Skip to main content

Blaming your ex: a quick budget analogy

Image
By

When people complain about the national debt accumulated during Barack Obama's first term, it's worth remembering that nearly all of our current annual deficit (the gap between the amount of income we raise through taxes and fees and what we spend on goods, services, and interest payments), and therefore the growth of the debt, is the result of:

1- policies initiated by George W. Bush:
  • 2001 and 2003 tax cuts
  • 2003 prescription drug benefit for seniors
  • wars in Iraq and Afghanistan
  • very deserved health, education, and retirement benefits that troops will rightfully receive long after those wars have concluded
  • Wall Street bailout and government takeover of Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac
none of which were "paid for" through tax increases or spending cuts;* and

2- the Great Recession:
  • millions of people who don't need food stamps, unemployment benefits, or Medicaid when the economy is good, do need them when the economy goes south, making those programs automatically (but temporarily) a lot more expensive
  • tax receipts plummet because while unemployed people pay taxes, they don’t pay nearly as much in taxes as employed people do, and unprofitable corporations pay even less.
(Read more from the Center on Budget and Policy Priorities.)

Of course, if you point this out, you'll get shouted down that it's time to stop blaming Bush.

I've been trying for awhile now to think of a good real-world analogy to explain what's going on in the budget and I may have finally come up with one:

It's like your reckless spouse bought a sports car. He's long gone but you're still stuck making the payments. Every single month, another big chunk of money goes out the door for a decision he made. No wonder you want to slug your neighbor when she tells you to stop blaming your ex.

*For what it's worth, I don't disagree with all of those policies. I just disagree with not paying for them.
Labels:

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

What Two Religions Tell Us About the Modern Dating Crisis - TIME

By
This article is so interesting to me, and seems to touch on so many different aspects of our current culture, both secular and non. I have no objection to cosmetic surgery. I've had both lasik eye surgery and liposuction over the years -- the former an equal measure of laziness and vanity, the latter pure vanity. I'd hated that little spare tire since I was 6 years old and so one day I had it delightfully sucked right out of me! But the stories over the years about the enormous amount of plastic surgery -- particularly breast augmentations -- performed in Utah have been eye-catching (not the least of which because the Church frowns so heavily on other much-less-invasive violations of the body-is-a-temple principle, like tattoos and multiple ear-piercings in an earlobe). When we were still friends, the husband of my old roommate continually pushed her to get a 'boob job' because everyone else in their ward had gotten one and he wanted her to have bigger breasts....
Post a Comment
Read more

Experience in jail

By
I was handcuffed at my home and driven to a processing station at the county “Justice Center.” Officers stood me against the wall and patted me down for contraband, checking my pockets, stripping off my socks, pulling out the insoles of my shoes.   Other officers emptied my bag and wallet of their belongings, took my ring and hairclip from me, and wrestled my tennis shoes free from their laces, putting everything they had collected into a sealed plastic bag. Occasionally they asked me about this or that they had found among my things: looking at my business cards, “Do you know anyone famous?”, or at the Kerry and Obama stickers that adorn my little makeshift Metro card case, “Are you a Democrat or a Republican? Because if you’re a Republican, I can take you to see the commissioner right away.” They were joking and generally amused. I was sobbing and shaking. This was the worst day of my life but just another work day in theirs, just another tawdry soap opera of thousands ...
Post a Comment
Read more

John McCain: 2009 ACA debate "one of most hard-fought and fair" in my time

By
Was the ACA rammed through Congress with no Republican opportunity to amend the bill? Nope. But don't take my word for it. Here is Sen. John McCain (R-AZ) on the Senate floor, September 24, 2013. He notes that 160 Republican amendments were accepted in the HELP committee alone. He says the ACA fight was "one of the most hard-fought and fair, in my view, debates that has taken place on the floor of the Senate in the time I have been here." He says he's "proud of the effort we made and, frankly, the other side of the aisle allowed that debate to take place." Mr. McCAIN. It is a matter of record that the Senate Finance Committee considered the Affordable Care Act over several weeks and approved the bill on October 13, 2009. At that time members of the Finance Committee submitted 564 amendments, 135 amendments were considered, 79 rollcall votes were taken, and 41 amendments were adopted. Then the Senate Health, Education, Labor, and Pensions Committ...
Post a Comment
Read more