What's 9.8 trillion among friends?

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blackangst1

Lifer
Feb 23, 2005
22,914
2,359
126
The Bush bashing is funny in this thread. More blame Bush. Typical of the left. Sorry, but Bush is no longer responsible. This is now clearly Obama's problem.

That said, I think we all agree we need to cut spending. Sure, we can do as the left wants and simply keep raising taxes on the rich; however, without changing massive amounts of tax code, those tax increases wont net much of anything. There are still too many loopholes. At the end of the day, spending needs to be cut. Even without the wars, we are in serious trouble. Which brings me to my point that the right doesnt like. To make cuts that are worth anything, we need to cut one of the largest areas of federal spending: defense. And the part of the budget the left doeswnt want to cut needs to be cut also: human services. These two make up about 60-70% of our federal budget, and neither side, I dont think, is willing to cut them. Although I agree the sweetheart deals included in alot of bills need to go, realistically they really arent that much, in comparison.
 

dmcowen674

No Lifer
Oct 13, 1999
54,894
47
91
www.alienbabeltech.com
Get over Bush already. This is Obama's work that we're talking about.

Or to be more precise, this is the Democrat's work since they have actually been in power for the past few years in congress. Remember, Congress is responsible for spending.

You can try to blame Bush all you want, but wishing won't make it true.

Stop lying, it's all over the news how Republicans have control especially since Brown got Taxachusetts.
 

GTaudiophile

Lifer
Oct 24, 2000
29,776
31
81
Meanwhile, the Republican who tries to stall legislation before we can find a way to pay for it gets crucified.

Face it: We need politicians with balls to come forward and tell the American people that we are in for some even more tough times and that we need to pay for it now such that this country has a viable future. These tough times will have to come in the form of higher taxes AND spending cuts.

And yes, cuts in education too. Everything will be cut. Quit crying. Get use to it.
 

Zebo

Elite Member
Jul 29, 2001
39,398
19
81
This is way way way low. It assume no more wars, fundi Muslims might have a bomb or two to say about that. It assumes that insurance cos won't raise premiums 300% when government is picking up the tab like they did in MASS. It assumes a 'recovery' and not having more deadbeats than producers.

EDIT: Deadbeats are killing USA.

We all know about welfare queens but they are nothing compared to Public sector employees and Finance in all it's forms.

Government employees, 20 million of them, who make 50% more than private thanks to yearly COLA bumps and unions, do not directly produce anything. Their employment and the wages and benefits they can collect inexorably track the actual productive output of the nation. This is failing right now without a productive base from which to draw thanks to off-shoring, outsourcing, and relocation of entire industry for various reasons. Usually due to their regs or Finance's cost cutting.

Finance, whether banking or insurance - produces nothing either. Every dollar of such "activity" comes about only as a parasitic drain on production. Speculative activity in all of its forms produces losers in exact proportion to winners, if Goldman makes $100 million speculating on oil prices, someone else loses the same $100 million. The net benefit to our nation's economy? Zero - we merely moved money from one hand to another. But they are making 33% of nations profits in an effort to kill domestic production.
 
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sandorski

No Lifer
Oct 10, 1999
70,085
5,618
126
Get over Bush already. This is Obama's work that we're talking about.

Or to be more precise, this is the Democrat's work since they have actually been in power for the past few years in congress. Remember, Congress is responsible for spending.

You can try to blame Bush all you want, but wishing won't make it true.

You are wrong. Sorry.
 

SparkyJJO

Lifer
May 16, 2002
13,357
7
81
You are wrong. Sorry.

Say that all you want. Doesn't make you right. I see no where that Obama spending more money is Bush's fault. As far as shifting the blame goes, the liberals are really good at that. They blame everything on Bush, they're pros at it.

But heck you don't even live here so what does it matter to you?
 

wiretap

Senior member
Sep 28, 2006
642
0
71
093_opt.png
 

StageLeft

No Lifer
Sep 29, 2000
70,150
5
0
Bush really was that stupid. He was increasing the size of government at an incredible rate and debt, too. he saw the first $2t and $3T federal budgets. Obama has grabbed the baton flawlessly, of course.
That said, I think we all agree we need to cut spending
Actually, no, we absolutely do not agree that. If I tell you I am going to cut back on drinking and immediately go to the store for more beer I'm either delusional or a liar.

Unfortunately the democrats, similar to Craig's post above "The debt is a serious problem, and while short-term massive stimulus is needed, we need to slash debt." say it but don't do it; they don't give a sh*t because ultimately they don't agree it needs to be cut. Part of that is that they're never looking beyond the next election and voters, also stupid, want to vote whoever can kick the can down the road longest.

