Pelosi: "It's Almost A False Argument To Say We Have A Spending Problem"

“It is almost a false argument to say we have a spending problem,” Rep. Nancy Pelosi told Fox News’s Chris Wallace today. “We have a budget deficit problem that we have to address.”

She also said that “tax subsidies” should be targeted for cuts rather than spending programs. And by “tax subsidies” what Pelosi means are tax breaks which allow Americans and businesses to pay less in taxes. In Pelosi’s world of Orwellian fiscal language, giving you a tax break is a “subsidy.”

To be fair, I think there are a lot of tax loopholes, credits and deductions that should be ended in favor of lower overall rates. I believe in tax codes that are simple and broad.

That being said, the idea that we don’t have a spending problem is ridiculous. Despite some significant dips due to recession in 2001 and 2009, total federal tax receipts have increased dramatically since 1992:

The problem is that spending is growing even faster:

We have two choices. We can either keep jacking up taxes so that revenues keep parity with expenditures (setting aside the fact that tax hikes can hurt the economy and depress revenues), or we can admit that spending is a problem and implement actual cuts.

Or we can believe in the Democrat fantasy land which holds that increased levels of government spending will somehow inspire tax revenues to pay for it.