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Yeah, Ron Paul is obviously a reliable source of information on tax policy.

Let's take 1995 as the canonical year "in the 90s" since it's dead smack in the middle of them. In 1995, the US federal government spent $1516 billion (source: http://www.cbo.gov/publication/42911).

Actual tax revenue for in billions for FY2011 are as follows: (source: http://www.cbo.gov/publication/42911)
        Individual Corporate Social
        Income Income Insurance Excise Estate and Customs Miscellaneous
        Taxes Taxes Taxes Taxes Gift Taxes Duties Receipts Total
                1,091.5 181.1 818.8 72.4 7.4 29.5 101.8 2,302.5

There are three major things to note about this data with respect to what you said:
1. Your claim is bullshit. Add up the stuff that's not under the "Income Tax" columns and you get $1029.9 billion. Last time I checked, that's less than $1516 billion. The math is a little hard but... YEP. $1029.9 is less than $1516. In fact, it's only about 68%. If you look at the data, you will see that there was not a single year in the 1990s that could have been paid for by the non-income taxes collected in 2011 OR ANY YEAR SINCE 1987.

2. Eliminating the income tax would mean that our taxes would break down as follows:
      79.5% from social insurance taxes
        7.0% excise taxes
        0.7% gift and estate taxes
        2.9% customs duties
        9.9% everything else
      This would be a highly regressive tax system.

3. Adjusted for inflation the bill for the stuff in the 1995 budget would be about $2282 today. (source: http://www.bls.gov/data/inflation_calculator.htm). That's 2.2X what your non-income taxes collect today.

You'd think Ron Paul would have as much access to the Congressional Budget Office as I do. He's a member of Congress. Or maybe his mouth just doesn't have as much access to the truth.

Yeah, Ron Paul is obviously a reliable source of information on tax policy.

Let's take 1995 as the canonical year "in the 90s" since it's dead smack in the middle of them. In 1995, the US federal government spent $1516 billion (source: http://www.cbo.gov/publication/42911).

Actual tax revenue for in billions for FY2011 are as follows: (source: http://www.cbo.gov/publication/42911)
        Individual Corporate Social
        Income Income Insurance Excise Estate and Customs Miscellaneous
        Taxes Taxes Taxes Taxes Gift Taxes Duties Receipts Total
                1,091.5 181.1 818.8 72.4 7.4 29.5 101.8 2,302.5

There are three major things to note about this data with respect to what you said:
1. Your claim is bullshit. Add up the stuff that's not under the "Income Tax" columns and you get $1029.9 billion. Last time I checked, that's less than $1516 billion. The math is a little hard but... YEP. $1029.9 is less than $1516. In fact, it's only about 68%. If you look at the data, you will see that there was not a single year in the 1990s that could have been paid for by the non-income taxes collected in 2011 OR ANY YEAR SINCE 1987.

2. Eliminating the income tax would mean that our taxes would break down as follows:
      79.5% from social insurance taxes
        7.0% excise taxes
        0.7% gift and estate taxes
        2.9% customs duties
        9.9% everything else
      This would be a highly regressive tax system.

3. Adjusted for inflation the bill for the stuff in the 1995 budget would be about $2282 today. (source: http://www.bls.gov/data/inflation_calculator.htm). That's 2.2X what your non-income taxes collect today.

You'd think Ron Paul would have as much access to the Congressional Budget Office as I do. He's a member of Congress. Or maybe his mouth just doesn't have as much access to the truth.

Public and Scientific earth viewing satellites are dwindling. The military has plenty of money to launch all they need.

*Poof* You have your wish. The military budget is now zero. And we still have a $610 billion budget deficit.

Can we please stop derailing any budget/financing debate with the misguided notion that everything can be fixed by cutting military spending? The problem is that the government spends way, way more than it takes in, period. Military spending is just a part of the problem, not the sole problem. It's not even the main problem if you believe the CBO reports (heresy, I know). Medicare and Medicaid are.

According to the Congressional Budget Office's prelminary report we just set a record in February for the largest ever monthly deficit at $229 Billion. The federal government spent $334 Billion dollars but only brought in $105 Billion in taxes. That works out to a deficit of about $7.9 Billion per day. It is almost comical think about a program with so much potential only needing $4 Billion to advance their work. I guess it would funny if it weren't real life.

http://www.cbo.gov/publication/21019

http://www.cbo.gov/publication/41147

http://www.economy.com/mark-zandi/documents/End-of-Great-Recession.pdf

http://www.thedailybeast.com/articles/2010/08/14/gm-proves-obama-saved-detroit-but-voters-hate-bailouts.html

Fuck where did those come from?

http://www.cbo.gov/publication/21019

http://www.cbo.gov/publication/41147

http://www.economy.com/mark-zandi/documents/End-of-Great-Recession.pdf

http://www.thedailybeast.com/articles/2010/08/14/gm-proves-obama-saved-detroit-but-voters-hate-bailouts.html

Fuck where did those come from?

There's a lot of truth in what you say. The bottom 50% of households don't earn much so not a lot of taxes to be collected there. True. The bottom 20% are mostly college students, retirees, disabled people, etc. (though not "children", because households rarely consist of just children). True. If you have a full-time job you are not in the bottom 20%. There is really no good argument that the federal government should be collecting more revenue from households in the bottom two income quinitles.

And yet it's talked about far too much, as if it were meaningful, yet they leave out the details, like the actual income, except when they can spin it to seem bad.

Notice how it's so often not talked about in terms of actual value.

But actually, the numbers do include children, since they're part of the population, and it's rarely just households in the numbers. Or it's those who are barely more than children, but count independently in those household measurements.

