Wednesday, November 22, 2023

The Republican-Made Debt Disaster

 It's not news that Republicans have pulled out the "Reduce Taxes" card so many times that the card is losing its spots.  And while they're "Reducing Taxes", (their real god) the United States is going straight to Debt Hell.

Thanks, Republicans!

Each time the U.S. government comes perilously close to a shutdown because of disagreement within Congress on raising the federal debt ceiling, a familiar question arises: Could we not fix the debt issue once and for all? Yes, it can be resolved with some bold steps that will also bring some bonus benefits, according to a new brief by the Penn Wharton Budget Model (PWBM), a nonpartisan policy thinktank.

The PWBM brief, titled “A Wide Range of Policy Bundles Can Stabilize Federal Debt While Growing the Economy,” details three options that could potentially contain the debt-GDP ratio at between 95% and 150% by 2050 — instead of the projected 190%. The measures proposed in the options would work at both ends: increase GDP and wages, and reduce debt and spending. If enacted in 2024, those options would bring in new revenue of between $4.3 trillion and $5.6 trillion within a 10-year budget window....

Before you say it:  YES, Donald Trump was all on board with Paul Ryan's Tax CutRyan did the bidding of his masters, the US Chamber of Commerce, and Trump (naive at the time) followed Ryan's lead.  (Following the lead of "experts" got Trump into deep doodoo with Covid, too.)

Those Tax Cut gods have been very good to certain people (those who own common stocks); as GDP rose, putting lotsa dollars into some pockets, real median income stood still:

The Free Market folks are saying that Real Median Household income is WAY up, and their graph looks like a rocket going straight up at fast rate, rate is a 

Well, what about those common stock holdings?  Doesn't look so good for the Normies:

Brat Chart 4

Most people can feel this Chart intuitively: something has gone very wrong and the Elites capture all of the gains while the American people

Anyhow.....

Republicans MUST get it through their heads that both tax increases AND discretionary-spend cuts MUST be taken, immediately.  They'll fight dirty, of course; you can expect that they'll offer a minor tax increase on millionaires combined with a 10% (or so) cut in Social Security payments for example, and tell you that "It's the only way to resolve this."

Count on it.

It's the Washington Way.  Get a seat, get lots of money, get re-elected, get lots of money....

Somehow, the Normies lose every.  damn.  time.

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