George Will lays out what Clinton-era policies would look like today had they been continued, or reimposed:
Democrats insist that the manufactured unpleasantness due Jan. 1 is a crisis of insufficient revenue. But Jeffrey Dorfman, a University of Georgia economics professor, thinks arithmetic says otherwise. Writing for RealClearMarkets, he says that possible tax increases and spending cuts would reduce the current deficit by less than a third, leaving a deficit larger than any run by any president not named Obama.
At the end of the Clinton administration, when the budget was balanced (largely by revenue generated by commercialization of the Internet), annual federal spending was $1.94 trillion and revenue was $2.10 trillion. “Adjusting for inflation and population growth since the start of 2001,” Dorfman writes, “today’s equivalents would be $2.77 trillion and $3.00 trillion,” and a $230 billion surplus.
What is to blame for today’s huge imbalance? The George W. Bush tax cuts? The recession? Obama’s spending? Dorfman answers yes, yes and yes — but that “spending is the main culprit” because: Today federal revenue is $2.67 trillion (slightly less than “the Clinton equivalent”) and spending is $3.76 trillion, so we are spending $987 billion more than we would be if we had just increased Bill Clinton’s last budget for inflation and population growth.
We cannot continue to spend at this rate, not without massively confiscatory tax rates across the broad spectrum of earners. We have to cut spending dramatically in order to even get close to balance, and reverse the free-spending trend of the last twelve years. Nothing else will work, and massive confiscation will end up crashing the economy and making the deficit situation even worse.
Look at some real figures
If we do what the liberals want AND we go back to Clinton-era tax rates, we have to go back to Clinton-era spending rates too in order to solve the problem. That means entitlement reform and serious cuts in spending now as well as in the long term. Everything else is simply hobby-horse riding.
Will anyone get serious about addressing the real cause of the crisis? David Harsanyi hasn’t seen any reason for optimism from either side yet:
The “fiscal cliff” deal House Republicans and President Barack Obama are debatingcan be called many things — the “avoiding a political nightmare” deal or a “Yes, Mr. Obama, may I have another” deal — but please let’s stop referring to it as a “deficit reduction” deal. We’ve yet to see a serious proposal on debt.
Actually, by proposing a tax increase for spending with no real corresponding cuts, the president has been arguing for growing deficits. And with a priority on “fairness” over prosperity, any chance of easing the $16 trillion national debt through an economic boom in the near future is improbable. …
But all of Obama’s pro-debt expansion policies don’t excuse Republicans for calling their own proposala “credible” $2.2 trillion plan on “deficit reduction.” Even if we were to concede for a moment that the plan would cut the debt, by the time we realized $2.2 trillion in savings, the Congressional Budget Office projects that debt as a share of GDP will have reached 100 percent. By 2035, we’re looking at 200 percent.
Or put it this way: The entire Republican plan would only pay down the $220 billion in net interest the United States owes on its debt every year. Well, if by some miracle that interest stayed at $220 billion. Which it won’t.
The Republicans’ offer also contains $800 billion in new “revenue” garnered from tax reform — partially from closing loopholes on the wealthy — which surrenders to the notion that “revenue” rather than “spending” drives the deficit.
I’d trade with some revenue for a serious effort to solve the actual drivers of the crisis. So far, I haven’t seen one yet, either — with the exception of Simpson-Bowles, which for all its flaws actuallygets the US moving in the right direction, and the Paul Ryan plan, which has no chance of even getting another hearing in the Senate. Republicans should present Simpson-Bowles in toto and dare Democrats to vote against it.
but the envirowackos will probably make that illegal 
