Honestly, maybe we ought to forego the tax cut

I don't really enjoy posting about politics, and in fact, I don't think I've done it much. But this has been kicking around in my head for weeks: why, when we are trillions, bajillions, zillions of dollars in debt, are we talking about cutting taxes? Whether you support Obama or McCain, they're both talking about finding ways to put money back into the hands of the American people, and generally speaking, they want to cut taxes. I get it, the government cuts taxes, we have more money in our pockets... and we HOPE that the government somehow curtails spending in order to make up for the money they didn't get in taxes. But we KNOW that this doesn't happen. Tax cuts mean less money in the US Treasury, which means less money to pay those big bills, which we aren't paying anyway.

It wasn't until this most recent election that I realized that we borrow money from other countries. Call it ignorance, naiveté, stupidity if you want... but I guess I just figured we owed other countries a lot of money, not that we borrowed money from, say, China in order to pay, say, Russia. For some reason this really bothers me. 

Josh and I bought a house a couple of years ago. When we sat down with the bank representative and she 'ran our numbers,' she told us we were approved for a house in the range of two to two and half times what our current mortgage is. We looked back at her and LAUGHED, thinking, maybe YOU think we can afford that, but we KNOW we can't. We found a house that was much more reasonably within our means, and in fact budgeted our mortgage to be manageable on only one income (see, we knew Ben would be on his way eventually). In light of the recent Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac buyouts, I am shocked that the financial intelligence Josh and I apparently have is rather rare. Why are people buying houses they can't afford?

Why is our country spending money we don't have?

How would lower taxes fix this problem?

For Pete's sake, why would we even consider cutting taxes until our debt is under control? My solution is this: no tax cuts until our debts are paid. And in fact, after all is said and done at your tax preparer, I propose that every American tax payer add ten dollars in taxes. You might think this is ridiculous, but work with me. Let's say there are a million people paying taxes. If everyone paid an additional ten bucks, we'd have an additional TEN MILLION dollars. I know, I know, $10 isn't the same to Average Joe as it is to CEO Joe, but who cares. Income is income.