Former Treasury Secretary Robert Rubin said the US is in a “terrible place” with regard to its federal deficits, and called for tax increases to address the deterioration.
“The risks are enormous and some of them are materializing already, like higher interest rates,” Rubin said Wednesday on Bloomberg Television’s Wall Street Week with David Westin. . . .Rubin estimated that about 60% of the increase in debt from 2000 to 2022 came from tax cuts, which were implemented by Republican administrations. . . .
While President Joe Biden’s signature spending packages had been paid for in their proposed form, Rubin said when they then went through Congress, “they came out some of them paid for and some of them not.”
Despite strong economic and job growth, the federal budget gap is now about 6% of GDP, a historically large figure . . .
(Former) Sec Rubin’s comments came on David Westin’s show Wall Street Week,
and that’s kind of a shame because Westin’s style is much like Larry King’s. He seldom challenges his guests. He seldom makes them defend their assertions. He usually just let’s them speak.
That’s kind of shame because Rubin is lying.
Government spending is up, way up, up much more than the amount we are paying for “proxy wars,” and since the government keeps telling us how fine the economy is clearly the money is not being spent to make us better off financially.
If the deficit is a problem, (it is), that problem clearly cannot be blamed on tax cuts or lack of taxes at all.
.
.
.
Why do we have a deficit problem?
Well because government tax receipts have gone up, but government spending has gone up even more.
Always tax increase. Never spending cuts.
It seems someone who should know better forgot about the point of diminishing returns.
My first thought as well. Add to that foriegn aid.
Maybe that’s it.
I doubt foreign aid is all that much, but maybe.
Chart below shows
Government spending
minus interest payments and SS as percent of GDP.
It seems kinda high, right?
Can’t blame interest rates and can’t blame social security because have been backed out of there.
Can’t blame a bad economy because, well the economy is soaring.
As a percentage probably not.
Cutting lots of "probably not"s will add up to some noteworthy budget cutting.
Correct. I think of it as throwing change in a jar. One day, you have a couple of hundred dollars for a rainy day. 
The first thing to do is review special interest spending. I have a hard time seeing special interest spending as a public good.
A problem with our spending is that each “special” is going to tell you why it’s a public good. And politicians who are concerned first and foremost with the continuation of their political career are likely to buy the “special”'s argument as a path to gaining (or maintaining) their political support. Cobble together an army of "special"s, and you have a powerful political base. The concept of what’s truly best for the nation is dead and buried.
That is why a zealot is sometimes need to swing the pendulum back.
I thought this was settled back during Obama was in office with Simpson and Bowles.
From your article:
Wait.
Does that read a trillion dollars per quarter?
Is there a World War going on that I forgot about?
The Greatest Generation, ran up that much debt to fight a world war on two fronts.
How and why did we do it?
More importantly, they felt it would be a good idea to pay it back down,
so they did.
Were they wrong for doing so?
