Republicans getting set to Release a Proposed Budget

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It's not a mindless talking point, it's the truth. Tell me, how do you raise a trillion in new revenue without killing the economy? It's impossible. You just can not raise enough revenue, period. It really is the spending that is the problem. As far as I know, we take in more revenue now than we have ever had but we also spend more than we have ever had. Could you raise revenue a little without hurting the economy? Maybe, but it's almost irrelevant in the grand scheme of things compared to the about 2 trillion in cuts we need to make to avert this debt crisis. It's not something you can meet halfway on, it's the spending cuts you need to focus on.

Cut 2 trillion off the budget and then maybe I'll consider a tax hike but until then federal government can pound sand for all I care. What's the point of raising revenue if they're just gunna keep spending more and more on wars and bailouts?

You and MP have accused people of using "talking points" and "mindless talking points" to the point the terms lack any meaning. Every conservative policy or belief is dismissed as a "mindless talking point". Quite frankly, Inuyasha and others "talking points" are based on carefully analyzed by experts (not political talking heads), and their conclusion is that we are in real trouble and we need to make drastic sacrifices and not because it's fun, ideal, or going to fatten people's wallets, but because if we don't our interest payments on our debt will eventually be bigger than our economy. Everyone knows we have a revenue problem. The point of contention is whether increasing taxes with the economy is going to make matters worse. Think of it like personal finances. If you are in a financial bind the most ideal way to get out of it is to find a source of more cash. That can't be done, you cut every expense possible. People in that situation have to quit eating out, virtually eliminate entertainment expenses, quit making any trips they can avoid, ration food and make cheaper meals, make improvised repairs or make do without things, maybe find a cheaper place to live, and maybe ration medications and put off doctor visits. The government needs to do the same thing. I'm not saying "let them eat cake" either because most of what I described applies to how I grew up. I actually did some of those things last month because I wanted to start saving up some money and I came in about 20% under budget, though I could have cut it by 40% If I stuck to bare life support, and that's exactly what the government needs to do.

Its not math, its accountancy. I should know I'm a trained accountant.
To balance the books there is two ways to do:
1) Find more sources of finance.
2) Reduce your outgoings (costs).

This says it best. I dispute the claim on unemployment as I'm sure he's using the same voodoo math that Democrats use to say the unemployment rate is still under 10%, but if we can't commit to cutting TRILLIONS from the insanely bloated government budget, then anything else we must do to salvage America and prevent it from going into the dustbin of history simply is not going to happen.

To save America, some tough choices must be made, and that his plan preserves the status quo for people 55 and over (Medicare/Social Security) is quite fair and realistic. He even wants to impose "means testing" for some government benefits which is adverse only to those who are wealthy and not the poor.



Utterly wrong.

More taxes only drives people out of business. Obama's tax-a-thon since 2008 has frozen new job creation because so much is still up in the air that employers are waiting for economic certainty before committing to growth and hiring. No matter how much you despise wealthy people, they create the jobs. Punish them enough for being successful and they will choose to stop being so productive. They can sit on their wealth and let everyone else rot.

Also keep in mind that the "rich" being targeted by government set the bar low enough to impact most of the small business owners across the nation who are anything but "rich."

I think it's a combination of basic math, accounting, and good business sense. Sales (revenue) up + Costs down = Success.

Who is supporting means testing? I heard this idea probably about a year ago from a California congressman, Issa maybe (republican). I think it's a very good idea and I also support raising the retirement age.

Learn to read. Both are a problem. Or are you going to describe spending cuts that actually balance the budget with current revenues? If Medicare, Medicaid, and Social Security disappeared tomorrow we would still have a budget deficit. I mean, if you're advocating completely eliminating all entitlement programs and disbanding the military, then the budget is probably balanced, but no one supports that.


Hence why I said both revenue and spending are problems. We need to raise revenue and lower spending. This means cutting the military, cutting social programs, and raising taxes. The Republican policy is to gut social programs, expand the military, and slash taxes for the ultra-rich while leaving them the same or even increasing them on the poor and middle class. The Democratic policy is to expand social programs, maintain the military where it is, and make only slight increases (if any) in taxation. Anyone who believes that either of those plans solves our problem is completely delusional. But you can see that the Republicans make the budget problem worse than it already is on two of the three main issues.

