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Were it me, I would try and force a balanced budget and then have a sales tax solely dedicated to eliminate the national debt. When the debt is retired, the tax ends.
How will you compel the people who hold the debt to sell it back to you? In 95 cases out of 100, the reasons for which they bought Treasuries to begin with still apply. They DON'T WANT their money back at this point. Nor in many cases, will they want it back at any conceivable point in the future. If you worked at it, perhaps you could drive many into holding Euro-debt instead of dollar-debt, but how exactly would that be of any help to us? Simply responding to some fire-breathing Protestant preacher's general condemnations of debt isn't a very nuanced approach to things.
Actually, that's precisely how it works (in most situations). And nothing that you've posted contradicts that.
Well, I've been there, so I know better.
Quote:
Originally Posted by TaxPhd
I neither said nor implied any such thing. If asked, I would say that the existence of those branches of government doesn't necessarily have to be justified (does the Constitution allow for it?) but that zero-based budgeting would be orders of magnitude better than what is currently being done.
You could have simply said, no, even though it sounds nice, you don't really think that zero-based budgeting would be appropriate in those (and likely many, many other such) situations. And do note of course that federal powers do not need to be explicitly enumerated within the Constitution in order for them to exist.
Quote:
Originally Posted by TaxPhd
Nice job turning it back on me, but you didn't answer the question. Here it is again:
My opinions on spending cuts have not been placed on the table here. YOU are the one who has claimed not to believe that if the gov. has spent money on something in the past, it must necessarily continue that spending into perpetuity, at an increasing rate every year. YOU are the one who has further claimed that true spending cuts could easily be achieved. I have presented you with a fairly complete and detailed list of what the government spent money on in FY 2011. It should be a simple matter from there to do some slicing and dicing, but you have struggled with it at best.
It's an easy thing for one to stand there and say that spending is too high and we therefore need to cut SOMETHING. The work however gets harder from that point on.
Not at all. It simply realizes that an absence of growth in proportion to population and productivity increases is a cut. The same nominal number of dollars falls ever shorter of itself over time. This is a pretty elementary concept.
Your circle of friends is too small, and none of them has ever taken a course in federal financing.
To start with, there is always an underlying level of waste that costs more to eliminate than the waste itself does. No sensible person tries to go after that. Furthermore, so many hacks have gone to Washington pledging to root out waste, fraud, and abuse, that there just isn't any of it left to go after anymore. Obama pledged in 2008 to go over the budget line by line and come up with $2 billion in savings. He did come up with a couple of good ideas, but he never got near an actual $2 billion worth of savings. The reports of waste you hear are much like reports of there being gold in them thar hills. This is particularly true for the nonsense that CAGW or Tom Coburn put out. At the end of the day, waste is simply not something to lie awake about.
Well, sloppy juggling of buzzwords aside, most people don't really know anything about the federal budget process, but we haven't had typical federal budgeting for some time now, thanks to refusals to engage in the process by Congresses of both parties. Nevertheless, every program still does have to justify itself at agency and departmental levels, then it has to go through OMB for conformance with administration priorities. Then a request has to be transmitted to Congress. At that point, it should be debated by people who likely all have some idea of their own as to how better to spend the money. Appropriators realize only too well that tax dollars are scarce and no-nonsense competition for them is fierce. If you can't continually show the bang-for-the buck, you're going to get defunded. Many more good ideas get left on the committee room floor than bad ideas walk away with any money. But these days, partisanship and political exigencies will as likely force some sort of omnibus or continuing resolution grand compromise around that last part.
They all have. Do you think that rooms full of quill-pushing scribes are still squirreled away somewhere in the basements of federal office buildings?
You seem to have an answer to everything even if it is not responsive to the statements you cite. How long have you been involved in politics?
So for several years now we have talked about the 16, 18 and 20 trillion USD of debt that America has. We hear how we make cuts but yet despite cuts we see our debt increase year after year. There have been cuts but it's not enough to really make a dent. The biggest thing I see that our debt is a lot of talk of cutting taxes. In reality any tax cut leads to increasing debt. $2 of tax cuts for every $1 of budget cuts is still $1 of debt increased. I ask why can't we raise taxes if the national debt is such a problem for America?
