Cut The Nonsense

I’m not sure that we need to solve the deficit problem now, we may need to let the economy pick up before we tackle that problem, but we do need to solve it, and the nonsensical crap that is coming from both sides to address the issue is just that: nonsensical crap. We have to get serious about it, and the longer we wait to do it the harder and more painful it is going to be.

The issue is in three parts and one solution does not cover all.

We cannot solve the federal deficit problem without raising taxes, and I am not talking about “making the wealthy pay their share,” I am talking about everyone. There is no free lunch. Taxes should be a great deal more progressive than they are, but the popular myth that we can have the government provide services and that the public, the middle class workers, need not pay taxes to support those services has to stop.

Dumping the tax burden on corporations and “wealthy businesses” is nonsense. Those taxes will not be paid by those corporations and business owners, they will be paid by the people buying the products sold by those corporations and businesses, the same consumers who are trying to avoid paying the cost of government now.

We need to cut military and defense spending by at least 50% and preferably by 75% or more. We are defending against an enemy that was defeated decades ago. We need to end farm subsidies and similar giveaways altogether. These programs are corporate welfare, and we need to begin using the government to manage the country and serve the needs of the people, not to fatten the pockets of corporate magnates.

We need to eliminate the home mortgage deduction and all other tax dodges that are designed to manipulate social policy. Taxes are for the purpose of raising revenue and should be used for that purpose only, not to inspire social policy or to promote one or more segments of commerce.

We do not need to address Social Security at all, at least not in terms of the federal deficit. It is funded by its own revenue stream and has no direct effect on the deficit. Chris Matthews once objected to raising or eliminating the cap on income taxed for the program because high income earners would ”pay in money that they would never get back.” So would anyone who dies at age 64. The adjustments need to keep in mind that this is not a social investment program, but is a social insurance program.

We need to address Medicare and Medicaid, not in terms of government spending directly, but in terms of the way that health care is administered and delivered in this nation. We spend three times more and get less on health care than any other developed nation in the world, and is because of the effect of rampant predatory practices by the delivery system. If we address and correct the way that providers charge for medical services, the payments problem for Medicare and Medicaid will take care of itself

In the entirety of the medical care system, public and private, we need to address the problem not in term of the payments we are making, but rather in terms of the costs we are incurring and the nature of those costs. Not what we're doing, but who's doing it and what they are charging for it.

A thousand tiny cuts will not slay an enemy. You have to take a big freaking sword, swing it from the hip and deliver a mortal blow.