This would have been just as bad with McCain. Of course it would have been. There is simply no will in Washington except in a small and marginalized minority, who actually want a balanced budget and, most importantly, would do what it takes to get one.
Face it: We need politicians with balls to come forward and tell the American people that we are in for some even more tough times and that we need to pay for it now such that this country has a viable future. These tough times will have to come in the form of higher taxes AND spending cuts.
They'll be laughed out of office. If I'm a fat bastard who loves to eat and hates to exercise and five doctors tell me they have a magic drug and another tells me I need to stop eating and hit the treadmill, which do I go with? Same thing here.
Bask in the glory of the Bush legacy.
Uh, no. You can't blame Bush on what the US federal budget is well into the 201X.
 

sandorski

No Lifer
Oct 10, 1999
70,085
5,618
126
Bush really was that stupid. He was increasing the size of government at an incredible rate and debt, too. he saw the first $2t and $3T federal budgets. Obama has grabbed the baton flawlessly, of course.Actually, no, we absolutely do not agree that. If I tell you I am going to cut back on drinking and immediately go to the store for more beer I'm either delusional or a liar.

Unfortunately the democrats, similar to Craig's post above "The debt is a serious problem, and while short-term massive stimulus is needed, we need to slash debt." say it but don't do it; they don't give a sh*t because ultimately they don't agree it needs to be cut. Part of that is that they're never looking beyond the next election and voters, also stupid, want to vote whoever can kick the can down the road longest.

This would have been just as bad with McCain. Of course it would have been. There is simply no will in Washington except in a small and marginalized minority, who actually want a balanced budget and, most importantly, would do what it takes to get one.
They'll be laughed out of office. If I'm a fat bastard who loves to eat and hates to exercise and five doctors tell me they have a magic drug and another tells me I need to stop eating and hit the treadmill, which do I go with? Same thing here.
Uh, no. You can't blame Bush on what the US federal budget is well into the 201X.

Yes I can, I have, and it's the Correct answer. Obama has been correcting colossal mistakes, nothing more.
 

Darwin333

Lifer
Dec 11, 2006
19,946
2,328
126
Yes.

Bush was that stupid.

Tell me again how Bush and the Republicans paid for their tax cuts, 2 on-going wars, a Big Pharma Give-A-Way, a 70% increase in baseline DoD spending and NCLB ?

Oh. I get it. Bush and the CONS break the gov't (and economy) and don't want to take responsibility for it.

Typical.




--

Ok, you win.

Bush broke it.

We are still fucked.

Happy?
 

woolfe9999

Diamond Member
Mar 28, 2005
7,164
0
0
Bush really was that stupid. He was increasing the size of government at an incredible rate and debt, too. he saw the first $2t and $3T federal budgets. Obama has grabbed the baton flawlessly, of course.Actually, no, we absolutely do not agree that. If I tell you I am going to cut back on drinking and immediately go to the store for more beer I'm either delusional or a liar.

Unfortunately the democrats, similar to Craig's post above "The debt is a serious problem, and while short-term massive stimulus is needed, we need to slash debt." say it but don't do it; they don't give a sh*t because ultimately they don't agree it needs to be cut. Part of that is that they're never looking beyond the next election and voters, also stupid, want to vote whoever can kick the can down the road longest.
.

I don't know what your typical liberal feels about public debt. I am a democrat but not a progressive on every issue. This democrat believes that public debt is the number 1 concern in our national politics right now.

Expressing generic concern about the debt is totally meaningless. You seem to be under the impression that democrats care less about the debt because they don't rail on about it as often as republicans, while probably failing to notice that republicans were a lot quieter about it from 2000-2008 than they are now. Some spoke up about it then, but not many.

The question of the debt is not the generic concern or worry. That is meaningless and hollow words. The question is what we are going to do about it, *specifically*. Saying you support "cutting spending" is getting a little more specific, but it's still worthless posturing.

Conquering the deficit is "hard" in the sense that it will cause *pain*, but how to do it is not rocket science. This issue is nowhere near the complexity of say, reforming healthcare.

These things generally need to be done:

Reforming Medicare, which is a euphemism for cutting it.
Reforming SS, which is a euphemism for cutting it (this is less a problem than Medicare and can be tweaked a little.)
Cutting Defense
Cutting non-defense discretionary spending
*Raising Taxes

I put raising taxes in their with an * because it's a sliding mathematical scale. The more you cut the less you need to raise, the more you raise the less you need to cut.

