Orrin Hatch: “while one might quibble with the particulars of Reinhart's and Rogoff's assessment, failure to take it seriously, given…”

“while one might quibble with the particulars of Reinhart's and Rogoff's assessment, failure to take it seriously, given the recent struggles of the eurozone, amounts to whistling past the graveyard. To be clear, the long-term source of our fiscal problem is overspending, not a lack of revenue. Our friends at the Heritage Foundation have done an excellent job of putting all this spending into historical perspective. I will run through some charts highlighting just how unusual and unsustainable recent levels of Federal spending have become. Any way we cut it, spending is up. Federal spending per household is skyrocketing, even with the $2.1 trillion in deficit reduction achieved by this summer's Budget Control Act. In 1965, Federal spending per household was $11,431. In 2010, it was $29,401. It is projected to hit $35,773 in 2020. That is per household. Federal spending is growing faster than median income. Between 1970 and 2009, total Federal spending rose by 299 percent, while median household income has gone up 27 percent in the same time period. Federal spending that is far out of line with historical averages is the cause of our annual deficits and total debt--not the much reviled 2001 and 2003 tax relief extended by President Obama and a Democratic Congress. Historically, revenues have averaged around 18 percent of GDP. As the economy recovers, CBO projects revenues to return to that historical average. Yet spending is going higher and higher.…”