Isn't it slight of hand that conservatives insist our deficit is a 'spending' problem?

It's a bald-faced attempt frame the issue by mere assertion, tantamount to claiming one's inability to pay their bills is totally unrelated to the fact that they're working for minimum wage.

Conservatives seem to be unable to grasp the simple concept that when you reduce your income below your financial obligations that you end up with a deficit.

for the hard of reading:

TAX . CUTS . COST . MONEY *PERIOD* ain't no market fairy gonna bring it back to you either.

So, in your mind, drastic cuts in spending and a roll back of government bureaucracy would do nothing to affect the deficit. Is that it? In your mind, even if we spent nothing, we'd still have a deficit because we don't take enough from those who earn.

Interesting.

No, sorry, young man. There are two halves to every deficit. Spending and revenue. We're not saying you couldn't address the deficit by increasing revenue...which raising the tax rate would not do...we're saying you could do more to reduce the deficit by reducing spending. See? Costs and revenues. You want to raise costs AND revenues. We want to lower costs to meet revenues.

Sorry, young man, but the federal government spends FAR too much and FAR exceeds its authority. Time has come to reign it in.

As a result of the Bush tax cuts revenue to the treasury went up, problem is we didn't get the matching spending cuts. Wikipedia is not a reliable source. Your information is incorrect.

When you spend more than you have coming in you get a deficit, the answer is not to demand more money, but to make cuts in spending.

When you run a household budget you have to live within your income. How many people do you know that will go to their boss and tell him/her I overspent my pay, can you give me more money?

You can't squeeze more money out of a dead or dying economy. We cannot raise taxes, that will just force more people on the streets.

There would be no revenue problem IF THE GOVT LIVED WITHIN IT'S MEANS.

Taxes are low because of high unemployment and underemployment which means less spending.

Less spending means less tax revenues and less new hires.

You must have missed the announcement that we are in a recession.

Actually, according to the Treasury Department, federal revenues were up 40% in the three years following the Bush tax cuts. Our deficit is indeed a spending problem because our spending has been increasing much faster than revenues.

Get a clue.

Eliminate the unconstitutional pandering and vote buying legislation and spending and you can hear the deficit smash through the floor. If spending is not the problem, then why has the deficit soared "to infinity and beyond" since the unconstitutional spending of chairman obama's "economic sedation act" was passed BY DEMOCRATS? Did the chairman actually expect to se an increase in revenue when his millionaire buddies volunteered to "donate" more of their money to the government?

We couldn't afford the 1986 tax cuts either. What they should have learned in consumer education in high school is that:

Revenue - Expense + borrowing - investment = 0

Lowering revenue has the same effect as increasing expense, and if you have a deficit, the difference must be borrowed (thus raising the debt ceiling), unless you can sell assets.

Perhaps we can sell a few of the 10 new $14 billion dollar Ford Class Aircraft Carriers we are currently building. We certainly don't need them to fight terrorists who use box cutters and dynamite. We could find a cash buyer for the Washington Monument or something. You know how sports stadiums are being named for corporate sponsors? Why not sell British Petroleum the right to rename the Washington Monument after their company?

What are you smoking? In that link it shows revenue rising both after the initial implementation of the tax cuts and the extension.

The huge drop in between those two periods of rising is when the housing and debt market collapsed.

The chart shows increases in revenue and declines during recession, but the analysis never mentions the recessions (following 9/11 and the Housing crash). 2007 was a record year for Federal receipts. You are cherry picking your results.

I could show you dozens of websites that prove you are wrong, and I can also find dozens that say you are correct. Careful what you read. The solution is usually somewhere in between.

Bush tax cuts helped the rich and corporations but the sagging economy and the cost of two wars finished us off. Nothing is free. Im not saying there isn't some waste but taxes and a booming economy is the way out. I think government bonds similar to WW2 War Bonds would help. Then at least we would be borrowing from ourselves. I don't know why Republicans want Americans to make all the sacrifices and deny that those two senseless wars and corporate welfare put us here..

you can take alllll the taxes you want. take all the rich peoples money and it still doesnt address our debt.

lookie here, bush the II has a huge hand in this. he fought unfunded wars and didnt fund medicare part D, BUT it is in fact a spending problem, not a revenue problem. c'mon man, youre better than that!

the o-man has been just as bad and in fact, worse. NOBODY will touch SS, medicare, or defense. IT'S MADDENING!

in fact, the o-man doubled down on black and came up red! BUMMER! were broke! blame whoever you want but it's true!