The turnaround in the automotive industry is, in part, due to normal capitalistic economic forces. Being in a stronger fiscal position, Ford managed its recovery without government help. A significant part of the credit for the recovery of the automotive industry, most notably for General Motors, is due to the government decision to inject capital into the failing industry.

Philosophically, I share concerns with the Republican party about the direct involvement of the government in private industry. I don’t know where Obama stands on that philosophy, but based on other policy decisions, I suspect his view is similar to mine. However, in times of crisis, leaders make pragmatic decisions that are targeted to ameliorate real, urgent problems.

It turns out that the policy decisions of the Obama Administration, like most other policy decisions of this administration, turned out to be the correct one – one based on analysis and not ideology.

The Republicans continue to espouse their fundamentalist policy, even in the face of the facts. They would have let the industry die. [1] Umm, “creative destruction”, I think Mitt calls it. According to conservatives, government can’t create jobs. It appears, however, targeted government action can save jobs…

… more than 1,140,000 of them in 2009 and another 314,000 jobs in 2010.[2]

According to the Wall Street Journal – you know, part of the liberal media – reported that more than a million jobs were saved by the action taken by the Obama Administration. That’s the same administration referenced by current GOP candidates on the campaign trail as the “job killing Obama Administration.”

Mitt Romney claims that America needs a CEO to lead it. With the Obama Administration’s proven track record of success – this just being one of them – I think I will stick with the community organizer.

[1] http://pa-magazine.com/industry-news/gop-presidential-candidates-criticize-auto-bailout/

[2] http://blogs.wsj.com/deals/2010/11/17/gm-ipo-auto-bailout-saved-more-than-1-million-jobs-study-says/

Let’s recap on some of the major provisions of the law:

• There no longer lifetime limits on coverage. This doesn’t affect too many Americans, about 20,000, but for those it does, it can be the difference between medical bankruptcy and the heathcare they need. Annual limits are no longer allowed, either [1]
• Honest mistakes on your application are no longer a sufficient reason for canceling your policy. [1]
• Young adults can stay on their parent’s plan until age 26. [1]
• Children with pre-existing conditions can not be denied coverage. [1] It’s rather astonishing that this was allowed in the first place, isn’t it?
• Preventative services, such as mammograms, colonoscopies, immunizations, pre-natal and new baby care are covered without expense to the insured. [1]
• Insurance companies are required to spend at least 85% of all insurance premium dollars from large employer plans on coverage and at least 80% of premium dollars from individuals and small group plans on actual healthcare. [2]

There are more changes in store, starting in 2014.

• Private health insurance exchanges will allow Americans to pool together to purchase coverage. For individuals and small businesses, this allows us to spread the insurance cost and risk among a larger pool of individuals. [1]
• Small businesses may be eligible for tax credits for providing coverage to their workers. [1]

It’s also important to recognize what the Affordable Care Act is not. It is not a takeover of healthcare by the government. Insurance companies are and will continue to be private, for-profit companies. Doctors and hospitals will continue to be private, for-profit, companies. In that, there is no substantive changes to the structure of pre-Obamacare healthcare in this country.

I challenge any conservative to explain how those above items above are bad for America.

Governmental policies are important in the abstract, but they become vastly more important when they affect your personally. I run a small business, so we are pretty much on our own when it comes to healthcare coverage. We decided to see if there was an alternative to our expensive individual healthcare plans, so we talked with an insurance agent and sent in the application.

We are very healthy, but one of my family members had a minor surgery in 2008 to resolve a lifelong issue. The risk of side-effects was low from the procedure and fortunately none of those were experienced. It resolved the problem and is not the type of condition that is recurring or has long-term risks – either it works or it doesn’t. However, that was sufficient for the insurance company to deny coverage for pre-existing conditions.

As a CEO, I fully respect the capitalistic endeavor. I want my insurance company to make a profit, so they can continue to be a viable service provider for me long into the future. However, the only explanation I can derive for this to be a cause for denial is unchecked greed by the insurance companies.

Again, I ask conservatives to justify how this behavior from insurance companies is justifiable and why is it not the role of government to ensure fair treatment from companies in the business of providing such fundamentally personal and life-affecting services as healthcare insurance. I challenge Republicans need to explain why they would vote for a Republican candidate who vows to repeal the Affordable Care Act.

Justify it. I dare you.

