http://online.wsj.com/article/SB1000...172357504.html
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Third rail(s) touched: politically unwise?
Unwise, and I think, maybe misguided. Unwilling to touch military spending is telling.
MI spending is the hidden rail.
Another one is declining revenue.Quote:
MI spending is the hidden rail.
Simplification of the tax code and elimination of special interest loopholes is way overdue, but I tend to doubt tax cuts and nothing but tax cuts will be very good medicine.
Quote:
Originally Posted by Winehole23
There are no spending cuts?
Sure there are. The context of my remark was the revenue side and tax reform.
In these times, I think people are more cognizant that something needs to be done with SS&M, so IMO touching the third rail isn't as deadly as it once was. The politically unwise part is touching the third rail while simultaneously talking about being "revenue neutral" and not touching defense.Quote:
Originally Posted by Winehole23
Destroying Medicare and Medicaid without touching health insurance, BigPharma, doctor, hospital gouging is as telling as not touching bloated, corrupt, wasteful defense. And then there's defunding SEC, EPA, IRS, CFPA, etc.
And the Big Lie of Soc Sec as an "entitlement", which is as big of a Big Lie that WI taxpayers pay for WI govt employee retirement fund.
Class warfare at its most vicious. Protect and enrich the "victimized" wealthy, fuck everybody else as useless, worthless cheaters, freeloaders, Welfare Queens.
I like how 2% or 4%, 1 cent or 5 million, does not even matter apparently. With that mentality, how the fuck do you get out of debt.
"how the fuck do you get out of debt."
undo the policy decisions that caused the debt:
1. stop Repug wars.
2. rollback tax cuts to 2000, or even to early 1990s.
3. kill all subsidies, tax breaks, etc for corporations, esp the transfer pricing scam, offshore tax havens, etc.
4. roll back the TX property tax cuts of 2006
5. close the hedge/equity fund tax loophole.
etc, etc, etc.
The bad-faith, total dishonesty, and Class War essence of the Repug program is blatantly clear.
btw, Robert Reich has a great point: the more Repugs fuck up govt at all levels, the more they can say "See, We Repugs Told You the Fucked Govt Is The Problem"
Republican Paul Ryan's budget proposal is brave, radical, and smart --- says Slate editor?
http://www.slate.com/id/2290509/?from=rss
Quote:
For the past 30 years, Republicans have been hypocrites about spending. They've raged against big government without ever proposing the kinds of cuts necessary to bring federal expenditures in line with tax revenues. Democrats have been more fiscally responsible, producing an actual budget surplus during Bill Clinton's second term. But they've been little better than Republicans when it comes to confronting the nation's long-term fiscal imbalance, which is driven by the projected growth in entitlement spending.
This dynamic of political evasion and reality-denial may have undergone a fundamental shift today with the release of Rep. Paul Ryan's 2012 budget resolution. The Wisconsin Republican's genuinely radical plan goes where Ronald Reagan and Newt Gingrich never did by terminating the entitlement status of Medicare and Medicaid. (It doesn't touch the third major entitlement, Social Security, though Ryan has elsewhere argued for extending its life by gradually raising the retirement age to 70.) Ryan changes Medicare into a voucher, which would be used to purchase private health insurance. He turns Medicaid into a block grant for states to spend as they choose. Though his budget committee isn't responsible for taxes, Ryan includes the boldest tax reform proposal since the 1980s, proposing to lower top individual and corporate rates to 25 percent and end deductions. While he's at it, Ryan caps domestic spending, repeals Obamacare, slashes farm subsidies, and more.
If the GOP gets behind his proposals in a serious way, it will become for the first time in modern memory an intellectually serious party—one with a coherent vision to match its rhetoric of limited government. Democrats are within their rights to point out the negative effects of Ryan's proposed cuts on future retirees, working families, and the poor. He was not specific about many of his cuts, and Democrats have a political opportunity in filling in the blanks. But the ball is now in their court, and it will be hard to take them seriously if they don't respond with their own alternative path to debt reduction and long-term solvency.
