What's causing rising debt?

[Celticguy]

Less spending, partially due to Obama, and some the GOP Congress, but the point being it did decrease from the earlier years as the economy pulled itself out from beneath the effects of the Recession

And BOs new taxes kicked in

 

[archives]

And BOs new taxes kicked in

How does new taxes decrease revenue and add to debt?

 

[Flash]

The Republicans are engaged in their usual two-step swindle. Step one, they give massive tax handouts to the rich and spending increases for their buddies in the military industries. Step two, they say the resulting run-up in debt requires austerity measures to be taken when it comes to programs that regular Americans rely on, like Social Security and Medicare. Mitch McConnell insists that cuts to those things are needed, because they're what's causing the problem.

Social Security and Medicare (Part A) are financed by payroll taxes and not affected by the income tax cuts.

 

[Celticguy]

How does new taxes decrease revenue and add to debt?

Its how debt decreased. Read your post i quoted.

 

[Oneuli]

No, it's not facts, it's the spin you put on them. I can be just as partisan as the next person so I'm not speaking as holier than thou but we spin the numbers to fit our narrative. That's how you're choosing everything to be rosy for Democrats and doom and gloom for Republicans.

You are so used to doing it from the conservative perspective that you assume it must be the same in the other direction, but it really is different. For example, imagine that you and I each had a task: to argue that presidents of our own preferred party tend to be better for job creation than presidents of the other party. My task would be very simple. I'd just need to go to the BLS site, download the job creation numbers by month, and show that the average monthly percentage growth of payrolls during Democratic presidencies was quite a bit higher than during Republican presidencies. There'd be no need to cherry-pick. I could look at the last 30 years, the last 50 years, or the entire data set going back to the first recorded numbers and it would show the same. It would be a very easy argument. You, on the other hand, would need to work to craft special pleading -- arguing, for example, that we shouldn't count certain great Democratic years because war time was artificially enhancing job creation, and that we shouldn't count certain horrible Republican years because demobilization following a war was weighing down job creation.

It's that way for a long list of potential arguments. We could also offer up arguments for whether Democrats or Republicans are better for GDP growth, stock markets, reducing poverty, reducing violent crime, reducing deficits, enhancing incomes, reducing teen pregnancy, and so on. In each case, I'd have an easy job: just find the data, do the math, and present the results. Time and again, the superiority of the Democrat-led eras would be self-evident. In each case your job would be difficult, because you'd need to craft plausible-sounding arguments for why we need to put asterisks next to the data.

 

[Oneuli]

Social Security and Medicare (Part A) are financed by payroll taxes and not affected by the income tax cuts.

I'm not clear on how you think that impacts what I said. Payroll taxes have been used to finance general spending. General taxes can, similarly, be used to finance Social Security and Medicare, if we wish. We could easily have tax rates high enough to do that and still have below-normal effective taxation by the standards of wealthy nations generally. But the Republicans would rather impoverish the elderly and leave them medically undertreated, in order to make it possible to preserve ultra-low tax rates and sky-high military spending.

 

[Grugore]

Do you imagine someone is arguing in favor of a second-rate military? Obviously, that's not what's being discussed. As of the end of Obama's presidency, the military spending for FY 2019 was projected at $600.221 billion. To put that in perspective, it would be almost exactly four times the spending of the next-closest country (using IISS figures), and just under three times as much as China and Russia combined. That wouldn't be a second-rate military by any sane analysis.

In fact, to put it in perspective, perform the following thought experiment. Ask yourself what country, in the whole history of human civilization, EVER spent four times as much as the next-closest contemporary nation, other than the US in the current era. Britain at the height of its empire? No way -- France always gave it a run for its money. Spain in its golden age? Nah -- France was also a close second fiddle to them. Ancient Rome? No. At any period in their history you could find at least one other superpower in the world with a military spend in their same ballpark, either locally (Hannibal's Carthage, Mithridates' Persia), or farther afield (the Han Dynasty). The level of military spending we were projected to do, even based on the trend-line Obama left us on, was UNPRECEDENTED, in all of human history, prior to the current age of American history.

This was never about whether we should have a second-rate military. It was about the mindless right-wing reflex, when asked how much we should spend on our military, to always answer "more," no matter how much we're spending. For them, military budgets are not an attempt to address concrete national objectives, but rather about signalling cultural alignment with other right-wingers. It's a kind of virtue signalling.



Incorrect. I have met many Democrats in my day, and have yet to meet a single one who is opposed to spending money on the military. It's a question of how much we should spend. Democrats don't suffer from that same right-wing disorder of reflexively answering "more," regardless of context.



There was never any neglect. In every single year of the Obama presidency, we spent between $590 billion and $706 billion on the military (just counting the part that shows up in the "Defense" budget -- not even counting the veteran's benefits and other spending that shows up elsewhere, much less state spending on the National Guard). By comparison, the second-highest-spending nation, during that same time, ranged from about $92 billion to $266 billion, so that their very highest was still far less than half our very lowest.

Facts are a hard thing for right-wingers to grapple with, but give it a shot.

Ever hear of a multi-front war? Think WWII. We had multiple enemies to fight. If a similar situation happened today, we would lose. In todays political environment we NEED to be four times better than the next biggest military. Because it is likely that they will bring some friends.

 

[Oneuli]

I guess you missed 2009, 2010, 2011 and 2012 when the Budget deficits were in the trillions

What makes you guess that, snowflake?

Did you also miss when the Democrats were finally kicked totally to the curb in 2012 and Republicans controlled the Congress, deficits started going down dramatically?

The deficit had already fallen about 8.4% just in FY 2010.

I guess you also missed that the full effect of Obamacare and Obamunism took effect in 2017 after Obama left office.

Affordable Care was phased in gradually over the course of the Obama era. It still isn't fully phased in (e.g., there's been a delay in cadillac plan taxes).

But not to worry snowflakes; Trump hasn't even been here two years. He has asked his cabinet heads to come back with 5% cuts in their budgets. It's a great start.

Do the math. Even if all discretionary spending were cut by 5%, what would the deficit be? And I've seen no evidence that Trump is treating the biggest area of discretionary spending, the military, as being on the chopping block with everything else.

 

[Oneuli]

Projected spending and estimated doesn't equate to lower spending levels

Do you imagine someone said they did, fool?

Do you have a link to the data you are claiming here?

Yes I do.

I can't find anything that supports the notion we will be spending LESS.

Do you imagine someone said we'd be spending less?

Link?

Reread.

Link?

Reread.

Mandatory spending is currently estimated to be $2.739 trillion for FY 2019. The two largest mandatory programs are Social Security and Medicare. That's 62 percent of all federal spending. It's also three times more than the military budget.

Relevance to my argument?

Can't be; revenue has not declined. [Therefore, it is a SPENDING problem not a revenue problem.

why would you imagine the issue couldn't be revenue if revenue hasn't declined, dunce?

I guess you don't know this, but those are projections and the OMB has NEVER gotten ANY projections right EVER.

Do you imagine someone suggest the OMB's projections tend to be right, fool? Obviously not. Each new year has legal changes which can result in increases and decreases. The whole point of my argument was that the OMB projections were WRONG, due to specific changes made by the Republicans. Did you honestly fail to grasp that?

Mandatory spending takes up 62% of the budgets. You cannot reduce them; they are mandatory by law.

Did you not realize that laws can be changed, fool?

The defense budget is NOT the problem.

Reread. I made it clear it was only a minority portion of the problem. Try to read more carefully and you won't embarrass yourself this way so often.

The tax reductions did not cause this.

Yes, they're the primary change that took us from a path of falling deficits to a path of rising deficits. They resulted in revenue growth being far below average levels, such that they fell well short of even below-normal pace of spending growth. Spending growth has moderated, but revenue growth rates are much lower, therefore we have a revenue problem.

One last thing, Corporations don't pay taxes.

Yes they do, fool. Read the tax code then get back to me.

Fascinating how you leftist liars never seemed concerned at all about the massive deficit spending Obama engaged in.

Orthodox economic policy calls for deficit spending during and immediately following recessions, which should then gradually be decreased as the economy strengthens, ultimately turning into surpluses when the economy is very strong and can afford a little extra burden to assist in getting out from under the debt overhang. Obama can, of course, be faulted for not pushing for larger deficits earlier in his presidency, when they were so clearly needed. But after that, we generally had a reasonable glide path of falling deficits. By comparison, increasing deficits at a time with unemployment in the 4% or lower range is reckless and clearly contrary to orthodox economic ideas.

THINK!

 

[Oneuli]

Ever hear of a multi-front war?

Yes. As an example, if we were ever to go to war with China, they'd be fighting a brutal multi-front war, since they're largely surrounded by nations friendly with the US, including India, South Korea, and Japan.... and they'd need to hold much of their military in reserve with a hungry Russia on their doorstep, and the possibility that their own people might rebel (especially in occupied places like Tibet). That's part of why we could probably get away with spending less than our adversaries.... unlike them, we're in a highly defensible position, surrounded by oceans and close allies, and with a network of mutual defense alliances that include several of the world's other major militaries.

Think WWII. We had multiple enemies to fight. If a similar situation happened today, we would lose.

What makes you imagine that? If you're right, then step one is we need to fire every general and admiral in our military, along with every procurement official, throw all the current armed forces committee members off those committees, and pick a whole new slate of defense contractors, preferably from other countries, because we must be getting an ABSURDLY shitty return on our military investment, relative to everyone else. If our military industrial complex is rotten to its very core with such breathtaking incompetence (or corruption), that we can spend twice as much as all our potential adversaries combined, and yet somehow not have the fighting strength needed for a multi-front battle, then we need to clean house in a hurry, and throwing more money on that rotten structure to try to prop it up is the dumbest mistake we could make.

In todays political environment we NEED to be four times better than the next biggest military. Because it is likely that they will bring some friends.

As should be painfully obvious, that's the EXACT OPPOSITE of the case. Ahead of WWII, we had good cause to worry about Germany, not just based on its own military strength, but on the basis of it having close ties to other superpowers -- mainly Japan and Italy, but there was also the worry that they'd pull the fascist Spanish into the conflict on their side, too. By comparison, our major adversaries today have nothing akin to the Axis. China's only allies are dirt-poor nations that it has to prop up, like North Korea and a few backwards African nations it has tried to make inroads with. Russia's in even worse shape -- it is almost completely without allies, and is right up against a bunch of nations that were under Soviet control and are now hostile and allied with NATO. And Russia and China don't trust each other as far as they could throw each other. What we have in 2018 is the US in the middle of a network of close alliances (NATO, Japan, North Korea, Australia, and Israel), friendly economic relations (much of the rest of the Middle East and North America), and aligned interests against Russia and China (e.g., India). We could cut our military spending to a sixth of what it is today and still overmatch any likely hostile alliance, by way of our own network of allies.

 

[Grugore]

Yes. As an example, if we were ever to go to war with China, they'd be fighting a brutal multi-front war, since they're largely surrounded by nations friendly with the US, including India, South Korea, and Japan.... and they'd need to hold much of their military in reserve with a hungry Russia on their doorstep, and the possibility that their own people might rebel (especially in occupied places like Tibet). That's part of why we could probably get away with spending less than our adversaries.... unlike them, we're in a highly defensible position, surrounded by oceans and close allies, and with a network of mutual defense alliances that include several of the world's other major militaries.



What makes you imagine that? If you're right, then step one is we need to fire every general and admiral in our military, along with every procurement official, throw all the current armed forces committee members off those committees, and pick a whole new slate of defense contractors, preferably from other countries, because we must be getting an ABSURDLY shitty return on our military investment, relative to everyone else. If our military industrial complex is rotten to its very core with such breathtaking incompetence (or corruption), that we can spend twice as much as all our potential adversaries combined, and yet somehow not have the fighting strength needed for a multi-front battle, then we need to clean house in a hurry, and throwing more money on that rotten structure to try to prop it up is the dumbest mistake we could make.



