A simple way to solve this "deficit crisis" is to restore the pre-Reagan top tax rates.
Did you know the corporate rate used to be 50% and the top income tax rate was 90% FOR A LONG TIME!
It would also go a long way to addressing the massive inequality that resulted.
That wouldn't resolve the crisis because no matter what the tax rates are a year from now the president is still demanding to borrow more money today.
Also, mathematically, it wouldn't raise that much money compared to the total deficit.
How much would that save and what is the deficit today that needs to be resolved?
I don't know if even that would be enough of a spending cut to resolve the debt ceiling issue.
My solution is that we stop reelecting the people that put us into this position. Kind of a first do no harm solution.
Once we have rational congresspeople in Congress then we can talk about having them discuss serious budgeting priorities.
But we keep reelecting these completely unserious, completely irrational people to Congress, so as far as I'm concerned the rest of the story is kind of irrelevant.
It is ridiculous that the last Congress authorized spending of money that didn't exist without doing anything to provide for the money, but we re-elected so many of the people involved in that, so 🤷♂️
My solution to the debt "crisis" is to ask people to learn what money is and how it works.
We use the terms deficit and debt to describe how many more dollars the govt spends into the economy than it takes out.
The govt can't "borrow" dollars. That's like saying a sports stadium has to "borrow" points to put on the scoreboard.
The govt PRINTS dollars, to use as an exchange medium for its "spending" which is allocation of resources toward priorities.
That government can't borrow dollars will come as a huge surprise to all of us who have lent dollars to the government.
OF COURSE government can borrow dollars. And, even more, it DOES borrow dollars.
It's just silly to deny this simple reality.
*I* have lent dollars to the US government. And the Treasury reports that it has accepted loans from a tremendous number of people and organizations around the world.
It's really tinfoil hat territory to deny that based on what we see with our own eyes.
