Q-1. The budget deal of 2013 avoided the fiscal cliff through various avenues. It entailed retaining the income tax brackets from the Bush tax cuts permanently. The ideal budget deal would avoid tax increases and deep spending cuts. However, in the PBS interview the “Americans will either have to in the future bear higher taxes, middle-class Americans, or most people will see their services, safety nets, public investments in everything from sewers and infrastructure overall to education, all of that will be cut” (www.pbs.org). In the upcoming years this can become a hardship because unemployment …show more content…
The budget deal led to problems with growing cuts in spending by the U.S. government. The deal will also have economic benefits, but billion dollars cut may cause damages to the struggling economy. Cuts should be a slow process and it will be hard to implement. Also it will lead to lower output, which will expand the budget deficits. As noted in the interview, the revenue coming in is small and there was no agreement on the debt ceiling. The U.S. government must get the spending under control. Lee, Johnson and Joyce noted that “this gap between taxes owed and taxes paid is critical considering the fact that the budget is projected to continue to be structurally out of balance in both the medium and the long term, meaning that improvements in economic conditions could not be expected to eliminate the budget deficit” (Lee, Johnson and Joyce 2013, …show more content…
To solve the federal deficit is a challenge, but there must be a solution. Taxing America is not a good solution but working together in executing a plan of reform. Everything should be put on the table and the focus should be the debt ceiling and the debt. The president and congress should address all areas of budget control. Increasing taxes on the wealthy and finding a way to control the rise in medical cost is key to solving federal debt. “The long-term problem is health care cost and the healthcare cost are now 18 percent of total gross national product, the total economy” (www.pbs.org). Healthcare is possibly growing faster than the U.S. economy and it will become more expensive in the up-coming years. Economic growth has cause the cost rise pass what the government is