Rhoads: Yes, Debt Matters, But Spending Matters More

By Mark Rhoads - 

The Peter G. Peterson Foundation has the gall to run TV commercials that cleverly appeal to the national debt concerns of fiscal conservatives in such a way as to undermine support for GOP tax cuts.

The commercial says that the tax cuts must be "paid for" by future generations who will be saddled with more debt.That is only partly correct if one assumes that spending can never go down.

The typical liberal view of the world is that tax cuts are seen by the Left as a "government program" and the "cost" of the program is lost revenue to the Federal Government. Only in Leftist Land can one imagine that letting people keep some of their own money is a "cost" to the government. The real villain of course is too much spending, not too little taxation. 

But the Peterson Foundation never complains much about tax increases to achieve "fiscal responsibility."  When the smoke clears in budget and tax debates, it is too much spending that must be attacked. Annual deficits and accumulated debt over many years are only symptoms of that problem. The average citizen in Illinois owes more that $11,000 as their personal share of just the state and local debt. The share of national debt is mounting almost too fast to keep track of because the national debt is way past $20 trillion. Yes we are concerned with debt but we need to focus on slowing the rate of spending, entitlements included, more than on raising taxes. Dynamic scoring shows the real world choices people make when they have more money in their pockets to spend but the Left prefers static scoring analysis because it supports their argument for higher taxes and spending.