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A debt deal will get done. That's why the repugs secretly told Wall Street that they were just kidding when they made their purely theatrical vote against raising the debt ceiling earlier this year. Big Business would never forgive them if they held out and crashed the economy over the debt limit.
This made my eyes bleed.Quote:
Originally Posted by Wild Cobra
Please stop that, I am still recovering from your last doozy.
http://www.atrandomcomics.com/411%20...ing%20Eyes.jpg
Budget Blowhards: Why the Budget Debate Is Destined to Become Ever More Painful
There are few exercises more entertaining than ridiculing the nonsense that comes out of the mouths of leaders in Washington. The great part is that this is completely bipartisan. Neither party has a monopoly on solemnly stated absurdities. And of course we never have to worry about running out of material.
The winner in last week's contest was John Kasich, the former Republican chair of the House Budget Committee and the current governor of Ohio. National Public Radio interviewed Kasich in the context of a piece on the state of the negotiations over raising the debt ceiling.
NPR introduced Kasich by saying that he was chairman of the House Budget Committee "when he balanced the budget with President Clinton in the 1990s."
Kasich is then quoted as saying: "At the end of the day, you look yourself in the mirror, and you say to yourself, 'Did I do what was right for families and for children, and if I paid a political price, so what?' "
The story then concludes: "That's the kind of attitude the president wants in his meeting Thursday. Come to the White House, he says, but leave your rhetoric at the door."
Pretty touching isn't it? It may even be inspirational. After all a politician who is willing to do what is right even at risk to his career is a rare bird.
It also happens not to be true. The Washington press corps is living some bizarre delusion about the balanced budgets at the end of the Clinton years. They didn't come about from politicians making tough choices. They came about from much stronger than expected economic growth and the willingness of Alan Greenspan to ignore the economic orthodoxy and not shut down the expansion.
This can be easily seen by just looking at the projections from the Congressional Budget Office (CBO). In 1996, CBO projected that the year 2000 budget deficit would be $244 billion (2.7 percent of GDP). Instead the economy ran a surplus of $232 billion, or roughly 2.4 percent of GDP. This involves a shift from deficit to surplus of $476 billion or 5.1 percentage points of GDP. This would be equivalent to reducing the annual deficit by $750 billion in 2011.
While Kasich and NPR tell this shift from deficit to surplus as being the result of politicians making the tough choices to cut spending and raise taxes, this is simply not true. According to CBO, the net contribution to deficit reduction of Mr. Kasich's courage was minus $10 billion. In other words, the sum of the impact of legislated spending cuts and tax increases to the budget over this 4-year period was to add $10 billion to the deficit.
The piece also doesn't mention Clinton's high dollar policy. The over-valued dollar made U.S. goods uncompetitive in world markets and led to a soaring trade deficit by the end of the Clinton years. The massive trade deficit and the imbalances it implied created the basis for the housing bubble.
If we had reality based politics, Clinton would be hiding under a rock, not lecturing us about the route to economic prosperity. In fact, Clinton even had the gall to tell us how to create manufacturing jobs through trade, apparently overlooking the fact that the economy lost manufacturing jobs each of his last three years in office.
The facts are fairly simple here, and they are 180 degrees at odds with the stories on the budget and the economy in the major news outlets. But the budget blowhards have the money and the power so we will be hearing much more from them. We can at least enjoy playing the ridicule game.
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/dean-b...tml?view=print
That's what his surgeon him to say.
??? Are you saying that payroll tax increases shouldn't be part of entitlement reform?Quote:
Originally Posted by RandomGuy
It's certainly fine if that's what you think, but it's hardly a ridiculous suggestion. Raising taxes, cutting benefits & raising the eligibility age are the only three options there are.
"entitlement reform"
you lie, SS is not a pejorative "entitlement".
It's a pension fund, people pay THEIR money in, they draw THEIR money out.
IT'S YOUR MONEY
-- dubya
But I agree that SS increases, shared equally by employee and employer, as now, should be part of the budget deal. And the SS cap should be removed completely, AND applied to capital gains, not just earned income.
Barry made a huge mistake cutting SS contributions. Now he's tied SS to the deficit and general fund, which is wrong. Repugs love it.
Galbraith:
Deficit Predators: Everything You Need to Know About the Twisted, Dangerous Debt Ceiling Fight
The debt ceiling was first enacted in 1917. Why? The date tells all: we were about to enter the Great War. To fund that effort, the Wilson government needed to issue Liberty Bonds. This was controversial, and the debt ceiling was cover, passed to reassure the rubes that Congress would be “responsible” even while the country went to war. It was, from the beginning, an exercise in bad faith and has remained so every single second to the present day.
Today this bad-faith law is pressed to its absurd extreme, to force massive cuts in public programs as the price of not-reneging on the public debts of the United States. Never mind that to force default on the public obligations of the United States is plainly unconstitutional. Section 4 of the 14th amendment says in simple language that public debts, once duly authorized by law and including pensions, by the way, “shall not be questioned.” The purpose of this language was to foreclose, to put beyond politics, any possibility that the Union would renege on debts and pensions and bounties incurred to win the Civil War. But the application is very general and the courts have ruled that the principle extends to the present day.
What is going on in Congress at this moment already violates that mandate. It is an effort to subvert the authority of the government to meet and therefore to incur obligations of every possible stripe. It is an attack on the concept of government itself – as the “Tea Party” by its very name would no doubt agree. It therefore paints those deficit hawks who are using the debt ceiling to take budget hostages as enemies of the United States Constitution.
The President, though supposedly a constitutional expert and though sworn to “preserve, protect and defend” the Constitution, will not say this. Instead he appears to treat the Constitution as an optional matter, to which he will not resort, in the hope that by negotiating with the hostage- takers he can reach some reasonable outcome that will preserve everyone’s good name. (The great Harvard legal scholar Laurence Tribe recently argued that the President cannot defy the debt ceiling on his own.That’s a debatable point.) It is as though Lincoln in 1861 faced with the siege of Sumter had sat down with Confederate commissioners to see what could be worked out.
http://www.alternet.org/module/printversion/151593
If it were YOUR money, SS wouldn't be set up the way it is. If it were YOUR money, YOUR money would be put in an individualized account where only YOU get to touch it.Quote:
Originally Posted by boutons_deux
What we've got is a ponzi scheme. People pay THEIR money to someone else, they draw SOMEONE ELSE's money out. Works great until you have too many people cashing checks and not enough suckers paying money in.
"What we've got is a ponzi scheme"
YOU LIE
Ponzi schemes are illegal. SS isn't illegal.
hmm...
Ponzi scheme (noun): an investment swindle in which early investors are paid off with money put up by later ones
Which part of this definition does social security not meet?
Which part of the SS and medicare rates do you imagine are not taxes?Quote:
Originally Posted by Wild Cobra
"Ponzi scheme (noun): an investment swindle"
SS isn't a swindle, it's not even in danger (unless you think the govt will default on the US bonds that SS holds). It's greedy, predatory Wall St and its Repug enablers that want all that money transferred to their filthy hands.
Sure it's a swindle. You stand no chance whatsoever of getting back what you put in.Quote:
Originally Posted by boutons_deux
The Social Security Administration disagrees with you.Quote:
, it's not even in danger
It's entirely possible.Quote:
(unless you think the govt will default on the US bonds that SS holds).
A different subject entirely, completely irrelevant to the problems SS is currently facing.Quote:
It's greedy, predatory Wall St and its Repug enablers that want all that money transferred to their filthy hands.