For the Good of America, Let ALL the Tax Cuts Expire

For the good of America, we the people should really let ALL the tax cuts that got us into this mess expire. Because the only other choice is cutting favorite programs from medicare to the Pentagon.

There is a role model - it was the first President Bush, as in George H.W. Bush. The Reagan cuts in the 80's (coupled with increased defense spending - the 'supply side economics' the first President Bush called 'voodoo economics') had savaged our budget and the deficits were soaring - just like today.

Bush did the right thing and let the rates go up. It cost him the election but it resulted in Pres. Clinton's balanced budget - the first one in decades. Clinton controlled spending and handed George W Bush a $200 billion surplus in 2000. Remember?

That $200+ billion surplus became an immediate $1.6 TRILLION deficit on the day the second Bush tax cuts were made in 2001. We have been in the hole since.

Let's face it - it is the citizens of this country who believed in voodoo economics that let us get into this hole. We added to it by starting two wars and for the first time in history didn't pay for either of them - and still aren't. Never in American history did we fight a war and not have a tax to pay for it.

So we taxpayers need to grow up and be mature and decide to let the rates rise (it's only 3% - nothing!) and avoid painful cuts, or insist on giving millionaires a tax cut that adds another $1 trillion to our total debt. How crazy is that?

And we should also have a "war tax" to finally pay the cost of being in Iraq and Afghanistan all these years. You don't have a free war. You don't have free health care.

Education is not free but it is the key to our future success. We are about to sabotage our own future success by cutting that too. Remember Rome? Careless acts on their part lead to their demise, just as the same will diminish our leadership in higher learning, technology, etc.

Time to make a mature decision, America. Time for voters to have more guts because our leaders won't do the right thing without public support. And its time for the public to stop believing in fairy tales and voodoo economics and do the right thing that makes our economic future sustainable.

It's our future that depends on letting these ill-advised cuts disappear, to return us to fiscal sanity and a better future. It’s time for Americans to do this, as JFK said, “not because it is easy, but because it is hard.” We wouldn’t be space pioneers today if it had been easy… We won’t be pioneers tomorrow if we don’t make the hard decisions today.

Michael Fjetland

Michael Fjetland

Global American Series

www.GlobalAmerican.org