[1] http://www.whitehouse.gov/healthreform/healthcare-overview

[2] http://www.whitehouse.gov/healthreform/timeline

– Newt Gingrich, November 19, 2011.

That statement says a lot more about Newt Gingrich than it does about the Occupy Wall Street protesters. First, the assertions are false pretty much all the way through. Many of the Occupy protesters are out of work, but they did pay taxes when they had employment, so they did indeed pay for those parks and public restrooms.

I spent some time talking with, and sometimes challenging, an Occupy protester at the information desk at Occupy Denver. I suspect that Newt has not had such as experience, but prefers to pontificate from his ivory tower. What that Occupy protester explained was that he got laid off from his job in 2008. All he had been able to get is temporary work, but he gets terminated when his hours get him too close to full time. He then jumps to another temporary job. He is working and wants to work more, but is unable to find the work. Nowhere in that conversation was there a sense that “we all owe them everything.”

I can’t understand how Newt can claim to love America, but have contempt for some many Americans and ridicule the most American of ideals – the right to assembly and free speech and to air grievances about policies in our country.

Newt is as out-of-touch with middle America as you might expect from someone who has a $250,000 no-interest revolving charge account at Tiffany’s and made over $1.6 million in consulting fees from Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac.

… and this guy is a front runner for the GOP presidential nomination.

That suggests that the problem with conservatives extends well beyond Newt.

In my experience, the majority of my Republican friends are caring and compassionate people for their family, friends and associates, but it stops there. There is no empathy and often outright contempt for those different than them. Sometimes it is differences in ethnicity, perhaps religion, or perhaps socio-economic status, but if you are different, you somehow aren’t a real American.

Is this the party that we want to lead this country?

“Trick or Treat!” they shouted.

“We don’t give handouts here. Get a job!” as I smiled with that Dick Cheney smile.

One little uppity little nitwit spoke up. “We can’t get a job.”

“Why not?”, I said. There are plenty of jobs out there for people who want to work.

“I can’t get a job because I am only 8 years old.”, he retorted.

“Well, it didn’t used to be that way. The liberals of your ilk imposed job killing government regulations in 1916, when they passed the Child Labor Act.” It’s your fault if you can’t get a job.

And so it went for the next couple of hours. Beggars after beggars looking for a handout. Then it happened. This kid, maybe 12 years old, rings the bell.

“Trick or Treat!”

“Hey, you look different than all of the other kids. You are dressed pretty sharp in that suit and all. What are you dressed as?”

“I am dressed as an investment banker. Like my Dad,” he said with a proud American smile.

“What are you doing out here begging?”, I asked.

“Well,” he said, somewhat sheepishly. “My Dad lent a bunch of money to a bunch of poor people at 17% interest and the losers couldn’t pay him back. We lost everything.”

“That’s awful.”, I said. “Come in. Let’s talk. You lost everything?”

“Yes.” He said. “Not everything, really, but we had to let two of the staff go and my Mom can’t have her personal trainer over any more. It’s awful.”

“It sounds awful, I said.” This kid really touched me. “What’s your name?”

“Tony,” he said.

“Tony, it will be ok. You have everything you need to be successful in America. You can live the American Dream. You are smart, and well-dressed. Most of all, you have a rich Dad.”

“You think so?” he said with that spark in his eyes that only entrepreneurs have.

“Yes, I do.” I asserted, as I gave him an unopened 2 pound box of Russell Stover candy and patted him on the back. I walked him out the door. As he turned with a smile on his face,  I said, “This is America. You will do great.”

It lifted my spirits. There’s a chance for America after all. About that time, a cute little girl dressed as a princess about 8 years old stepped up on the porch.

“Trick or Treat!”

“Hey, you are a cute little princess.” I said. “Let me give you some advice for your treat that is better than candy. Keep being a little princess. Learn how to cook and you can stay home, take care of the kids, get married and let your man take care of you. It’s the bedrock of American society.”

She scrunched her nose with a confused look on her face and romped off to the next house.

For the next few hours, the bell rang less and less. “I knew it,” I thought smugly to myself. They are lazy. If you don’t give them handouts, they will quit asking.

As the evening went on, the traffic slowed to nothing, so I decided that Halloween was over. I mused, “I wish it could be like this every day of the year.” … and I hope Tony will be ok.

