And who's going to pay for it?

It always comes down to who pays, doesn't it? Well, it is a legitimate question. Government live from revenues. When revenues don't cover what you want or have to pay for, you need to borrow to get the money you need. We all agree that this is how the game is played. We also most likely agree that there is a lot of spending that is unnecessary and if we could reduce some of this waste, we'd be generally better off, but we wouldn't be in great shape. Why? Because you can't starve yourself back to health. If you don't have enough to pay for what you want and need, you have two options: reduce costs (which will only get you so far) or increase revenues (which may not solve your problems, but could certainly help).

This is how most of us try to manage our family budgets, but for some reason, the national budget obeys different rules? I don't think so. It has been documented, repeatedly, that the Bush tax cuts did not do what they claimed they would do: increase investment and generate job growth. It has been documented, repeatedly and reliably, that the who idea of trickle-down economics is just as "voodoo" as Bush I thought it was before he was forced (?) to embrace it. It was Hitler's propaganda minister, Goebbels, who taught us that if you repeat the lie long enough, the people will believe it. And it would seem that even a vicious, twisted mind can come up with an accurate thought as well.

No, there's not way around it: revenues have to be increased and the tried and true way to do it is to have everybody pay their fair share. That's not what's happening now, and everyone who insists that's the wrong way to go has simply been proven wrong already. You can try to play the free-market card, of course, but the free-marketeers like to ignore the fact that good old Adam Smith was one of the first to propose and endorse the idea of progressive tax rates. It's just that simple. Even he recognized that unfair tax structures would disadvantage more people than they help. What is more – and this is something the free-marketeers will never tell you – is that Mr. Smith also said one of the primary roles of government (and he wasn't even speaking about anything democratic) is to protect the ordinary citizen from the undue, unfair, and most likely corrupt, influence of business. He firmly believed that if left unchecked, the big players would get together and destroy the little ones and take advantage of their customers. Yeah, but who reads all of Adam Smith anymore?