How liberals would fix the federal budget
Despite what you may have heard, liberals are just as invested in eliminating the federal budget deficit as conservatives are. The difference is that conservatives want to fix it in the context of not raising taxes, whereas liberals are more open to both spending cuts and tax increases.
Matthew Yglesias talks about one proposal, and explains how it differs from others, like the Simpson-Bowles plan:
First and foremost that means explicitly situating the “budget” problem in a broader economic context. You see this two ways. One is the heavy (and appropriate) emphasis in the short term on mobilizing excess capacity to increase growth and decrease unemployment rather than austerity budgeting that will only increase resource-idling. The other is the principle they call No Cost Shifting, namely “Policies that simply shift costs from the federal government to individuals and families may improve the government’s balance sheet but may worsen the condition of many Americans, leaving the overall economy no better off.”
My general takeaway from all of the plans that have been floating around is that there are many, many ways of eliminating the budget deficit, given the will to do so. It’s a completely fixable problem. What we lack is the maturity to fix it.
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