But what you ask is exactly one critical role of the federal government: regulating interstate commerce. I would imagine in a case where more and more services are being pushed down to the state level, legal clauses would be built in to protect earned benefits and that law would be upheld by the federal government. There's no reason the implementation of the program itself has to rest at the federal level. They just need to step in to make sure everyone plays nice. And frankly, it's not that all uncommon in decentralized governments. Take a look at Canada. Each province ("state") has its own healthcare law. However, their federal government has a set of guidelines and stipulations that each program must meet. They don't run things at the federal level, they merely moderate.
And that works not at all for the three things our federal government spends >75% of its budget on: defense, health care, and social security
That's only true of defense, which unsurprisingly the founding fathers thought of when granting the federal government the power to maintain a standing army. Both healthcare and social security could easily be implemented at lower levels of government. In fact, many other countries have already done this (one example is Canada, where each province has its own healthcare program). Massachusetts had (has?) its own healthcare program as well.
Does it make the slightest bit of sense to have a "young whuppersnapper" state with no social security and an "old fart" state that everyone moves to when they're 65?
Yup, they're called "California" and "Florida", respectively. Believe it or not, it wouldn't exactly change much.
at best would make people a prisoner of whatever state they were lucky enough to be born in.
Not entirely true. For instance, if one state had a social program you paid into all your life and then you move to another state, I see no reason why you shouldn't be allowed (either by law or by ethics) to collect funds from that state even if you are living there no longer. Pensions certainly work this way (after you stop working for a company).
1. Public finances don't work like your household finances (deficits drive economic growth when it's needed and is essential in modern economies)
Public finances work exactly like household finances. I have a home loan, a car loan, a student loan, and a bunch of credit cards. These were all used to "drive growth" in my household by providing "vehicles" through which my income can prosper. If I spent too much, the payments of and interest of my debt makes me insolvable. Nations are no different. They do have added means of pretending debt doesn't exist since debt collectors never come after a nation's assets, nor does anyone stop them from just jacking up their credit limit and printing more money. But to pretend this practice has no consequences or is somehow different from any other balanced budget is crap. It's exactly the same. The seeds are just sown in different manners (look at the austerity the Irish/Greeks are being forced to endure, or the future inflation our children will be forced to endure).
2. Debt is the result of budgets, and should be corrected with a budget rather than by forcing the issue with a technicality.
And in the event that you try to do this and people stick their fingers in their ears and go "lalalalalala"? Fuck, they aren't even willing to pass a balanced budget amendment -- you can be damned sure no one is going to pass a balanced budget out of the kindness of their hearts when they can so easily debt spend and dump the mess on the next administration.
3. If you take out the cost of the wars and the money that we put into the financial sector to bail them out, the problem we have with public debt is mainly the result of tax cuts.
Perspective. By the numbers, we've spent far more on entitlements than we've lost on tax cuts. Similarly, stimulus spending has far exceeded the cost of the wars. You can go ahead and remove any one thing and magically balance the budget, but it doesn't make that one thing automatically responsible for the debt problem.
By what logic do you believe that retracting a demand of your own (rather than giving in to an opponent's demand...) is somehow a concession? By the same yardstick, I could put together a package of 20 extreme loony things and then say "I'll make a major concession by backing out of 19 of these things I demanded of you". You have a rather strange definition of compromise.
Couple this with that fact that there are far too many loopholes for the upper class and this resentment is not hard to understand.
All the more reason I believe Obama is completely misguided. Raising the taxes on all families making 250k+ does not close these loopholes which are utilized only exclusively by the uberrich. That means the top 1% get off scot-free with their 15% capital gains tax rate and the "upper-middle to wealthy" working class segment is left holding the bill. And that segment just happens to be squarely where practically all small businesses fall. I've far less of an issue with plugging holes than I do indiscriminately raising taxes with a bar set way too low.
I also fail to see how raising taxes on the upper classes would affect millions of Americans
Well, by the numbers: http://pubdb3.census.gov/macro/032006/hhinc/new05_000.htm
The top 5% is 166k+. I don't know the exact number for 250k+, but clearly it's somewhere between 1 and 5% (because we know the top 1% make like ~380k). Even at 1% of the US populace, you're looking at 3 million people. If you use a more realistic 2-3%, you're looking at 6 to 9 million people.
