Doctor CamNC4Me wrote:BMC,
How do you feel about upticking the 5%'ers' tax rate so we can get some infrastructure projects done, some Americans to work, and reduce our national debt a bit?
- Doc
I don't think we have a tax problem (well we do, but for purposes of this argument lets say we don't). We are getting record tax revenues. Its a spending problem. We need an overhaul of what the federal government should spend money on.
I think until we have a deficit of $0.00, not one cent should leave this country to subsidize other nations for anything. A bright light needs to be pointed at every program the federal government spends money on, including the military. I'm pro-armed forces, but the black hole in spending needs to be closed. A friend of mine used to work for the government, working on contracts and procurement for the armed services. He said what floored him was the overlap and redundancy in their spending. Each branch needs the same things, but no, the Army had to have green water coolers, and the Navy had to have blue ones, the Marines needed camo water coolers with a machine gun attached, and the AirForce cooler needed to levitate (tongue and cheek examples). The amount of money spent designing and creating the same things was mind blowing.
We need to get an army of independent, non-partisan forensic accountants to unravel the knot and I think you would find more than enough money for infrastructure spending. I would also whack as many federal "departments" as I could (Agriculture, Education, and HUD to start) and let states manage their own affairs.
If after all of this, we still come up short and need infrastructure spending, then maybe increase certain taxes.
“A government big enough to give you everything you want is a government big enough to take away everything that you have.”