Since each of these things will cause pain - more expensive healthcare for seniors, raising the retirement age again, laying off federal employees, cutting back on defense, higher withholdings from paychecks or elsewhere - in my opinion the only plausible approach is to do ALL of these things, so that the pain is not experienced disproportionately in one area.

If we do it all by tax increases, then its a massive amount of new taxes. If we take it all out of Medicare, then seniors will pay 20x what they currently pay for their medical care. If we take it all out of defense, we're talking about cutting defense by 80%. So you spread the pain around.

Find me one partisan democrat or republican who supports doing all of these things. There isn't a single one I can think of. The democrats generally would support raising taxes and cutting defense. The republicans so far as I can see support literally none of it. They might want to roll back non-defense discretionary spending a little, which by the way is 12% of our annual budget (the portion that Obama wants to raise this year). I can see repubs, centrist dems, and Obama agreeing to small Medicare cuts, after November of course. But it won't be near enough.

The bottom line is that if the two political parties, and the equally polarized electorate, cannot compromize their ideological "principles," we are basically doomed.

Accordingly, injecting any sort of partisan polemic into any conversation about the debt is worse than sticking our heads in the sand and pretending the problem doesn't exist.

- wolf
 

Steeplerot

Lifer
Mar 29, 2004
13,051
6
81
So awesome how that graph is so badly photoshopped the 12 in 2012 isnt even the right font size. You fail at propaganda wiretap.

1183uie.jpg
 

Zebo

Elite Member
Jul 29, 2001
39,398
19
81
I don't know what your typical liberal feels about public debt. I am a democrat but not a progressive on every issue. This democrat believes that public debt is the number 1 concern in our national politics right now.

Expressing generic concern about the debt is totally meaningless. You seem to be under the impression that democrats care less about the debt because they don't rail on about it as often as republicans, while probably failing to notice that republicans were a lot quieter about it from 2000-2008 than they are now. Some spoke up about it then, but not many.

The question of the debt is not the generic concern or worry. That is meaningless and hollow words. The question is what we are going to do about it, *specifically*. Saying you support "cutting spending" is getting a little more specific, but it's still worthless posturing.

Conquering the deficit is "hard" in the sense that it will cause *pain*, but how to do it is not rocket science. This issue is nowhere near the complexity of say, reforming healthcare.

These things generally need to be done:

Reforming Medicare, which is a euphemism for cutting it.
Reforming SS, which is a euphemism for cutting it (this is less a problem than Medicare and can be tweaked a little.)
Cutting Defense
Cutting non-defense discretionary spending
*Raising Taxes

I put raising taxes in their with an * because it's a sliding mathematical scale. The more you cut the less you need to raise, the more you raise the less you need to cut.

Since each of these things will cause pain - more expensive healthcare for seniors, raising the retirement age again, laying off federal employees, cutting back on defense, higher withholdings from paychecks or elsewhere - in my opinion the only plausible approach is to do ALL of these things, so that the pain is not experienced disproportionately in one area.

If we do it all by tax increases, then its a massive amount of new taxes. If we take it all out of Medicare, then seniors will pay 20x what they currently pay for their medical care. If we take it all out of defense, we're talking about cutting defense by 80%. So you spread the pain around.

Find me one partisan democrat or republican who supports doing all of these things. There isn't a single one I can think of. The democrats generally would support raising taxes and cutting defense. The republicans so far as I can see support literally none of it. They might want to roll back non-defense discretionary spending a little, which by the way is 12% of our annual budget (the portion that Obama wants to raise this year). I can see repubs, centrist dems, and Obama agreeing to small Medicare cuts, after November of course. But it won't be near enough.

The bottom line is that if the two political parties, and the equally polarized electorate, cannot compromize their ideological "principles," we are basically doomed.

Accordingly, injecting any sort of partisan polemic into any conversation about the debt is worse than sticking our heads in the sand and pretending the problem doesn't exist.

- wolf

Mearly removing the 100K cap on SS tax would raise 500B. It's all about taxes. We did all this spending just fine in the 50's, 60's and 70's before RR and GWB went ape shit and gave top earners a free ride. After which we went from biggest creditor nation to largest debtor. I'd hate to see the receipts if you applied SS tax to cap gains, unearned income and stock options but I've never seen those stats. Pay off national debt in couple three years?