As someone that makes a fair amount of money I can assure you that I can afford a couple thousand extra a year in taxes without affecting my lifestyle one bit as opposed to friends of mine where a few hundred extra a year would break them.
My main beef come from people labelling people in this segment as "billionaires" when they have far more in common with the middle class than they do the private jet CEOs. My second beef comes from the fact that the tax as proposed will primarily impact small business, which I do believe will hurt the economy. But I agree with you in that the people could absorb a tax hike without severe lifestyle changes. It's the way the debate is framed that cheeses me off. Even Obama himself says things along the lines of "oh, they can pay a bit more for their jets". I guarantee you most (if not all) families making ~250k a year do not have their own jets. They're still paying mortgages, student loans, working a 9 to 5 job in a cube somewhere.
So you're basically just going to dodge this one and not answer, right? Sure, Obama would have gone into Afghanistan too. Doubt he would have been dumb enough to go into Iraq while fighting a war in FUCKING AFGHANISTAN!
Nope I completely concur Iraq is totally Bush's baby, and all the fallout and expense is his alone to bear. But when tallying the expense of the wars, people always "package-deal" the Iraq and Afghanistan wars together, and I believe that's a bit disingenuous.
Then, whether we go into Afghanistan or not, why keep the war off the books? Then start another one, and not pay for that either? Then pass a big drug bill and not pay for that either? Then pass a big tax cut and not pay for that either? W T F?
I'm totally on board with you. I don't believe in ludicrous spending by either side.
How do Republicans possibly have the fucking nerve to point the finger at anyone after what they've done with their control of Congress over the 10 years that they had it?
Well, I do believe their rate of spending is still far below Obama's (do you know how much federal spending he increased in his first year in office? Nearly 900 billion, and that's with an incredibly low price estimate on his healthcare bill. And also, it's not very fair to just chastise all Republicans for the actions of a bunch of Neocons. Hell, the whole Tea Party movement was born because of the actions of the previous administration. So I believe it's very fair for some Republicans to "point the finger".
he consensus among economists was that the stimulus was necessary
Aside from the fact I think the opinions of "economists" (let's face it, they're all Keynesians...) are roughly equivalent to throwing darts at a dartboard, I'm also convinced a good many of them are just flat out idiots. They've been wrong about practically everything to this point, yet you somehow give them credit for stimulus being the proper course of action, even in the light of unchanged unemployment, sluggish -to-non-existant-growth, still-falling house prices, and soverign debt debacles? You sure have alot of faith in these Oracles.
most thought it should've been bigger.
Another staple counter to "my plan isn't working" -- believe it or not, not all problems are solved just by "throwing more money at it" and the solution to a failing program also isn't as simple as "throw more money at it". Seeing as how it's impossible for me to prove one way or another whether the current stimulus did a damn thing or if a bigger stimulus would have done a damner thing, I guess we'll have to agree to disagree.
Sigh. Another misinformed, deliberately moronic Tea Partier on the loose.
The Bush tax cuts disproportionately benefited the wealthy, plain and simple.
This is confirmed years later. The top 1% of earners laughed all the way to the bank taking a WHOPPING 38% of the benefit from the Bush tax cuts.
So no, the "bulk" of the expense is not coming from those lower brackets. Feel free to go fuck yourself.
Soooooo.....what you're saying is that 62% is not "the bulk"? Apparently basic math is not your forte...
Or is everyone making over 114k a year a billionaire in your world? One way or the other, I fail to see how billionaires got the bulk of the tax breaks. If you want to change your statement (which you're apparently now doing...) to state that the wealthy got the bulk of the tax cuts, that's far more accurate. But you're an ass if you're trying to categorize the entire top 20% of income earners as fat cat millionaires (instead of only the top 1%). Especially since they already pay 80% of all our taxes. By your logic, no tax cut would ever be "fair", since it's pretty much impossible to cut taxes in any substantial fashion without the top 20% benefiting the most in total dollars.
If what you said was true, budgets wouldn't be necessary, nor would debt ceilings. Money is not infinite. Printing (and spending) more of it has ramifications. That's the entirely point of this debate. And you really are clueless if you think the economy won't be impacted by currency issues. Ask Zimbabwe if their problem is a political one and not an economic one.
no, yoou couldn't unless you made a law to do so first.
That's my point. The inventors of Social Security made a law to allow their tax to be split off separately. This doesn't suddenly make it a separate expense vs income comparison. If the Social Security tax doesn't sufficiently cover the expense, they will raise that tax or subsidize it with the general fund. The total cost to American taxpayers is the same, no matter what pot of money you hold those funds in. Pretending that it somehow exists in a budgetary vacuum is completely ridiculous.
