Bush tax policy won't pay for Obama spending policy

Of course, it didn’t pay for Bush spending policy, either, but the point is there’s even more of a disconnect between the revenues raised under the Obama-proposed Bush tax policy extended and projected Obama-proposed spending.

This video clip from CNN’s IOUSA Solutions special (simply titled “Federal taxes fall short of spending” and featuring me on the panel and my boss Bob Bixby in the film) makes this simple point: There’s a huge gap between spending and revenues, and no one solution, and in fact no “simple” solution (such as trimming only the defense budget or cutting only “waste, fraud and abuse”) will suffice. And on the eve of the dreaded “Tax Day”, this should remind us that revenues, i.e., Taxes, will (unfortunately) have to come up. But again, as only one part of the not-so-easy solution.

(Oh, and by the way, despite this story in yesterday’s Washington Post, I do think that gap between spending and revenues is still “huge”–even if it turns out to be “only” $1.3 trillion and not the Administration’s originally forecasted $1.6 trillion. That was yet another way in which the Obama Administration seems to be continuing the federal budget practice of the prior Administration in ways I just don’t “get.”)

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