Monday, September 25, 2006

Two and a half Cheers for the Government

Glad to see the federal government using the $13 billion surplus to reduce the national debt.

Also glad to see its cutting back on some spending.

But I am disappointed to see that no tax cuts seem to be on the horizon.

Overburdened taxpayers deserve a break.

3 comments:

Monkey Loves to Fight said...

I support the debt reduction. I also agree with the size of the spending cuts, I should note the Liberals themselves were also looking at ways to find even larger amounts of savings. In the last budget, 100 programs were cut. However, none of them affected the most vulnerable members of society, whereas some of the Conservative ones do. Lets cut at the top first, not the bottom first. And cut the programs that need to go, not base the decisions on who will support who and who won't.

As for tax cuts: I fully agree. We should have cut income taxes and corporate taxes, instead of the GST. Income tax cuts and corporate tax cuts do more to stimulate economic growth than a GST cut does.

JeffDG said...

Honestly, I see debt reduction and tax cuts as two sides of the same coin.

We have almost half a trillion dollars in debt. Even at $13b/a, we'll be paying it off in 37 years.

Debt repayment today is a tax cut in the future. The quicker we can dig out of the hole, the quicker we can drop the $19b/a in interest servicing costs.

Monkey Loves to Fight said...

I agree with jeffg, however I think debt reduction should take priority at the moment. As the debt drops, surpluses will rise meaning more money available for tax cuts. Once the debt is eliminated we can have both high spending and low taxes as Alberta does. Now I know the NCC is not a big fan of high spending, but we could always ensure that goes to areas Canadians truly care about like defence, health care, post-secondary education etc.