And before they reject everything in Ryan's plan, liberals might want to consider whether some of what he proposes doesn't in fact serve their own ultimate goals. Ryan's proposal to turn Medicare into a voucher provides an easy political target. But it's hard to make a principled liberal case for the program in its current form. To do so, you have to argue that government-paid health care should be a right only for people over the age of 65, and for no one else. Medicare covers doctor and hospital bills at 100 percent, regardless of income. This gives doctors and patients an incentive to maximize their use of the system and waste public resources. Choosing to pay 100 percent of Warren Buffett's medical bills while cutting Head Start reflects a strange set of social priorities, to say the least.
Ryan's alternative to Medicare hardly seems as terrible as Paul Krugman makes out. Seniors would enter the health care world the rest of us live in, with co-payments, deductibles and managed care. Eventually, cost control would require some tough decisions about end-of-life care and the rationing of high-tech treatments that have limited efficacy. But starting with a value of $15,000 per year, per senior—the amount government now spends on Medicare—Ryan's vouchers should provide excellent coverage. His change would amount to a minor amendment to the social contract, not a fundamental revision of it.
Effectively constraining the growth of Medicare could make it possible for Democrats to do a lot else that's important to them in the future. In 2010, Medicare spending was $519 billion, as compared with $666 billion for all nondefense domestic discretionary spending. Growing at more than 7 percent a year, Medicare is projected to eventually consume nearly all federal tax revenues. It is crowding out everything else that Washington does or might want to do. Conversely, cutting Medicare's growth rate to near the overall rate of the economy would do more than anything else to enable the kind of activist government liberals support—investment in kids, education, jobs, and infrastructure. Ryan's goal isn't to empower the federal government. But if your goal is a more interventionist public sector, you might find yourself on Ryan's side of the Medicare debate.
Of the alternatives we face in controlling long-term spending growth, moving Medicare to a voucher system seems only mildly unfortunate—and nothing as compared with a debt-driven economic crisis that could stem from inaction. As Ryan rightly points out, this kind of crisis could come at any time and could cast a pall over the country's entire future. Keeping Medicare as a fee-for-service program simply isn't worth that risk. If anything, liberals should go further than Ryan did in this plan, adding a means-test that would diminish Medicare subsidies for upper-income beneficiaries.
There are, of course, some sleight-of-hand tricks in Ryan's plan. What he claims would restore fiscal balance would do nothing of the kind over the next decade, leaving $400 billion in annual deficits as far as the eye can see. That's because he slips a large tax cut into his "reform," leaving government revenues perpetually two percentage points lower than spending expenditures as a share of GDP. What's needed is not more tax cuts but a modest tax increase, of the kind the Simpson-Bowles fiscal commission proposed. That failure is easily remedied, however, by adopting a top rate higher than the 25 percent he proposes, though still lower than the current 35 percent level.
Ryan also evades a lot of difficult particulars. He seldom spells out domestic spending cuts, preferring to kick the can down the road by applying "caps." He skirts the question of which deductions and tax subsidies he'd eliminate to pay for these lower rates. Unfortunately, you don't get big savings unless you eliminate mortgage interest and charitable deductions, which would be politically unpopular. Ryan includes the Heritage Foundation's projections about job growth triggered by his plan—4 percent unemployment in 2015 vs. 5.9 percent without the plan—that are a supply-side fantasy. His anti-bailout rhetoric is silly pandering. I could go on.
But more than anyone else in politics, Rep. Ryan has made a serious attempt to grapple with the long-term fiscal issue the country faces. He has a largely coherent, workable set of answers. If you don't like them, now you need to come up with something better.
"largely coherent, workable set of answers"
... for protecting the Have-It-Alls and screwing everybody else.
