"Let's hope we find some folks willing to pull the trigger and who have plenty of ammo." Just as long as it's open season, no bag limit and baiting allowed for politicians and lawyers (but I repeat myself) then I'll volunteer.

Seriously, if those fools don't take a meat ax to the budget and eliminate agencies, departments and cut budgets by amounts that limit spending to pre drunken sailor spending levels then there's going to be very ugly events happening.

Just raising the level isn't going to solve anything.

One thing to bear in mind is that Ryan intentionally left Social Security out of his budget, not because he doesn't plan on touching it, but because he expects that battle to be fought separately. So all the people torching Ryan's plan for not going far enough are both right and wrong, they're right that his budget, by itself doesn't go far enough, but they need to acknowledge that his intent is also to tackle SS, which would further bring that number down. The alternate Republican study plan or whatever it's called shows more savings because they 'go there' right away. And, of course, Obey-Won's blue-ribbon panel suggested slashing into these things, also, which is why it was quickly swept under the rug. I think they actually had lower tax rates than Ryan proposed.

Two days ago, Rick, you were flacking for spending billions on a moon mission.

Oh, you would personally benefit from that government spending as an aerospace contractor. My bad. Then it's OK.

House Republicans killed a vote today that would have ended subsidies for oil companies.

As a result the moochers are still taking our money. taking what the producers make like leeches. unable to make it on their own.

and the Republicans in congress won't stop this. Billions wasted on business that can't stand on their own two feat. Lazy welfare queens the lot of them.

I think that such analysis has one flaw - like other analyses, it treats the economy and tax revenues as unchanging, as not being affected by changes in tax rates or government spending levels. That makes it overly pessimistic.

Democrat projections have the same flaw in that they assume there will be no economic changes if they increase taxes and spending, making their claims overly optimistic.

The economy is far too dynamic to use an assumption that GDP and tax revenue will remain unchanged regardless of government fiscal policy.

I'm not trying to minimize the scope and challenge of the mounting debt and endless deficits, but analyses need to avoid the pitfalls of being doomsday pronouncements or rainbows and unicorns.