Here you're definitely confused. Austerity means reducing their deficits in order to be allowed to keep borrowing at reasonable interest rates. The alternative is effectively bankruptcy ("screw this"). This would require them to balance their budget overnight, because few would be willing to lend to them. That is "screw this" would require much deeper spending cuts than "austerity". That's why Greece has chosen "austerity" over "screw this".

That's because you don't realize that they're going to suffer just as much under this austerity, but the money is going to the people telling them to starve, and it's going to buy them a nice prime cut of meat.

Yeah, it'd be painful, and they probably couldn't survive it without cost, but at least they wouldn't be feeding the dog that bit them.

Maybe you don't realize that, but somebody's going to profit off these measures, and it won't be the Greeks.

It may be tough for the average citizen to get a grasp on what the debt level means. Sure $51,000 per man, woman, and child ($204,000 for a family of four) may sound like a lot, but is it really a problem? Well, the people who have the best grasp on the state of the U.S. economy and the Federal budget almost unanimously agree that it is essential that we bring the debt under control to ensure future economic stability. The CBO and the Fed have both consistently made statements favoring policies that would move deficits to stable and low levels (say 2% of GDP).

And the economists didn't mess up already when it came to the whole Housing crisis. Why are we listening to them anymore? Besides, the biggest point is they don't rely on the numbers people who want you to believe there is an imminent debt crisis throw out, as if that kind of hysterical ranting was anything but hyperbole, and I'm pretty sure the "experts" recommend the changes that the same people braying about those large numbers want either.

I can understand prudence. But more people would have radical wholesale changes overnight, as if the proper response to a disaster in the making is acting precipitously.

There's a reason firemen don't run into a building.

In 2011 about two-thirds of the Federal budget (excluding interest on the debt) went to transfer programs: Social Security(726bn), Medicare(574bn), Medicaid(268bn), Other Income Security Programs(352bn), Other Discretionary Outlays for Health, Income Security, and Education(~200bn). You could argue that a lot of that money doesn't go to the poor per se.

Or you could admit that it does. OR that Social Security and Medicare are not funded from general tax revenues. Or that outlays for education include funding to companies for services, not payouts to the poor? Or that Medicaid doesn't go to the person, but

There's a lot of truth in what you say. The bottom 50% of households don't earn much so not a lot of taxes to be collected there. True. The bottom 20% are mostly college students, retirees, disabled people, etc. (though not "children", because households rarely consist of just children). True. If you have a full-time job you are not in the bottom 20%. There is really no good argument that the federal government should be collecting more revenue from households in the bottom two income quinitles.

"Yeah, ask Greece how they feel about the international bankers dictating their national policy. If they were really smart, they'd say "Screw this" and cut themselves off from the foreign system."

Here you're definitely confused. Austerity means reducing their deficits in order to be allowed to keep borrowing at reasonable interest rates. The alternative is effectively bankruptcy ("screw this"). This would require them to balance their budget overnight, because few would be willing to lend to them. That is "screw this" would require much deeper spending cuts than "austerity". That's why Greece has chosen "austerity" over "screw this".

"Stop buying into the fallacy of large numbers, it looks scary to you the individual"

It may be tough for the average citizen to get a grasp on what the debt level means. Sure $51,000 per man, woman, and child ($204,000 for a family of four) may sound like a lot, but is it really a problem? Well, the people who have the best grasp on the state of the U.S. economy and the Federal budget almost unanimously agree that it is essential that we bring the debt under control to ensure future economic stability. The CBO and the Fed have both consistently made statements favoring policies that would move deficits to stable and low levels (say 2% of GDP).

"Too bad you don't realize where the real money is going. The sums that go to the poor are not the majority share of government spending on special interests, they aren't even a plurality. They're a drop in the bucket."

In 2011 about two-thirds of the Federal budget (excluding interest on the debt) went to transfer programs: Social Security(726bn), Medicare(574bn), Medicaid(268bn), Other Income Security Programs(352bn), Other Discretionary Outlays for Health, Income Security, and Education(~200bn). You could argue that a lot of that money doesn't go to the poor per se. But the intent of all of those programs is to transfer money from people with higher incomes to those with lower. I know a dollar isn't what it used to be, but two trillion of them seem to be more than a drop in the bucket.

Discussions of fiscal sustainability should not be polarized polemical disputes that end with references to killing people. Bringing the budget under control is not a liberal or conservative thing. It's in all of our best interests. If you want to have transfer programs, fine. Then fund transfer programs. Figure out how to sustainably finance your programs for the poor. Because if you just run up debts until interest payments on the federal debt are squeezing the growth out of the economy, those programs will be substantially reduced (out of necessity). Greece is showing us that no amount of protest can make new goods and services appear out of thin air. We can only solve this problem with serious discussion and a willingness to make tough decisions. We need to sort out our priorities and then make plan to pay for them. But anyone who says "screw fiscal responsibility" is charting a road to disaster.

Creating fancy new entitlements like Obamacare just make the collapse come that much sooner.

Sorry kids. there is no free lunch. (or free medical care, or free retirement, or free anything.) We simply cannot afford to lie to ourselves about it anymore.

I agree with your second sentiment; however, I would caution you not to lie to yourself about "obamacare." http://www.cbo.gov/publications/collections/health.cfm

sorry you need to validate your claim, here is the my data on the federal debit,
http://www.cbo.gov/ftpdocs/108xx/doc10871/HistoricalTables.pdf

this was about a budgeting issue and having a surplus, that would in effect have a canceling out of more bonds being issued ( bonds hit maturity, paid off, no re-financing of the pre-established debit )

as a note I see you are talking about debt ( which would cover treasury notes and bonds and all outstanding obligation if they were cashed in at once )
then your are correct http://www.treasurydirect.gov/govt/reports/pd/histdebt/histdebt_histo4.htm
with the years of 1951 and 57 being the years of reduction.

The Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act was the first step in very much needed healthcare reform. Reform which will both improve quality of live for a very large number of Americans who have previously only had access to emergency rooms, but save us money in the long run ($143 billion over ten years according to the Congressional Budget Office):

http://cboblog.cbo.gov/?p=546

Interestingly, but not surprisingly, if you search for "Obamacare saves money", using the derisive name for the act coined by the neo-cons, you get editorial after editorial from conservative sources using anecdotal evidence to try a refute the CBO's finding. "I know a doctor who now prescribes Aspirin! Aspirin people!" Naturally, none of them have actually done any research on the subject. They're just haters, and they gonna hate.

Perhaps you should look up what a shift from 70% to 57% from 1980 means. That is, when you compare the amount provided by private sector research investment and what happened to that research. So just throwing off a smug comment about statistics that actually contributes nothing to the conversation is at best dilatory, you might want to bother digging a little deeper into the facts behind the conversation.

Here are some interesting questions whose answers would be most illuminating;
1. What was the total spending on research per year for the United States since 1980?
2. By dollars spent or GDP%, what was the amount spent by the US government vs Corporate sources?
3. What percentage of that research was made available for public consumption vs what was bound up in corporate patents per year?
4. What was the breakdown of investment dollars or GDP%, tending over the 30 years in question?

For the most part, the government spent significantly less on research over the last 30 years. Moreover, though the total spending on research per year leading up to 2005 wavered between 2 and 3 percent of the GDP, we are currently in something of a research slump. Research spending for the last 6 years has remained virtually constant, except for defense based research which increased markedly. In short, those with whom we are competing, are substantially outspending us in research, which every viable source tells us is one of Governments best investments (extremely high return on investment), with the exception of military research which has for the most part, a rather low return on investment. Finally, corporate research tends to get tied up in patents (I hope you're not surprised) meaning that government research often but not always has more public value. There is a current push to have University research that has been government funded released to public access. Of course the Universities are complaining, but if the research was paid for by tax dollars, all Americans should receive the benefit.

If you'd like to evaluate some of the source reference for these observations I suggest The Congressional Budget Office and perhaps this document by the AASS. There are plenty of other sources if you'd bother to research the issue. Other iInteresting sources put us in global context and point at how we've degenerated into our current political, economic and sociological state. If it weren't so worrisome, it would be fascinating.

Real incomes are up for everyone since '79:

CBO finds that, between 1979 and 2007, income grew by:

275 percent for the top 1 percent of households,
65 percent for the next 19 percent,
Just under 40 percent for the next 60 percent, and
18 percent for the bottom 20 percent.

http://www.cbo.gov/doc.cfm?index=12485

I would suggest that what has really happened is that expectations have outpaced that, to the extent that people generally expect to live in a larger house, have more (and nicer) vehicles, and the ability to purchase more luxury goods (e.g. meals out, boats, second televisions, super-duper cable packages, etc.)

By far, the cheapest solution to traffic congestion is not to expand the I-5, but to convert all existing lanes to express lanes. Here's proof: the SR-91 express lanes in Orange County, California "generate net social benefits of at least $12 million per year, compared with a scenario in which the lanes had been built but drivers did not pay to use them."

Reduced congestion of existing highways and airspace?

Sorry, but high speed rail won't reduce congestion. Two University of Toronto professors have added to the body of evidence showing that highway and road expansion increases traffic by increasing demand. On the flip side, they show that transit expansion doesn't help cure congestion either.

When you understand that traffic congestion is a type of shortage (too many cars, too little road space), and that a shortage is defined as the situation when supply is greater than demand, two solutions immediately become obvious: increase supply, or reduce demand. The least expensive of these two is to reduce demand, and here's proof: the SR-91 express lanes in Orange County, California generate net social benefits of at least $12 million per year, compared with a scenario in which the lanes had been built but drivers did not pay to use them.

Every time Wall Street stops freaking out there's some budget emergency in DC that highlights the inability of our current government to function. Right now it's not taxes or regulations that are killing jobs, it's business owners wondering if they should just liquidate everything and move to Cambodia now to avoid the rush. It's investors and little people wondering if the Government will actually default and destroy their savings again. It's awfully fucking hard to plan on buying a house or a car, even if you're in reasonably good shape, if you're worried that the economy is going to go down the shitter tomorrow because Congress can't do it's job!

There's more than enough blame to go around here. All those guys there are more concerned with scoring political points than with the well being of America and Americans! We need a steady flow of idealistic new people being sent to Washington, and then being kicked out before they become the dessicated husks of humanity that we have up there today.

One advantage of tolling over gas taxes is congestion tolling can permanently eliminate traffic congestion while keeping the roads filled and productive, but the gas tax cannot do both at the same time. And with traffic congestion eliminated, you save a lot of money on road expansion. As a result, the SR-91 express toll lanes in Orange County, California generate net social benefits of at least $12 million per year, compared with a scenario in which the lanes had been built but drivers did not pay to use them.

As someone else pointed out, it's over-simplistic to look at just Presidents, you also have to look at who controls Congress (which the wiki entry does, but you elected to ignore). But if you're going to look at just Presidents, you left out:

Obama (2009-2011) +23.3% in two years

(The wiki entry oddly hasn't yet been updated with his 2011 budget, which ended last month.) I've been watching those figures compared to President, House, and Senate control by party since Reagan, and I really can't see a pattern. If there is one, it's that a D President with a R House and Senate provides the best results, but by that point the sample size is so small you can't really call it a pattern.

