Despite the rhetoric espoused by both party’s during their respective conventions, the Republicans must continually challenge Mr. Obama on the fundamental problem of unsustainable government spending.  Every time a Romney-Ryan policy is criticized, the runaway freight train of Obama spending should be part of the rebuttal.

When the Obama administration claims that the Romney-Ryan Medicare plan will harm the elderly (which is a distortion because those over 55 can keep Medicare as is), the response should be “what do you plan to do about a budget that is 1 trillion dollars in the hole this year?”  Raising taxes on the wealthy is not a viable policy option to solve this spending problem.

As the chart above demonstrates, the trend shows government borrows approximately 45 cents of every dollar it spends.  This level of imbalance is not only unprecedented historically during peacetime, but it is a problem that more tax revenue cannot solve.  Even when considering one of the most punitive tax increase proposal by the democrats in the House of Representatives, a tax on the wealthy making $1 million or more a year (both income and capital gains tax increases) would actually raise $40 billion to $50 billion a year which is only about 3% of the annual federal deficit.  This increase in revenue is barring an absence of any negative effects on economic growth, which is no certainty when taxes are raised on those who drive economic activity.

The U.S. government has a major spending problem, and both the candidates and the American people need to start acknowledging the disastrous path we are on.