The Juice is Running…
By Hilzoy explains why deficits matter for progressive politics:
Total Spent On Debt Service: 405.9 billion
Yes, that’s right: had we simply paid our bills on time, more or less, we would not only not be running a deficit, we would have $157.9 billion dollars to either refund to taxpayers or spend on some new program. For instance, we could have universal health care coverage for this amount of money. Think of it: we could all have health insurance, without having to pay one cent above what we’re paying today. No more wondering what will happen to your health coverage if you lose your job. No more wishing you could take a different job, which you can’t because the job you want has no health insurance, or because you have a preexisting condition. No more just not having any health insurance at all. All for free — if only we had not run up deficits in previous years.
About one in every six dollars that we pay in taxes goes to pay not for anything useful, like fixing bridges, but for debt service. Stupid, boring, utterly pointless debt service. I wish those anti-tax organization that talk about “Tax Freedom Day”, or whatever they call that day when you’ve earned enough to pay your taxes and get to keep the rest for yourself, would be honest enough to have two days: “taxes for actual government services freedom day”, which would come when we’d paid the taxes that don’t go to debt service, and “taxes we pay only because we were dumb enough to listen to Grover Norquist and the rest of you idiots freedom day”, which would come when we’d finished paying off the rest.