Also, I've found that looking purely at deficits makes it difficult to understand what's really going on since a deficit conflates spending and revenue. If you look at spending and revenue separately, you get a much clearer picture of what exactly happened (from this doc).

If you examine that figure, you'll see that Clinton's surplus was really a phantom surplus. Yes he and the Republican Congress cut spending substantially - give them full credit for that; but their spending levels never dipped below the average revenue for the last 40 years. That is, compared to the average revenue over the last 40 years, Clinton's budgets were all deficit budgets. What caused the surplus was the tech bubble increasing tax revenue far above the average.

Likewise, Bush's deficits were mostly driven by lower tax revenue due to the recessions following the tech bubble popping and 9/11 (his tax cuts in 2003 didn't help either). One of the surprising things is that Bush's average spending during his 8 years was pretty much the same as Clinton's average spending during his 8 years. His problem wasn't spending, it was revenue.

As someone else pointed out, it's over-simplistic to look at just Presidents, you also have to look at who controls Congress (which the wiki entry does, but you elected to ignore). But if you're going to look at just Presidents, you left out:

Obama (2009-2011) +23.3% in two years

(The wiki entry oddly hasn't yet been updated with his 2011 budget, which ended last month.) I've been watching those figures compared to President, House, and Senate control by party since Reagan, and I really can't see a pattern. If there is one, it's that a D President with a R House and Senate provides the best results, but by that point the sample size is so small you can't really call it a pattern.

Also, I've found that looking purely at deficits makes it difficult to understand what's really going on since a deficit conflates spending and revenue. If you look at spending and revenue separately, you get a much clearer picture of what exactly happened (from this doc).

If you examine that figure, you'll see that Clinton's surplus was really a phantom surplus. Yes he and the Republican Congress cut spending substantially - give them full credit for that; but their spending levels never dipped below the average revenue for the last 40 years. That is, compared to the average revenue over the last 40 years, Clinton's budgets were all deficit budgets. What caused the surplus was the tech bubble increasing tax revenue far above the average.

Likewise, Bush's deficits were mostly driven by lower tax revenue due to the recessions following the tech bubble popping and 9/11 (his tax cuts in 2003 didn't help either). One of the surprising things is that Bush's average spending during his 8 years was pretty much the same as Clinton's average spending during his 8 years. His problem wasn't spending, it was revenue.

http://www.cbo.gov/ftpdocs/108xx/doc10871/HistoricalTables.pdf

It's not welfare.

The CBO cost estimates categorize federal student loans into 2 categories: Subsidized and Unsubsidized. They use the word "subsidy" over 100 times in their budget estimate documentation.

As to giving Obama credit for what he's accomplished please look at this:
http://www.usgovernmentspending.com/federal_deficit_chart.html
I think you will notice the significant increase in DEFICIT under his term.

Didn't you read the page you linked to? Bush's last deficit was higher than any of Obama's deficits so far. From your own link: Bush -$1.413T, Obama -$1.299T.

Again, refusing to give Obama credit for doing things you agree with makes you sound like an anti-Obama reactionary and your attacks suspect.

All those bailout and stimulus plans cost lots of money and may just be extending the recession instead of getting us out of it. In contrast say Donald Tusk (Prime Minister of Poland) was praised for his handling of the economic crisis which was basically leave things alone and let the markets sort it out (as is the premise of capitalism in general). BTW, Poland was the only EU country to avoid recession in 2009. Odd, isn't it?

I'm no expert on the Polish economy, but how does all that EU development aid for Poland fit into your theory? Sounds like stimulus to me.

Call me a Ron Paul shill if you like but I ask you once again, point me to a link that shows Obama's plan in anywhere close to the detail of Paul's (one with numbers). If he's as prepared a candidate as you say he is that should be an easy task. I'm not singling out Obama here I'd be happy if you can point me to a plan nearly as detailed for ANY other candidate. I'd really like to think there's more than one out there that isn't just flapping their gums but has a real plan in place and eagerly await a response that can show me a link to one.

If you're so eager, why didn't you do a simple search for the jobs bill I mentioned?
http://www.americanjobsact.com/
Since Ron Paul bases his projections on the CBO, I suppose you'll want to know what they say about the plan:
http://cboblog.cbo.gov/?p=2875
And about the economic outlook in general. Pay special attention to what continuing the Bush/Obama tax cuts do to the deficit:
http://www.cbo.gov/doc.cfm?index=12316

As to giving Obama credit for what he's accomplished please look at this:
http://www.usgovernmentspending.com/federal_deficit_chart.html
I think you will notice the significant increase in DEFICIT under his term.

Didn't you read the page you linked to? Bush's last deficit was higher than any of Obama's deficits so far. From your own link: Bush -$1.413T, Obama -$1.299T.

Again, refusing to give Obama credit for doing things you agree with makes you sound like an anti-Obama reactionary and your attacks suspect.

All those bailout and stimulus plans cost lots of money and may just be extending the recession instead of getting us out of it. In contrast say Donald Tusk (Prime Minister of Poland) was praised for his handling of the economic crisis which was basically leave things alone and let the markets sort it out (as is the premise of capitalism in general). BTW, Poland was the only EU country to avoid recession in 2009. Odd, isn't it?

I'm no expert on the Polish economy, but how does all that EU development aid for Poland fit into your theory? Sounds like stimulus to me.

Call me a Ron Paul shill if you like but I ask you once again, point me to a link that shows Obama's plan in anywhere close to the detail of Paul's (one with numbers). If he's as prepared a candidate as you say he is that should be an easy task. I'm not singling out Obama here I'd be happy if you can point me to a plan nearly as detailed for ANY other candidate. I'd really like to think there's more than one out there that isn't just flapping their gums but has a real plan in place and eagerly await a response that can show me a link to one.