No, it's more like starting a bunch of useless wars while passing tax cuts to billionaires, but keeping the war funding "off the books" until the next guy has to come in to office to clean up the fucking mess you created.
Except that any president (including Obama) would have started the Afghanistan War, given the circumstances (http://www.huffingtonpost.com/social/HCLiberal/kandahar-infrastructure-civil-affairs_n_819370_77875588.html). And the total cost of both wars is still dwarfed by entitlement spending/bailouts/stimulus spending. And the people talking about "tax cuts for billionaires" routinely forget to include the fact that the Bush tax cuts cut taxes for _everyone_. In fact, the bulk of the expense of those tax cuts is coming from the lower brackets, not the highest.
lol, quite the distorted picture that paints. This pretty much means that all the war expenses and low tax benefits under Obama's watch are actually Bush's expense? There's a huge difference between a gigantic one-time giveaway (stimulus-esque handouts) and continued expenses that can be stopped at pretty much any time. If the Dems wanted to, they could have ended the Bush tax cuts at the start of Obama's presidency. They had the votes. Yet they did not...and yet you claim it's still Bush's expense? Moreover, claiming Afghanistan is Bush's expense is fairly ridiculous as well -- that exact war would have happened under _any_ president. Iraq, on the other hand, is totally Bush's war. Also regarding the Bush tax cuts, where does the 1.8 trillion number come from? All breakouts I see put the total far closer to 1.3 trillion (http://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/fact-checker/post/revisiting-the-cost-of-the-bush-tax-cuts/2011/05/09/AFxTFtbG_blog.html) And it's absolutely hilarious that they're claiming only a ~150 billion dollar expense from Obama's healthcare plan. All the "projected savings" from this plan are entirely fictional, yet are somehow being used to factor into discounting the program (entirely ignoring the actual cost of the program) And worst of everything, you're trying to compare 8 years of presidency (and expense) against 2.5 years. Even with the distorted facts, Bush is.63375 trillion per year and Obama at.576 trillion per year, far closer than the picture this tripe tries to paint.
At any rate, next time pick a less slanted source for your claims of expenditure. Like this one: https://secure.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/wiki/National_debt_by_U.S._presidential_terms#Federal_spending.2C_federal_debt.2C_and_GDP
You'll note that federal spending with bush started at 2.011 trillion in 2002, steadily increasing by ~150 billion a year to a final total of 3.1 trillion in 2009. Then you'll notice a MASSIVE spike of nearly 900 billion dollars taking us to just short of 4 trillion in federal spending in 2010. In one year. Even if you completely disregard the 200 billion spike in unemployment costs from 2009 to 2010, that's a 700 billion jump in a single year. No president in history has spent that much. And his term isn't even over yet. Nor do we know what the final cost of his healthcare plan will be.
As for the whole "ride in the back" thing, you'd probably do that too if the people you had to deal with had a habit of comparing you to Hitler and Marx.
Like they did for Bush for 8 years? "Bush is the devil/Bush is Hitler" was very common if I recall correctly. By your logic, every president should be entirely one-sided and uncompromising because the other side continually derides and berates them. Oh wait, I think that's exactly the government we have now.
It's retarded to call him anything but a centrist.
He isn't a centrist. Centrists don't jack minimum wage or try to jack taxes on the rich, or push healthcare "reform" that is more concerned with giving everyone health insurance than is it actually lowering healthcare costs. Dems love to claim he's a centrist, because it gives them a perfect scapegoat to absolve themselves of the guilt of putting him into office. But it doesn't make it true.
He's continued a lot of Bush policies.
Continuing existing legislation does not make you a centrist. Passing new legislation that is somewhere in the middle would do that.
Continuing tax breaks on the super rich is a major concession
The exact opposite of what you said is true. If the Republicans caved on the tax cuts, it would be a major concession. The tax hikes on only the rich is something that doesn't exist now that the Dems want. Claiming demanding less as a "major concession" is like claiming that giving up on the "balanced budget" amendment was a Republican concession. It's absurd. And that's why your kind is impossible to negotiate with. The Reid "compromise" is the _perfect_ example. It concedes _nothing_, yet is being put forward as some kind of "grand compromise" to the Republicans simply because it doesn't raise taxes? It doesn't even cut any spending the Democrats even care about. These are the things Republicans want: substantial entitlement reform, a balanced budget amendment, actual defined spending cuts that exceed the amount of the debt ceiling hike (ya know, without cheating like claiming savings from wars that were ending anyways as part of your "plan"). If any of these 3 things is conceded by democrats, that would be a major concession. Otherwise, it's all smoke and mirrors.
