A Rebuttal to "Democrat Budget Proposal is Unrealistic"
The budget deficit of the United States has exceeded over $1 trillion and debate is raging over how to reduce the budget deficit without further negative impacts on the economy, business, and jobs. As the federal government approaches the borrowing limit of $14.3 trillion, the Democrat argument is to raise the debt ceiling in order to allow for continued borrowing and meet current financial obligations or default on its debt or risk financial collapse as a result of decreased creditor confidence (Toomey, 2011). Republicans have countered that they will not allow debt ceiling increases without substantial cuts in spending and without increases in taxes (Toomey, 2011). The article, “Democrat Budget Proposal is Unrealistic,” posted on www.caldwellteaparty.org, provides as its’ central thesis that government spending should be decreased to 2008 levels and claims that the current Democrat-led administration as having “recorded and performed the most gargantuan, massive, unconscionable, ruinous, explosive, erratic, careless, extreme, astronomical increase of the deficit EVER in U.S. History” (snaketread, 2011, para. 7). This article is examined and a rebuttal provided to its various claims.
Analysis and Rebuttal
The central thesis of the article is that government spending should be reduced to 2008 levels and that the recent budget deficit issue is the result of gross overspending of the current administration’s policy of big government, big spending, and intervention that hampers business (snaketread, 2011). Beyond widely published figures, for example the $800 billion cost of the stimulus package, the author fails to provide any substantive reliable data that would support a spending reduction to 2008 levels. The author claims that the current deficit is the result of the policies of the Obama-administration, but ignores that the deficit was increasing at the same rate in the years prior to Presiden