The federal deficit-cutting plan that will take effect starting in early 2013 if Congress doesn’t take action between now and the end of the year is, on balance, a lemon.
The plan has some outright disastrous provisions. It would mean crushing tax hikes, for one thing. In Chattanooga, for example, it would herald an average hike of $3,000-plus per household in income and payroll taxes.
That’s a sure-fire job killer and one of the fastest ways to ensure a return to full-blown recession, as more of the nation’s economic output shifts out of the productive private sector and into the unaccountable federal maw.
But let it not be said that the budget-cutting plan is utterly without merit.
According to one study, by George Mason University’s Center for Regional Analysis, close to 280,000 federal jobs would be eliminated over the next year or so as part of a 10-year plan to cut about $1.2 trillion in U.S. government spending.