I went upstairs, took off my suit and put on my dungarees. “That’s over,” I sighed to myself. “Now I am going to have to start caring about people again.”

I did a little work on the computer and got ready for my 8:00am conference call. I dropped the land line a few months ago and use a mobile phone exclusively. The mobile phone industry wouldn’t be possible if there wasn’t an FCC to allocate the spectrum to the various mobile carriers in the area.

I did a few more hours work and jumped in the car to drive to my customer’s location for a meeting. The car design is heavily influenced by safety regulations. I am glad the seat belt was there 20 years ago when I totaled my Honda Prelude in a highway-speed accident. The impact caused the seatbelt to break my rib. It was before air bags, but were it not for the seatbelt, I am sure I would have had significant injuries.

I live close to the state line and my customer is in the neighboring state, so I used the Interstate Highway system to get there more quickly than the side streets.

I stopped by the grocery store on the way home to get some groceries for dinner. There were some mom’s there, who had just picked up the kids after their day at public school. I am glad the kids are in school rather than working in the local factories. I picked up some USDA-grade A beef and vegetables and got a refill on some medication at the grocery store. I appreciate that there a Food and Drug Administration that helps ensure a safe food supply and ensures that the large pharmaceutical companies can’t put anything on the market and make whatever claim they want. I remember reading Upton Sinclair’s book, “The Jungle” in high school.  It wasn’t always that way in America. That 1906 book exposed the realities of an unregulated meat-packing industry. If you haven’t read it, you should.

I got back to the home office a little before the markets closed and had time to place a trade. There is some amount of confidence – less than there used to be – that the information I used to make the trade is accurate, given the regulations enforced by the Securities and Exchange Commission. Insider trading and pump-and-dump schemes were commonplace before the SEC was founded in 1934.

So in a single day, governmental institutions are there to ensure a healthier populace and a more balanced playing field. I’ve been the beneficiary of the local government’s services and infrastructure, including our educational system, the FCC, the Interstate Highway System, automotive safety regulations, the USDA, the FDA, the SEC and – because I am a breather – the EPA. All in a typical day. That’s why I don’t mind paying taxes. Of course, all of these government institutions could be more effective and more efficient, but so could private companies like AT&T, GE and Blue Cross/Blue Shield and every other large organization on the planet.

There used to be an America without these safeguards and social infrastructure. There was a time when drug companies could make outrageous claims and the food supply was unsafe and the markets were rigged and children were working in factories instead of going to school. The Republicans – especially the Tea Party wing – want to take us back to the days of those “freedoms” and the lack of government regulation.

Do we really want American to look the way we did in 1911? I certainly don’t.

The Republican Party tries to lay claim the mantle of fiscal conservatism, but that isn’t what is going on with the GOP these days. Webster defines conservatism as “tending or disposed to maintaining existing views, conditions or institutions.” For the majority of American history, we have had fiscal discipline and most self-described political conservatives would agree that fiscal discipline is a conservative value that we need to rejoin.

Let’s look at the political environment in my adult lifetime. Before Ronald Reagan, our debt was $1.0T dollars [1]. Reagan nearly tripled the debt to $2.9T, due largely to peacetime defense spending and permanent tax cuts. That violated my sense of fiscal conservatism and I was critical of Reagan’s break from the past. George H.W. Bush added another 1.5T to the debt, but he did the right thing and raised taxes after vowing, “Read my lips. No new taxes.” He was a true fiscal conservative and the math mandated raising government revenues. He is vilified by the current Republicans for having done the right thing.

Clinton added $1.4T to the debt, but ended his presidency with a budget surplus. Since he is the only president in my adult lifetime with a budget surplus, that makes him the ideal of modern fiscal conservatism. George W. Bush, with one of the most failed presidencies in American history, added a whopping $6.1T to the debt, bringing the total to $13.9T at the start of the Obama administration.

By what measure can the GOP make any claim to fiscal conservatism? The only modern Republican president that can claim fiscal conservatism, George H.W. Bush, is vilified by his own party.

What we have in the GOP isn’t fiscal conservatism, it’s fiscal fundamentalism.

