[jerf]

Maybe it's just me, but when I think "austerity" I don't think such small-single digit percentages. If our government is that sensitive to such small piddling decreases in income, then the problem lies in the government anyhow, not the income decrease... on the timespan of your life, there will be years where the income will have to go down. Be it major famine, major natural disaster, or the need to fight an actual war again, you can't build a government edifice that only works if you feed it 105% of what it got last year, every year, after inflation, or it will fail anyhow.

Of course, expecting fiscal responsibility from a government is a fool's errand. Screaming like a stuck pig and running around yelling "AUSTERITY! AUSTERITY!" if one even breathes a threat to feed them less, and then blaming everything bad that ever happens again on the AUSTERITY is exactly what I'd expect from them. What on Earth will they actually do when something bad happens?

[SteveLAnderson]

Anybody that thinks $1.1T is a "small piddling decrease" must be a truly wealthy person. Can you spare the government that pittance? We'd all benefit from it.