Tax and Spend

Paul Krugman column in the NY Times on Monday May 25, 2009, The State of Paralysis in California saying that the problem with the California budget dates back about 30 years when the Voters of California Passed Proposition 13 a ballot measure that placed cap on property taxes. This leaves the California budget to depend on income taxes for most of its money and in a recession that money dries up leaving California in a big hole. Paul Krugman seem to say that putting a cap on property taxes is a bad idea because seniors are paying less taxes on their homes than younger home owners. Why can't the spending part of the budget be cut as much as I hate to agree with conservatives the income tax is the fairest of all taxes because people only pay what they can afford and doesn't throw them out of their homes. State budgets are by their nature harder to cut because they have more meat and less fat, the federal budget on the other hand has a lot of fat called the military budget. The Bush administration spent most of the budget on the military and building Iraq and cut the domestic budget to the bone. Now the Obama administration is spending on the domestic budget, but is still spending almost the same amount on the military budget so the balance between money coming in and the money going out is out of balance giving us a big deficit. If we as a country finally come to realize that we cannot afford an empire and close most if not all of our bases overseas, cut military budget in half (it is now 57% of the federal budget). We must move from a war time economy to a peace time economy then we will enough money for both federal and state spending.