Talk of the federal deficit and ways to decrease government spending has grown all-the-more steady since President Obama’s State of the Union Address Tuesday evening.
But is drastic spending cuts championed by Tea Party supporters and others in Washington the answer?
Patrik Johnson of The Christian Science Monitor spoke with Goizueta economist Tom Smith among others taking a look at the various approaches to set the nation on a better track during its recovery from the greatest economic downturn since the Great Depression.
“The idea [of debt reduction] has merit, but I also think it’s myopic and kind of juvenile to just pick a level that you were comfortable with before and go back to that level,” Smith told The Christian Science Monitor. “The idea isn’t to have crazy spending, but what’s the appropriate amount of spending, and it probably isn’t ‘slash everything.’ The idea that if we remove government from GDP that void will be filled by businesses automatically because government is somehow boxing out business spending by being a big government, the mathematics there are not that simple.”
