So Senator Rand Paul (R, KY) wants to cut 500 billion dollars from the deficit. And people are freaking out about it, because there’s stuff on his list that people don’t want to cut. Everybody’s got something on that list that they don’t want cut, including me. Here’s the problem, though: if we don’t start cutting now – because that half a trillion bucks is only 1/3rd of our current yearly deficit – when we start cutting later it’s going to hurt worse. And it’s not going to be a straight-line progression kind of hurting worse; there is a curve, and it’s upward. And yet… knowing all of this, I still blanch at the thought of cutting, say, aid to Israel.
And that’s why it’s so hard to cut spending.