Federal Budget: Spending and Taxing Revisited

A. A Preventable Crisis: Exploring Fiscal Crisis Scenarios for the United States is a sobering report regarding the rising National Debt and potential disastrous scenarios we face unless we tackle the problem soon. From the Committee for a Responsible Federal Budget, April 21, 2010.

B. The Man With the Plan is a long and relatively heavy article, but insightful and worth reading. The article is about Congressman Paul Ryan's "Roadmap for America's Future," a sweeping plan to stave off the nation's looming economic and fiscal collapse by changing the tax code, overhauling the health care system, and reforming the nation's major entitlement programs. Its debt-reducing claims aren't based on mere fantasy -- the Congressional Budget Office has determined that the plan would boost economic growth while making Medicare and Social Security solvent. And it accomplishes these aims without raising taxes or affecting the benefits of current retirees. From The American Spectator, April, 2010.

C. Value Added Tax Update: The VAT is exactly what I have been warning people about with the huge and growing deficits and the enormous national debt. (See National Value Added Tax Considered - Tax Increases Ahead , posted October 2, 2009) This invisible tax (imposed on each stage of production) must be opposed, as once in, can all too easily be increased. The VAT is a prescription that treats the symptom (deficit) rather than the cause (spending) of the disease (national debt).

“As the night follows the day, the value-added tax cometh.

With the passage of Obamacare, creating a vast new middle-class entitlement, a national sales tax of the kind near-universal in Europe is inevitable.” Health bill brings higher taxes, by Charles Krauthammer, from the Detroit News, April 8, 2010.

“Pay attention to the growing chatter about a value added tax. It's how we'll likely pay for our new health care entitlement, and the vehicle that will turn America into a colony of worker bees sweating and slaving to sustain Queen Government. . . .” Welfare state will demand a new VAT tax, from the Detroit News, April 22, 2010.

“. . . the liberals' lunge to maximize government's growth depends on quickly creating a crisis that can be called a threat to the entitlement menu. Then the public can be panicked into accepting the addition of a VAT to the existing menu of taxes.” Social programs have real costs, By George Will, from the Detroit News, April 30, 2010.