Is the moderate position that we should not cut any spending that involves somebody getting a paycheck? How’s that supposed to work? At the very least could we stop creating new spending programs like High Speed Rail?

Tell me how to make spending cuts work painlessly. Tell me how to do it painlessly ten years from now when the debt is nine trillion dollars larger. I’m open for ideas.

Attempts at the smallest incremental long-range solutions, like Ryan’s plan, or the entitlement reforms during the Bush years, were attacked mercilessly. Any attempt to even slow the rate of government growth is attacked mercilessly. A determination to fix the massive spending imbalance in this country is now called “terrorism.” I don’t know where the “moderates” are hanging out, but I’m not seeing a lot of them in the Democratic Party.

The coming cuts in government spending are going to have a huge impact on [likely] many thousands of people and families.

The majority of these people are going to be decent, hardworking, law abiding citizens. Some will be government employees, but many will not.

Over the next few years, they’re going to get their teeth kicked in. Conservatives steadfastly refuse to acknowledge the hardship these people will face as we reduce government spending. And of course, the very programs that would, in the past, have been there to help people in need will be going away as well.

Moderates would like to see this happen over time, with at least some attempts at coordination. The Tea Party, however, will gleefully yank the rug out from under these people in one go.

So be it, but I expect to never again hear the sentiment that Americans give a damn about each other.

Krugman’s ideas are not only wrong, they are bloody lethal.

But go ahead, let’s do what he says. Print or borrow a few more trillions of dollars (how easily the word “trillion” comes off the tongue in recent years). Hire people to do things nobody needs and build things nobody wants. Make sure to funnel a nice chunk of those trillions to the unions, who will reward The Party with a nice kickback and political support. Or cut the pretense and just send checks to everyone in return for their lifelong political loyalty.

Meanwhile, keep stomping in the faces of the private industries who actually do something for the economy.

Me, I’m just a heartless bastard who doesn’t think my fellow Americans deserve to be treated like this.

The government’s goal is to invest money where it will return political power. Whether or not the investment actually pays for itself is utterly beside the point, and like many government-funded programs, nobody seems to mind if the end product loses money forever. Remember, to a “progressive” “profit” is a curse word, but it’s the private profits that subsidize the government losses.

Only one of these investments actually grows an economy. This should be historically obvious by examining economies where most of the wealth moves in the private sector versus economies where most of the wealth is controlled by the State.

Hardship from streamlining government? Sure. A job that destroys net wealth, like some Federal Deputy Assistant Chicken Inspector, is still a job that puts food on someone’s table. But there’s a limit to how many people can be in the wagon when only a certain number are pulling it, and we’re hitting that limit now, if we aren’t already past it.

Make the environment safe for the private sector again, and see what happens.

Politics aside, the FAA issue is giving us some real insight into what’s coming. Plenty of people are going to get clobbered, and saying it ain’t so won’t make it any better.

The Federal government is spending twice the money it was in 1988. Somehow the FAA got funded back then. Somehow everything got funded back then. And yet for the next year we’re going to hear about how every billion dollars we reduce the budget will destroy lives.

Right now, after we just raised our debt by the largest amount in history, I’m listening to Democrats saying what we really, really need is another trillion dollars or so borrowed, printed, and spent. This has gone way past stupidity into the insane.

Spending “cuts” between now and the next election run to about $22 billion, or about half a percent of the Federal budget.

Anyone telling you this is going to affect either employment or the larger economy during that time is either uninformed or lying.

The fact that cuts are necessary doesn’t mean they’re “good.” A lot of decent people are going to get hit hard.