{"id":1564,"date":"2010-02-01T17:00:00","date_gmt":"2010-02-01T21:00:00","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/blogs.northcountrypublicradio.org\/inbox\/2010\/02\/01\/why-tax-hikes-and-deep-service-cuts-are-unavoidable\/"},"modified":"2010-02-01T17:00:00","modified_gmt":"2010-02-01T21:00:00","slug":"why-tax-hikes-and-deep-service-cuts-are-unavoidable","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/blogs.northcountrypublicradio.org\/inbox\/2010\/02\/01\/why-tax-hikes-and-deep-service-cuts-are-unavoidable\/","title":{"rendered":"Why tax hikes — and deep service cuts — are unavoidable"},"content":{"rendered":"

The New York Times has one of the coolest graphic features on its website<\/a> right now that I’ve ever seen.<\/p>\n

It lays out Federal spending in an easy to understand way. Most compelling is the button that allows you to identify “mandatory” spending.<\/p>\n

These are the programs — from social security to debt maintenance — that we can’t avoid.<\/p>\n

Note that when you hide that mandatory spending, the only big chunk that remains is Defense spending, which most Americans also view as fairly essential.<\/p>\n

This graphic reveals in a nutshell why I’m so impatient with conservative rhetoric about tax cuts. <\/p>\n

During last year’s special election, Conservative Doug Hoffman talked about serious budget cuts, talking passionately about “pork” and “earmarks.”<\/p>\n

But as this graphic demonstrates, that’s just not reality. <\/p>\n

This is also why it’s unrealistic for Democrats to pretend that we can continue adding more services, more upgrades to the promises our government makes.<\/p>\n

Currently, we’re borrowing nearly half of the money we’re spending as a society. In order to put the Federal back into balance we’re going to need two things:<\/p>\n

1. More revenue. Hopefully some of this will come in the form of more robust tax income from a more robust post-recession economy. But I think tax hikes are in our future.<\/p>\n

2. Deep cuts in programs that are currently viewed as ‘mandatory.’ Medicaid, Social Security, defense spending — something’s got to give. <\/p>\n

Before firing back with rhetoric, take a few minutes to play with the NY Times’ graphi<\/a>c. <\/p>\n

See if you can find realistic ways to cut this budget that avoid either of those two steps. <\/p>\n

Then…fire away.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

The New York Times has one of the coolest graphic features on its website right […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":12,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[1],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.northcountrypublicradio.org\/inbox\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1564"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.northcountrypublicradio.org\/inbox\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.northcountrypublicradio.org\/inbox\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.northcountrypublicradio.org\/inbox\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/12"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.northcountrypublicradio.org\/inbox\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1564"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.northcountrypublicradio.org\/inbox\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1564\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.northcountrypublicradio.org\/inbox\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1564"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.northcountrypublicradio.org\/inbox\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1564"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.northcountrypublicradio.org\/inbox\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1564"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}