Geez, Richie, how does one "substantiate" common sense?
Oh, I forgot. You never do the arithmetic. You always rely on your gut feeling to make your political decisions. (I sure hope you don't do the household budget that way.)
Anyway, let me help you out with the common sense that Chris Matthews says is missing. It's based on arithmetic. Now don't get all excited; it's not higher math. Only addition and subtraction, not even multiplication or division. Here you go...
Step One. Write down the total amount that the federal government spends per year. (Hint: it'll be a number around $3.6 trillion).
Step Two. Write down the total amount that the federal government takes in in taxes, fees, etc. (Another hint: it'll be a number around $2.3 trillion)
Step Three. Subtract the second number from the first number. That's the number that people call the "deficit".
Step Four. To see how much government spending needs to be cut to eliminate the deficit, subtract the total of the "discretionary" budget of the federal government from the number you came up with in Step Three.(Hint: it's a number that's about $1.3 trillion.)
Wait a minute! You mean we'd have to eliminate the entire federal government except the Defense Department just to balance the budget?
You mean if we eliminated Homeland Security, the national parks, the IRS, the FDA, EPA, FAA, FBI, DEA, FHA, Department of Justice, the federal court system, Immigration, the border patrol, Customs, any money given to support the post office, Amtrak, Freddie or Fannie, eliminate any money spent on education, the highways, close all the embassies, shut down the military hospitals and the Veterans Administration, even eliminate any money spent paying Congress (that's not a bad idea isn't it?), that we
still would just barely have enough in tax receipts to make the legally-required payments for Social Security and Medicare? Not enough to pay the interest on our federasl debt though. That would have to be paid with either cuts in defense or increased taxes.
Well, maybe not. If we laid off all the people employed by the federal government, that would add close to 5 million people to the unemployment rolls; tax receipts would really take a nose dive. But hey, on the bright side, there'd be a helluva lot less regulations and nobody to enforce them. The private sector would love it!
So in order to keep the entitlements required by law untouched, we'd have to eliminate the entire federal government as we know it?
Yeah, Richie, do the arithmetic yourself. Just follow the bouncing ball in the steps outlined above. Then you'll see how much common sense will lead you to the conclusion that
to balance our federal budget, we'll have to both cut spending pretty dramatically as well as increase taxes.
As Chris Matthews says, it's just common sense. No gut feeling required. And only the "substantiation" needed is what's outlined above.
It ain't claptrap.