The Federal Budget: Taxes Minus Expenditures

Balancing the budget is a worthy cause. Republicans always stress the importance of fiscal conservatism, even when they often don't practice what they preach. Most troublingly and frustrating is the apparent oblivion on the part of many conservatives to the fact that the federal budget is determined by the total inflow of money (i.e., raised through taxes) minus the total outflow of money (i.e., spent on government programs like national defense, entitlements, education, and more).

Obviously, cutting expenditures will decrease the national debt. But just as obviously, cutting taxes will increase the national debt. There is nothing deep to this, nothing that should elude a fifth-grade understanding of mathematics or accounting. And yet it does: Today, Republican minority whip Eric Cantor said that Obama's budget "creates the largest deficits in history and imposes the largest tax increases in history -- at a time when our country can least afford it."

If you want to decrease the budget deficit, you might try not cutting taxes.