Once again, I don't think that it is appropriate to cut taxes until the debt is paid off.

It is inappropriate that the government continues to spend as it does, not that the government would allow its citizens to retain the wealth which they have earned.

Any time a tax is reduced, it is a small victory. It is too bad that they didn't repeal the death tax completely and for good but at least they moved in the proper direction. Now, if we could only see an actual cut in Federal spending.... We have to find a way.

Nigel, you could wait 100 Billion years AFTER the Second Coming and that debt will not be paid off. It is rigged in such a way that it can NEVER be paid off. It is designed to keep us in perpetual servitude. The money itself (Federal reserve NOTES) are instruments of credit, redeemable for nothing. This is why everyone in Washington from our so-called "conservative" President on down spend money like a 7 year old in a candy store, they KNOW what you will not accept. Please don't tell me that you actually believe that tax money is used against this "debt".

Chuck: It is my understanding that the debt can be measured in dollars (and in teradollars), and thus can be paid off in dollars. Care to explain how it's impossible to pay off?

Nigel:

The best thing you can do is sit down and read "The Mystery of Banking" by Murray Rothbard. An excellent and thorough explanation of how the Federal Reserve works and how the Federal Government buys and uses the Federal Government's debt to help the banks inflate the money supply.

Rothbard provides a step by step plan for getting rid of the Federal Reserve and in the process eliminating much of the debt. There are several books by Rothbard and other Austrian economists on this subject.

It would be possible to simply write of almost $3.5 Trillion dollars of the National Debt simply by eliminating the Federal Reserve and returning to specie. Also without a central bank and with commercial banks constrained by a 100% reserve requirement from inflating the money supply, the government would be restrained by the lack of available credit from incurring further debt.

oops, in my last comment, that should have read "how the Federal RESERVE buys and uses the Federal Government's debt.."

Wealth that they have earned? The majority of people who the estate tax would effect did not earn their money. Most of wealtiest people today are rich because of government action to centralize economic power among the wealthy elite that they serve. Now, I am against the estates tax, but I do not for one second even thing that the elite deserves all the wealth they have.

Where I said "thing" it should say "think". Sorry about that.

Jeremy is undoubtedly right that many rich don't deserve every last penny they have because government intervention distorts what would otherwise obtain in a laissez faire economy. By the same token, there are undoubtedly some very rich who would have even more without government intervention. Nonetheless, I would bet if the government redistributed every last cent equally across all citizens, in ten years the "rich" would be largely the same people.
Might I point out, too, that compromise at estates
of $5mm or $10mm still treats all such estates the same even though the previously untaxed assets of one such estate can be radically different than those of another.