Repugs can't do it all by themselves. collaboration across the aisle is indispensable.Quote:
btw, Robert Reich has a great point: the more Repugs fuck up govt at all levels, the more they can say "See, We Repugs Told You the Fucked Govt Is The Problem"
Naturally that part of the conspiracy theory is left out.Quote:
Originally Posted by Winehole23
The VWRC tide rises all boats.
In B4 "YOU LIE!!!!"
why are tax increases off the table?
Good friggin' question.Quote:
Originally Posted by George Gervin's Afro
There He Goes Again. False equivalence between Repugs/VWRC and Dems.Quote:
Originally Posted by Marcus Bryant
Show us where the repeated, clear message from non-Repugs that "Govt Is The Problem"
Show us where the Dems haven't been an equal partner in the results, rather than paying attention to rhetorical flourishes.
Apparently he is advocating something closer to a 25% flat tax without deductions. I know under that scenario I would have paid higher taxes last year.Quote:
Originally Posted by George Gervin's Afro
All depends on which loopholes are eliminated. Article was kinda sketchy on that.
Of course. Putting mortgage interest on the table would be explosive.Quote:
Originally Posted by Winehole23
"mortgage interest"
the lenders would scream the loudest.
Tax-deductible interest payments divert govt revenue directly to the lenders. Killing the interest deduction won't happen because the lenders/financial sector owns the govt, finances the politicians.
I'll bite. Can you explain how this happens without using the following words: repug, VRWC, UCA, or lies?Quote:
Originally Posted by boutons_deux
Also, please detail how this deduction goes directly to a lender.
It doesn't divert money directly to the lenders but it allows people to buy bigger, more expensive homes and take out larger loans. Homebuilders and related industries will scream the loudest.Quote:
Originally Posted by boutons_deux
http://tpmdc.talkingpointsmemo.com/2...le.php?ref=fpaQuote:
"CBO is what they use on the budget side -- as a matter of procedure, any numbers from the Heritage Foundation or anybody else are essentially worthless," Bruce Bartlett, a former Treasury official under President George H.W. Bush, said in an interview. "You can assert whatever you want to assert, but you can always find some half-baked tax think tank that will make up any number you feel like."
Neither the lenders or the homebuilders would be screaming as loudly as the middle class.
No shit. That deduction is a major player in my returns.Quote:
Originally Posted by coyotes_geek
Paul Ryan’s Multiple Unicorns
Gosh. For a plan that supposedly sets a new standard of seriousness, Paul Ryan’s vision (pdf) depends an awful lot on unicorn sightings — belief in the impossible. Let me review the top three unicorns.
First, the plan assumes that tax cuts will set off a literally unprecedented boom. Here’s again, is what is assumed about unemployment:
https://lh3.googleusercontent.com/_V...FNMo/ryanu.jpg
House budget proposal
So Ryan is claiming that unemployment will plunge right away; that by 2015 it will be down to the levels at the peak of the 1990s boom (and far below anything achieved under the sainted Ronald Reagan); and that by 2021 it will be below 3 percent, a level we haven’t seen in more than half a century. Right.
Then there’s the Medicare business. According to the CBO analysis, a typical senior would end up spending more than twice as much of his or her own income on health care as under current law. As Dean Baker points out, this means that seniors would end up paying most of their income for health care. Again, right.
But in a way, the worst part isn’t the Medicare plan: it’s the fact — which so far has not penetrated the debate — that the biggest source of supposed savings in the plan isn’t actually health care, it’s an assumption that federal spending on everything except health and Social Security can somehow be squeezed, as a percent of GDP, to a small fraction of current levels. Here’s the table, from Ryan’s own report:
https://lh6.googleusercontent.com/_V...anasterisk.jpg
Notice the marked area at the bottom: Ryan is assuming that everything aside from health and SS can be squeezed from 12 percent of GDP now to 3 1/2 percent of GDP. That’s bigger than the assumed cut in health care spending relative to baseline; it accounts for all of the projected deficit reduction, since the alleged health savings are all used to finance tax cuts. And how is this supposed to be accomplished? Not explained.
