Why is the spending side of the equation never addressed?

Joseph Henchman, tax counsel and director of state projects at the Tax Foundation, told reporter Ed Vogel, “People are having trouble all over. You could make changes now to solve your short-term problem but undermine your ability to grow."

But the currently Democratically controlled Legislature has its eyes on the Stakeholders Group, which can’t seem to grasp the concept or cutting spending on anything and appears poised to propose a panoply of taxes and fees.

Let’s see, how’d that work out for the folks in Oregon who passed a soak-the-rich income tax hike in January? It was supposed to raise a half a billion dollars in new loot so the state could spend it on "education, health care, public safety, other services." The public employee unions spent millions encouraging voters to approve their continued lucrative salaries.

According to the Heartland Institute things did not quite work out as planned.

Oregon is projecting tax revenues for the coming year will be $577 million less than was budgeted. Nearly all of the decline is in personal income tax revenue. The governor is ordering 9 percent across-the-board spending cuts.

Heartland’s Budget & Tax News quotes Bob Williams, director of StateBudgetSolutions.org, who says most state budget problems are due to excess spending.

“They are far more interested in redistributing wealth than in maintaining the conditions for its creation. If wealth creation were a priority, we would see tax cuts, not tax hikes,” he said.

That also applies on the national level. This week the heads of President Barack Obama’s national debt commission called the nation’s debt a cancer. Republican Alan Simpson said, "It is truly going to destroy the country from within."

He said the entirety of the nation’s current discretionary spending is consumed by the Medicare, Medicaid and Social Security programs.