If you have household A which earns $100,000 per year and houseold B which ears $40,000 per year, and you take $20,000 from household A and give it to household B where does this job creation happen? Being that all money is spent regardless of whether it is put into a bank, used to buy investments, or to buy goods and services, how do you get economic growth by moving money around?

A few people are to blame here

1) S&P for that awful calculation error
2) House Republicans for refusing to let the tax cuts expire
3) George W Bush for invading Iraq
4) Whoever the hell had the stupid idea of separating debt ceiling votes from the Budget (the S&P report mentioned this)

I'm trying to fault the Democrats at least slightly, but I can't. They were excessively resistant to cuts, but nowhere near as bad as the Republicans with regards to tax increases.

I don't think you can really blame S&P for coming to a different figure since they are both talking about how much the US government is expecting to spend over the next 8 or 9 years. (and besides S&P being $2 trillion high, and the US government including the estimate that they will cut spending by $2 trillion in the next debate with months is just semantics... as the current $4 trillion in cuts is actually $2.4 trillion in cuts + estimates of $2 trillian in the next round of spending cuts)

If it was that simple we wouldn't be headed towards a double dip.

Such a statement completly ignores actual people.

People aren't going to spend extra money in a down economy, they're going to save it.

As for spending cuts not needing to happen, you need to cut between 4 to 15 trillion in spending over the next 10 years.  Ending the wars wouldn't begin to  come close to that.

Actually, it doesn't remotely come close to 4 trillion.

Getting rid of the Bush Tax cuts for the rich, would bring it about... 500  billion... and considering the wars being ended is already figured into the budget.... that would save us zero.

You do know that RT stands for Russia Today, which is a russian government funded news station broadcast to other countries to try and highlight the russian perspective and philosphy of doing things right?

Their credibility is somewhere between Fox News and Joseph Goerbles... and leaning close toward Goerbles.

which stimulus? the one that cut taxes and put money in our pockets to get us to spend, or the one that cut taxes and put money into businesses hands to keep people from losing there jobs.

it seems as if both Bush and Obama stimulus only softened the blow and risked Americas triple A credit rating.

its also funny how taxes don't get raised but education, public, transit, and other areas get increases as an alternative which is just another way of raising taxes without raising taxes.

Well you could blame the democrats for also invading Iraq... since a bunch of them voted for it.

Aside from that, while tax raises were needed at some point, letting the bush tax cut on the rich wouldn't of brought in nearly enough money to avoid this.  We'd still be about 3.5 trillion short... and honestly, a lot more then that because we'd have to cut more once the new CBO projections cut out, and even then we'd still be far from not running up more debt.  (Like 10 trillion in more cuts/raisesor so.)

Outside of that, the only way to raise revenue is to raise taxes on the poor and middleclass, when the nation sucks economically.

Hence why having far more cuts then tax increases pretty much had/has to happen.

something like 5-1 cutting to spending... which is likely why tax increases never made it on the table.

Wow, shocking stuff. And I thought Ireland was in a bad situation......I was wrong.  Our rate of tax is disgusting because of the recession though.  America should probably do the same.

So what does that mean to lose your triple A credit rating?