By John Sykes
In the “The Road to a Downgrade - A short history of the entitlement state.”, the WSJ does a good job of showing that our journey to Greeciousness is imminent and has been and continues to be a bi-partisan affair.
This is the [Greek] road to fiscal perdition. The looming debt downgrade only confirms what everyone knows: Congress has made so many promises to so many Americans that there is no conceivable way those promises can be kept. Tax rates might have to rise to 60%, 70%, even 80% to raise the revenues to finance these promises, but that would be economically ruinous.
This graph shows the beginning of the progressive era in the 1960’s, a brief respite, and then the breath-taking bi-partisan Bush-Obama spree beginning in 2000. Historic graphs show an average of expenditures somewhere around 18% of GDP.
The late Reagan, Clinton, & Bush I years were pretty good except that one should note that every President since the 1950’s, modern memory, has increased the deficit and done very, very little about reducing government size or regulations.
If any question remains as to the primary cause of our current fiscal mess, ENTITLEMENTS, this following graph makes it obvious! LBJ kicked it all off with his “Great Society”, Clinton got it moving again, Bush II kept “compassionately” expanding it, and Obama is blowing us out the window.
Looks bi-partisan to me.
The biggest question is will our current crop of politicians stop it? No way!
Will compromise stop it? No way!
Will this take an effective conservative party which might easily rule over compromise and even become the biggest of three parties?
We need to be looking deep into our American souls and getting us back to the all-to-easy mantra of less government!
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