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You even admitted that the Republicans agreed to revenue increases. Obviously that's their counter, the democrats now have to come up with significant and hopefully equal -- dollar for dollar -- spending cuts. What's so hard about that?
Wrong. We have seen no actual detailed offer by the Republicans at all, let alone a counter.
My god man, but it appears you've never negotiated as much as the price of an ice cream cone.
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Originally Posted by malamute
All this deficit could actually be solved by spending cuts alone.
Only an idiot who desperately desires a second great depression could genuinely believe that.
The deficit could be solved with tax cuts alone. It could be solved with tax increases alone, or it could be solved with a combination of the two. I think a combination of the two is the best path forward.
If I were Obama, I'd go back over past budgets and find one from when the country ran in the black ink. And just go with that same plan.
Would you magically end the war in Afghanistan, the Euro Crisis, return China to an agrarian backwater and reduce the US population by 30 million at the same time?
Would you magically end the war in Afghanistan, the Euro Crisis, return China to an agrarian backwater and reduce the US population by 30 million at the same time?
Because that would be a really neat trick.
Yes, yes, and yes.
Having our guys fighting in Afghanistan accomplishes nothing at all. The Euro Crisis is not our problem, it's their foolishness in going with the euro and some stupid union in the first place. We need jobs here for the American people, China can deal with it's own people -- it's now got the technology to keep moving forward.
And if 30 million foreigners are here illegally -- then yes, the population can be decreased by that much. Otherwise --- just use one of those past balanced budgets and adjust proportionately for the more people who are here now.
If in 1960, $2 billion was spent on some program and the population is double what it was, then $4 billion. Programs added that caused the budget deficits should just be shut down -- if we didn't need them in 1960, then we don't need them now.
It doesn't matter. Dollars are fungible. It does not change the actual deficit. Excluding it as part of the calculation (on the other hand) is accounting legerdemain and does not actually make hundreds of billions of dollars evaporate. It only soothes the envious delusions of right wing apologists.
No, that's called fraud in all 50 states if you use money that's in a "trust" for your own gain.
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Originally Posted by HistorianDude
Again... this claim can only be made by cooking the books and pretending that Social Security is not part of the Federal Budget. Guess what? Social Security actually is part of the Federal Budget.
That's admitting that there is no Trust Fund and it's basically just a tax for the general use of the government. Maybe you should tell your liberal friends that they can stop using the word Trust Fund when talking about SS and to start using taxes.
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Originally Posted by HistorianDude
Look, I know it actually makes your teeth hurt that Clinton delivered the first balanced budgets in a generation and that Bush then proceeded to destroy our national solvency with tax cuts, two foreign wars and a new Medicare pharmacy benefit that was never paid for. I know you hate that so much you would do almost anything to change history.
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Urging Congress to Stay with What Works. President Clinton warned that proposals by Congressional Republicans for irresponsible tax cuts, spending the Social Security surplus, and across-the-board spending cuts would threaten our continued prosperity. The President urged Congress to keep America on this course of progress by passing his budget plan, which pays down the debt, protects Social Security, strengthens and modernizes Medicare, and invests in national priorities like education, health care, public safety, and the environment.
But playing games with the numbers will not accomplish that for you. Changing the accounting method from cash accounting to accrual accounting is merely another example of what Megan Kelley called "Math that you do as a Republican to make yourself feel better."
Um, that's simply a stupid comment seeing as how the Treasury Department is who puts out the Financial Report of the US Government and that's been coming out since 1995 under two democrats and one republican president.
Talk about self-delusion and a bunch of tomfoolery.
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Originally Posted by HistorianDude
I'm a liberal. We're relativists for whom the answer to any question is, "It depends." Actual hypocrisy is primarily the franchise of the right wing where reasoning is too simplistic to allow for more than two options for anything. I have little fear of being an actual hypocrite. I will never be a fundamentalist preacher caught trading drugs for gay sex, or a senator tapping his feet in restroom stalls to solicit the same, or cheat on my (second) wife while leading the impeachment of the President over his extramarital affair.
Onemoregin...
Quote:
Urging Congress to Stay with What Works. President Clinton warned that proposals by Congressional Republicans for irresponsible tax cuts, spending the Social Security surplus, and across-the-board spending cuts would threaten our continued prosperity. The President urged Congress to keep America on this course of progress by passing his budget plan, which pays down the debt, protects Social Security, strengthens and modernizes Medicare, and invests in national priorities like education, health care, public safety, and the environment.
Quote:
Originally Posted by HistorianDude
I'm all for Social Security reform. And we don't need to lie about the Clinton era surplus to do it.
You're going to have to lie about it because it will most certainly come up when you tell people they're going to need to do this:
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Lawmakers could eliminate the actuarial deficit for the 75-year period by immediately increasing the combined payroll tax from 12.40 percent to 15.16 percent,1 immediately decreasing scheduled benefits by 17.0 percent, or using a combination of these approaches. The Trustees project that these changes would be sufficient to eliminate the actuarial deficit and leave an actuarial balance of zero for the OASDI program.
And people will certainly be asking about that trust fund the democrats repeatedly told them about for decades on end. Heck, Obama already admitted to it:
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I cannot guarantee that those checks go out on August 3 if we haven't resolved this issue because there may simply not be the money in the coffers to do it.
~Obama~
Simply put, if they don't raise the debt ceiling and continue to take on more and more debt then they simply have no SS program and there was never any money invested in it anyways. Then democrats will have to admit that it's a tax for the general use of the government and that they'll have to raise those taxes and cut benefits or do one or the other in a much more extreme way.
Since 1960, transfer payments to individuals have grown from one-third to two-thirds of all federal government spending. It is crowding out investments in defense, infrastructure and research. On a per person basis, entitlement spending has leaped 700 percent with the average annual burden for every man, woman and child in America now at $7,200, he said.
Simple question to the posters here on the right--specifically what do the Republicans want to cut? They have been consistently adamant that there must be cuts--let's see details of where they want to make them. How hard is that?
bek their candidate lost. now the hot seat is on the dems to do spending cuts.
they get to be the bad buy.
Nope, for months now it's been the Republicans, not the Democrats, who have insisted that we need deep spending cuts, but they refuse to spell out what cuts they want.
Instead, what we're hearing from Republicans is this: We demand spending cuts! Now, President Obama, tell us what those spending cuts that we demand are going to be.
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