Debt is a big issue in this election, and it should be. Bush added $6 trillion to the debt during eight years, and Obama has added another $4 trillion. While most of the clamouring about the debt comes from Republicans, their solutions are simply impossible, and it is outrageous that they think American people to be stupid enough to fall for their claims.
If a candidate promises to cut debt, cut taxes and increase military spending at the same time, the candidate is lying. It is impossible to do such a thing. Even if a majority of social spending, Social Security, Medicare, earmarks, Department of Education, Department of Energy and Environmental Protection Agency were cut, that still would not balance the budget. Their math does not work, and it is important that people know this.
As far as military goes, it is the government's biggest, most wasteful and most inefficient bureaucracy, costing approximately $900 billion a year. The military buys $200 hammers and $600 toilets. The military throws away perfectly good tools after a week in use. The military spends billions of dollars of taxpayer money on weapons that never get used. America could have a military as powerful as it does today for one half the cost - or a military twice as powerful as it does today for what it pays now. If any department requires pruning of wasteful practices, the Department of Defense it is. And this can be done without beginning to compromise the power and effectiveness of America's military.
Of course America's budget problem has been fixed before. It was called the Clinton administration. Each year of the Clinton administration, the deficit significantly declined until by the end of the Clinton administration America had a large annual surplus. Clinton's secret? Slightly raise taxes on highest incomes, bringing in vast amounts of money into the treasury while realizing zero suffering on the part of the people. This rational solution restored fiscal sanity to America while creating a vast economic boom that added 23 million American jobs.
One mantra often floated by Republican candidates is that tax cuts have always created prosperity. That claim is a blatant lie. The Bush tax cuts on highest incomes did not create prosperity. Debt rose by $6 trillion over eight years of Bush, while private sector employment declined. Whereas Clinton's raising of taxes on highest incomes brought in vast amounts of money into the treasury while reducing the deficit and freeing the capital for investment in the productive sectors of the economy. The result was fiscal sanity and a vast economic and job growth.
Among the Republicans, few publicly identify themselves with the ruinous policies of the Bush administration; but there are many who harken back to Ronald Reagan. In fact, Reagan began the huge deficits; and while the economy boomed under Reagan, it boomed more under Clinton - and under Clinton fiscal sanity was achieved along with the economic growth. There is a logical solution to the problems that we are now facing, and it is a solution that has tried and worked. It is the Clinton administration policy that combined growth-generating policies with responsible taxation.
Of course, whenever one says anything about raising taxes on higher incomes the immediate response is the claim that one is driven by envy or that one is punishing success. I, for one, have been in the higher income bracket under Clinton, and I never had a problem paying my taxes. If Warren Buffett can come out and say that it's wrong for him to be paying less percentage in taxes than his secretary, then the same should apply to other wealthy individuals. The bottom line is that a millionaire is neither punished, nor bankrupted, nor made to suffer, by paying a slightly higher tax rate; whereas money realized that way for the treasury is substantial. And this - maximizing benefit for the treasury while minimizing suffering for the taxpayer - makes this the rational policy of taxation.
So whenever we hear Republicans make the aforementioned claims, we know that we are dealing with liars. There are real solutions to the present debt crisis, and these solutions have worked wonders before. The Bush administration took America down the garden path, and we are still dealing with the outcome. It is time to end this ruinous misdirection entirely and restore the successful policies of the Clinton administration.