You are asking a very good, but loaded question--so many parts.
My answer
1) Actually as of 2016, our national debt is not a problem. The interest payments on our debt and as a % of the federal budget is among the lowest in the past 60 years. Incredible, no? But true.
2) The ability of most lay people to understand numbers in a meaningful way declines as the number get huge. We owe about $20 trillion. Scary, right? Yet our GDP is about $18 trillion.
3) ^^This is like making $50K a year and owing $55K. But yet our interest payments are 1.24% of GDP (as of 2015). This is like making interest payments of $620 a year. Now...that is not so bad, is it?
4) Since 1944, the lowest % of debt/GDP was reached in 1959. Then it his 1.103%. The worst? 3.15% of GDP in 1991 owing to the build up to the Gulf War and the costs that accumulated fighting the Cold War.
5) Back to #3 above, think about what this calculation entails. $50K a year. But not guaranteed in this economy. with a loss of job and a downgrade of income, interest payments will become much larger and pinching. If your interest payments take on a larger %, then you will see larger payments. If your perceived needs increase, then you will feel the need to borrow more and thus have to make more payments. Finally, we all fantasize about the day when we no longer have to make payments.
6) Take #5 to the macro picture. A) We have been experiencing anemic growth. So our $50K is not growing to make it than much easier to make payments. B) We have been borrowing at rock bottom interest rates. If that changes that 1.24% will grow. C) When we do have more money in pocket we are not trying to retire debt but seem to want to borrow more. We are addicted to debt. The hope? In the second half of the Clinton years, we were using good fortune to pay down debt.
7) As you can see above, taxes are really not as important a payer in this game than growth and the desire to grow debt. If taxes can sure growth, then lower taxes will help the debt scenario. But if spending on things that are not very productive is coupled with tax cuts, then we will be growing debt. Be reassured, our interest payments as a % of GDP since 2001 have been below any year between 1980-2001 . Despite the stress of the financial crisis and the various wars.
You seem to have an answer to everything even if it is not responsive to the statements you cite. How long have you been involved in politics?
Save for voting and the occasional op-ed piece or two, I have never been involved in politics. I have long been involved in fact-finding however. You may be reacting to one or more of the outcomes of that.
You seem to have an answer to everything even if it is not responsive to the statements you cite. How long have you been involved in politics?
Pub 911 seems to have answer (and often an insult or snide comment) to many things. However, when you ask Pub to back something up with facts, you might not get an answer to that.
The hope? In the second half of the Clinton years, we were using good fortune to pay down debt.
Actually, we were using budget constraints and offsets developed by bipartisan panels to curb the dramatic excesses of the Reagan/Bush-41 years. In pop lingo, these have often been referred to as "Gramm-Rudman," even though that regime collapsed of its own accord. Clinton took the successor PAYGO limits seriously, and ended up with budget surpluses that allowed him to pay down $363 billion worth of debt held by the public over four years. With Bush-43 in office, PAYGO limits were simply scrapped in 2002, and we were back to running record deficits in 2003.
Quote:
Originally Posted by Sandpointian
If taxes can sure growth, then lower taxes will help the debt scenario.
Tax cuts always result in lower government revenues. They do not ever help the "debt scenario." What can be said is that tax cuts add to aggregate demand and can therefore have a stimulative effect on the economy as a whole. An expanded tax base can then serve to offset some part of the losses from reduced rates. Empirical analysis has suggested that as much as 30% of a nominal income tax cut could be recovered in this way, as could as much as 50% of a capital gains tax cut, again assuming a best-case scenario,
Pub 911 seems to have answer (and often an insult or snide comment) to many things. However, when you ask Pub to back something up with facts, you might not get an answer to that.
LOL! These are the sorts of posts that Moderators advise us either to ignore or report.
Save for voting and the occasional op-ed piece or two, I have never been involved in politics. I have long been involved in fact-finding however. You may be reacting to one or more of the outcomes of that.
Surprising. Our "public servants" always manage to find apologists.
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