This isn’t a serious proposal; it’s a strange combination of cruelty and insanely wishful thinking.
http://krugman.blogs.nytimes.com/201...gman&seid=auto
Ryan Budget: Voodoo Economics Redux
any hope that Ryan would rise above party politics and seek compromise with Democrats or even the moderates in his own party has been dashed by this proposal. At bottom, his plan is an ideological platform for the 2012 campaign—a Tea Party manifesto clothed in some nice rhetoric and sprinkled with a few good ideas.
http://www.democracyjournal.org/argu...mics-redux.php
==============
Will Barry and Dems be ballsy and clever enough to slaughter the Repugs in the major battle in the Class War?
(echo in here?)
lolzQuote:
Originally Posted by boutons_deux
http://www.spurstalk.com/forums/show...5&postcount=26
lol Krugman
His gripe that Ryan includes a few rosy assumptions seems legit to me. 2.6% unemployment?
don't tell darrinsQuote:
Originally Posted by Winehole23
A boom in housing? Unlikely.
they would have to grandfather it. It would kill the real estate market.Quote:
Originally Posted by coyotes_geek
Tax cuts leading to more government revenue? How'd that work out the last 10 years?
Projected health care savings paying for the tax cuts? Robustly optimistic.
Quote:
Originally Posted by Winehole23
Did anything else happen in the last 10 years that might negatively impact revenue?
You don't think some of those projections seem a little optimistic?Quote:
Originally Posted by DarrinS
Quote:
Originally Posted by Winehole23
It does sound a little bit too optimistic. How does the Dems' budget compare?
Thanks for proving that projections out to 2050 are retarded. :tuQuote:
Originally Posted by DarrinS
Quote:
Originally Posted by LnGrrrR
Sure, but isn't Krugman the guy that thinks we should double-down an on even bigger stimulus?
the bush tax cuts?Quote:
Originally Posted by DarrinS
What budget?Quote:
Originally Posted by DarrinS
exactlyQuote:
Originally Posted by Winehole23
Quote:
Originally Posted by George Gervin's Afro
Nothing else?
Sure he does. Is that a good reason to dismiss his criticisms of the Path to Prosperity?Quote:
Originally Posted by DarrinS
The topic is the GOP Path to Prosperity. The Dems' lack of any plan doesn't make its flaws invisible.Quote:
Originally Posted by DarrinS
They're all full of shit.
Entitlement spending growth must be cut. Military spending must be cut. Taxes must increase. Any plan that doesn't include any these in any significant amount is flawed.
The optics are terrible, too. Tax cuts paid for by cutting health care for seniors? Moronic, electorally speaking.Quote:
Originally Posted by Marcus Bryant
Any legit attempt to reduce the the federal deficit and debt will undoubtedly not be wise politics. Perhaps if one of these politicians actually had the 'character', wisdom, and leadership abilities they all claim at election time they might be able to get the country to accept a program of significant spending cuts and tax collection increases.
How so? Maybe I'm in the minority here, but when I bought my house the mortgage deduction was a perk, but not something that ever factored in to my decision on when to buy or how much to spend.Quote:
Originally Posted by CosmicCowboy
No GOP politician will advocate tax increases. Even the Democrats are gun-shy about it save for a high enough income level such that those impacted constitute 5% or less of the electorate, or to fund one of their ideological clusterfucks like nationalized health insurance. Still, the precious middle class could never be called on to contribute more for all the wars and entitlements and other bullshit they expect someone else to pay for.
Taxes don't need to be raised. We need to grow the economy and raising taxes is counterproductive to that. We need more tax payers, not less paying more.
This can be solved when we solve the problems that export jobs, and when we make the safety net a safety net again, rather than the hammock it's become.
All we need is for the useless non-supermen to disappear and then the remaining can work until they die.
America needs more sweatshop jobs. The minimum wage is counterproductive to that.
Ryan is on some serious fucking crack with those employment figures. And a new housing boom? WTF? That budget is just fucking stupid when you look at the things he would need to happen to make it workable.
