Well, they damn sure ain't paying 91% now. Look, tax rates in the 70's were too high and were stifling. Reagan lowered them and it did the trick. A proper balance was found and the national actually started producing surpluses and was paying down the debt in the '90's. But the flaw in republican thinking was that this could go on forever and still be good for the nation. The Bush cuts lowered rates to an unsustainable level since they did not come with corresponding spending cuts. Indeed he added his own Trillion dollar health bill and "No child" as unfunded mandates, and loaded two overseas decad-long wars on top of it. And the slide to deficit spending began again. Cutting income to low current levels was a mistake that we are paying for today. The balance must be established again. We have to start posting surpluses to have cash to pay down the debt. It cannot be done by starving the nation of tax income while the top 1% hoard huge amounts of money. No, they don't need to return to 90%, but they do need to return to the 39% that they paid before Dubya.
The problem is that the programs that consume the vast bulk of the spending is politically untouchable . . . Social Security, Medicare, and defense. Blindly, eliminating services like air traffic control, FBI, national parks, and many other essential services, doesn't affect the budget much, yet hurts us all.
i have some ideas for reducing spending. dept of agriculture, close it. same hith housing and urban development. health and human services, 80% reduction. same with dept of labor. i can keep going. billions and billions cut. easy.
But still not close to reducing a trillion dollar deficit. Without cuts to medicare, medicaid, social security and defense a balanced budget is not possible.
i am fine with social security privatization as well. make my first cuts and then we will see how things are going, then worry about medicare.
