Pays for itself (in federal budgetary terms) by raising taxes, and playing games with the numbers like taxing people for ten years to pay for five. The real ongoing cost is not quite so rosy.

Furthermore, we could just cut to the chase and have the government spend all our money. That would pay for itself too. Or instead of having the government spend it, we could just have the government tell *us* how to spend it. In CBO terms, telling people what they have to spend their money on has no cost at all(!).

That is $120 billion out of ~$2.5 trillion budget for those years. Well within the realm of reasonable repayment. We paid the enormous WWII debt after all, and it certainly wasn’t passed onto the next generation in any substantive sense. What percentage of people don’t expect to live thirty more years?

The sad thing about all this stuff is not that we are passing the debt onto our children. We each will suffer personally for our collective profligacy.

I wouldn’t normally call treasury bonds “money”, by the way, they are bonds, or notes receivable that we will have to redeem in actual money derived from future taxes. Unless we do something as suicidal as print our way out of debt.

If anyone accuses you of not being a tax and spend liberal, have them come talk to me. I will vouch for your willingness to take money from others so politicians can spend it and redistribute it.

Hey man, we can’t have our cake and eat it too. If we wish to wage war, we must raise taxes to pay for said war. Right? If we wish to use an economic stimulus, we will eventually have to pay for that with taxes. If we wish to bail out certain industries in order to save the overall economy, eventually we will have to pay for that with taxes. Honestly I don’t know where conservatives get this aversion to taxation from. While reducing taxes to an extent does actually bring in more revenue, that system is subject to the law of diminishing, and eventually negative, returns. There comes a point where if you reduce taxation levels too much, you will no longer have enough funds to manage the programs you have. This should be painfully evident with the events since Bush’s 2001 tax cut. If the idea is true that reducing tax levels brings more revenue to the government, then when Bush’s tax cut went into effect, more revenue should have come into the government’s coffers. But sadly that never happened. Because it just is not true. Now, back in the 1980s, yes when Reagan cut taxes to 50% for the richest Americans that brought in more revenue. Well, that is clear. Taxing the richest Americans at 75% or even 94% (which is where it was during WWII) is obviously way too high—though under the circumstances, that is justifiable. That generation of Americans realized they needed to pay down their debts due to a war not of choice (WWII). Since the 1980s, Americans have been fed this notion that we can have our cake and eat it too. Thus we’ve grown fat and in debt. It is doubly painful, but sadly we need to raise taxes on the wealthiest Americans again in order to manage our funds appropriately. Otherwise we will be bankrupting our country. And we need to stop waging wars around the world. And we need to cut down some of our domestic expenses too. Obama’s health care bill actually does this. The CBO report indicates that Obama’s health care bill pays for itself AND reduces some of the current costs. That sounds like something fiscal conservatives should appreciate.

#46,

I would say the evidence for that proposition is somewhere between shaky and non-existent. It is common for governments to run deficits during war time, but the numbers we are talking about here are so small that the idea that the debt is going to be passed onto the next generation is ridiculous.

What do you mean? I’m talking about the well over $1 trillion dollars so far spent on Iraq and Afghanistan. That’s not a small number. All of that money is currently sitting in Chinese banks.

Ah, but here’s the problem: The U.S. has an arrangement with Turkey and India to provide at least 80% our legal opiates. If we wanted to change that arrangement to include Afghanistan, Turkey and India are certain to object. If we discard the arrangement, more Turkish and Indian opiates are going to end up in the illegal drug market. All we’d be doing is shifting the source of heroin from Afghanistan to other countries; the overall problem remains the same.

(That is, unless we decide to end the failed, costly “war on drugs,” which has been about as successful as the “war on terror.” That’s not likely to happen, though.)

This is why invading and occupying other nations fails so often: We get ourselves involved in local and regional issues that we don’t understand and can’t resolve. No matter how much political and military pressure we put on Afghan poppy farmers, poppies are still going to be grown, and much of the crop is going to end up on the black market, where it funds either terrorism or some other organized crime.

We get in over our heads on these things, and only later — after all the money has been spent and all the bodies buried — do we start to understand that we can’t change people’s beliefs and convictions. They have to want to change, and bombing them or giving them cash won’t do that; all that does is change temporary behaviors.

One hundred years from now (mark it, Senator McCain!), the Afghan people will still want self-government based on Sharia law. Will we still be there, trying to convince them otherwise? I hope not, but then to hope for a rational U.S. foreign policy is the biggest of all opium-fueled pipe dreams.

But like you, I do find myself responding somewhat to public opinion, and, in my contrarian moods have been known to defend something I don’t necessarily support in my heart and mind. Your honesty is shocking yes, but it’s so refreshing, too. There’s nothing worse than party hacks who defend their party but do it in the name of defending principles (e.g., Hannity, Olberman). I told my wife last night after reading your post that it pretty much made my day. Good stuff. Thanks.

I would say the evidence for that proposition is somewhere between shaky and non-existent. It is common for governments to run deficits during war time, but the numbers we are talking about here are so small that the idea that the debt is going to be passed onto the next generation is ridiculous.

Futhermore, if there was a balanced budget requirement the willingness of the citizenry to support some types of wars would certainly go down. That could be a good thing. However, the willingness of the public to support completely unfunded spending of other sorts would be an even more significant benefit.

If there was a balanced budget amendment, there would be no $800 billion stimulus package, for example. No bailout of GM, AIG, Fannie Mae, etc. without a much higher level of public support. And so on. No more robbing the public blind without the taxes to pay for it.

If we encourage change, thru education, from the children up, the Taliban and their ilk, will not flourish in an educated society. They will change on their own. Slowly, and with patience, we/they will enact change.

Brian,

There is a better idea. Tax Americans to pay for their wars.

Dan,

If anyone accuses you of not being a tax and spend liberal, have them come talk to me. I will vouch for your willingness to take money from others so politicians can spend it and redistribute it.