Friday, August 01, 2003

Paul Krugman on the Bush administration's deficits:

The administration says it will never, ever contemplate increasing taxes; it says it will narrow the deficit through spending restraint, but has never said what spending it intends to restrain.

But that's always the problem, isn't it? Conservatives say we can cut taxes and still have balanced budgets, but no one ever presses them to show how that's possible -- to show, in other words, exactly what programs would have to be cut to achieve this goal, and by how much. And conservatives certainly don't volunteer this information. Every chance we get, we need to tell them to put up or shut up. Don't just say there's government waste. Show us a whole budget, with low taxes, that's balanced and that cuts only fat. If you can't do that, go away and don't bother the grown-ups.

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