"I still don't see a sense of urgency from the president about the massive federal debt," said Sen. Lamar Alexander, Tennessee Republican. "His budget calls for too much government borrowing -- even though the debt is already at a level that makes it harder to create private-sector jobs."
I don't see much of a sense of urgency even from the Tea Party folks that we sent to Washington.
I sent them there to make cuts.
They are afraid to "cut popular programs".
I repeat: I sent them there to make cuts.
I hope they figure it out, not to repeat that stupid "popular programs" mantra.
MAKE SOME SUBSTANTIAL CUTS, including entitlements!
#1
A better way to visualise this is to say that whatever you earned this year the government is over-drawn by that amount.
As interest rates start climbing the load of this debt AND the larger private debt will cripple the country.
The problem was that GDP measurements did NOT discount increases in debt (private and state) and thus the wrong information about the health of the economy became "common knowledge"...
It's a bit like a asking a high junky if they're good, and the come-down will be the same if the debt is used for consumption rather than investment...
#2
I read yesterday in our local newspaper there is $703 billion in unobligated funds sitting around in various agencies. I realize this is small potatoes compared to our debt but it is a start. Also, aren't there stimulus funds that weren't spent? Use these funds to pay down the debt.
All new spending in Washington needs to be frozen now. Stop all new legislation that needs new spending.
The debt is spread between mandatory spending and discretionary spending. BO's 2011 budget proposes $2.009 trillion in mandatory spending. He wants to cut in this area by 20.1%. Currently we are spending as follows according to the U.S. Debt Clock: Social Security ($799 billion), Medicare ($704 b), Federal Pensions ($200 b), Interest on the Debt ($200 b), and Income Security ($434 b). Mandatory spending needs to be cut also or at least a workable plan implemented for reducing this indebtedness. His budget allocates $1.368 trillion to discretionary spending (an increase of 13.1%). I have heard politicians and others say that reducing discretionary spending really doesn't add up to much. However, it adds up to $1.368 trillion. This would be the money going to defense and all other agencies. There's a need to consider cutting budgets of agencies and maybe eliminating some of them.
I don't know about you but the amount spent for Federal Pensions seems way out of whack when one considers the number of people employed by the government in comparison to the number who don't work for the government.
Income Security is another name for Welfare. This is currently (year-to-date) estimated to be $434 b.
BO needs to get rid of his cockamamie ideas about spending his way into prosperity.
Term limits for all politicians so that they won't be trying to buy votes for re-election.
The elected politicians need to have some adult conversations about the above and be honest and straightforward with the American people. The voters tried to send a strong message to Washington in the last election.
If we are a broke country, we cannot be a strong country.
#1
We could just outsource all the pols they same way they helped companies outsource all the workers.
After all its the logical end game when raping a nation .. isn't it?
Posted by: Water Modem ||
02/14/2011 14:37 Comments ||
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#4
This may well be his strategy, although I doubt he came up with it.
Posted by: Deacon Blues ||
02/14/2011 19:31 Comments ||
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#5
Another theory is ya aim 10-15% higher than needed, then both the cutters and proposer look like winners.
I suspect Deacon's link is more likely, with the narrative indicators over the last 3 months. Let the House choose what to cut so the ink is on their hands. Whatever the play, that is the formation and to the House...hope that isn't the play, nope nope nope.
The tableware, the color of mucus and as bendable as a pocket watch in a Salvador Dali painting (and thus unable to pierce any foodstuff firmer than the innards of Brie cheese), was the most visible manifestation of recently deposed House Speaker Nancy Pelosi's Green the Capitol initiative. That was her carbon-cutting effort to use the food-service and other House operations to fight global warming and a host of other perceived environmental, health and social ills. During the lunchtime rush, you could observe dozens of staffers struggling to stab lettuce leaves and poultry pieces with fork tines that appeared to be double-jointed as well as dull.
[Al Jazeera] Barack B.O. Obama, the US president, is set to unveil his fiscal 2012 budget on Monday, an election-year plan forged from conflicting needs to cut spending and stoke the economic recovery.
With vast crisis payments and sharply lower tax revenues making it difficult for the government to balance its books, Obama will set out an austerity plan that will help set the tone for next year's presidential race.
It is expected to address widespread public anger that the government is living beyond its means, detailing sweeping spending cuts while including some investments.
To square the circle, Obama's proposed budget for fiscal 2012 will seek to cut the record federal deficit, slashing energy subsidies for the poor and freeze public workers' pay.
But faced with high unemployment and an economic recovery that is still struggling to escape the orbit of the 2008 economic crisis, Obama will also give states more flexibility to pay for unemployment benefits.
Most of the projected savings would be achieved through two changes would require congressional approval.
At 2,448 pages and a weight of 4.5kg, the budget will contain something for most members of congress, but plenty more that will be loathed.
On the eve of of the budget's publication, Republicans have been promoting ever-deeper spending cuts and criticising Obama for not doing enough.
Republicans argue spending cuts will help boost growth, while the B.O. regime argues cuts are needed, but should be carefully measured for fear of derailing the recovery.
Posted by: Fred ||
02/14/2011 00:00 ||
Comments ||
Link ||
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#3
it's criminal what's been happening to the US economy. It's now screwed because of a whacked out mix of socialism and bail-outs.
Bailing out the banks was outright socialism of the worst order. Whatever happened to the power of creative destruction, the engine of capitalism.
All those smaller and mid-level banks who did NOT create a moral hazard would have grown to fill the shoes of the big guys who went bust - in time. Yes it would be painful but it ensures the system is healthy.
You have to purge every now and then.
Instead: a trillion in corporate handouts that largely went to bonuses or offshore.