Don't forget that tax cuts also basically act as an expenditure considering you're drastically reducing your income and hoping that the rich will use it to create jobs rather than keep yacht makers in business.

How about you take your own advice Orwell, cause you Jacoby isn't the one with a reading and comprehension problem.



Obama wants to increase spending by $400 billion dollars, not cut spending. Paul Ryan is the only one whom has proposed a budget that cuts spending. If you had seriously done some research you would know this little fact.

I disagree. You are currently sitting at (if memory serves) 30 out of 31 in the OECD for overall tax burden. If anything, you are undertaxed, and you are paying the price for it with an ever increasing public debt.

The US has plenty of tax room within fiscal policy, and a solution that is predicated on the spending side only is going to do significant damage over time.



Any bookkeeper can tell you that is the stupidest strategy ever conceived. In a progressive tax system it never hurts you to earn an extra dollar. Let me repeat that: It never hurts you to earn an extra dollar!. Suppose your tax bracket thresholds are set at $25,000 and $50,000, and the marginal rates are set at 10%, 15% and 20%

A worker earning $25,000 pays $2,500 in tax--simple. A worker earning $50,000 pays $2,500 in tax on his first $25,000 and $3,750 on his next $25,000--for a total of $6,250 and he takes home $43,750. (12.5% aggregate).

Suppose he gets a $1,000 raise, what happens?

Well, he pays $6,250 on his first $50,000 (as above) and he pays $200 on the last $1,000, for a total tax load of $6,450, and a take home of $44,550. He is still better off having earned that extra $1,000.

Anyone who works less to avoid moving into the next tax bracket is either lazy or stupid.



A solution must be found that addresses both sides of the deficit function--revenues must be increased and expenditures must be reduced. Doing the job exclusively on one side is pointless.

But what parts of those programs is he cutting? I'm sure there is a lot of those programs that is useless waste that can be cut which would actually make it better at helping people.

Furthermore, we can't afford to spend money we don't have.

House Budget Committee Chairman Paul Ryan’s budget plan would get about two-thirds of its more than $4 trillion in budget cuts over 10 years from programs that serve people of limited means, which violates basic principles of fairness and stands a core principle of President Obama’s fiscal commission on its head.

The plan of Erskine Bowles and Alan Simpson, who co-chaired President Obama’s National Commission on Fiscal Responsibility and Reform, established, as a basic principle, that deficit reduction should not increase poverty or inequality or hurt the disadvantaged. The Ryan plan, which the chairman unveiled in a news conference, speech, and Wall Street Journal op-ed today, charts a different course, turning its biggest cannons on these people.

This finding emerges from a Center on Budget and Policy Priorities analysis of the Ryan plan. Table S-4 of the plan shows that it proposes net program cuts of $4.3 trillion over ten years. The plan shows a $5.8 trillion cut in outlays from the Congressional Budget Office baseline, but $446 billion of that is interest savings and another $1.04 trillion is simply an assumption that the Iraq and Afghanistan wars will phase down on the Obama Administration’s timetable. Actual program cuts produce net savings of $4.322 trillion.

Cuts in low-income programs appear likely to account for at least $2.9 trillion — or about two-thirds — of this amount. The $2.9 trillion includes the following three categories of cuts:

* $2.17 trillion in reductions from Medicaid and related health care. The plan shows Medicaid cuts of $771 billion, plus savings of $1.4 trillion from repealing the health reform law’s Medicaid expansion and its subsidies to help low- and moderate-income people purchase health insurance.
* $350 billion in cuts in mandatory programs serving low-income Americans (other than Medicaid). The budget documents that Chairman Ryan issued today show that he is proposing $715 billion in cuts in mandatory programs other than Medicare, Medicaid, and Social Security, but do not specify how much will be cut from various programs (although they imply that cuts in the food stamp program will be large). In this analysis, we make the conservative assumption that savings from low-income mandatory programs (other than Medicaid) would be proportionate to their share of spending in this category. Thus, we derive the $350 billion figure from the fact that about half of mandatory spending other than for Medicare, Medicaid, and Social Security goes for programs for low- and moderate-income individuals and families. This likely substantially understates the cuts that the plan would make in low-income programs. The Ryan documents show that $380 billion in cuts would come from programs in the income security portion of the budget (function 600), and the overwhelming bulk of the mandatory spending in that category goes for low-income programs. The documents also show $126 billion in mandatory cuts in the education, training, employment, and social services portion of the budget (function 500), which, based on the discussion in those documents, would likely come mainly from cuts in the mandatory portion of the Pell Grant program for low-income students.
* $400 billion in cuts in low-income discretionary programs. The Ryan budget documents show that he is proposing $1.6 trillion in cuts in non-security discretionary programs, but again do not provide details about the size of cuts to specific programs. (The documents do identify some major low-income program areas, including Pell Grants and low-income housing, as prime targets for cuts.) Here, too, we make the conservative assumption that low-income programs in this category would bear a proportionate share of the cuts. Thus, we derive the $400 billion figure from the fact that about a quarter of non-security discretionary spending goes for programs for low- and moderate-income individuals and families.

Our numerical assumptions are conservative in another way as well. That’s because, when faced with the choice of which specific programs to cut, policymakers are unlikely to cut much from a number of non-low-income programs in these budget categories that are popular, such as veterans’ disability compensation and the FBI. That means that other programs — including low-income programs — would have to be cut by more than their proportionate share.

http://www.cbpp.org/cms/index.cfm?fa=view&id=3451

This might come across as insensitive, but I'm just going to point some things out....

First and foremost, we must make massive cuts to government spending, and most government programs have no basis in the Constitution.

Medicaid is free health care for the "poor." I work for a living and can't afford health insurance. Someone I do financial paperwork for has seen his health insurance go up 47% in the last 2 years alone. If I must do without or pay through the nose for coverage (never mind actual health care) why should I care about others? Most Medicaid recipients are welfare leaches, not people who legitimately can not work.



Insane amounts in "pubic aid" is just vote-buying by politicians. You want meaningful change in government? Cut off the gravy train. Free cheese keeps those too lazy to go out and change things happy. Cut them off and they will either go out and work or revolt. Perhaps it's time for it to happen. Don't get me started on Pell Grants and student loans. Government money for education is a big part of why education costs have skyrocketed. If government stayed out of funding education, schools would have to price service to what society could bear. Easy money = no duty to keep prices competitive.



Discretionary means NOT ESSENTIAL. Government has no business funding non-essential programs. Until the government is fiscally sound and the nation is out of debt, this spending must be gutted. If you work for a living, you know that YOU have to balance your budget, and if in debt, either get more income or cut non-essential spending to get that debt under control. Time for government to do the same.

***

America is at a crossroad. We can either make serious sacrifices (nationally and personally) to save this nation, or we can do like Ancient Rome and demand more bread and circuses while the Visigoths breach the gate. 2011 will likely determine where America is ultimately headed for the next 50 years or more. I don't know which side will prevail in this debate, but the stakes are monumental.

Can you name some of these giants? I can't think of any European country that is as big as the US or has the same influx of immigrants. And prove that the crisis is caused by less regulation. It's both corporate welfare and social welfare that puts a strain on the economy.

Point out one war that was the result of mere disagreement. If you're gonna say Iraq, then please bring something more to the table than "Bush lied people died!" cuz I have tons of arguments that would prove that statement to be nothing more than BS.

As for a "sense of entitlement", usually that phrase is used under the context of feeling entitled to something for nothing. There's nothing wrong with feeling entitled to the fruits of your own labour. They aren't against the concept of entitlement, they are against a something for nothing sense of entitlement, not a sense of entitlement pertaining to reaping what you sow.

Geographically, none are as big, but most of Western Europe is undergoing major waves of immigration from Eastern Europe & the Middle East, and the nature of modern immigration means it is much more likely that immigrants don't 'integrate' (much smaller world, these days...)



US corporate 'disagreement' with foreign governments leads to US openly backing regime changes...

https://secure.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/wiki/Big_Stick_Ideology

https://secure.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/wiki/US_intervention_in_Latin_America#Interventions_in_Latin_America