The problem for the government as it is for most business is cash flow, revenue, and expenditures. If you take something away from revenue you need to make it up somewhere else with higher taxes or stop spending somewhere else with cuts.
Sadly, with our deficit the debt we have now equals more then $30,000 per man woman and child in this country. Servicing the debt to foreign customers, social security (and repayments of loans to SS), and defense make up the lions share of that. We will need much more money to meet commitments once baby boomers start to retire and the likelihood of low interest loans rolling over on our debt decreases as well.
Basically we are facing a pretty bad cash flow crises and expense crises which only means we need more revenue and cuts in other big ticket items (like defense and infrastructure). A lot is made about politically hot expenditures but that makes a tiny fraction of our budget and gets us nowhere as a country as we spend months or years debating them. Every politician on both sides of the isle puts it off fiscal responsibility to the next one and every generation does the same. We need smart people with some "cojones" to take the hit and get this done if we are going to remain a great country in the future. This will be the "great battle" of our generation if we are going to meet our promises to our elderly, repay our debts, and continue to have a reasonably good society we have grown to enjoy.
On a side and mildly humorous note, I think it is interesting that they are going to repeal it for 1 year in 2010 and put it back in during 2011. Why in the heck would they do that?
I can see it now, everyone will be pulling the plug on their grandparents during the end of 2010 and accidents to the elderly will go up 2000% for the rich.
If I was an old person with tons of money I would go way underground in a couple years! :wink:
