The "Grand" Budget isn't grand at all!
It looks like President Obama is still open to negotiations with Republican economic terrorists. Details of the president's budget, set to be released April 10th, show that he will offer significant spending cuts to so-called “entitlement programs”- like Social Security and Medicare – in hopes of attaining a “grand” budget bargain with Congressional Republicans.
The plan replaces the sequester with other spending cuts, and increases revenues by $580 billion. In a move that is sure to infuriate progressives and many Democrats, the president will propose lowering cost-of-living increases to Social Security benefits. This is insane. Instead of asking the wealthiest in our country to pay the same percentage of their income towards our social safety net, the President thinks that the elderly, disabled, and veterans should bear the burden of Republican austerity.
Our nation has a policy of not negotiating with terrorists, and economic terrorists shouldn't be the exception. We must stand together to preserve our social programs. Tell Congress and the President that we won't stand for balancing the budget on the backs of the poor. Sign the petition at no-cuts.com.
Comments
You all know that if we had let the Bush tax cuts expire we would have increased revenue by 6 trillion. Mitch M had the nerve to say we got the tax increases we wanted because he gave us 0.6 trillion in increases. On the other hand it sounds like what a republican calls a compromise.
Mauiman2 wrote: "1.Neither you or I are in a position to say exactly how much can be cut from the military before we seriously effect national security. I throw out 20% and that may be high. You seem to want to get rid of it all. You are smoking something really good if you actually think that is possible to do that without having some SERIOUS ramifications. "
What the hell are you smoking? You're the one who is Paranoid! I've lived in this country now for 50 years. I've never owned anything more powerful than a bee bee gun and a Baseball Bat. What kind of a Wuss are you anyway? What exactly are you afraid of? Do you need to be tucked in at night? What will it take for you to Man-Up?
Don't burden this Nation or Me with these silly Superstitious fears. Man-UP for crying out loud you Wuss!
你是正確的 ☑
Ripping off Social Security was the Obama plan all along. It was evident when he brought on-board all Bill Clinton's bagmen.
Obama, like Clinton, is a corporatist and a free market liberal and anti-populist, anti-progressive who shmoozes populist and progressive to get traditional Democratic voters. It is worse than just being wishy-washy or a bad negotiator. These corporatists are posers, users, manipulators, and predators. They are duplicitous. They have made us their dupes.
Do read this piece below. And I wish Thom would talk about this piece. I've never understood why no one talks about the fact that Clinton had plans to assault Social Security (like he assaulted Labor with NAFTA and our free press with the Telecommunications Act, etcetera).
http://www.counterpunch.org/2004/10/30/how-monica-lewinsky-saved-social-security/
[excerpt]
How Monica Lewinsky Saved Social Security...
[This essay is excerpted from CounterPunch's hot new book, Dime's Worth of Difference.]
Had it not been for Monica’s captivating smile and first inviting snap of that famous thong, President Bill Clinton would have consummated the politics of triangulation, heeding the counsel of a secret White House team and deputy treasury secretary Larry Summers. Late in 1998 or in the State of the Union message of 1999 a solemn Clinton would have told Congress and the nation that, just like welfare, Social Security was near-broke, had to be "reformed" and its immense pool of capital tendered in part to the mutual funds industry. The itinerary mapped out for Clinton by the Democratic Leadership Committee would have been complete.
It was a desperately close run thing. On the account of members of Clinton’s secret White House team, mandated to map out the privatization path for Social Security, they had got as far down the road as fine-tuning the account numbers for Social Security accounts now released to the captious mercies of Wall Street. But in 1998 the Lewinsky scandal burst upon the President, and as the months sped by and impeachment swelled from a remote specter to a looming reality, Clinton’s polls told him that his only hope was to nourish the widespread popular dislike for the hoity-toity elites intoning Clinton’s death warrant.
In an instant Clinton spun on the dime and became Social Security’s mighty champion, coining the slogan "Save Social Security First".
Let us now reconstruct the plot in greater detail.
In the mid-1990s pessimism about the future of Social Security was rife in seminars, conferences, op-eds and learned
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[please read more at link]
DAnneMarc:
Sorry there is one thing in your posts that says it all, you want to save money by eliminating the war on drugs. That ruins your credibility completely.
Palindromedary ~ 谢谢
Mauiman2 ~ wrote: "Sorry there is one thing in your posts that says it all, you want to save money by eliminating the war on drugs. That ruins your credibility completely."
Now that you've lost your primary argument about the budget you think the path to redeem yourself is to defend having the highest prison population in the history of the planet--mostly composed of non-violent drug offenders?. Wanting to correct this travesty of justice ruins my credibility?