If you're so eager, why didn't you do a simple search for the jobs bill I mentioned?
http://www.americanjobsact.com/
Since Ron Paul bases his projections on the CBO, I suppose you'll want to know what they say about the plan:
http://cboblog.cbo.gov/?p=2875
And about the economic outlook in general. Pay special attention to what continuing the Bush/Obama tax cuts do to the deficit:
http://www.cbo.gov/doc.cfm?index=12316

Every couple years the Congressional Budget Office puts out a new report on what programs are causing our budget problems. And in every report for more than a decade, the culprit has always been Medicare/Medicaid. Its growth far outstrips any other program, increases in Medicare payroll tax revenue falls far short of offsetting its costs, and under current rules it will all by itself exceed the historical average of total federal tax revenue (18% of GDP) in about 60 years.

But instead of rolling up our sleeves and fixing the problem, people get into arguments of what else we should cut. Seemingly anything except Medicare/Medicaid. If we're not allowed to alter the program that's causing the problem, then our budget is already screwed before we've begun. I've been posting this same thing here for nearly 3 years now, ever since Obama's health care plan was up for debate and I took the time to actually read the CBO reports. The people we hired to find the problems with the budget have been telling us the answer for over 10 years now. If we're just going to ignore them and argue based on which programs we personally like/dislike, why even task them with that job in the first place?

Every couple years the Congressional Budget Office puts out a new report on what programs are causing our budget problems. And in every report for more than a decade, the culprit has always been Medicare/Medicaid. Its growth far outstrips any other program, increases in Medicare payroll tax revenue falls far short of offsetting its costs, and under current rules it will all by itself exceed the historical average of total federal tax revenue (18% of GDP) in about 60 years.

But instead of rolling up our sleeves and fixing the problem, people get into arguments of what else we should cut. Seemingly anything except Medicare/Medicaid. If we're not allowed to alter the program that's causing the problem, then our budget is already screwed before we've begun. I've been posting this same thing here for nearly 3 years now, ever since Obama's health care plan was up for debate and I took the time to actually read the CBO reports. The people we hired to find the problems with the budget have been telling us the answer for over 10 years now. If we're just going to ignore them and argue based on which programs we personally like/dislike, why even task them with that job in the first place?

Every couple years the Congressional Budget Office puts out a new report on what programs are causing our budget problems. And in every report for more than a decade, the culprit has always been Medicare/Medicaid. Its growth far outstrips any other program, increases in Medicare payroll tax revenue falls far short of offsetting its costs, and under current rules it will all by itself exceed the historical average of total federal tax revenue (18% of GDP) in about 60 years.

But instead of rolling up our sleeves and fixing the problem, people get into arguments of what else we should cut. Seemingly anything except Medicare/Medicaid. If we're not allowed to alter the program that's causing the problem, then our budget is already screwed before we've begun. I've been posting this same thing here for nearly 3 years now, ever since Obama's health care plan was up for debate and I took the time to actually read the CBO reports. The people we hired to find the problems with the budget have been telling us the answer for over 10 years now. If we're just going to ignore them and argue based on which programs we personally like/dislike, why even task them with that job in the first place?

Much of the relevant research is basic research that's funded through government grants (ie, taxes) anyway, so counting just the "top of the pie" done by the pharmaceuticals isn't 100% reasonable. But let's do that for a moment anyway.

Using the figures from the 2006 CBO.gov report at http://www.cbo.gov/doc.cfm?index=7615 as a basis (this is the first result from a Google search for "how much of pharmaceutical research is done by pharmaceutical companies") we find that the net cost of an "NME" (New Molecular Entity) to a pharmaceutical comapny is about 802 million USD (as of 2006) including opportunity cost for the research money, and there's 30-40 new NMEs approved each year. Assuming 40, that's 32,080 millon USD.

If we can find another way to finance that, we'll have most drugs available at the same kind of cost as ibuprofen is today (pennies per dose), we'll have more rational and less marketing driven choice of what drugs to use, and we'll have the benefit of research being directed towards where it can make the most difference rather than wanting to get a piece of the pie with me-too drugs - and we'll get rid of the significant corruption of science done around pharmaceuticals. And we'll avoid having to pay the marketing costs of the pharmaceutical companies, which are about twice the research costs.

If we say that we can't get any international help whatsoever, and it's all going to be funded in the US, this is $104.50 per person per year in extra taxes.

If we can fund it internationally, we could just attach it to the OECD funding overall. According to Wikipedia at http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Funding_of_science#Government-funded_research the net OECD funding for research in 2006 was 729,430.80 millon USD - or about 23x more. Of this, 30.2% (220,287.9 million USD) was government funded. So, we end up with an extra 14.6% in research spending for the OECD group.

It's substantial, but it's not infinite. And it comes with a number of other benefits.

It is clear that a significant part of the cost of the pharmaceutical research comes from patents as well, so the above is a worst case scenario - it will be cheaper than that.

You mean other than the Great Depression?

As far as your numbers, you do realize that the top 25% of earners in the US make far more than 60% of the money, right. The top 1% makes more than the bottom 90% does, but they don't pay 90% of the taxes.

The top quintile makes on average roughly 3x as much as the second highest quintile does, but doesn't pay 3x as much tax as the second highest quintile.

