All of us know how easy it is to spend — if we have the money. But we also know how painful it is to cut spending when we don’t have money.
For a long time — despite high taxes — our federal government has been spending far too much, a lot of it for essentials, but a lot of it for nonessentials, too. Now the chickens have come home to roost in the form of a $14.3 trillion national debt. We pay taxes to cover some of our spending. But we have to borrow money to fund the rest — and that means hundreds of billions of dollars in interest payments every year.
So as you may be aware, Congress plans to appoint a 12-member panel — six Democrats and six Republicans, divided between representatives and senators — to make some financial choices that the full Congress has been unable to make.
The panel has the important but unenviable job of reducing federal deficits by $1.5 trillion or so over the next 10 years.
One immediate reaction many of us as taxpayers might have is, “I wish I were on that committee, because I would love to be able to tell Congress where to cut $1.5 trillion!”