Because raising the debt ceiling is a matter-of-fact.
Just because it has always been a matter-of-fact doesn't mean it should be. Otherwise, why have a debt ceiling at all? It's it is completely arbitrary, irrelevant, and raised without even a second thought, that means it is nothing more than window dressing, akin to TSA security theatre. Either remove it entirely and don't pretend you actually give a shit about a balanced budget, or adhere to it. It's that simple. I'm personally grab someone is finally actually forcing this hard issue to actually be debated -- "passing the buck" on government spending has been happening for way too long. Hell, the Dems are constantly bitching about the cost of Bush's wars...you think they'd actually be into the idea of a law that forces politicians to actually have money before they spend it.
The economic situation in 2006 was significantly different than it is now.
Whereas this is true, I can tell you as a fact that Mandatory Spending cost 1.4 trillion in 2006 (half the budget), and costs 2.1 trillion in 2011 (~57% of total spending). As a percentage of total spending, it has always been high. So your claim that it is high only because we're in a slump is wrong. The main expense in our budget is (and for quite some time has always been) entitlement programs.
Iraq and Afghanistan? Despite being undeclared, not calling those two "operations" wars, and denying that they cost a hell of a lot of money, is deliberately obtuse.
It's equally obtuse just to throw out a large "pricetag" number (1-3 trillion) without mentioning that this spending occurred over a decade. When compared to Mandatory Spending (which spends over 2 trillion a year), the wars didn't cost a "hell of alot of money" in comparison. Though yes, they're a decent chunk of change.
Bail out of GM, TARP (part 2), Obamacare, I could go on.
Wow, so amazingly misinformed...
For one, "bailing out GM" is crap -- you need to talk about "totals cost of companies bailed out" vs "total recouped", and I guarantee that's a net negative.
For two, it's BUSH's TARP that has "paid for itself". What you claim is "TARP Part 2" is actually called the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act (https://secure.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/wiki/American_Recovery_and_Reinvestment_Act_of_2009). It cost $787 billion and has NOT paid for itself. That money was pissed away on "stimulus" that did not stimulate. In fact, I'm pretty sure the bulk of it was just cash handouts.
Thirdly, Obamacare is NOT a "net savings". Even the supposedly fair CBO lists it as 2 trillion (http://www.weeklystandard.com/blogs/cbo-obamacare-would-cost-over-2-trillion) and they've been known to wildly underestimate (I think the CBO estimate for the Iraq War was around 600 billion). It's an expense, and a massive one at that. In fact, most of the "claimed future savings" from the program is highly suspect/dubious as best and in no way takes into account the cost ramifications of forcing all insurance companies to accept any risk without ability to turn away losing bets.
No, Obama has spent more dollars, but Bush has spent more PERMANTE dollars.
By this I mean that Bush's policies amounted to taking tax money and burning it on the white house lawn.
Umm, I'm pretty sure that the extra tax savings that are in my pocket now would not be there if the tax cuts didn't occur. So I don't know how that's equivalent to "burning the money". On the other hand, stimulus programs that don't stimulate ARE equivalent to simply burning the money.
While Obama has certainly done some of this as well, most of his most expensive policies have already or will recoup most if not all the money invested.
Proof? Oh, that's why, you have none. That statement is equally disingenuous as saying tax cuts promote growth. Since there's no way to prove one way or another what would have happen had he NOT spent the money. Personally, I believe he did nothing more than fuel inflation and piss away alot of cash, making him almost singlehandledly responsible for the debt crisis we currently face.
I have had several discussion, and none of them were reasonable people. Not at all. They weren't raving, but the clearly had no idea how the government runs, are clueless to the facts that prices go up, have no plan on what to cut, and when pinned don't they don't want any services recedes
FYI, we feel the same way about your ilk. Except that your side comes with the "raise taxes on rich people == solve all problems" paradigm as well.
