It’s not hard actually to sum the book in a couple of pages, a primer if you will — just in case you don’t have time to read the whole thing, or you want a little cheat sheet to carry around.
Get these quick points under your belt and you can out-debate Bill O’Reilly, Pete Peterson and Paul Ryan—though, truthfully, that’s not much of a
challenge because your mother would probably provide more of a challenge if she stuck to the facts.
Did social spending or “entitlements” create the current annual deficits and long-term debt?
No. There are three—and only three—key reasons for the debt: two unpaid-for wars in Iraq and Afghanistan (supported and endorsed by both political parties); the Bush tax cuts, which siphoned hundreds of billions of dollars to the very wealthy; and the Wall Street, mortgage scam-fueled housing bust, which sunk the economy into deep crisis, robbing the Treasury of income because millions of people lost their jobs.
Take those three factors out and we’d have a surplus. If someone answers, “well, but”, don’t let them off the hook: keep focused on these three reasons because that will make it clear that social program spending, especially entitlements, is not the root cause of annual deficits.
