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Barack Obama, deficit spending, economics, economy, fiscal cliff, keynes, Keynesian, milton friedman, national debt, Obama, politics, president obama, president of the united states, spending, taxes
In order to address the budget logman, President Obama has proposed $1.6 trillion in tax increases over 10 years, and not one single spending cut. Unless of course, you count “cuts” that were already made or already planned, as the President has an unfortunate habit of doing. Otherwise, there’s pretty much zero in the way of spending cuts. It’s not a remotely realistic proposal and goes directly against the principles set out by the Simpson-Bowles deficit reduction panel.
The proposal is so extreme, that we might actually be in a better position going off the “fiscal cliff”. Indeed, that would appear to be the objective: make the alternative so undesirable, that there’s no other choice.
The “fiscal cliff” would be a terrible option, too, but at least it includes about $100 billion in spending cuts that would be desirable; with a large portion of that coming from the completely bloated Defense department. It’s also worth noting that the fiscal cliff consists of less extreme rate hikes than the President’s proposal.