They haven't passed a 2012 budget yet. The 2011 budget expires in September.
but they are also refusing to raise the debt ceiling which is essential to implement this budget
Umm, if it was essential implement the budget, why did they not raise it when they passed the budget? (since they knew exactly what they'd be spending?).
Yes, Democrats are absolved because they have made major concessions, e.g. the Reid plan you just mentioned
You mean this Reid plan?
http://www.businessinsider.com/reid-introduces-democratic-deficit-plan-2011-7
"His deficit reduction package would not include entitlement reform"
"includes $1 trillion in savings from the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan."
"$1.2 trillion would come from cuts to discretionary spending, while another $400 billion would come from interest savings. The plan does not detail where the discretionary program savings would come from."
Major concession??? What major concession? Entitlement reform isn't addressed as all, half the bulk of the savings come from "unwinding wars" (which is cuts to things Republicans are actually interested in), and the other half of the bulk isn't even detailed. What you call a "major concession" I call a smoke screen.
When they put forward a plan that contains real entitlement reform or detailed extensive spending cuts (as in exactly where the money comes from) that doesn't resort to using projected savings of things that were already going to happen (unwinding the wars) as a cost point, maybe I'll agree with you.
The thing is that the truly rich avoid this 35% on most of their income by receiving most of their income as long term capital gains, which are taxed at 15%.
Exactly. Which is why the focus of the debate should be on closing such loopholes. Instead, Obama is deadset on simply jacking the taxes on everyone at 250k+ joint income, which is going to impact quite a few small business owners (and the "lesser rich"/"upper middle class").
Slashdot Mirror
lol, they can do that even if you're living in the state, and several are threatening to do just that: http://cincinnati.com/blogs/politics/2011/01/27/state-pensions-well-cut-benefits/
But what you ask is exactly one critical role of the federal government: regulating interstate commerce. I would imagine in a case where more and more services are being pushed down to the state level, legal clauses would be built in to protect earned benefits and that law would be upheld by the federal government. There's no reason the implementation of the program itself has to rest at the federal level. They just need to step in to make sure everyone plays nice. And frankly, it's not that all uncommon in decentralized governments. Take a look at Canada. Each province ("state") has its own healthcare law. However, their federal government has a set of guidelines and stipulations that each program must meet. They don't run things at the federal level, they merely moderate.
How's that Hope and Change working out for ya? Don't pretend politics are different in any other party.
Not according to the Constitution. Don't like it, pass an Amendment.
That's only true of defense, which unsurprisingly the founding fathers thought of when granting the federal government the power to maintain a standing army. Both healthcare and social security could easily be implemented at lower levels of government. In fact, many other countries have already done this (one example is Canada, where each province has its own healthcare program). Massachusetts had (has?) its own healthcare program as well.
Yup, they're called "California" and "Florida", respectively. Believe it or not, it wouldn't exactly change much.
Not entirely true. For instance, if one state had a social program you paid into all your life and then you move to another state, I see no reason why you shouldn't be allowed (either by law or by ethics) to collect funds from that state even if you are living there no longer. Pensions certainly work this way (after you stop working for a company).
Yes, moreso than most.
Public finances work exactly like household finances. I have a home loan, a car loan, a student loan, and a bunch of credit cards. These were all used to "drive growth" in my household by providing "vehicles" through which my income can prosper. If I spent too much, the payments of and interest of my debt makes me insolvable. Nations are no different. They do have added means of pretending debt doesn't exist since debt collectors never come after a nation's assets, nor does anyone stop them from just jacking up their credit limit and printing more money. But to pretend this practice has no consequences or is somehow different from any other balanced budget is crap. It's exactly the same. The seeds are just sown in different manners (look at the austerity the Irish/Greeks are being forced to endure, or the future inflation our children will be forced to endure).
And in the event that you try to do this and people stick their fingers in their ears and go "lalalalalala"? Fuck, they aren't even willing to pass a balanced budget amendment -- you can be damned sure no one is going to pass a balanced budget out of the kindness of their hearts when they can so easily debt spend and dump the mess on the next administration.
Perspective. By the numbers, we've spent far more on entitlements than we've lost on tax cuts. Similarly, stimulus spending has far exceeded the cost of the wars. You can go ahead and remove any one thing and magically balance the budget, but it doesn't make that one thing automatically responsible for the debt problem.
By what logic do you believe that retracting a demand of your own (rather than giving in to an opponent's demand...) is somehow a concession? By the same yardstick, I could put together a package of 20 extreme loony things and then say "I'll make a major concession by backing out of 19 of these things I demanded of you". You have a rather strange definition of compromise.
