Politics Of Bad Ideas Analysis

A fiscal deficit is when a government's total expenditures exceed the tax revenues that it generates. A budget deficit can be cut by either reducing public expenditure or raising taxes. In this essay, I am going to analyse the benefits and costs of increasing tax rates to reduce fiscal deficits instead of cutting government expenditure.

The book begins by saying that economics has more incorrect arguments than any other study. The two critical reasons for this are: People don’t care about the long term health of the public, as much as the care about the short term gain in their private lives. Special interest groups create or reuse correct-sounding fallacies to promote their viewpoint. Economics consists in looking at more than the immediate policy; It includes seeing the problems of the policy for not just one group but for all groups. The misconception that government spending boosts the Economy, is a result of a system of misconceptions. The fact that, we don’t address deficit spending and inflation and assume that public spending will be covered in taxes, is a delusional dream.

Overspending is a pertinent problem facing the lawmakers in Congress. In 2012 discretionary spending reached $1.3 trillion and mandatory spending $2 trillion, while only bringing in $2.5 trillion in revenue. Since the turn of the century back in 2000, non-mandatory spending by the government has topped out a whopping $16.1 trillion just in the past 13 years (Boccia, Frasser & Goff 2013). This persistent overspending on programs and services that are not necessary to the functionality of the country is what is causing the deficit to rise year after year. To remedy this issue the government must either increase the revenue it brings in through taxes and trade or reduce the amount of money it spend or perhaps even both. In 2012 thirty-one cents of every dollar that Washington spent was borrowed (Boccia, Frasser & Goff 2013). Most of which went to large programs such as Social Security and Medicare and if these large, growing programs, or just the budget in general, do not undergo financial reform it could spell disaster for the economy and fiscal state of the nation.

In addition to Reaganomics, the federal budget deficits climbed in his years in office. Before President Reagan was in office the budget deficits were below $75 billion and then from 1982 to 1989 the annual deficit surpassed $100 billion. The Department of Defense annual budget increased approximately 85 percent. During his presidency the national debt tripled from $908 billion in 1980 to $2.6 trillion in 1988. Liberals believed that the debt was acceptable if the government invested in education, transportation, healthcare, and other economic and social issues. When President Reagan was in office, he cut most of the programs that President Johnson had created to benefit the low-income families. The government spending did not make all Americans prosper. The social issues were not solved because the government spent the money other issues like to pay for the interest on the debt. Today, these social problems still remain a problem in the United

On October 19, 2017, the Senate approved a budget that would aid Republican efforts to create tax cuts in a vote of 51-49. In essence, this budget would expand the federal deficit by 1.5 trillion dollars over a span of 10 years. According to Republicans, the intent of these tax cuts is to create more jobs as well as providing more income to Americans as a whole. However, many Democrats are starkly opposed to this budget because of how it will increase the federal deficit as well as reducing the potency of federal revenue provided by taxes. With the budget being approved by the Senate, it is now up to the House to adopt its version of the budget to officially make it into law.

The American government has struggled with the issue of taxes and the budget for over a hundred years. Class conflict, adversarial political parties, and convoluted economic philosophies have resulted in a never-ending debate over taxation. The New York Times newspaper article, “Senate Panel Vote Backs Budget Plan”, from June 1993, discusses the current feelings of the time in regards to the budget and taxation. Moreover, the article mentions factors such as democrat-republican debate, trickle down economics, and high verse low taxes for the middle class. The issues discussed in this 1993 article differ only slightly from the taxation conversation of today. However, now in 2011, we face a budget crisis that threatens the American economy

President Obama has introduced a variety of fiscal policy changes during his presidency; some of his ideas, however, did little to strengthen the economy as they were intended to do. For example, in 2001, as President Bush had just entered office, he ushered a reduction of income tax rates in addition to other tax cuts for the middle class, through Congress. While these policies were initially quite slow in boosting the economy, the economic benefits eventually began to surface around 2003 and the economy did begin to exhibit stronger growth. However, President Bush’s tax policy was set with an “expiration date”, set by Congress through a budget process called “reconciliation”

“Open ended benefit programs, funded by other people’s money” foster a ’something for nothing’ mentality, that is weakening America”, states Nicholas Eberstadt. The governments need to emphasize unemployment spending and help businesses that are failing, is driving the national debt up by the day (Clemmitt). “Government is what it spends” Allen Schick shares in Clemmitt’s article, but this statement is only factual if that government spends its money wisely.

