Us Budget Hits 2.3 Trillion...

[Almighty Colin]

I think tax cuts are not the best idea right now. While economic incentive tax cuts can work, I would think they don't work all the time. Philosophical points about what is fair or not aside for a moment, I think supply-side economics works under some conditions and not under others. If we knew when and how, well, someone would have a Nobel for that.

One cannot budget the current budget with a supply side approach. One can only balance the future budget that way. That may or may not work. We guess. We don't know.

Blaming or crediting one party or another for a budget that is in the red or black makes no sense. It's completely futile. No one ever wins those debates because there is no one clear responsible party. Give credit to the president or congress? Place blame on the president or congress?

Take 1999 for example. Democrats say "Look, our president balanced the budget!". Republicans say "Look, our congressmen passed a balanced budget!". What really happened? Republicans wanted a 1% cut in the budget. Clinton wanted less. They settled on a .38% cut. Now, who to credit? How about both?! Congress and the president acted at the same time to provide a balanced budget. For once.

Now, I think one could blame the Republicans for the current budget. There are no Democrats to blame. To me, it makes sense to balance the budget now and not later. Of course, supply side tax cuts might work too but by the time they would ripple through the economy no one would know for sure that is what happened.

Thre are so many variables that determine the course of a large-scale economy. These debates will never end because of that.