It's a scenario that will swamp our federal and state budgets, and impose a vicious choice of either unprecedented tax hikes, overwhelming deficits or drastic cuts in our federal and state budgets.
To chip away at an overwhelming budget deficit, Miami's public hospital system stopped paying for kidney dialysis for the indigent this week, officials said, leaving some patients to rely on emergency rooms for their life-sustaining treatments.
SACRAMENTO — As states across the country struggle to deal with overwhelming budget deficits, a number of state officials, including those in California, have resorted to trying to sell state office buildings, pouring the proceeds into the general funds, and then leasing back the space.
Public opinion is volatile and equivocal, with recent polls showing backing for action on the deficit but overwhelming opposition to cutbacks in education and health.
Still, overwhelming is overwhelming.
President Obama's proposal for a new tax on millionaires echoes a call in many countries struggling with budget deficits and overwhelming debts to make the wealthy pay more.
The overwhelming need to clear the deficit is bad enough.
Nor is there an overwhelming issue, like the budget deficit, that neither party is willing to confront.
So disdaining new revenue means that spending reductions would end up as the overwhelming contributor to our budget deficit reduction effort, as shown in chart 2. If sequestration remains in place, we will have taken $3.5 trillion out of the projected budget deficits of the coming decade.
Either the deficit is the overwhelming issue facing America, to be attacked with every tool available, or it's not.
