[quote=Allan from Fallbrook]Brian: The problem here is you want to eat your cake and have it, too. When JFK (and, later, LBJ) pushed for a wider social safety net, the world and the US were very different places. The period from 1945 (WWII’s end) to about 1972, was an American Golden Age. We won’t ever see its like again. We had emerged virtually unscathed from WWII (when compared to Europe, England and Japan) and were dominant militarily, economically and politically. We had the ability to fund “guns and butter” programs (i.e. Vietnam AND the Great Society).

No more. We cannot argue about universal rights and expansion of programs when we can’t afford them. Its nuts. Yeah, I get you’re an Obama guy and I also get wanting your team to win (I coach football, remember?), but we’re pushing these programs when we have no real means to fund them and are getting way too close to the edge of the cliff for my liking, which was my point about many of the Tea Partyers having a valid point.

We need to get back on track with education, and infrastructure and REAL renewable energy programs. We need to cut defense, entitlements and the bailouts.[/quote]

Or, of course, we could restore some of the massive tax cuts given to the top 2-5% over the past 30 years.

Part of the reason why we had the ability to fund those “Guns and Butter” programs and don’t any more (in fact, an enormous part of the reason) is the simple fact that over the past 30 years we’ve cut taxes on the middle class just a little bit, while cutting taxes on the incredibly wealthy by an enormous amount (in the 50’s, as an example, a corporate titan’s top income tax bracket would have been more than double his bracket today, and his capital gains would’ve been taxed much higher than todays rates as well).