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I think more people in general should look at the actual structure of the budget. Four items alone soak up most of the money:
-Interest payments on debt
-Medicare/Medicaid
-Social Security
-The military/Department of Defense
Budget reform must focus on those four areas, or else it is meaningless.
There are quite a few distractions - like the Gravina Island "bridge to nowhere" - but their cost is absolutely minuscule compared to the price of the above four categories of spending.
I find it troubling that you appear to think it's okay to spend a boat load so long as you're honest about it.....
Now remind me who preaches to be the "party of fiscal responsibility"?
Anyhoo, what I find more troubling is that you and your buddies appear to believe that Obama WANTS to spend Trillions and Trillions of dollars, as though it's his goal in life to spend as much as humanly possible....
Here's a simple question. If we wipe out all the entitlements like I'm sure you wish we would, where do these people go? You understand that they have to live somewhere. Will you complain about all the tent cities and all the panhandlers and poor people on the street? What about the inherent uptick in crime? Will you fund police and prisons more instead?
What about other entitlements? Should we simply bar anyone who is hurt or sick but without insurance from our hospitals? If not, you realize with or without insurance YOU are paying for thier visit, right?
Seems to me you're going to complain either way about how this all goes down. Bottom line is that there's no great solution here. Getting rid of entitlements sounds good on the surface. I mean Social Security and Medicare are the two biggies that are going to bankrupt the nation, right?
But what do you propose we do instead? I'd love to hear it... I mean we can't fund these monsters, but yet we have no answer on what we do with people who depend on them...
And so we have a massive budget filled with entitlement programs because our stupid government is trying to take care of the people. SHAME on them!!!
If you got that impression from my postings, then surely you havent read enough of them.
I'd be perfectly fine with the federal government ONLY spending money on what they were supposed to.. Things like the military..
If you dont understand, I want the federal government to be spending ALMOST NOTHING.. Many of the other items you listed are STATE responsibilities and obligations, which the federal government should NEVER have gotten involved in..
You understand that Health Care reform is an attempt to FIX a broken entitlement right? The Health Care SYSTEM is broken...
This is/was an attempt to control the costs of health care. Whether you believe it would work or not is a fair fear to have, but to characterize it as a brand-new entitlement is off IMO...
To put it simply? I believe the philosophy of this Administration seems to be that you invest to fix things now so they cost less later...
If you focus on the initial cost? Yeah, you're going to HATE what you see. If you look down the road at how these things are supposed to work? You'd see the logic behind it (depending on who's economists you listen to)...
The healthcare system is broken because GOVERNMENT got involved and wont allow it to rectify itself. When the government dictates what coverage people need, where you can get coverage, how much to pay, who gets paid, what proceedures and tests need to be performed.. then its not able to fix itself..
That's a fair and reasonable post.
I would prefer that neither side spend like that.
So would I... Part of it is a belief that it is, in fact, necessary to spend like this to prevent an economic disaster... Health Care addresses a future crisis more than the present crisis which is why I can understand opposition to it based on the timing, but that was NOT the reasoning I'd been hearing from Republican opposition for the most part...
If you got that impression from my postings, then surely you havent read enough of them.
I'd be perfectly fine with the federal government ONLY spending money on what they were supposed to.. Things like the military..
If you dont understand, I want the federal government to be spending ALMOST NOTHING.. Many of the other items you listed are STATE responsibilities and obligations, which the federal government should NEVER have gotten involved in..
Hmmm, okay... I can respect this....
The problem is that the cow is out of the barn... I'd like to hear your proposal on how to get it back in...
Yes, the obvious comeback is "Let's start by not letting more cows out." (ie. Health Care) to which I'll respond that that cow IS already out and that the current attempt is to at least keep it on the farm...
This is damn scary. If you aren't scared, you're either blindly "progressive" or too naive to understand the DEPTH of this.
Bunker Building Mode Reactivated.
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