For each dollar of extra revenue there should be 2-3 dollars of cuts PREVIOUS to the tax hikes. Subsequent cuts vanish. Also no spending cuts are really useful unless baseline budgeting is abolished so that any increase over the previous year is registered as an increase instead of, as now, any increase below the baseline of annual increase, say 5%, is rated as a decrease.
Worse, any tax hike will be followed by NEW SPENDING in order to make use of the windfall supposedly generated by the tax rate rise even as revenues actually decline due to the decrease in economic activity occasioned by the increase in taxes. There is nothing good that can come from ANY tax hike. Abolish baseline budgeting and really cut real spending.
And the Republicans have control of the process altogether. All money bills, appropriations, must originate in the House. The Republicans need only refuse to fund whatever they choose not to fund, such as Obamacare and all its new bureaucracies and tax hirees and the EPA and all its expensive regulations and takeovers, etc.
But Here we are talking about getting the President to cut spending. Any increase in spending, any failure to cut spending, is directly due to the willful refusal of the Republicans in the House to do what they can actually do. The president does not appropriate money. Once upon a time history and civics, including the Constitution, were actually taught in public school.
Maybe they should bring the “Cut, Cap and Balance” idea back. That coupled with some type of tax reform that broadens the tax base and increases revenue is about the only thing that can work.
Then we take on Medicare, Medicaid, Social Security and Obamacare.