Webster defines fundamentalism as “a movement or attitude stressing strict and literal adherence to a set of basic principles.” We can see a fundamentalist mindset in the non-political domain. Fundamentalist Muslims believe in a set of principles that haven’t changed in the last 500 years. To the fundamentalist mindset, there are no shades a gray – just black and white. Fundamentalist Christians see the world much the same way as fundamentalist Muslims. To maintain their beliefs, they have to reject much of modern science, such as evolution, and the dating of the age of the universe. They must reject much of the progressive changes in attitudes toward gays and racial relationships. It is an overly simplistic mindset that fails in the face of critical thinking.

Starting with Reagan, the Republicans have courted fundamentalist Christians as a key voting block. It should come as no surprise that the fundamentalist mindset has become pervasive in the political domain of the Republican party. The current fundamentalist belief is that there should be no new taxes, under any circumstances. Like any other fundamentalist belief, it is absolute and can not be questioned or overturned when the changing economic global picture suggest that the thinking should be challenged. Any fundamentalist belief, including those of the Republican Party, does not withstand the scrutiny of critical thinking.

Most Muslims are not fundamentalist Muslims. Most Christians are not fundamentalist Christians. Just because they share the Christian moniker, fundamentalist Christians think and act differently than most Christians. Most Republicans are fiscal conservatives, but I think few are fiscal fundamentalists.

I encourage voters to shed their party affiliation at look at the actions and attitudes in the last quarter century. Should they do that, I think most Republicans would have to conclude that their party has left them.

Sources:

[1] http://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2011/07/28/us/charting-the-american-debt-crisis.html

The presumption implicit in the rhetoric is that the wealthy people create jobs. I am not an economist or a CPA, but I am the CEO of a small C-corporation (the same tax structure as the largest corporations), so I have to be involved enough with the tax implications and the math to make financial decisions for the corporation that I head.

There are really two separate tax issues at work here. How do we tax the personal income of wealthy people, many of whom are corporate executives, and how do we tax the corporate income of those corporations headed by those wealthy individuals? A C-corporation is a completely separate fiscal entity that has no direct fiscal relationship to the personal wealth of the executive team. The executives are paid a salary and other compensation the same way (although not in the same proportion) as other workers.

Thus, the first fallacy is readily apparent. Except for nannies, chauffeurs and gardeners, the personal wealth of the corporate executives aren’t used to create jobs. The jobs are created within the corporation for benefit of the corporation’s shareholders. So as a mental exercise – and I am not advocating this – what if we were to tax income above, say, $10 million at a 100%? That would effectively cap salaries at $10 million, so corporations certainly wouldn’t have salaries above that. The money would either stay in the corporation or there would be other avenues, such as dividends, to move corporate wealth into the hands of the executives. There would be no effect on job creation at all because, again, jobs aren’t created from the personal wealth of the wealthy.

So if the issue of taxes on personal income doesn’t affect job growth, surely raising corporate taxes would be a job killer, wouldn’t it? Intuitively, it makes sense. Herein lies the second fallacy.  Most of us are aware of our personal tax situation.  Taxes are based on our revenue, mostly from our salary, minus the few deductions left, such as mortgage interest and dependent children deductions.  The salary minus deductions is the taxable income on which we are taxed.

In the case of a corporation, the basic idea is the same.  Revenue minus expenses is the taxable income (aka “profit”) and the taxes are applied as a rate on that profit.  However, on the corporate side, salaries aren’t revenue like they are for us, they are expenses. The money paid by a corporation in salaries is not taxed. Here’s where it seems backward, but bear with me. Assuming revenue stays the same, if I, as CEO, hire another person, my corporation’s taxes go down because my corporation has more expenses, less profit, so my tax rate is applied to a smaller number.  So as a mental exercise – and again, I don’t endorse this – what would happen if corporations were taxed at 100%? Well, I could give all of my corporate profits to the government in taxes, I could move corporate profits to the salaried employees,… or I could hire another person. As tax rates increase, the corporate executives has a disincentive to retaining profits in the corporation as an asset, but I can’t figure out how that translates into a disincentive to hire more employees.

The reality is that the decision to hire has little to do with taxes. It has to do with whether that employee can generate revenue in excess of their loaded salary, increase efficiencies in excess of their loaded salaries or is necessary for the operational infrastructure of the corporation (e.g. CPAs, lawyers, etc.)  Taxes just aren’t a substantive part of the decision making process.

Well, that’s the basic math at work.  In reality, it’s quite a bit more complicated, but that’s the general sense of what is going on with corporate and personal taxation.  As I said, I am not an economist or an accountant, so I could be wrong. That is just my informed understanding.