Ryan being seriously respected by Repugs as a policy wonk indicates all of their 100% bad faith and 100% commitment to the Class War.
"raising taxes is counterproductive"
yes, and proof is USA's shitty growth, infrastructure deterioration, and destruction of the middle class from 1945 to 1975.
Just keep spending and print more money. Only good things will happen.
-Krugman
Not Krugman's stance at all but no one in this thread will be surprised at your endless erection of straw men and refusal to address how much of a fairytale this budget is.
Supply side economics has been proven to be the voodoo economics that GHW Bush claimed it was when was running against Reagan for the nomination. It has been tried off and on now since 1980, and never has done anything but increase the deficits.
I can hardly believe that anyone who purports to be serious about the deficits includes any semblance of it in any debt-reduction plan, as does Ryan.
erection and strawman in the same sentence. nice.Quote:
Originally Posted by MannyIsGod
I believe our major economy killer has been the global free market stances our elected officials created. I didn't mind NAFTA, only because I seen it as helping to balance the economy or our immediate southern neighbor over the long term. However, free trade agreements that followed relocated those jobs from Mexico to Asia.
http://fdlaction.firedoglake.com/201...are-inflation/Quote:
Many elected Democrats and individuals that consider themselves to be to the left of Ryan (Ezra Klein, Alice Rivlin, Matt Yglesias, Jon Cohn) are rightly attacking Ryan’s huge Medicare “savings” as being cruel and/or unrealistic. By 2022, Ryan would turn Medicare into a private voucher program, but the value of the vouchers would only increase annually at the rate of inflation. This is significantly slower than the traditional rate at which health care costs have grown, so it is basically huge cuts ever year in what Medicare would normally have spent. The likely result is that the political outcry would cause a future Congress to raise the voucher amount, eliminating these supposed “savings,” or our seniors in the future start getting dramatically worse and less affordable coverage.
The problem for Democrats and their defenders is that they use a nearly identical accounting gimmick to produce the supposedly huge long-term savings in the Affordable Care Act. Almost all of the long-term savings in ACA come from the excise tax capping how much can be spent tax free on employer-provided insurance starting in 2018. While the limit on how expensive these plans can be starts high, just like the Ryan voucher will start high, the limit is also only indexed to inflation.
It is the same “unrealistic” indexing Ryan’s Medicare Privatizing plan uses. So If you believe Ryan’s long-term Medicare savings are unrealistic because it won’t be politically viable, than you should also feel that the excise tax deficit reductions are meaningless because they won’t be viable. Or Democrats should admit that the ACA will in fact eventually make most under-65 Americans’ health insurance dramatically worse in the same way Ryan’s Medicare plan would for most people over 65.
The problem is that neither party wants to actually deal with the real cost issues in our system, which is that Congress allows the politically well-connected health care industries to dramatically overcharge Americans and the government. Instead, the parties use gimmicks set far in the future to pretend they have plans to reduce the deficit.
The most efficient way for the federal government to collect revenue is to collect no taxes.Quote:
Originally Posted by DarrinS
- Republicans
This is true. This is why I'm fine, in theory, with tariffs on certain goods.Quote:
Originally Posted by Wild Cobra
So Cobra Commander is cool with screwing Americans as long as it stays in the hemisphere.
...
Entitlement Hater Paul Ryan Was A Social Security Baby
When Representative Paul Ryan was 16 years old , tragedy struck his family. His 55 year old father had passed away from a heart attack. Young Paul Ryan found his father’s lifeless body and was burdened by the fact that he had to tell his mother and siblings of this horrible situation.
After his father’s passing, young Paul Ryan started collecting social security benefits until the age of 18 years old. He took this benefit and saved it for his college education. Representative Paul Ryan is one example of the millions of people whose lives have depended on our social contract with the American people
http://www.politicususa.com/en/paul-...ocial-security
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goddam, Repugs are truly repugnant assholes.