Yes, we can.

[Ghoulish Delight]

Originally Posted by scaeagles

First is that raising taxes will result in raised revenue, far from a certainty, and I would argue the opposite takes place.

And you'd be wrong. (or rather, you'd be just as likely to be wrong as right since all the evidence has shown that far too many economic factors are at play for incremental changes, up or down, in taxation to produce any sort of predictable, measurable effect on overall revenue due to economic growth or shrinkage).

By the same token, ignoring the last clause of the sentence, I agree that raising taxes is not a certain path towards revenue increase (see above). But the reality is that our spending is growing and that's not going to change no matter who is in office. The only thing that is going to have an effect at this point is military spending and McCain will certainly continue the trend of blowing the budget out of the water on that. From the standpoint of economic stability, while my druthers would be to make large cuts in all areas where there is waste, that's simply not going to happen in the short term so the next best thing is to stop the bleeding via un-budgeted military spending and continue to ensure there is enough revenue to cover the current levels of approved waste. When we had a budget surplus, moves were being made to begin cutting intelligently because Congress could look at the budget rationally instead of in panic mode. It'd be nice to be there again.