FEATURED QUESTION: Our Economy

(This FEATURED QUESTION stuck here for few days. Please scroll down for other postings)


HERE in the Washington Post you can read the highlights of the deficit-reduction proposals. They include the following:

-Overhaul individual income taxes and corporate taxes. For individuals and families, eliminate a host of popular tax credits and deductions, including the child tax credit and the mortgage interest deduction.Significantly reduce income tax rates, with the top rate dropping to 23 percent from 35 percent.

-Reduce the corporate income tax rate to 26 percent from 35 percent, and stop taxing the overseas profits of U.S.-based multinational corporations.

-Increase the gas tax by 15 cents a gallon to fund transportation programs.

Read this link to see the entire list.

On the list is a hot-button issue for every American I know. Maybe more than one hot button.

No matter how we look at this problem, the solution is going to be painful:

Voters who last week sent Washington a message to wrestle the spiraling debt under control have gotten a message back from the leaders of a White House budget commission: It'll hurt.

A proposal released Wednesday by the bipartisan leaders of President Barack Obama's deficit commission suggested cuts to Social Security benefits, deep reductions in federal spending and higher taxes for millions of Americans to stem a flood of red ink that they said threatens the nation's very future.

Interest groups on the right and the left squealed, predictably, about the plan, which would cut total deficits by as much as $4 trillion over the next decade - much of it from programs long considered all but sacred.

Besides Social Security, Medicare spending would be curtailed. Tax breaks for many health care plans, too. And the Pentagon's budget as well in a plan that attaches $3 in spending cuts to every $1 in tax increases.

For all the pain, the deficit still would approach $400 billion in 2015 under the proposal...

Surely, we all realize that something must be done about our deficit! If nothing is done, our entire economy could well collapse.

FEATURED QUESTION (in two parts): (1) How can the deficit be substantially and effectively reduced? (2) What will be the consequences for us as individuals and families if various methods of deficit reduction are put into place?