Data on the Distribution of Federal Taxes and Household Income

Given that traffic congestion is a type of shortage (a shortage of available space on a road at a given time of day), and that a shortage happens when when the price of an item is set below the going rate determined by supply and demand, the solution is made obvious: raise the price of freeway access just high enough to eliminate the traffic congestion, but no higher. Then lower the toll when demand is low, to give people the ability to economize. Variable tolls permanently eliminates any need to expand the freeway just to eliminate congestion. There are other ways to justify expanding a freeway, but congestion is no longer one of them.

Efficiently pricing freeway access saves a lot of money that would be spent expanding the freeway. For example, the USA's Congressional Budget Office found that southern California's SR-91 express lanes generate net social benefits of at least $12 million per year, compared with a scenario in which the lanes had been built but drivers did not pay to use them.

Because many if not all states currently fund freeways with general sales tax revenue, As a group low-income residents, on average, pay more out-of-pocket with sales taxes" for freeways than with tolls. Therefore, tolls are less regressive than the alternative.

The free market works remarkably well, when it's allowed to work.

i can think of one justification for borrowing money to close the deficit between revenue and spending: to prevent an unforeseen economic disaster and facilitate recovery. naturally, you want to pay off this debt during times of economic prosperity. unfortunately, this last bit doesn't seem to be happening. see page 2, last column.

Yet another zombie lie.

Clinton did balance the budget even without social security in 1999, and ran a surplus even without social security in 2000.

http://www.cbo.gov/budget/data/historical.pdf

According to the CBO revenues increased every year after 2003 (the year the Bush tax cuts were fully implemented) and at a rate more than 2 times inflation. You can argue the "why", but not the numbers. It could have been a natural bounce back after a tech bubble recession and an unprecedented terrorist attack on American soil or it may have been an affect of the tax cuts increasing disposable income and making investing more appealing, or it may have been any number of other things or all of the above.

Claiming the tax breaks cost 1.8 trillion in revenue (over 10 years) should be taken with a big grain of salt since it is merely a hypothetical number based on assumptions of the rate at which the economy would have grown without the cuts in place; an impossible situation to completely predict, but it is also really a moot point. As the the historical data clearly shows, there was more than enough revenue coming into the government coffers to maintain all programs, even accounting for inflation. The problem was and is that politicians always love to expand and create new programs and the concept of 'living within their means' is completely foreign on Capital Hill, regardless of who is holding the purse strings.

Let me get this straight. We actually need yet another party claiming to be the center?

Last time I looked, the Democrats are simply recyclying Republican policy from the past. If it actually became a viable leftist party that would actually make politcs possible again.

I wish they'd recycle one of those budgets. The Democrat controlled Senate hasn't passed a budget in 800 days, which includes over a year in which they controlled the Presidency, the House and the Senate. Okay, granted, Obama did pass a budget that was voted down 99-0, but seriously, how can they bitch about the country being on the brink of default when they don't have an actual budget?

Compromise, to recall the grade-school concept, is when two parties make two separate propositions and then resolve their differences to find a course of action somewhere between. When one side won't propose anything, they're being uncompromising.

(If you want to play, any mention of a Democratic budget must contain a link to the actual text, and a link to a CBO analysis of it. For example, here's the Ryan budget, and the CBO's analysis.)

From a recent CBO report http://www.cbo.gov/ftpdocs/98xx/doc9884/12-23-EffectiveTaxRates_Letter.pdf, here are effective tax rates (total taxes divided by total income) for 2005, the most recent year available:

Lowest quintile: 4.3 percent
Second quintile: 9.9 percent
Middle quintile: 14.2 percent
Fourth quintile: 17.4 percent
Percentiles 81-90: 20.3 percent
Percentiles 91-95: 22.4 percent
Percentiles 96-99: 25.7 percent
Percentiles 99.0-99.5: 29.7 percent
Percentiles 99.5-99.9: 31.2 percent
Percentiles 99.9-99.99: 32.1 percent
Top 0.01 Percentile: 31.5 percent

For state and local taxes,http://www.itepnet.org/whopays3.pdf shows that lower income pays a higher tax rate (11%) than higher income (7%).

Your graph at http://www.cbo.gov/docimages/35xx/doc3521/352101.gif shows not just Defense, but also "Other" and "Non Defense Discretionary" decreasing at pretty much the same "consistent decrease" (all three show a few periods where they increase). Also "interest" is also showing a decrease though more recently, which shows how much this graph is dependent on the GDP size. The graph also ends at 2001 which is a bit of some time ago...

I agree the graph shows how alarming the increase in Medicare/Medicaid/Social Security, which I think is your point. Your point could be made quite effectively without lying (saying that "only defense has decreased in percentage of GDP", which is clearly a lie from your OWN graph!).

Defense spending is hardly untouchable. Defense is about the only part of the Federal budget which has been consistently decreasing over the last 50 years as a percentage of GDP. It's ticked up a bit since 9/11, but is still lower than during Reagan's build-up in the 1980s, and nowhere near as high as during the Vietnam War.

The thing that's threatening to bust the budget is entitlements. Medicare and Medicaid speciically. Just the growth predicted for entitlements between now and 2035 will exceed the entire defense budget. Go read the CBO's long-term outlooks if you don't believe me. I'm not saying entitlements have to go, but any budget plan which refuses to change entitlements is doomed to fail before it even starts.

Defense spending is hardly untouchable. Defense is about the only part of the Federal budget which has been consistently decreasing over the last 50 years as a percentage of GDP. It's ticked up a bit since 9/11, but is still lower than during Reagan's build-up in the 1980s, and nowhere near as high as during the Vietnam War.

The thing that's threatening to bust the budget is entitlements. Medicare and Medicaid speciically. Just the growth predicted for entitlements between now and 2035 will exceed the entire defense budget. Go read the CBO's long-term outlooks if you don't believe me. I'm not saying entitlements have to go, but any budget plan which refuses to change entitlements is doomed to fail before it even starts.

