WASHINGTON — We in America today live in a country circumscribed by entitlement policies devised by an America that steadily has been disappearing. Those policies established more than a generation ago cannot possibly, in mathematical or demographic terms, support the America of the present, much less the America of the future. That is the stark reality. We need to reform those policies, or we shall go bankrupt, and raising taxes on the so-called rich will not fix things. Even raising taxes on the middle class will not fix things. Nor will spending a trillion dollars more than we have on hand fix things. Eventually, those trillion-dollar deficits have to be paid off. Facts are facts; the day of reckoning that our hayseed politicians have said was up the road apiece is here. We have to do something now, and we can begin by growing the economy.
That is the burden of House Budget Committee Chairman Paul Ryan’s carefully thought-out budget for fiscal year 2013. The way he would get the economy growing again is by lowering the corporate tax rate from 35 percent to a more competitive 25 percent. He would allow American corporations to bring profits earned abroad home without penalty so that they could invest in jobs and factories here. His budget would eliminate the complexity of the tax code on individuals and families and consolidate the tax brackets — from the current six brackets to two, of 10 percent and 25 percent. He argues that revenue would remain steady because of the elimination of special-interest loopholes and because of economic growth.
