Re: Plan B on the debt ceiling?
"I recall a surplus that was destroyed by two wars and a tax cut."
Not strictly accurate. The projected deficit for just this year alone (2011) is more than the entire cost of the wars to date in Iraq and Afghanistan combined.
When we were debating extending the Bush tax cuts, it was estimated that over the next ten years the cuts would reduce revenues by $3.5 trillion, or an average of $350 billion a year. The smallest predicted annual deficit in Obama's budget for the next ten years is $748 billion.
And Obama extended the Bush tax cuts. All of them. Why? What were the reasons he gave?
You can look at the Bush tax cut breakdown here to see for yourself how many of these tax cuts were "for the rich," and how many were for all the rest of us.
It's not the revenues. It's the spending. It has always been the spending. And almost all of it is for the military, social spending, and entitlements. Go to Obama's front budget page, and open up that little graphic. That small box on the lower right is everything else, and that's only if you don't count veteran benefits as military.