Defense spending is hardly untouchable. Defense is about the only part of the Federal budget which has been consistently decreasing over the last 50 years as a percentage of GDP. It's ticked up a bit since 9/11, but is still lower than during Reagan's build-up in the 1980s, and nowhere near as high as during the Vietnam War.

The thing that's threatening to bust the budget is entitlements. Medicare and Medicaid speciically. Just the growth predicted for entitlements between now and 2035 will exceed the entire defense budget. Go read the CBO's long-term outlooks if you don't believe me. I'm not saying entitlements have to go, but any budget plan which refuses to change entitlements is doomed to fail before it even starts.

Do you think they would still be getting the level of funding had they said "not a problem, nothing to see here"?

Yes. Climatology is a hell of a lot more than just AGW. Without AGW that money would be focused on other things, but I doubt it would be substantially less than it is now. Climate (and its shorter timescale sibling weather) have huge impacts on global economics. Government tends to support studying things have large implications for society even if there isn't some looming doomsday threat.

Additionally, climate science funding (as opposed to global warming related technology expenditures) has averaged about $2 billion/year in 2009 dollars (see Table 1). In contrast the US spent a little over $4 billion on astronomy in FY2010 (see Table 1, pg. 174).

You have a point that technology expenditures (mostly programs to promote energy efficiency and weatherizing buildings) increase total climate-change related spending. However, it's a very very tenuous stretch to claim that researchers would make up AGW in hopes that the government would spend billions on technology projects they have no part in.

CBO: Under the alternative fiscal scenario, by contrast, expiring tax provisions in the Economic Growth and Tax Relief Reconciliation Act of 2001 (EGTRRA) and the Jobs and Growth Tax Relief Reconciliation Act of 2003 (JGTRRA) would be extended, and the AMT would be indexed to inflation. As a result, revenues would grow only slightly faster than the economy, equaling 22 percent of GDP by 2080. Slowly growing revenues combined with sharply rising expenditures would create an explosive fiscal situation. Under the spending and revenue policies incorporated in this scenario, federal debt would surpass 100 percent of GDP in 2023 and exceed 200 percent of GDP by the late 2030s.

http://www.cbo.gov/ftpdocs/104xx/doc10455/Long-TermOutlook_Testimony.1.1.shtm

I couldn't find one provable assertion in that entire post - the gov't collects about $2.6T/year and spends about $4.3T/year, a $1.7T deficit each year (excluding the exceptional TARP, Stimulus, and other one-off spending events). The Bush Tax Cuts "cost" $470BN/year ($400BN/year for the "middle-class tax cuts" everyone was so keen on maintaining, and $70BN/year for the top 1-2% that we simply couldn't afford), and last year our entire military expenditures came to about $660BN/year, for all operations, including our "overseas contingency exercises" - that leaves you about $500BN/year short of being "in the black"...

Medicare & Social Security will implode in a few years, something needs to be done - your acceptance of the lie that Republicans want to "end" medicare is exactly why the Democrats have taken their "Thelma & Lousie" approach to simply over-promise benefits and gun it for the cliff...

MSNBC will be glad to know you're reflexively parroting their talking points without question.

Here is the actual data (just a few years old though)
http://www.cbo.gov/publications/collections/tax/2010/AvgFedTaxRates_Summary.xlsx

If you make only 30K (in pre-tax income) a year, that places you roughly in between the bottom two income quintiles.

You can clearly look that the bottom 40 percent pay no income tax as the numbers for the bottom two quintiles are negative for their share of tax liabilities. This means your refund at the end of the tax year more than offsets the federal income taxes you had to pay over the year. That said, you are correct about having to pay other taxes, but in terms of the federal dollars (since that's the focus, and some states have no income taxes and others have low sales taxes), there is no national sales tax - just excise taxes and safety net taxes.

Based on the numbers you cite above and the data provided by the CBO, your numbers don't match up. Your 2K seems to be in the Social Insurance & Excise taxes part, not Income tax. And in the offshoot chance that I'm wrong, I'd recommend getting a new tax accountant.

Our deficit is $2.2T

Citation needed. According to the CBO (pdf) the deficit in 2011 will be $1.48 T and it will drop to $533 B by 2014. As another child noted, ending the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq will make up a large portion of that. Other solutions this progressive would suggest is raising the retirement age for SS by at least 1 year now, and by about 5 years over the next 20-50 years (pegging it to life expectancy); legalize and tax drugs; ending oil, gas and coal subsidies; and ending farm subsidies. I am a pretty liberal guy, but I agree with about 40% of this CATO ad.

Our deficit is $2.2T

Citation needed. According to the CBO (pdf) the deficit in 2011 will be $1.48 T and it will drop to $533 B by 2014. As another child noted, ending the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq will make up a large portion of that. Other solutions this progressive would suggest is raising the retirement age for SS by at least 1 year now, and by about 5 years over the next 20-50 years (pegging it to life expectancy); legalize and tax drugs; ending oil, gas and coal subsidies; and ending farm subsidies. I am a pretty liberal guy, but I agree with about 40% of this CATO ad.

Thanks for your amazing math skills, Rush.

Sorry, I can't take credit for it. I knew about the source data from the Congressional Budget Office:

http://cbo.gov/publications/collections/tax/2010/all_tables.pdf

But, I only recently discovered that someone had plotted the data and posted it on Wikimedia.

One person in the U.S. earns a few trillion dollars a year. Everyone else earns a few thousand. The government taxes anyone earning over a million at %60. Who's paying most of the taxes? That one guy. Oh... but who SHOULD be paying most of the taxes? That one guy.

