Liberals Ideas for Cutting the Deficit...

D

Dixie - In Memoriam

New member
First off, let us understand the perspective of reality in which we currently find ourselves as a nation. We are $13 trillion in debt, and this has been growing at a rate of $1 trillion per year, over the past several years. We currently hold over $100 trillion in unfunded liabilities, to Social Security, Medicare and Medicaid, as well as a host of other entitlement programs provided by the government, but also, to federal pensions and perks 'negotiated' by federal employee unions. The serviceable interest we have to pay on this massive debt, is clearly our biggest annual expenditure. It trumps all other programs and departments, and it continues to grow larger, as we go further into debt.

Now, we can get all side-tracked into a debate of the past, as to whether it was right for the right to make the arguments in the 80s, that we could economically 'grow' our way out of this debt, if we could balance our budget, or we can remain focused on the problem currently facing our nation and deal with that. We can choose to remain in denial of this problem, as if we are completely ignorant of what "a trillion dollars" means or is... it's just a number... or we can face the music... smell the coffee... wise up.

We've got to cut the budget, and it has to be dramatic. The GOP is taking enormous flack for proposing $100 billion in budget cuts this year... but $100 bil is a laughable notion in light of our problem. $500 Billion would be a laughable notion! We MUST find a way to balance our budget. We're currently spending $1 trillion more than we take in... (That's 10x $100 bil) So, we actually need to cut $1 trillion in spending, to "balance the budget!" The liberals claim $100 bil is 'draconian' and they are screaming and writhing... but that's 1/10th of the amount we need to cut. It's as if we live in alternate universes, where liberals just don't seem to grasp what is happening, or what is reality.

Liberals seem to have a two-pronged approach to cutting the deficit and dealing with the debt problem... Raise taxes on the rich, and gut the military! But... we don't live in pinhead liberal fantasy universe, where this doesn't have anything but positive consequences, we live in the real world, where the fact of the matter will not allow us to gut the military or substantially raise any taxes on the rich. Whenever you make dramatic cuts in the military, it means military bases must close, and the entire economic infrastructure of entire towns dotted across America, are dramatically effected. At the same time, the people who have the necessary funds to invest in new business enterprises to maybe offset such a consequence, are being squeezed for even more of a percentage of their earnings, and unable to provide such a benefit. The result is catastrophic economic failure across America.

Okay, let's revisit the infamous democrat Car Driving analogy.. Obama took the wheel in '09... but it's clearly obvious he is entirely too intoxicated to be driving the car! Now, he has promised... he will not have anything more to drink, and we are to allow him to remain at the wheel and trust him! He has stated that he wants to "freeze spending levels" but that means we are perpetually running a deficit of $1 trillion a year! Okay.... so I am driving the the car off the cliff, LOOK... I don't even have my foot on the gas pedal anymore! Obama needs to take the back seat and sober up.
 
The House Republican proposed cuts would result in an estimated loss of 700,000 jobs. Cutting the budget at all right now it fucking stupid.
 
All these social programs of the FDR and LBJ era were predicated on the belief that we would continue to grow economically.

The fact is that the US is not growing at the rates that we have gotten used to in the 1950's through the 1980's. Yes our population continues to to increase but it has not been the highly educated immigration of the past, and the kids graduating high school today aren't as well educated as children a generation ago. This of course is due to liberal immigration policies and a takeover of the education system by liberals.
 
Damn Yankee said:
All these social programs of the FDR and LBJ era were predicated on the belief that we would continue to grow economically.

The fact is that the US is not growing at the rates that we have gotten used to in the 1950's through the 1980's. Yes our population continues to to increase but it has not been the highly educated immigration of the past, and the kids graduating high school today aren't as well educated as children a generation ago. This of course is due to liberal immigration policies and a takeover of the education system by liberals.
Click to expand...

Not only that, but the very philosophies of FDR and LBJ have been morphed into unrecognizable perversions of their original intentions. FDR himself, spoke out fervently against federal employee unions, he argued they would not work and could not be allowed! This, from the patron saint of liberals! LBJ's initiatives were implemented on the gains in revenue from JFK tax cuts... when is the last time you heard a liberal propose we cut taxes?
 
