I'm not arguing that we should not cut spending. I'm saying you can't just do it overnight. Would I like to see it happen? Sure. However the sad reality is government has injected itself into the economy in too many ways. Suppose we stopped consuming oil overnight. The same thing happens with stopping spending over night.
My point about growth was that if there was no will to stop spending we could grow into it. The 2008 deficit was $151 billion. We were almost there. But then TARP and a trillion dollar deficit. Oops. Bush's last budget was $3.1 trillion over 2.7 the year before. The first year of Obama with the stimulus it was $3.7 trillion. (Whatever happened to the days of 1.9 trillion which was clinton's last. Bush promised to cut spending and lied. I supported him for that reason and got pissed off a few years later.)
It is true, though. If government spending is going to be some percentage of GDP (which is way up under Obama) then grow GDP to lower the amount of spending relatively. It's that simple. We can have growth if government got out of the way. ($40 billion in new regulations Obama's first year??) The medical device industry, America's last great bastion of innovation (we are still number one) is going to be hit with a 2.5% tax on sales with Obamacare starting next year. (or is it 2014?) They were the only group to not cow-tow to the policy so they got punished.
Ail mentioned that we won't have a new technology like we did with computers in the 80s and 90s. I say: why not? Sure we can! And we will. As soon as we encourage more entrepreneurship instead of punishing success in this country.