Compare this graph:

Share of US Pre-Tax Income by Income Level, 1979-2007

To this graph:

Share of Total US Federal Taxes by Income Level, 1979-2007

Even you should be able to see the difference. I certainly understand your desire for the "wealthy" to pay more, but you can't claim they aren't paying their share.

Yes, the wealthy are paying for the bulk of government operations, but they should, because nobody else can.

No, the wealthy are paying for the bulk of government operations because you don't want to.

...they can't independently go out and gather their own data they have to base their projections on the mis-information they are fed by the politicians and their staff.

[citation needed]

According to their own Web page, "Budget and mandate cost estimates are based on the text of the proposed legislation...All CBO estimates and analytic products are reviewed internally for technical competence, accuracy of data, and clarity of exposition. CBO studies also are reviewed by outside experts..."

If their estimates are based on "the text of the proposed legislation," how exactly is that a bad thing?

And yet the "rich people", even with what you seem to feel are criminally low rates, already pay the bulk of the taxes the government takes in.

Imagine that.

As an outsider looking in, it's obvious to me the government really needs to cut military funding.

It's only "obvious" if you're only listening to the people who absolutely refuse to cut entitlements like Social Security and Medicare. Don't listen to them, don't listen to me, listen to the Congressional Budget Office - the division of the U.S. government tasked with predicting what is going to happen to the budget and how to fix it:

"In the past several decades, the country paid for increases in Social Security, Medicare, and Medicaid spending through cuts in defense spending relative to the size of the economy. That approach is not feasible in the future. Instead, significant changes will be needed in taxes or spending directly visible to many Americans." - CBO - Fiscal Policy Choices March 8, 2010 (PDF)

The graph that illustrates the minimal impact that cutting defense would have on the problem is on page 12 of this CBO report from Jan 10, 2010 (PDF). Here's a link to just the graph if you dislike PDFs. Basically, just the growth in Social Security, Medicare and Medicaid from 2000-2020 is about equivalent to adding a second entire defense budget. In terms of the graphic you linked to, the entire defense budget with Iraq and Afghanistan funding included accounts for only about half the deficit in your graphic. You could eliminate all defense spending right now and we'd still be almost a trillion dollars short this year.

The CBO has been saying basically the same thing since before 2000. We need to rethink and restructure Social Security, Medicare, and Medicaid to get the budget under control. Paying for increases in those by cutting other parts of the budget is a losing battle. At the rate these are projected to grow, do nothing and by about 2050 they will consume 20% of GDP (the historical average of all Federal tax revenue). They must be cut in order to balance the budget.

As an outsider looking in, it's obvious to me the government really needs to cut military funding.

It's only "obvious" if you're only listening to the people who absolutely refuse to cut entitlements like Social Security and Medicare. Don't listen to them, don't listen to me, listen to the Congressional Budget Office - the division of the U.S. government tasked with predicting what is going to happen to the budget and how to fix it:

"In the past several decades, the country paid for increases in Social Security, Medicare, and Medicaid spending through cuts in defense spending relative to the size of the economy. That approach is not feasible in the future. Instead, significant changes will be needed in taxes or spending directly visible to many Americans." - CBO - Fiscal Policy Choices March 8, 2010 (PDF)

The graph that illustrates the minimal impact that cutting defense would have on the problem is on page 12 of this CBO report from Jan 10, 2010 (PDF). Here's a link to just the graph if you dislike PDFs. Basically, just the growth in Social Security, Medicare and Medicaid from 2000-2020 is about equivalent to adding a second entire defense budget. In terms of the graphic you linked to, the entire defense budget with Iraq and Afghanistan funding included accounts for only about half the deficit in your graphic. You could eliminate all defense spending right now and we'd still be almost a trillion dollars short this year.

The CBO has been saying basically the same thing since before 2000. We need to rethink and restructure Social Security, Medicare, and Medicaid to get the budget under control. Paying for increases in those by cutting other parts of the budget is a losing battle. At the rate these are projected to grow, do nothing and by about 2050 they will consume 20% of GDP (the historical average of all Federal tax revenue). They must be cut in order to balance the budget.

As an outsider looking in, it's obvious to me the government really needs to cut military funding.

It's only "obvious" if you're only listening to the people who absolutely refuse to cut entitlements like Social Security and Medicare. Don't listen to them, don't listen to me, listen to the Congressional Budget Office - the division of the U.S. government tasked with predicting what is going to happen to the budget and how to fix it:

"In the past several decades, the country paid for increases in Social Security, Medicare, and Medicaid spending through cuts in defense spending relative to the size of the economy. That approach is not feasible in the future. Instead, significant changes will be needed in taxes or spending directly visible to many Americans." - CBO - Fiscal Policy Choices March 8, 2010 (PDF)

The graph that illustrates the minimal impact that cutting defense would have on the problem is on page 12 of this CBO report from Jan 10, 2010 (PDF). Here's a link to just the graph if you dislike PDFs. Basically, just the growth in Social Security, Medicare and Medicaid from 2000-2020 is about equivalent to adding a second entire defense budget. In terms of the graphic you linked to, the entire defense budget with Iraq and Afghanistan funding included accounts for only about half the deficit in your graphic. You could eliminate all defense spending right now and we'd still be almost a trillion dollars short this year.

The CBO has been saying basically the same thing since before 2000. We need to rethink and restructure Social Security, Medicare, and Medicaid to get the budget under control. Paying for increases in those by cutting other parts of the budget is a losing battle. At the rate these are projected to grow, do nothing and by about 2050 they will consume 20% of GDP (the historical average of all Federal tax revenue). They must be cut in order to balance the budget.