All the more reason I believe Obama is completely misguided. Raising the taxes on all families making 250k+ does not close these loopholes which are utilized only exclusively by the uberrich. That means the top 1% get off scot-free with their 15% capital gains tax rate and the "upper-middle to wealthy" working class segment is left holding the bill. And that segment just happens to be squarely where practically all small businesses fall. I've far less of an issue with plugging holes than I do indiscriminately raising taxes with a bar set way too low.
Well, by the numbers: http://pubdb3.census.gov/macro/032006/hhinc/new05_000.htm The top 5% is 166k+. I don't know the exact number for 250k+, but clearly it's somewhere between 1 and 5% (because we know the top 1% make like ~380k). Even at 1% of the US populace, you're looking at 3 million people. If you use a more realistic 2-3%, you're looking at 6 to 9 million people.
My main beef come from people labelling people in this segment as "billionaires" when they have far more in common with the middle class than they do the private jet CEOs. My second beef comes from the fact that the tax as proposed will primarily impact small business, which I do believe will hurt the economy. But I agree with you in that the people could absorb a tax hike without severe lifestyle changes. It's the way the debate is framed that cheeses me off. Even Obama himself says things along the lines of "oh, they can pay a bit more for their jets". I guarantee you most (if not all) families making ~250k a year do not have their own jets. They're still paying mortgages, student loans, working a 9 to 5 job in a cube somewhere.
Nope I completely concur Iraq is totally Bush's baby, and all the fallout and expense is his alone to bear. But when tallying the expense of the wars, people always "package-deal" the Iraq and Afghanistan wars together, and I believe that's a bit disingenuous.
I'm totally on board with you. I don't believe in ludicrous spending by either side.
Well, I do believe their rate of spending is still far below Obama's (do you know how much federal spending he increased in his first year in office? Nearly 900 billion, and that's with an incredibly low price estimate on his healthcare bill. And also, it's not very fair to just chastise all Republicans for the actions of a bunch of Neocons. Hell, the whole Tea Party movement was born because of the actions of the previous administration. So I believe it's very fair for some Republicans to "point the finger".
Ah yes, the staple appeal to authority. Let me counter with: https://encrypted.google.com/search?q=economist+no+housing+bubble&ie=utf-8&oe=utf-8&aq=t&rls=org.mozilla:en-US:official&client=firefox-a
Aside from the fact I think the opinions of "economists" (let's face it, they're all Keynesians...) are roughly equivalent to throwing darts at a dartboard, I'm also convinced a good many of them are just flat out idiots. They've been wrong about practically everything to this point, yet you somehow give them credit for stimulus being the proper course of action, even in the light of unchanged unemployment, sluggish -to-non-existant-growth, still-falling house prices, and soverign debt debacles? You sure have alot of faith in these Oracles.
Another staple counter to "my plan isn't working" -- believe it or not, not all problems are solved just by "throwing more money at it" and the solution to a failing program also isn't as simple as "throw more money at it". Seeing as how it's impossible for me to prove one way or another whether the current stimulus did a damn thing or if a bigger stimulus would have done a damner thing, I guess we'll have to agree to disagree.
Soooooo.....what you're saying is that 62% is not "the bulk"? Apparently basic math is not your forte...
Or is everyone making over 114k a year a billionaire in your world? One way or the other, I fail to see how billionaires got the bulk of the tax breaks. If you want to change your statement (which you're apparently now doing...) to state that the wealthy got the bulk of the tax cuts, that's far more accurate. But you're an ass if you're trying to categorize the entire top 20% of income earners as fat cat millionaires (instead of only the top 1%). Especially since they already pay 80% of all our taxes. By your logic, no tax cut would ever be "fair", since it's pretty much impossible to cut taxes in any substantial fashion without the top 20% benefiting the most in total dollars.
If what you said was true, budgets wouldn't be necessary, nor would debt ceilings. Money is not infinite. Printing (and spending) more of it has ramifications. That's the entirely point of this debate. And you really are clueless if you think the economy won't be impacted by currency issues. Ask Zimbabwe if their problem is a political one and not an economic one.
That's my point. The inventors of Social Security made a law to allow their tax to be split off separately. This doesn't suddenly make it a separate expense vs income comparison. If the Social Security tax doesn't sufficiently cover the expense, they will raise that tax or subsidize it with the general fund. The total cost to American taxpayers is the same, no matter what pot of money you hold those funds in. Pretending that it somehow exists in a budgetary vacuum is completely ridiculous.
