Budget troubles...

The healthcare debate is up and rolling, and we're over a month past the ridiculous "Tax-Day Tea Parties," and the budget passed. However, the budget and taxes are still bothering me.

My worries on the budget are less about the level of spending, and more about the expectations about what we can get at our current tax rates. Republicans keep screaming that the tax rates are all too high, but the fact of the matter is, they can't go much lower. A massive number of people don't even have to pay income tax.

However, Democrats, and the Obama administration, for all the good they want to do, are still terrified of being tagged as "tax & spend liberals." They've pushed everyone into a vision that government can give them access to new alternative energy, that government can make necessary improvements in education, and that government can ensure health coverage for everybody -- without raising 95% of people's taxes. The simple truth is, well, that's not possible. Not without incurring large amounts of future debt, at least.

The thing is, people want many of these programs. People want reform of healthcare, people want improved education. Everybody wants to get the Social Security checks they've been paying for their entire working lives. And that's not a bad thing. Government can do a lot of good things. There are plenty of things it can do very badly, but it can still do a lot of good.

But we need to snap out of this fix we're in where we think we can get all the good out of government without paying for it.

The problem lies on several fronts. On the one hand, there are few politicians who have the guts to tell everyone that we're going to need to raise most peoples taxes, at least a little bit. On the other hand, you have constituents who will get angry about their taxes being raised, and will, in all likelihood, vote that politician out of office. Then you have the delusional Republicans, who are still under the impression that we can just cut enough spending to work our way out of this.

Spending needs to be cut, but at this point, without a very serious and lengthy budget overhaul, budget cuts aren't going to work. We need a serious budget overhaul, we need to re-evaluate all the department spending, and we need to re-examine the tax code. However, with the amount of things currently on the Obama administration's plate, I can understand why they're avoiding putting these things on the agenda.

Right now, these issues are taking a backseat to the economic crisis, but I have a serious feeling that this is going to come up in the 2010 midterms, and will likely be a large part of either Obama's second term, or, if he doesn't get re-elected, it will likely consume the agenda of the next President.