Not all that surprising
The math is pretty hard to obscure with partisan spin, and I think basic economic issues like this is where we ought to have the most common ground. It really isn't about the absolute size of government, it's really about the share that my priorities get versus the share yours get. We all win optimally over the long-haul with a healthy government budget embedded in a healthy economy. Once we get there we can start fighting over the pie again. But things have gone beyond that by now and the system isn't serving anybody well.
I just hope at some point, somebody wakes up and realizes that it needs to grow larger at a SLOWER rate than the rate of economic growth.
Balance is what we need. Get the curve back on approximately the right trajectory, we can fine-tune it from there to achieve particular policy biases like incrementally shrinking the govt. It'd be nice to have the freedom to even debate subtleties like that, wouldn't it?
One of the things I find particularly aggravating about the strategy behind the tax cuts is that they were made deliberately hard to get rid of by the way they're structured over a decade. The middle class got token breaks now for maximum vote-buying appeal, while ten years from now breaks in the $100K range start kicking in for the top 1% just as the bill's sunset provisions loom...and Republican fund-raisers will be there offering to head off the problem by making the tax cuts permanent. That's dirty politics and abuse of power--the system is supposed to be free to respond to circumstances, not have its hands tied by an ideology.
That's a bit of partisan bickering, or at least partisan bitching. Back to the games...