What's Going on With the Budget?

I never understand this stuff.

In vague, general terms, it's seemed to me that the Dems are dedicated to cranking up both government spending and taxes. The Pubs have claimed dedication to lowering taxes and shrinking government and government spending. We're headed for deficit disaster (allegedly), and the question is: which side will blink first?

   Unfortunately, the Pubs have been more dedicated to cutting taxes than they've been to reducing spending. So we've really got two parties on the more spending side. This seems to leave us with no good options with respect to taxes: raising them is bad, but, given greater expenditures, so is not raising them.

   But I don't really understand anything about this stuff.

   I'm getting old enough now that I've gotta start at least acknowledging that I'll retire some day. Needless to say, I'd like more money rather than less. But I don't see how we can avoid cutting benefits. If we have to do it, we have to do it.

   I'm set up to get particularly screwed in all this, since my parents believed the tall tale about paying money into the system and then getting it back someday. So they got my brother and me Social Security numbers as soon as they could, and we started paying in. My father had a rather short-lived bus company, driving his co-workers up to McDonnell-Douglas, and my brother and I got paid for some of our work for the company. So I've been paying in since I was very young. But anyway, the point is: if anybody should be ticked off at the thought of benefit cuts, it's me. But what's bad for me personally isn't always bad for the nation.