So I ask you… can anyone out there explain the mathematics behind the Republican assertion? If so, explain it to me.

References:

[1] http://tinyurl.com/44hofhk

I know what your are thinking, “What kind of ultra left-wing garbage is this?”, but hear me out. Corporations should definitely generate revenue, but profit is only one outcome of corporate revenue generation, and we have to look at the others to understand where I am coming from. Corporations, like individuals, are taxed on profit, not on revenue. It’s the mistake that “Joe the Plumber” made during the 2008 elections. He thought because his gross revenue was over $250,000, he would be taxed at the rate of the wealthy. Since he has expenses, his taxable income would be considerably less, and that’s the first place that corporate revenue goes – expenses. They have to pay for all of the things that enable the business to run – from paper clips to the corporate jet.

The second place where a big chunk of money goes is salaries. That includes the compensation packages of the executive team all the way to paying the guy who empties your trash can long after you have gone home.

The third place where revenues can be spent is through dividends. The idea of a corporation is straightforward. People become part owner of the corporation by virtue of buying shares of stock. If the company does well, then then the Board of Directories can elect to distribute some of that success to the owners of the corporation – the shareholders – through dividend payments. You don’t hear as much about dividends as you used to, because fewer corporations feel the need to share the wealth with the shareholders.

So when a corporation pays all of its expenses, including salaries big and small, and still has money left, they can distribute the wealth to their owners – the shareholders – in the form of dividends, but most don’t. What is left is profit. When it is carried over to the next taxable year, that profit is called “retained earnings.” What do companies do with retained earnings, if it isn’t expenses, salaries or dividends?

Imagine a corporate tax structure that didn’t allow corporations to retain earnings across a tax year. What if they were required to distribute excess revenues to its employees and shareholders? Heresy, you say! Socialism! Government over-reach! In fact, not only does such a corporate structure exist, it is the most common form of incorporation for new and/or small businesses. It is the S-Corporation often wrapped in an LLC.  Most big corporations, like GE, Exxon, Google, and a few small ones like mine are C-Corporations.  I couldn’t find any statistics, but I would suspect that a substantial majority of American corporations are S-Corps simply because the majority are small corporations.

When you hear of tax rates on corporations, it is not the same as taxation on your personal income. They have a choice to distribute their success to shareholders as dividends. They have a choice to pay their executives or other employees more. Therefore, the amount of tax a corporation pays is always a choice.

Now I don’t really believe that corporations shouldn’t be able to make a profit. I just said that to get your attention. There are reasons for retained earnings. There may be a stockpiling of money for an acquisition or for a large, long-term capital expenditure such as a new factory. The tax structure should encourage such capital investment. I don’t think the current corporate tax structure is oriented this way, however.

I will ask the question again. So what are corporations doing with their retained earnings? I know what I did with retained earnings from my corporation. Hint. It wasn’t job growth or investment in America.

In a politically polarized environment, there are those who try to manipulate with emotion. Both sides are guilty of such. In fact, I just opt-ed out of e-mails from TrueMajority.org because the e-mail I received from them was just a lie – plain and simple. A conservative friend of mine posted a link from Fox Business that reinforced his feelings on where the country is. It provided me an opportunity to do some critical analysis on the story, snippets of which I posted back on Facebook. Here is the link:

http://www.foxbusiness.com/markets/2011/04/20/government-cash-handouts-exceed-tax-revenues/

Especially if you are of a conservative mindset, read the story and see how many factually incorrect or manipulative things you can find in the story.

The title of the article is “Government Cash Handouts Now Top Tax Revenues”, but that’s only true if you accept a very broad definition of what a cash handout is. According to the story it includes “stimulus spending, among other things.” I wonder what the “other things” they included to make the numbers fit the premise, but certainly stimulus spending doesn’t belong there. According to Glenn Beck[1] (hey, a fella’s got to have a sense of humor), a third of the stimulus money is in tax breaks. The Washington Post – that bastion of liberal media – reports that 22% of the stimulus money is in tax breaks[2]. Pick your number, but if conservatives started considering tax breaks as “cash handouts,” the political discourse would change radically. It should also be noted that as of September 2010, only 70% of the allocated money had been spent. I suspect Fox’s number included the entire appropriation.