I'm pretty RW on lots of things school choice, vouchers, guns, Israel, toning down govt, environment regs and so on but taxes need something between an Eisenhower top rate of 91% and 35%, Cap gains, where most rich/smart money is drawn from needs something higher than 15%. It aint right a hedge fund manager is making $2B and paying less percentage (15%) than a plumber. We also need to take care of weakest among us, sure give em pain, incentivise getting off but leaving them homeless, foodless, medicalcareless aint right juxtaposed to obscene wealth we have in this country.

Another thing, it's not like these folks (excluding seniors) don't wanna work. They do, but the corps have pitted regular Americans against slave wage and police state regimes so there is no jobs for most regular folks. And guess what when foreigners get uppity overseas corps move yet again. Thailand to Vietnam then to Malaysia and so forth pitting the worlds underclass against one another in a race to bottom. Unless we want to have caste system I think it behoves us to only trade with countries which respect basic labor, property and environmental rights - doesnt have to be exactly the same but +- 25% in all matrices.
 
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wiretap

Senior member
Sep 28, 2006
642
0
71
So awesome how that graph is so badly photoshopped the 12 in 2012 isnt even the right font size. You fail at propaganda wiretap.

1183uie.jpg
It's meant to be a joke.. I know, it was hard to tell. ;) But seriously.. he's spent more than every president in US history combined when you include the bailouts. Sickening. IMO, my joke graph wasn't tall enough.
 

Ozoned

Diamond Member
Mar 22, 2004
5,578
0
0
Mearly removing the 100K cap on SS tax would raise 500B. It's all about taxes. We did all this spending just fine in the 50's, 60's and 70's before RR and GWB went ape shit and gave top earners a free ride. After which we went from biggest creditor nation to largest debtor. I'd hate to see the receipts if you applied SS tax to cap gains, unearned income and stock options but I've never seen those stats. Pay off national debt in couple three years?

I'm pretty RW on lots of things school choice, vouchers, guns, Israel, toning down govt, environment regs and so on but taxes need something between an Eisenhower top rate of 91% and 35%, Cap gains, where most rich/smart money is drawn from needs something higher than 15%. It aint right a hedge fund manager is making $2B and paying less percentage (15%) than a plumber. We also need to take care of weakest among us, sure give em pain, incentivise getting off but leaving them homeless, foodless, medicalcareless aint right juxtaposed to obscene wealth we have in this country.

Another thing, it's not like these folks (excluding seniors) don't wanna work. They do, but the corps have pitted regular Americans against slave wage and police state regimes so there is no jobs for most regular folks. And guess what when foreigners get uppity overseas corps move yet again. Thailand to Vietnam then to Malaysia and so forth pitting the worlds underclass against one another in a race to bottom. Unless we want to have caste system I think it behoves us to only trade with countries which respect basic labor, property and environmental rights - doesnt have to be exactly the same but +- 25% in all matrices.
I think SS tax should be tied to production or consumption, something other than income. It used to take 3 guys, now it takes 1 guy and a robot. The robot doesn't pay SS.
 

Zebo

Elite Member
Jul 29, 2001
39,398
19
81
I think SS tax should be tied to production or consumption, something other than income. It used to take 3 guys, now it takes 1 guy and a robot. The robot doesn't pay SS.

Applying SS to all forms of income amounts to the same thing.

I don't know if I'd go that far though. Certainly not corp income which all taxes should be eliminated. I've never understood corp taxes, you tax people, not corps saving for a rainy day and competing internationally. Even Sweden, where you can go craddle to grave never working doesnt have corp taxes.
 

LumbergTech

Diamond Member
Sep 15, 2005
3,622
1
0
if anyone truly cared about this crap, we could all get together and you know............vote someone who isn't democrat or republican into office...

of course we cant agree on the definition of 3 letter words , so that will never happen
 

ProfJohn

Lifer
Jul 28, 2006
18,251
8
0
I'm not going to argue about your piss poor power or railroads.

Living in Sheffield i really don't need a car, if i should miss one bus to the rails there comes another one within five minutes.

An investment on infrastructure like that should come during good times though, but some twat was preoccupied with a war that probably cost as much to sell based on bought lies as it does to fight it.

I'd pity you but you voted for the twat TWICE!
You live in a country that has 1000 people per square mile, we live in a country that has 83 people per square mile. Mass transit makes little sense in most of our country because the people live too spaced out for it to work.

BTW according to wiki the Sheffield urban area has a population of 640,000 and is the 8th largest urban area in the United Kingdom. It is also about the same size as Birmingham Alabama, which is the 55th largest urban area in the US. You Brits seem to forget about stuff like this when you talk about us. We are a country with 5 times your population and 40 times your land mass. Therefore, our infrastructure IS far greater and far more complicated than yours in every way measurable.