By now, you're probably heard about the newest estimates on the federal deficits and debt.  While this year's deficit will be smaller (though still huge, if you ask me) than expected, the national debt between 2010-2019 will increase another $7-9 trillion, with a T, dollars.  That's about an additional $30,000 per person.

Now don't get me wrong.  I still do have faith in President Obama, largely because I have no faith in conservatism.  I just hope Obama knows what the hell he's doing.  And sure, the deficit may be decreasing by year after 2009, but this is just a daunting amount of money that somehow needs to be paid back.

There are two schools of thought (maybe more, if you have more ideas please comment) on deficit reduction:

1) Raise taxes, preferably on the rich, which is what the left wants to do.

2) Lower taxes on the rich and hope the tax cuts pay for themselves.  Or pray that Supply-Side Jesus saves us all (the link courtesy of Bwak from a comment on an earlier post).

Let's take a look at option number two, why it doesn't work, and why the hell people still think it will work now.  This article breaks down four main factors that show economic growth--real income increases, real GDP increases, real wage increases, and real unemployment rate decreases, and shows that there's basically no correlation.  The Heritage Foundation has other nifty charts--except that in most of them they conveniently leave out information.  For example, real income may have been lower in 1994 than 1989, but yeah, just go ahead and ignore the increases afterwards and the fact that unemployment was at 4.2% when Clinton left office.  And they cite statistics from the 1920s to prove that Reaganomics works, also conveniently forgetting what happened afterward.

A recent op-ed by Paul Krugman calls these ideas "zombie" ideas--instead of wanting brains, these people want their country back--whatever the hell that means.  These people rail against healthcare reform, socialism, whatever-they-make-up-isms, without really having any ideas of their own.  As a result, we have with the healthcare--or for the sake of semantics, health insurance--debate, as Rachel Maddow puts it, "people who want reform versus people who don't even want this conversation to happen".

And that about sums it up.  If health insurance reform succeeds, that's it.  Supply-Side Jesus can't save you and conservatives will be sent to Keynesian hell (or our form of heaven, at least).

So this puts Obama between a Barack and a hard place.  The only way we can really get the deficit back on track is to raise taxes, but of course that's socialism or something.  I guess Eisenhower, a Republican, was a "socialist" too and was evil for maintaining a strong middle class.  Just keep widening the income gap; that's the way we do it in real America.

On the whole, I'm a moderate liberal--probably more conservative than the average TPMer.  I try to understand all sides of the argument and watch FOX News when I can stomach it.  I'm not a fan of pure socialism, but how the hell else can we reduce the deficit other than jacking up the top income tax rates?  I'm not necessarily for it, but I'm not against it either because a) I'm far from rich, and b) as discussed, Reaganomics doesn't work.  And my reason for shyness on the issue is probably the same reason why Democrats can't get united behind health insurance reform: because socialism is evil and un-American, and to stand for anything left of center in this country will get you kicked out of office.  That is, unless you take your stance on the issue, stay there no matter how irrational some may think it to be, and can articulate your vision in less than 140 characters.  Which reminds me--when you think about it, it's been 40 years since the Democratic Party actually stood for something:

"The Democratic Party has not been burdened by a unified ideology, or even vision, for quite some time. The last major legislative victories by a Democratic president occurred during the mid-1960s during the Johnson administration. Even the accomplishments of the Clinton presidency, the most successful Democratic administration in at least a generation, were products of good management and small scale legislative changes, not sweeping reform or major new programs."

I want to spur some discussion on the issue--namely, how we can pay this money back, how we can ensure the GOP doesn't get the upper hand on this issue (and thus regain control and make it worse, if that's even possible), and how Obama can frame the debate on this issue--and even on health insurance even though that wasn't the main topic of my post--for a 5-year old to understand.  Though the debate is making a turn-around, it's clear that Hitler mustaches and cries of socialism resonate much better than actually explaining something.