As Reagan slashed spending in his first term on programs such as food stamps and subsidized housing, the poverty rate climbed from 12% to 15% and unemployment rose from 7% to 11%.Reagan pledged during his 1980 campaign for president to balance the federal budget, but never submitted a balanced budget in his eight years in office. In 1981, the deficit was $79 billion and, in 1986, at the peak of his deficit spending, it stood at $221 billion. The federal debt was $994 billion when he took office in 1981 and grew to $2.9 trillion when his second term ended in 1989. US imports that were subject to some form of trade restraint increased from 12% in 1980 to 23% in 1988.Reagan's "voodoo" economic policy, where tax cuts were believed to somehow generate tax revenues, failed to account for his administration's excessive spending which increased from $591 billion in 1980 to $1.2 trillion in 1990. Reagan both increased and cut taxes. In 1980, middle-income families with children paid 8.2% in income taxes and 9.5% in payroll taxes. By 1988 their income tax was down to 6.6%, but payroll tax was up to 11.8%, a combined increase in taxes.Reagan pushed through a Social Security tax increases of $165 billion over seven years.The problem with judging Reagan’s economic policy is people associate the economy with President's terms and policies. In this case the two biggest causes of the 1970's early

and Bush Jr.’s presidencies, they continued the work of Reagan by eliminating waste, however they both faced many obstacles. When Bush Sr. became President, the federal debt was $2.8 trillion. Due to the financial situation, Bush couldn't create many of his own feeder all programs. He called this a “limited agenda” and could make the changes he wanted. Instead, he just continued the programs of Reagan. When Bush Jr. came to office one of the first programs he installed was the No Child Left Behind Act, which expanded federal funding for education. This act also instructed that every child in America must have basic reading and math skills, and no child was to be left behind. Bush also worked towards his vision of an “ownership society” of personal responsibility thin his second term. He wanted American citizens to have increased ownership of houses, businesses, retirement accounts, and health insurance. This idea created new benefits and competition increased, and it was the largest expansion of Medicare since 1965. How're both of these President, tried to decrease the government involvement in daily lives and tried to decrease government

George W. Bush lowered the taxes during his term, signing the Economic Growth and Tax Relief Reconciliation Act. The idea was to lower taxes for Americans but only the richest people benefited from the taxes being lowered. The average middle-class family received one-eighth of the tax breaks a richer family would and therefore the middle class fell behind. The tax cuts also failed to make jobs for people, influences the current day deficit problem. George W. Bush tried to lower taxes during his term however only the rich gained and the negative affects are still seen today.

3). Trump further pointed out that large fractions of the US annual budgets are set aside to finance the international economic obligations of the country. As such, the Republicans pointed out that cutting such parts of the budget would help to boost the American economy and to reduce budget deficits.

If our government didn’t spend anything would we have any type increase in our economy? I do not thing we would. Who would pay for the necessity things we need in order to thrive as a country. How would we keep up with our transportation system, invest in our future or keep us from totalitarianism? We have to have some type involvement from the government. I the 2016 election outcome came due to the fact that a lot of people felt like President Obama and his administration implicated too many policies that increase government spending. Such policies geared towards health care reform and income inequality. All in which increased taxes for each individual. I think a lot of people feel like the last eight years of government spending cost the tax payers a lot of unnecessary money. People were paying taxed for programs they didn’t support or agree with. “In fiscal year 2015, the federal government spent $3.7 trillion, amounting to 21 percent of the nation’s gross domestic product (GDP). Of that $3.7 trillion, over $3.2 trillion was financed by federal revenues. The remaining amount ($438 billion) was financed by borrowing. As the chart below shows, three major areas of spending each make up about one-fifth of the budget” (Center on Budget and Policy Priorities). This article outlines the major areas of spending which are

This article is about the current Republican presidential candidates and their spending habits in the past. Staying true to their conservative roots, each Republican candidate has guaranteed to cut back on government spending if they are elected. Unfortunately, according to this article, not all presidential candidates have a track record that lines up with their promises to the public. Fox news presents its readers with a graph labeled with the names of all current Republican presidential candidates who were also previous governors and their spending patterns. The chart shows that candidate Jeb Bush cut spending the most, while Mike Huckabee allegedly increased spending the most out of all Republican candidates who were also previous state

Reagan, during his administration fought to decrease the far-reaching policies of the federal government. He increased defense spending, social security payments and tax cuts, causing less money to be spent on grant-in-aid programs. The trend set by Reagan has been carried on throughout the more recent administrations. The role of the state and