That depends…I would argue that the Iraq war was very necessary as well as high military spending….whereas you may or may not. If we differ greatly on what is important, then there is no way we could possibly agree on what should get cut first.

I would be in favor of nickel and dime-ing down every social program in the country and recuding waste there way before even looking at military spending.

More importantly, differences between the plans aside, I fail to see the importance of criticizing tax *credits* while ignoring spending. Much political blathering from both parties aside, anyone who studies the Code learns pretty quickly that, considering the tax system as a whole, there is no difference between taxation and government spending. It just happens that overt taxes/credits are visible.

Given that the majority of our current debt is not occasioned by lower taxes or tax credits, but by massive overspending (see, e.g, a massively ballooned military budget, the Iraq war etc.) shouldn’t we focus on cutting spending first? Also, tax credits help those below the poverty line. If we have to attack credits to low-income families, why not focus on special interest giveaways like agricultural and oil industry subsidies first?

Mainly because Hollywood has utterly ignored the USSR as a basis for stories. You’ve seen all the horrors of the Nazis, time and time again — rarely does a year pass without a critically acclaimed picture which deals with the Holocaust in some way… and that’s a good thing.

But the fact is, the USSR and China were each just as effective as the Nazis in wiping out their citizenry — and for much longer.

The only movie with any distribution in recent memory which actually suggested anything about this is The Red Violin, which had a segment set during the “Cultural Revolution” — and I seem to remember that it touched it only peripherally (I don’t include The Killing Fields, which was Cambodia, not China or the USSR).

There’ve been more movies made about supposed US “attrocities” in the last 15 years than there have about communist ones.

Every “benefit” that government grants comes with a loss of freedom. When you accept the states money, you accept restrictions on how to spend. If you don’t take the money, you place yourself at a disadvantage e.g. declining to accept money to go to a government approved school puts you tens of thousands dollars in the hole at the start of your adult life.

Look, at the list. You only get most of funds if you do what the government wants you to do. My family only qualifies for the first “credit”. That means we’ll be paying for everyone else’s goodies.

You’re welcome.