Except that any president (including Obama) would have started the Afghanistan War, given the circumstances (http://www.huffingtonpost.com/social/HCLiberal/kandahar-infrastructure-civil-affairs_n_819370_77875588.html). And the total cost of both wars is still dwarfed by entitlement spending/bailouts/stimulus spending. And the people talking about "tax cuts for billionaires" routinely forget to include the fact that the Bush tax cuts cut taxes for _everyone_. In fact, the bulk of the expense of those tax cuts is coming from the lower brackets, not the highest.
lol, quite the distorted picture that paints. This pretty much means that all the war expenses and low tax benefits under Obama's watch are actually Bush's expense? There's a huge difference between a gigantic one-time giveaway (stimulus-esque handouts) and continued expenses that can be stopped at pretty much any time. If the Dems wanted to, they could have ended the Bush tax cuts at the start of Obama's presidency. They had the votes. Yet they did not...and yet you claim it's still Bush's expense? Moreover, claiming Afghanistan is Bush's expense is fairly ridiculous as well -- that exact war would have happened under _any_ president. Iraq, on the other hand, is totally Bush's war. Also regarding the Bush tax cuts, where does the 1.8 trillion number come from? All breakouts I see put the total far closer to 1.3 trillion (http://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/fact-checker/post/revisiting-the-cost-of-the-bush-tax-cuts/2011/05/09/AFxTFtbG_blog.html) And it's absolutely hilarious that they're claiming only a ~150 billion dollar expense from Obama's healthcare plan. All the "projected savings" from this plan are entirely fictional, yet are somehow being used to factor into discounting the program (entirely ignoring the actual cost of the program) And worst of everything, you're trying to compare 8 years of presidency (and expense) against 2.5 years. Even with the distorted facts, Bush is .63375 trillion per year and Obama at .576 trillion per year, far closer than the picture this tripe tries to paint.
At any rate, next time pick a less slanted source for your claims of expenditure. Like this one: https://secure.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/wiki/National_debt_by_U.S._presidential_terms#Federal_spending.2C_federal_debt.2C_and_GDP You'll note that federal spending with bush started at 2.011 trillion in 2002, steadily increasing by ~150 billion a year to a final total of 3.1 trillion in 2009. Then you'll notice a MASSIVE spike of nearly 900 billion dollars taking us to just short of 4 trillion in federal spending in 2010. In one year. Even if you completely disregard the 200 billion spike in unemployment costs from 2009 to 2010, that's a 700 billion jump in a single year. No president in history has spent that much. And his term isn't even over yet. Nor do we know what the final cost of his healthcare plan will be.
Like they did for Bush for 8 years? "Bush is the devil/Bush is Hitler" was very common if I recall correctly. By your logic, every president should be entirely one-sided and uncompromising because the other side continually derides and berates them. Oh wait, I think that's exactly the government we have now.
He isn't a centrist. Centrists don't jack minimum wage or try to jack taxes on the rich, or push healthcare "reform" that is more concerned with giving everyone health insurance than is it actually lowering healthcare costs. Dems love to claim he's a centrist, because it gives them a perfect scapegoat to absolve themselves of the guilt of putting him into office. But it doesn't make it true.
Continuing existing legislation does not make you a centrist. Passing new legislation that is somewhere in the middle would do that.
The exact opposite of what you said is true. If the Republicans caved on the tax cuts, it would be a major concession. The tax hikes on only the rich is something that doesn't exist now that the Dems want. Claiming demanding less as a "major concession" is like claiming that giving up on the "balanced budget" amendment was a Republican concession. It's absurd. And that's why your kind is impossible to negotiate with. The Reid "compromise" is the _perfect_ example. It concedes _nothing_, yet is being put forward as some kind of "grand compromise" to the Republicans simply because it doesn't raise taxes? It doesn't even cut any spending the Democrats even care about. These are the things Republicans want: substantial entitlement reform, a balanced budget amendment, actual defined spending cuts that exceed the amount of the debt ceiling hike (ya know, without cheating like claiming savings from wars that were ending anyways as part of your "plan"). If any of these 3 things is conceded by democrats, that would be a major concession. Otherwise, it's all smoke and mirrors.
