The handwringing continues as the L.A. Times tells readers how slight increases in federal spending are going to devastate California due to how slight those increases (which they call “cuts”) will be:
The parade of horribles marches on:
As the state braces for pain from so-called sequestration, there are warnings of long delays at airport security checkpoints, potential slowdowns in cargo movement at harbors and cutbacks to programs, including meals for seniors and projects to combat neighborhood blight.
If we only increase federal spending a little instead of a lot, seniors will starve!
The Los Angeles Unified School District is bracing for a loss of $37 million a year in federal funding. Supt. John Deasy said Monday that he is sending a letter to the California congressional delegation warning about the “potential very grave impact” of the cuts on Los Angeles schools.
Rachelle Pastor Arizmendi, director of early childhood education at the Pacific Asian Consortium for Employment in Los Angeles, said she anticipated that the cuts would cost her agency $980,000 in federal Head Start funding. That would force PACE to eliminate preschool for about 120 children ages 3 to 5.
“It’s not just a number,” she said. “This is closing down classrooms. This is putting our children behind when they’re going to kindergarten.”
As a reminder: the federal government will be spending more money next year than it did last year. It will be spending less than last year as a percentage of the total economy, to be sure, but spending will still increase.
Imagine the hysteria if they were actually cutting the budget.
What to do about all this? A great piece at the American Thinker explains how we can take care of the whole problem by just raising taxes. The writer calmly goes through the numbers, assuming (counterfactually) that a planned raise of $1 in taxes will actually yield the whole dollar, and explains how much we would need to be taxed to eliminate the deficit (not the debt, just the deficit). Assuming we don’t raise taxes on the bottom 47% who aren’t paying income taxes anyway:
If we equally distribute the deficit-busting new taxes among the remaining six brackets, new taxes for a $1 million household would be $1.1 million; $56,000 for a $200,000 household; $14,000 for a $100,000 household; and $7,800 for a $50,000 household. If we let the millionaire households keep a few bucks to live on and only ask them for around $500,000 each in new taxes, burdens for the remaining brackets go up to $65,000; $16,000; and $9,000 respectively.
Easy peasy. We just need to ask those who are already doing very well to do a little more. To pay their fair share.
And then seniors wouldn’t have to starve. You don’t really want seniors to starve, do you? Hmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmm?
