Here's the deal.I love Bondad's writing.
The U.S is running a deficit. That means two things.
1.) Taxes have to increase.
2.) Spending has to drop. As I demonstrated last week, the real issue there is medical costs We need to find some way to lower medical spending. I have no idea what that entails,but that is the central issue going forward for the US deficit.
This magical thinking that a reworking of the tax code will solve the problem is utter crap. It's a nice idea, but the tax code is full of special interest giveaways. The only way to make simplification work is to eliminate every single giveaway and not let any return. Politically, in an age of massive lobbying by everybody and their dog, that is simply not going to happen.
So far, all we've gotten is really stupid solutions that effectively say, "we don't want to make hard decisions because we might not get re-elected."
This isn't that hard or complicated. However, it does require grown-up solutions to answers. And that is where we come up short. Washington is full of stupid people.
Granted, the man's a Tax Attorney. One could argue that he'd stand to lose business if the Tax Code were simplified, and one would be wrong. (I'm thinking he could find something to do with his skillz).
But he's right about the Politics of this.
What he says makes sense, but collectively "We The People" also bear an awesome responsibility for the mess we're in. Remember Walter Mondale talking about a rising deficit and how he needed to raise taxes in order to fix Reagan's mess? Of course you don't...because he lost to Reagan.
Remember Grey Davis saying that the California Budget hole was large and growing, and how he needed to resort to desperate measures to fix it? This after he'd been re-elected. I bet you don't because he was recalled in favor of Governor Arnold.
And the budget hole got worse.
Why do Politicians lie about these things? Because we beg them to.
