Aging America

The Republican party pretends to be the fiscally conservative party and accuses the Democrats of being the big spenders.

The current budget and tax proposals in Washington would seem to put the lie to that claim.

The budget measure the Senate approved last night is expected to expand the deficit by $1.5 Trillion over the next ten years.

Now if a Democrat ever came up with such a proposal the attacks from "fiscal conservatives" would never end.

However since Republicans are trying to pass anything right now I don't see them taking a stand.

Will have to see what happens when the bill goes to the house and I think the whole thing is simply designed to allow the passage of tax breaks with a simple majority.

However, if they actually leave Social Security and Medicare alone and increase Defense and Infrastructure spending while cutting taxes on the wealthy, well the deficit will grow, maybe much faster than predicted.

The budget makes growth assumptions and if the growth is less, which I believe is likely the deficit will be worse.

Of course there is a possibility that the tax saving will spur the economy but our demographic picture tells us its unlikely.

We don't have enough workers in the right ages to grow very much as boomers leave the workforce.

That also the problem with Social Security and Medicare.

Younger people are needed to work, earn money and spend money for our economy to grow.

We probably should be emulating the early years of this country and allowing vast number of immigrants in to revitalize our economy.

Instead we are going down the path of an aging country getting cranky about young people and foreigners.