deficit
Deficit hawks have swooped down on the U.S. budget
Getting out of the red is the new black. Deficit hawks have swooped down on the U.S. budget. This week, they attacked unemployment benefits.
Ultimately, they are going after Social Security and Medicare/Medicaid, the venerable programs once considered untouchable "third rails" of U.S. politics. These have been replaced by a new third rail, the defense budget. To really deal with annual deficits and a surging national debt, we are going to need to cut military spending.
We need some deficit doves.
McGuinty government rewarding those at the top and squeezing those at the bottom
One of the depressing aspects of the last few decades is the ease with which seemingly normal people walk obliviously past the aching pools of humanity spread out on our sidewalks.
At what point will people start looking up from their iPhones -- at least momentarily -- and think: Something must be done.
That moment should have come with the recent axing of Ontario's "special diet allowance," in which Dalton McGuinty's government literally took food out of the mouths of hungry people, in the name of deficit reduction.
Budget delivers cuts not jobs
The 2010 federal budget stuck predictably to the Conservative dogma that there is no need for a fundamental change of course. One we get past the temporary hiccup of global and national recession, we must return to a world of ever-smaller government to be achieved through continued tax reductions and deep spending cuts.
Despite the fact that unemployment is and will remain very high -- forecast in the budget itself to average 8.5 per cent this year and 7.9 per cent next year -- temporary extensions of EI benefits will expire in September of this year and some 500,000 unemployment claims filed during the Great Recession will be exhausted before claimants can find a new job.
Balancing needs with revenues in the Ontario budget equation
On March 27, residents of Ontario will get a clear picture of the implications of choosing to eliminate the public debt by 2017-18 within the current public revenue framework.
The key question to be considered: how much are we willing to lose in order to eliminate the deficit without increasing government revenue?
Based on Ontario public accounts, over the last five years (fiscal year 2006 to fiscal year 2010), health-care spending in Ontario increased at an average nominal rate of 7.1 per cent per year.
February 8, 2012 |
To cure our economic ills, we need a good diagnosis and the right medicine.The problem with the Canadian economy is not too much government debt or too big a deficit.