The report states that 59% of Americans get at least one federal benefit. Again, we have to look at what is included. The story included veteran’s benefits in that. It’s a benefit, of course, but including that in the category of a “cash handout” strikes me as odd.

The bigger problem with this assertion is the math. If you total the number of people in the stated categories – Medicare, Medicaid, food stamps, etc. , you get 183.2 million Americans. If you divide that by the population of 308.7 million, you get 59% of the American population, so the math works, right? Wrong. There is considerable overlap in the people getting those various benefits, so they counted people multiple times. This story clearly has no credibility – and I am only at paragraph five.

Standing on the lilliputian shoulders of contrived premises and her failure at ninth grade math, Fox Business reporter, Elizabeth MacDonald has all of the ammunition she needs to assert that the government is responsible for wealth growth and that capitalism is doomed.

Of course, I picked low-hanging fruit, Fox News, to show how critical thinking can change the conclusions we reach from biased op-ed organizations. Material from other organizations is harder to critique, but we should do so, regardless of whether we are reading MoveOn.org, an article in the New Yorker or a report from the Heritage Foundation.

There are serious fiscal problems in the country that require changes in the entitlement programs and changes in the tax laws and the rate structure. It can’t happen without political will and the political will won’t coalesce until we, the electorate, get out of our echo chambers and start to critically think about the problems that face us and the solutions are are available to us.

[1] http://www.glennbeck.com/content/articles/article/198/20639/

[2] http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/graphic/2009/02/01/GR2009020100154.html

It is disturbing on so many levels. First, the budgetary haggling that almost shut the government down wasn’t over the real budgetary problems. About two-thirds of the Federal budget goes toward Medicare, Medicaid, Social Security and the military budget. That wasn’t the issue for the Republicans, of course. The haggling was over funding for NPR and Planned Parenthood. It is demagoguery to their base at at time when we need a serious discussion about a serious issue.

The Democrats, including President Obama seemed to be missing in action once again.

There is someone serious about deficit reduction, though. Paul Ryan is serious in his intent. He shows the only admirable characteristic remaining in the GOP – the courage of his convictions – and I have respect for that. At least he has to courage to declare where he stands and let the electorate decide whether that is the America they want. The problem is that his assertions aren’t based on serious analysis. They are based on Ayn Rand-inspired ideology.

Once again, Ryan and the GOP advocates tax cuts that will “pay for themselves” based on pretend math from The Heritage Foundation. When George W. Bush took office, he inherited a budget surplus from Bill Clinton. Eight years later, Barack Obama inherited a deficit of $641 billion dollars[1] from the Bush Administration. Those tax cuts sure as hell did not pay for themselves. A study of Ryan’s proposal by the nonpartisan Congressional Budget Office finds that a large part of the savings from Ryan’s spending cuts would pay for tax cuts, not reduce the deficit[2], and that the deficit would actually increase. I guess Paul Ryan is just serious-sounding.

But again, where are the Democrats?

I have had a few exchanges with a conservative friend of mine, usually in short Facebook posts. It’s always a good exchange of ideas and we typically don’t find much common ground. There is one thing we agree on, though. There is no serious discussion of deficit reduction without including defense spending as part of the discussion.

Half of the military spending from all countries in the world is spent by the United States. That is unsustainable. I did contract work for the Department of Defense and it was common knowledge that there was still a plethora of cold war projects still being funded. A true political leader would have the courage to admit that and start a serious discussion of where we can reduce military spending in a way that doesn’t hurt national security.

It was late in coming, but President Obama finally said the words that I have been waiting to hear. There are no sacred cows in the budget discussion. He specifically mentioned cutting defense spending – something I never thought I would hear a modern President say. He also said that some programs near and dear to his heart are going to be reduced. I was also glad to hear him say that the Bush tax cuts would be allowed to expire. I found his excuse for not letting them to expire at the end of 2010 to be weak, but he gets a chance to redeem himself this time around.

Take the time to listen to the speech with an open mind. I am not exactly sure of all of his math, and I suspect I would dispute some of it, but certainly the approach is right on target. He framed the discussion as an adult discussion. The commentary was frank and exceptionally close to my thinking on the topic. Let’s just hope there are enough adults in Congress to try and solve what is a serious problem.

It can work if there is a general consensus that we all have to share in the burden.

[1] http://www.cbo.gov/budget/budget.cfm
[2] http://tiny.cc/j2c02