Graham Wilson, chair of the political science department and author of Only in America? American Politics in Comparative Perspective, offers the following comment on President Obama’s deficit reduction plan:
“There is no evidence that the U.S. is an over-spender on domestic programs. Its crumbling infrastructure, high child (and indeed overall) poverty rates testify to that fact. The obvious, compelling fact in understanding the deficit is that federal government revenues as a percentage of GDP are amazingly low not only by international but by U.S. historical standards.
“The repeated failure to address this fact pushes the President ever more into accepting, at least in part, GOP plans to slash government spending driven by an antipathy to ‘big government’ more than concern about the deficit. Add to this the fact that cuts in government programs are more immediately ‘job destroying’ than tax increases at a time of very high unemployment and the case for continuing to surrender the debate to the Republicans becomes dubious indeed.
“Taxing millionaires more is probably largely rhetoric but is at least a start.”
Contact Wilson at 617-353-2540; gkwilson@bu.edu
