Kurt Ullman wrote
Don Homuth dhomuthoneatcomcast.net@ wrote

No -- the problem is in the mismatch between a small increase
in revenues coupled with a large increase in expenditures.

The key to keeping things in balance is to match them.

Exactly. Spend less

Actually if you look at the Joint Commitee on Taxation "scoring" of the cuts,
the revenues that came in after the cut were larger than the scoring said
would have come in if the cut had not occurred. This is same scoring
system they have used for taxes way before GW came about.

Also based on an illusion. So-called tax "cuts" that are merely
deferrals merely postpone the day of reckoning, and create an
illusion of a thriving economy based on borrowed money. Rather like
that teevee commercial where the guy is bragging about his house,
cars, lawn, pool, etc -- and then says "I'm in debt up to my ears!"

Spending is the key. Heck I would actually agree with a tax cut if
the quid pro quo was a balanced budget amendment or some such.
You can't trust a Congress of any stripe to not spend too much money.

There is a need to tax more than we spend. Otherwise we can't pay
down the accumulated Debt, the overwhelming majority of which the Rs
have managed to run up. It is the Combination of taxing and spending
cuts that will be required to get the job done.

But no one is talking about a way to enforce spending cuts in
the same way a tax increase enforces an increase in revenue.

So -- same question: What expenditures that You
support are You willing to have cut or done away with?

Pretty much everything except law enforcement, defense and
a couple other small things. "Politics should be limited in its
scope to war, protection of property, and the occasional
precautionary beheading of a member of the ruling class."

-P.J. O'Rourke

The world's moved on just a tad since that dinosaur's day.

So what would YOU be willing to give up
or would you just up taxes and up taxes.

Somehow the Rs lost their way a couple of decades back on such fundamental
matters. For a while there, I thought perhaps the Ds would pick up the concept,
but of late it doesn't seem to be happening as it ought.

The Dems have pretty much always lead the charge on spending.
There was a small timeframe of about 5 years when the GOP first
took over where there was some slowing of the rate of increase in
spending, but then they got the addiction and it was all over