Just because it has always been a matter-of-fact doesn't mean it should be. Otherwise, why have a debt ceiling at all? It's it is completely arbitrary, irrelevant, and raised without even a second thought, that means it is nothing more than window dressing, akin to TSA security theatre. Either remove it entirely and don't pretend you actually give a shit about a balanced budget, or adhere to it. It's that simple. I'm personally grab someone is finally actually forcing this hard issue to actually be debated -- "passing the buck" on government spending has been happening for way too long. Hell, the Dems are constantly bitching about the cost of Bush's wars...you think they'd actually be into the idea of a law that forces politicians to actually have money before they spend it.
Whereas this is true, I can tell you as a fact that Mandatory Spending cost 1.4 trillion in 2006 (half the budget), and costs 2.1 trillion in 2011 (~57% of total spending). As a percentage of total spending, it has always been high. So your claim that it is high only because we're in a slump is wrong. The main expense in our budget is (and for quite some time has always been) entitlement programs.
It's equally obtuse just to throw out a large "pricetag" number (1-3 trillion) without mentioning that this spending occurred over a decade. When compared to Mandatory Spending (which spends over 2 trillion a year), the wars didn't cost a "hell of alot of money" in comparison. Though yes, they're a decent chunk of change.
Wow, so amazingly misinformed...
For one, "bailing out GM" is crap -- you need to talk about "totals cost of companies bailed out" vs "total recouped", and I guarantee that's a net negative.
For two, it's BUSH's TARP that has "paid for itself". What you claim is "TARP Part 2" is actually called the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act (https://secure.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/wiki/American_Recovery_and_Reinvestment_Act_of_2009). It cost $787 billion and has NOT paid for itself. That money was pissed away on "stimulus" that did not stimulate. In fact, I'm pretty sure the bulk of it was just cash handouts.
Thirdly, Obamacare is NOT a "net savings". Even the supposedly fair CBO lists it as 2 trillion (http://www.weeklystandard.com/blogs/cbo-obamacare-would-cost-over-2-trillion) and they've been known to wildly underestimate (I think the CBO estimate for the Iraq War was around 600 billion). It's an expense, and a massive one at that. In fact, most of the "claimed future savings" from the program is highly suspect/dubious as best and in no way takes into account the cost ramifications of forcing all insurance companies to accept any risk without ability to turn away losing bets.
Umm, I'm pretty sure that the extra tax savings that are in my pocket now would not be there if the tax cuts didn't occur. So I don't know how that's equivalent to "burning the money". On the other hand, stimulus programs that don't stimulate ARE equivalent to simply burning the money.
Proof? Oh, that's why, you have none. That statement is equally disingenuous as saying tax cuts promote growth. Since there's no way to prove one way or another what would have happen had he NOT spent the money. Personally, I believe he did nothing more than fuel inflation and piss away alot of cash, making him almost singlehandledly responsible for the debt crisis we currently face.
Says you. I say it's the result of Obama's stimulus spending. See how that works?
FYI, we feel the same way about your ilk. Except that your side comes with the "raise taxes on rich people == solve all problems" paradigm as well.
They haven't passed a 2012 budget yet. The 2011 budget expires in September.
Umm, if it was essential implement the budget, why did they not raise it when they passed the budget? (since they knew exactly what they'd be spending?).
That just proves they were utterly insane in the 50s.
You mean this Reid plan? http://www.businessinsider.com/reid-introduces-democratic-deficit-plan-2011-7
"His deficit reduction package would not include entitlement reform"
"includes $1 trillion in savings from the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan."
"$1.2 trillion would come from cuts to discretionary spending, while another $400 billion would come from interest savings. The plan does not detail where the discretionary program savings would come from."
Major concession??? What major concession? Entitlement reform isn't addressed as all, half the bulk of the savings come from "unwinding wars" (which is cuts to things Republicans are actually interested in), and the other half of the bulk isn't even detailed. What you call a "major concession" I call a smoke screen.
When they put forward a plan that contains real entitlement reform or detailed extensive spending cuts (as in exactly where the money comes from) that doesn't resort to using projected savings of things that were already going to happen (unwinding the wars) as a cost point, maybe I'll agree with you.
Exactly. Which is why the focus of the debate should be on closing such loopholes. Instead, Obama is deadset on simply jacking the taxes on everyone at 250k+ joint income, which is going to impact quite a few small business owners (and the "lesser rich"/"upper middle class").