As should be painfully obvious, that's the EXACT OPPOSITE of the case. Ahead of WWII, we had good cause to worry about Germany, not just based on its own military strength, but on the basis of it having close ties to other superpowers -- mainly Japan and Italy, but there was also the worry that they'd pull the fascist Spanish into the conflict on their side, too. By comparison, our major adversaries today have nothing akin to the Axis. China's only allies are dirt-poor nations that it has to prop up, like North Korea and a few backwards African nations it has tried to make inroads with. Russia's in even worse shape -- it is almost completely without allies, and is right up against a bunch of nations that were under Soviet control and are now hostile and allied with NATO. And Russia and China don't trust each other as far as they could throw each other. What we have in 2018 is the US in the middle of a network of close alliances (NATO, Japan, North Korea, Australia, and Israel), friendly economic relations (much of the rest of the Middle East and North America), and aligned interests against Russia and China (e.g., India). We could cut our military spending to a sixth of what it is today and still overmatch any likely hostile alliance, by way of our own network of allies.

Are you familiar with something called tactical calculus? I am. I served in the military. I am familiar with the weapons of war, troop strengths...among other things. One concern is the aging planes of our air force. They are mostly outdated, and we do not have anywhere near enough stockpiles of munitions or spare parts. Our troops are not properly trained because of a lack of funding. I've seen it first hand, so don't even try to deny it. Our military is weaker than most people realize. That's the truth.

 

[Superfreak]

Trump could pass it, and the difference is Obama created the debt dealing with two wars, anunpaid drug prescription program, and a historical recession. Trump, inherited an advancing economy not a recession, one war is over and the other dwindling, and he goes ahead and blows up the debt by creating a stimulus for the upper income brackets in the country

Even a high school economics students can see the difference and the consequences

Same old tired talking points. No, the tax cuts weren't predominantly for the upper income. It was predominantly for small business owners. The majority of the overall dollars still went to the lower and middle income families. Only on a per capita basis does it benefit the wealthy more and that is simply because they have so much more and pay so much more in income taxes.

The two wars were largely over when Obama came into office. Pretending otherwise is ridiculous. The recession ended in March of 2009. Two months into his first term. There was no reason for him to run up massive debt after year two. Yet he completely failed to get us back to pre-crisis levels. The economy was only being propped up because of his massive over spending and because the Fed kept rates so low for so long.

 

[Truth Detector]

Social Security and Medicare (Part A) are financed by payroll taxes and not affected by the income tax cuts.

Yet, it is built on a ponzi scheme whereby the Government borrows money from SS, hands suckers like us the IOU and uses it to fund more government spending and making you and I pay the interest on that IOU. It is really clever and if you or I tried to create a similar scheme, we would be arrested.

 

[Truth Detector]

You are so used to doing it from the conservative perspective that you assume it must be the same in the other direction, but it really is different. For example, imagine that you and I each had a task: to argue that presidents of our own preferred party tend to be better for job creation than presidents of the other party. My task would be very simple. I'd just need to go to the BLS site, download the job creation numbers by month, and show that the average monthly percentage growth of payrolls during Democratic presidencies was quite a bit higher than during Republican presidencies. There'd be no need to cherry-pick. I could look at the last 30 years, the last 50 years, or the entire data set going back to the first recorded numbers and it would show the same. It would be a very easy argument. You, on the other hand, would need to work to craft special pleading -- arguing, for example, that we shouldn't count certain great Democratic years because war time was artificially enhancing job creation, and that we shouldn't count certain horrible Republican years because demobilization following a war was weighing down job creation.

It's that way for a long list of potential arguments. We could also offer up arguments for whether Democrats or Republicans are better for GDP growth, stock markets, reducing poverty, reducing violent crime, reducing deficits, enhancing incomes, reducing teen pregnancy, and so on. In each case, I'd have an easy job: just find the data, do the math, and present the results. Time and again, the superiority of the Democrat-led eras would be self-evident. In each case your job would be difficult, because you'd need to craft plausible-sounding arguments for why we need to put asterisks next to the data.

Idiot thinks Cawacko is a Conservative.

 

[Truth Detector]

The deficit had already fallen about 8.4% just in FY 2010.

...and increased again in 2011, and was still in the trillions. Yet here you whine about things you know nothing about. Why?

