{"id":4582,"date":"2011-04-15T03:17:07","date_gmt":"2011-04-15T10:17:07","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.politicsplus.org\/blog\/?p=4582"},"modified":"2011-04-15T03:17:07","modified_gmt":"2011-04-15T10:17:07","slug":"revenue-problem-or-spending-problem","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.politicsplus.org\/blog\/2011\/04\/15\/revenue-problem-or-spending-problem\/","title":{"rendered":"Revenue Problem or Spending Problem?"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><font color=\"#0000ff\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" style=\"display: block; float: none; margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto\" title=\"15Spending\" alt=\"15Spending\" src=\"https:\/\/www.7thstep.org\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2011\/04\/15Spending.jpg\" width=\"538\" height=\"307\" \/><\/font><\/p>\n<p><font color=\"#0000ff\">Almost any time the subject of making the super-rich share in the sacrifices needed to reduce the defect, a Republican feigns indignation and says?&#160; We don\u2019t have a revenue problem.&#160; We have a sending problem.&#160; Is that true?&#160; There\u2019s an easy way to tell.&#160; If the Republican\u2019s mouth is open when he or she says it, the Republican is lying.<\/font><\/p>\n<p><font color=\"#0000ff\">Of course a deficit is that the difference between revenue and spending is less than zero, so the problem is that the difference.&#160; Raising revenue and cutting spending reduce the difference.&#160; But some Republicans are totally loony on the subject.<\/font><\/p>\n<blockquote>\n<p>Appearing on MSNBC\u2019s Jansing and Co. this morning, Rep. Todd Rokita (R-IN) ran into some problems defending a GOP talking point [Faux Noise delinked] when <strong>he claimed that the federal government has \u201ctoo much\u201d tax revenue coming in<\/strong>\u2026<\/p>\n<p>&#8230;Watch it:<\/p>\n<p>&#160;<iframe loading=\"lazy\" title=\"YouTube video player\" height=\"510\" src=\"http:\/\/www.youtube.com\/embed\/mXCy9lVbIoI?rel=0\" frameborder=\"0\" width=\"640\" allowfullscreen=\"allowfullscreen\"><\/iframe> <\/p>\n<p>The Republican message about a revenue vs. a spending problem is silly, as they are each flip sides of the same coin, but Rokita\u2019s statement is just wrong. If the government spent only what it takes in in tax revenue, it would have to slash nearly half its funding to every program, from defense to Medicare, yet Rokita apparently thinks even that is too much. <strong>As a share of GDP, government revenue in 2009 (the most recent year available) was at its \u201c<\/strong><a href=\"http:\/\/www.usatoday.com\/money\/perfi\/taxes\/2011-02-07-federal-taxes_N.htm\" target=\"_blank\"><strong>lowest since 1950<\/strong><\/a><strong>.\u201d<\/strong> As this chart <a ak1href=\"http:\/\/www.cbo.gov\/ftpdocs\/120xx\/doc12085\/03-10-ReducingTheDeficit.pdf\">from<\/a> the Congressional Budget Office demonstrates, the recession decimated the federal tax base:<\/p>\n<p><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" style=\"background-image: none; border-right-width: 0px; padding-left: 0px; padding-right: 0px; display: block; float: none; border-top-width: 0px; border-bottom-width: 0px; margin-left: auto; border-left-width: 0px; margin-right: auto; padding-top: 0px\" title=\"15CBORevenues\" border=\"0\" alt=\"15CBORevenues\" src=\"https:\/\/www.7thstep.org\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2011\/04\/15CBORevenues.jpg\" width=\"482\" height=\"207\" \/><\/p>\n<p>But <strong>even before the recession, there simply wasn\u2019t enough money coming into the federal government to cover costs<\/strong>, forcing the government to <a href=\"http:\/\/www.usatoday.com\/money\/perfi\/taxes\/2011-02-07-federal-taxes_N.htm\" target=\"_blank\">borrow 40 cents<\/a> of every dollar it spends, as Republicans like to remind Americans so frequently. <\/p>\n<p><strong>It\u2019s worth noting that the last time Republicans claimed there was too much revenue coming into the federal government, they ended up solving that problem by helping to create the deficits of today<\/strong>\u2026 [<em>emphasis added<\/em>]<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n<p>Inserted from &lt;<a href=\"http:\/\/thinkprogress.org\/2011\/04\/14\/todd-rokita-too-much-revenue\/\" target=\"_blank\">Think Progress<\/a>&gt;<\/p>\n<p><font color=\"#0000ff\">If nothing else, Rokita proves, beyond a shadow a doubt that the folks Republicans are putting up as candidates, these days, are not fit to be Dog Catcher.<\/font><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Almost any time the subject of making the super-rich share in the sacrifices needed to reduce the defect, a Republican feigns indignation and says?&#160; We don\u2019t have a revenue problem.&#160; We have a sending problem.&#160; Is that true?&#160; There\u2019s an easy way to tell.&#160; If the Republican\u2019s mouth is open when he or she says <a href='https:\/\/www.politicsplus.org\/blog\/2011\/04\/15\/revenue-problem-or-spending-problem\/' class='excerpt-more'>[&#8230;]<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[5],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-4582","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-politics","category-5-id","post-seq-1","post-parity-odd","meta-position-corners","fix"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.politicsplus.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4582","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.politicsplus.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.politicsplus.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.politicsplus.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.politicsplus.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=4582"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.politicsplus.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4582\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.politicsplus.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=4582"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.politicsplus.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=4582"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.politicsplus.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=4582"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}