Federal sspending is without restraint now
Adam N. Michel 7/5 -- director of tax policy studies at the Cato Institute (“Did Tax Cuts Cause Rising Deficits?”, Cato Institute, 7-5-2023, https://www.cato.org/blog/did-tax-cuts-cause-rising-deficits, Date Accessed 7-9-2023) //TCM
The current federal budget deficit and the accumulated debt result from Congress spending more than they are willing to raise in taxes. Ultimately, the question of which is more to blame—steady taxes or ballooning spending—will depend on our priors: should the government consume an ever‐increasing share of private resources, or should its growth be constrained? However, the recently updated makes clear that the causes of the future budget deficit is not a question of normative judgment. Tax increases cannot fix the underlying growth of health and retirement spending. Even if tax revenues permanently increased to the levels collected when the United States had a budget surplus in 2000, projected deficits would still rise above 9 percent of GDP by 2053. Tax cuts are not to blame for the demographic and benefit‐formula‐fueled growth in mandatory spending. This short piece will begin with context on U.S. fiscal trends and then discuss the two distinct issues in budgetary sustainability—the growth rate of future spending and the desired level of government spending. Fixing the unsustainable growth rate of federal spending is necessary regardless of the desired level of government spending and preferred tax rates. However, without spending restraint, any tax relief will necessarily be short‐lived.