Affordable Care was phased in gradually over the course of the Obama era. It still isn't fully phased in (e.g., there's been a delay in cadillac plan taxes).

Again, the full effect of Obamacare hits in 2016 and 2017. Why do you pretend it hasn't? Because you're a dishonest partisan hack on steroids?

The CBO estimates that together, the subsidies will cost taxpayers almost $1.1 trillion from 2014-2023.

Do the math. Even if all discretionary spending were cut by 5%, what would the deficit be? And I've seen no evidence that Trump is treating the biggest area of discretionary spending, the military, as being on the chopping block with everything else.

Apparently you can't do the math; even if you cut the entire Military budget, Obamacare and social welfare will still create a deficit. The military is one of the FEW things in the Federal budget that is within the constitution. The Federal Government has stepped way outside of its constitutional limitations providing welfare to everyone.

 

[Truth Detector]

Do you imagine someone said they did, fool?
Yes I do.
Do you imagine someone said we'd be spending less?
Reread.
Reread.
Relevance to my argument?
why would you imagine the issue couldn't be revenue if revenue hasn't declined, dunce?
Do you imagine someone suggest the OMB's projections tend to be right, fool? Obviously not. Each new year has legal changes which can result in increases and decreases. The whole point of my argument was that the OMB projections were WRONG, due to specific changes made by the Republicans. Did you honestly fail to grasp that?
Did you not realize that laws can be changed, fool?
Reread. I made it clear it was only a minority portion of the problem. Try to read more carefully and you won't embarrass yourself this way so often.
Yes, they're the primary change that took us from a path of falling deficits to a path of rising deficits. They resulted in revenue growth being far below average levels, such that they fell well short of even below-normal pace of spending growth. Spending growth has moderated, but revenue growth rates are much lower, therefore we have a revenue problem.
Yes they do, fool. Read the tax code then get back to me.
Orthodox economic policy calls for deficit spending during and immediately following recessions, which should then gradually be decreased as the economy strengthens, ultimately turning into surpluses when the economy is very strong and can afford a little extra burden to assist in getting out from under the debt overhang. Obama can, of course, be faulted for not pushing for larger deficits earlier in his presidency, when they were so clearly needed. But after that, we generally had a reasonable glide path of falling deficits. By comparison, increasing deficits at a time with unemployment in the 4% or lower range is reckless and clearly contrary to orthodox economic ideas.
THINK!

Idiot translation:

 

[Truth Detector]

Same old tired talking points. No, the tax cuts weren't predominantly for the upper income. It was predominantly for small business owners. The majority of the overall dollars still went to the lower and middle income families. Only on a per capita basis does it benefit the wealthy more and that is simply because they have so much more and pay so much more in income taxes.

The two wars were largely over when Obama came into office. Pretending otherwise is ridiculous. The recession ended in March of 2009. Two months into his first term. There was no reason for him to run up massive debt after year two. Yet he completely failed to get us back to pre-crisis levels. The economy was only being propped up because of his massive over spending and because the Fed kept rates so low for so long.

 

[evince]

Are you familiar with something called tactical calculus? I am. I served in the military. I am familiar with the weapons of war, troop strengths...among other things. One concern is the aging planes of our air force. They are mostly outdated, and we do not have anywhere near enough stockpiles of munitions or spare parts. Our troops are not properly trained because of a lack of funding. I've seen it first hand, so don't even try to deny it. Our military is weaker than most people realize. That's the truth.

and yet it is MASSIVE compared to every other countries on the earth.

who exactly are you on planning on attacking us?

 

[evince]

Charlie hates you racists

 

[evince]

Same old tired talking points. No, the tax cuts weren't predominantly for the upper income. It was predominantly for small business owners. The majority of the overall dollars still went to the lower and middle income families. Only on a per capita basis does it benefit the wealthy more and that is simply because they have so much more and pay so much more in income taxes.

The two wars were largely over when Obama came into office. Pretending otherwise is ridiculous. The recession ended in March of 2009. Two months into his first term. There was no reason for him to run up massive debt after year two. Yet he completely failed to get us back to pre-crisis levels. The economy was only being propped up because of his massive over spending and because the Fed kept rates so low for so long.

link