These are extraordinarily grim times on the government budget front. At the federal level, insolvency looms if deficits aren't cut sharply, Dallas Federal Reserve Bank President Richard Fisher warned last week. At the local and state levels, where officials can't print money and laws ban deficit spending, many governments have no choice but to make vast cuts wherever possible.
Unfortunately, a movement is gathering steam that denies government finances are in bad shape and depicts fiscal gloom and doom as being ginned up by anti-government ideologues.
Perhaps this backlash is understandable, given the overreach of some newly elected Republican governors. Perhaps heavy federal cuts might be problematic in the short term.
But the red ink is very real and very daunting, and some much-touted quick fixes don't add up. Repealing the Bush tax cuts for the wealthy would wipe out less than $70 billion (under 5 percent) of the $1.5 trillion federal deficit for fiscal 2011. Ending the Iraq and Afghan wars would cut about $110 billion (less than 8 percent) of that deficit, according to Congressional Research Service data.
Alas, some lawmakers want to make the problem more intractable. Even as fellow California Democratic Sen. Dianne Feinstein discusses ways to reduce entitlement costs, Barbara Boxer wants to require two-thirds congressional approval to trim Social Security benefits.
No wonder the Fed's Fisher is so worried. We should all be.
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