NigelTufnel said:
The House Republican proposed cuts would result in an estimated loss of 700,000 jobs. Cutting the budget at all right now it fucking stupid.
Click to expand...

I thought they were suppose to be creating jobs, not eliminating them!

How foolish, think of the trickle down from the loss of 700,000 jobs.
 
NigelTufnel said:
The House Republican proposed cuts would result in an estimated loss of 700,000 jobs. Cutting the budget at all right now it fucking stupid.
Click to expand...

the fact of the matter is, is that both democrats and republicans created massive spending programs that they thought would be ok because of anticipated economic growth. they were both wrong and now we have to pay the price. it sucks, but that's the way that it is.

also, notice that not a single one of those lying assed politicians will suffer much of these cuts. It's us, the common people that will.

how's that make you feel about your precious programs now?
 
Cut the salary and benefits for politicians. They should have to fill out a form proving that they are not rich in order to get paid.
 
hotdog said:
Cut the salary and benefits for politicians. They should have to fill out a form proving that they are not rich in order to get paid.
Click to expand...

or, here's an idea, maybe we should get out of the brainwashed mode of thinking that we need rich business people in office because 'they know more'.
 
Are you suggesting that we keep military spending levels relatively the same, just to keep jobs?

You could say that about any program.

I'm in for a compromise: privatize social security, and cut the military budget by 50%. Problems solved.
 
Damn Yankee said:
All these social programs of the FDR and LBJ era were predicated on the belief that we would continue to grow economically.

The fact is that the US is not growing at the rates that we have gotten used to in the 1950's through the 1980's. Yes our population continues to to increase but it has not been the highly educated immigration of the past, and the kids graduating high school today aren't as well educated as children a generation ago. This of course is due to liberal immigration policies and a takeover of the education system by liberals.
Click to expand...

Yawn.
 
Dixie said:
yeah, maybe we should shoot some more holes in the bottom of the boat, and the water can run out??? :dunno:
Click to expand...

The level of our national debt is not actually high. In relation to GDP, it is only a bit over half of what it was in 1946. And to give more credit, the number Walker used, 63 percent, refers to debt held by the public, which is the correct construct -- not the 90+ percent figure for gross debt, commonly seen in press reports and in comparisons with other countries. The relevant number is today below where it was in the mid-1950s, and comparable to the early 1990s.


What I learned from hanging out with deficit hawks

The Peter G. Peterson Foundation's "Fiscal Solutions Tour" came to my town, so I stopped by

By James K. Galbraith

The Fiscal Solutions Tour is the latest Peter G. Peterson Foundation effort to rouse the public against deficits and the national debt — and in particular (though they manage to avoid saying so) to win support for measures that would impose drastic cuts on Social Security and Medicare. It features Robert Bixby of the Concord Coalition, former Comptroller General David Walker and the veteran economist Alice Rivlin, whose recent distinctions include serving on the Bowles-Simpson commission. They came to Austin on February 9 and (partly because Rivlin is an old friend) I went.

Mr. Bixby began by describing the public debt as "the defining issue of our time." It is, he said, a question of “how big a debt we can have and what can we afford?" He did not explain why this is so. He did not, for instance, attempt to compare the debt to the financial crisis, to joblessness or foreclosures, nor to energy or climate change. Oddly none of those issues were actually mentioned by anyone, all evening long.

A notable feature of Bixby’s presentation were his charts. One of them showed clearly how the public deficit soared at the precise moment that the financial crisis struck in late 2008. The chart also shows how the Clinton surpluses had started to disappear in the recession of 2000. But Mr. Bixby seemed not to have noticed either event. Flashing this chart, he merely commented that "Congress took care" of the budget surplus. Still, the charts did show the facts -- and in this respect they were the intellectual highpoint of the occasion.

A David Walker speech is always worth listening to with care, for Mr. Walker is a reliable and thorough enumerator of popular deficit-scare themes. Three of these in particular caught my attention on Friday.

