Baraka_Guru

The Dems have to prove they are willing to reduce spending. I think this will be the case, considering things such as the stimulus spending was to be temporary anyway. Clinton is the only president in recent history that I can think of who has proven that budgets can be balanced and deficits can be reduced. The timing was bad for Obama with the economy, so of course you're not going to balance a budget very easily when your economy is melting down.

The Republicans are going to have to prove they are serious about reducing the deficit by focusing on reducing spending and forgetting about tax cuts. You don't cut your income when you aren't making ends meet. It doesn't make sense. If the deficit is so bad that you're saying everything except the sky is falling, then why not reduce spending and leave taxes as they are, or, better yet, increase tax revenues somehow? (Tax revenues as a percentage of GDP are relatively low.) You know, something rational as opposed to cutting taxes at a time like this.

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Knowing that death is certain and that the time of death is uncertain, what's the most important thing?
—Bhikkhuni Pema Chödrön

Humankind cannot bear very much reality.
—From "Burnt Norton," Four Quartets (1936), T. S. Eliot