And then the handouts to the UN.... more billions wasted.
And then the handouts to foreign aid...more billions wasted.
And then the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan: if they're not going to do it properly and put the cesspits under martial law like Japan and Germany post WWII then get the hell out of there and stop risking US lives and more billions wasted year after year.
Do it properly or go away and stop wasting the hard earned dollars of US taxpayers.
And then the refusal to take China to task over the Yuan. Where are the tariffs that should have been slapped on all Chinese imports about 5 years ago?????
more jobs lost and billions wasted.
After all that has rooted the US economy fair and square
I don't understand how the humble requirement of Government to spend US taxes on US citizens comes in for such a drubbing.
It's foreign adventurism that wastes it.
Government should provide basic healthcare, education and transport infrastructure for the citizenry in a developed country. Plus sewers, and clean drinking water and rubbish collection. That is why we pay tax: for services!!
#4
"Government should provide basic healthcare, education and transport infrastructure for the citizenry in a developed country. Plus sewers, and clean drinking water and rubbish collection. That is why we pay tax: for services!!"
The Federal government should not be doing any of that. That's a state or local job. The Federal government getting into those areas is the problem.
Posted by: Laurence of the Rats ||
02/14/2011 10:32 Comments ||
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#5
The austerity program is for those who pay taxes, as 1/3 of the "savings" will come from increased taxes.
Posted by: regular joe ||
02/14/2011 11:11 Comments ||
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#6
correct, Laurence, but I would add that the interstate highway system, interstate rail and air system is a Federal responsibility, the rest? Not so much
Posted by: Frank G ||
02/14/2011 11:14 Comments ||
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#7
> "Government should provide basic healthcare, education and transport infrastructure for the citizenry in a developed country
Hah, Rubbish the state should do Connectivity (transport infrastructure ), but the others are individual goods which are vastly better without the states monopoly bureaucrat directed provision*.
*The state [sh|c]ould mandate that Children get an education, it might even force those not involved in their reproduction to subsidise the education (which is still a bad idea), but actually school provision? No.
#9
Note that the Interstate Highway System, Interstate Rail, and Air transportation facilitate interstate commerece - the commerce clause in the classical sense.
Education, Healthcare, EPA, FDA, and most of the other alphabet soup agencies hinder commerce (intrastate, interstate or international) - yet the Feds are using the commerce clause to justify them - this is the Commerce Clause in the twisted, stapled, and mutilated sense.
#10
I'd go for 10% across the board, INCLUDING that which I am only four years way form partaking in - social security and medicare.
Include it ALL in the trimming. Everything.
Trim it all,
Trim it all,
Trim the long and the short and the tall...
Posted by: Bobby ||
02/14/2011 14:01 Comments ||
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#11
I don't like the fact that I am paying Medicare Tax and when I took my better half to the doctor this morning a big sign on the window said "We do not accept Medicare." Which means, when I get old, I can't use Medicare because the government has screwed it up so bad doctors won't take it. The government therefore has not right doing health care, whatsoever.
#12
Oh, dear. Today's comments are all over the place on this issue.
Doctors who can afford to reject Medicare patients are few and far between. Somebody must be accepting those patients, otherwise Medicare expenditures would amount to nothing.
The Federal and State involvement in the provision of education dates back to the North West Ordinance of 1785, which pre-dates the US Constitution. The Ordinance has been re-affirmed many times by federal and state legislatures before and after the adoption of the US Constitution. Some provision for education by the governments has become part of the organic law of the USA and its states. That is not to say that "No Child Allowed to Excel" and the "Department of Boondoggles Education" are good ideas.
Some opinions from today's Bloomberg.com:
Social Securitys problem is one of demographics: an increasingly large number of retirees have to be supported by a relatively smaller base of workers.
Easy fixes for Social Security ... include indexing initial benefits to prices instead of wages; raising the retirement age to reflect longer life expectancy; and means-testing benefits. ...
If Republicans explained that cuts are inevitable once discretionary spending is squeezed out by entitlements, people would understand, says Veronique De Rugy, senior research fellow at George Mason Universitys Mercatus Center in Arlington, Virginia. People already understand that. However they REFUSE to accept it. Republicans who cut entitlements will not be re-elected.
I suspect people already understand. What they dont get, or arent willing to accept, is that the only solution short of crushing the economy with confiscatory tax rates is benefit cuts.
There was a time when Americans accepted the idea of shared sacrifice for the greater good of the nation. The government didnt fight wars and lower taxes at the same time. It didnt waste money on programs whose cost exceeded the benefit. And it didnt grant a tax break to any special interest group willing to pay for it.
#13
Doctors who can afford to reject Medicare patients are few and far between. Somebody must be accepting those patients, otherwise Medicare expenditures would amount to nothing.
I don't know about anybody else's doctors, but mine have put up signs that they aren't accepting any new Medicaid patients. And my GP offers the choice of an annual fee for services like after-hours telephone consults and records copying, or a higher cost on a per-item basis, which used to be part of his regular service. And he's one of the good ones who spends time talking with each patient rather than rushing them through at precisely 20 minutes per.
A multi-volume chronology and reference guide set detailing three years of the Mexican Drug War between 2010 and 2012.
Rantburg.com and borderlandbeat.com correspondent and author Chris Covert presents his first non-fiction work detailing
the drug and gang related violence in Mexico.
Chris gives us Mexican press dispatches of drug and gang war violence
over three years, presented in a multi volume set intended to chronicle the death, violence and mayhem which has
dominated Mexico for six years.
Rantburg was assembled from recycled algorithms in the United States of America. No
trees were destroyed in the production of this weblog. We did hurt some, though. Sorry.