To my surprise, Walker began on a disarming note: he acknowledged that the level of our national debt is not actually high. In relation to GDP, it is only a bit over half of what it was in 1946. And to give more credit, the number Walker used, 63 percent, refers to debt held by the public, which is the correct construct -- not the 90+ percent figure for gross debt, commonly seen in press reports and in comparisons with other countries. The relevant number is today below where it was in the mid-1950s, and comparable to the early 1990s.

But Mr. Walker countered that fact with another, which I’d never heard mentioned before: in real terms he said -- that is, after adjusting for inflation -- per capita national debt is now twice what it was back then.

The problem is that real per capita national debt is a concept with no economic meaning or importance. (No government agency reports it, either.) Even in the private sector, debt levels matter only in relation to income and wealth: richer people can (and do) take on more debt. Real per capita national income is well over three times higher today than it was in 1946 -- so how could it possibly matter that the "real per capita national debt" is twice as high?

Next, Mr. Walker made a comparison between the United States and Greece, with the implication being that this country might, some day soon, face that country’s interest costs. But of course this is nonsense. Greece is a small nation that has to borrow in a currency it cannot control. The United States is a large nation that pays up in a money it can print. There is no chance the markets will mistake the US for Greece.

More
 
Onceler said:
Are you suggesting that we keep military spending levels relatively the same, just to keep jobs?

You could say that about any program.

I'm in for a compromise: privatize social security, and cut the military budget by 50%. Problems solved.
Click to expand...

50% might be a bit much, but i'm all on board with 25% for military, as well as 10% minimum across the board for every single agency under the federal government.
 
Here you go Dixie...

Report: Wartime Contractors Waste, Steal Tens Of Billions -- Then Come Back For More


WASHINGTON -- The chairmen of the bipartisan Commission on Wartime Contracting decried on Monday a federal system that has allowed contractors in Iraq and Afghanistan to commit fraud -- then get hired again and again.

"For the 200,000 people employed by contractors to provide support and capability in Iraq and Afghanistan, accountability is too often absent, diluted, delayed, or avoided," Republican co-chair Chris Shays, formerly a longtime congressman from Connecticut, said while calling to order a hearing of the commission Monday.

There are so many barriers to suspending or banning contractors with violations that "untrustworthy contractors can continue profiting from government work, responsible businesses may be denied opportunities, and costs to taxpayers can climb," Shays said in a statement co-authored with his Democratic co-chair, Michael Thibault, formerly the deputy director of the Defense Contract Audit Agency.

The commission last week issued a blistering interim report to Congress: "At What Risk? Correcting over-reliance on contractors in contingency operations," which concluded that "misspent dollars run into the tens of billions" out of the nearly $200 billion spent on contracts and grants since 2002 to support military, reconstruction and other U.S. operations in Iraq and Afghanistan.

And that could well be an understatement, the commission noted, because "it might not take full account of ill-conceived projects, poor planning and oversight by the U.S. government, and criminal behavior and blatant corruption by both government and contractor employees."

The report suggested that the government stop using contractors so routinely, start taking oversight more seriously and establish strong interagency standards.

It called for an end to contractors' current role in hiring other contractors, concluding that they tend not to erect the appropriate oversight firewalls.

More
 
When Republicans Cut?!!

camp-ss.jpg
 
Bfgrn said:
The level of our national debt is not actually high. In relation to GDP, it is only a bit over half of what it was in 1946.
Click to expand...
Actually, it's approaching the 1946 level at about 84% right now and climbing rapidly:

usgs_line.php


And in 1946 we had come out of The Depression, then had just fought the largest war in history. Right now we are coming out of an unprecedented lengthy economic boom, and are fighting relatively tiny little wars.
 
Damn Yankee said:
Actually, it's approaching the 1946 level at about 84% right now and climbing rapidly:

usgs_line.php


And in 1946 we had come out of The Depression, then had just fought the largest war in history. Right now we are coming out of an unprecedented lengthy economic boom, and are fighting relatively tiny little wars.
Click to expand...

READ THE ARTICLE...this is a conservative economist who says it isn't.

We are in the middle of an economic bust that had a decade of wealth for a tiny segment of the population.
 
You must log in or register to reply here.
Back
Top