That stupid war has been going on now for over 40 years. We are no closer to winning it now than we were when Nixon started it in the early 70's. How much longer do you want to pour our precious Tax money into that black hole before you realize that it can never be won. The war on drugs produces nothing except a prison industry, a non-violent prison population, ruined innocent lives, and incredibly rich drug dealers. Look at the misery this war has caused here and abroad. Right now, we import far more drugs and have far more drug addicts in this country than we ever had before this war began; but, you, want to keep this costly mistake going. Shame on you.
Here's some numbers. War on Drugs past annual budget $15.6 Billion. Projected 2013 budget $26.5 Billion. The US has the highest incarceration rate at more than 3 x the rate of any other country in the history of the world. As of 2008 2.3 million people, or 1 out of every 100 citizens were in prison. The current rate is 7 x higher than it was in 1980 when President Reagan took office. You are suggesting this is a better way to spend money than caring for sick people and feeding the hungry?
You were the one who wanted to stick to the numbers. Now that the numbers have betrayed you, you want to attack my credibility. HA! What a joke? That's a classic example of FOX News loser logic. The last refuge of a scoundrel!
But, wait! Let's have some fun!
IS THERE ANYONE ON THIS BLOG THAT AGREES WITH THIS?
LET'S PUT THAT COMMENT UP FOR A VOTE!
I agree that the War on Drugs was a smashing success, assuming that the true objective was a symbiotic relationship between the government and criminal-elements, for outrageous agricultural price-support for God's Green Grass. I mean can you even comprehend $200/ounce? That's $6.4-million ($6,400,000.00) for a ton of dried weeds, that grow wild along the sides of the roads and fields across the Mid-West.
Same argument holds for the REAL "War on Terrorism" objectives. Trillions of dollars have been transferred from (paying) tax-payers' pockets to the Military-Industrial-Political Complex's pockets -- while disrupting and keeping the Mid-Eastern Oil Resources in turmoil, accessible to Global Petro-Chemical extraction and control. I mean, how successful would you like? The Bush Kid had it right: "Mission Accomplished."
Our Government is good at this stuff; just ask their patrons.
Greenspan did not call Clinton "the Greatest Republican President" for nothing. Thom has used this quote often.
欢迎你
Exactly right! This myth of a "war on drugs" has been very profitable to a lot of people who are not normally considered part of the drug trade. The believers may still have the meme of the "law and order" against "criminal drug lords" in their minds but in reality our "law and order" are the "criminal drug lords". They have just used the ruse to drive up the price of the goods...just like our "holy war" in the middle east. Obtaining lots of cheap oil was never really the goal in invading the middle east...it was "control" of the oil ...to keep it "off the market"...to drive the prices up. It sure would not be in the interest of the oil companies to flood the market with lots of cheap oil. And it would not be in the interests of those "drug lords" (including the US banksters..who have laundered the drug money... and their puppet politicians) to make drugs legal...flooding the market with cheap drugs. No profit in that! And that is what it really is all about.
Nowt’s to the Newt’s
Yes this is an intellectual political economic social mental spasm. Good I hope. Form my view wondering if America is in what I call president Obama’s Sherlock Holms “Adventure of the second stain”. My spasm has an audience for a select few.
Wiki has a good reading about the adventure. Basically, documents stolen from important political persons that if found and published would likely lead to controversy, criminal indictments, murder, or war. Shall we say everything that a president needs to know for stuff like that could have been kept from Obama, or does Obama know these things now to play out a poker hand in the political theater, the mainstream extra listen as you lean forward all about after the commercial to culturist confuse trying to expose both terrorist Wahhabi Democrats and Republicans? They both exist and big time in Fox news, CNN, MSNBC.
Seems that wiki weaving about itself in possible blasphemous libel, or any definition by tea baggers in the internet and the general mainstream media with free speech and money being the same is in somewhere in the archipelago of corruption leaning on the shores watching serenely as the waves move with cocktails served elegantly removed from any sequester friction gazing in a sun set wondering what it would be like to lose everything they have. Yikes. Certainly realizing Romney just blew the shit out of having a business type person as president. Having elevators in the garage for all middle class and poor people didn’t beat two birds in every pot. What’s the use if you can’t buy a car, or a house? An Ace Ventura blunder or that might come from the Francis Grose's dictionary of the vulgar tongue.
Hi there we the people see you, the rich inclined arrogant with a savage wine with a beautiful bouquet garnished obnoxiously virtuous. Seditions libel as in free speech is money or vice versa all from the Supreme Court Bishops dedicated to the first perversion of the first Amendment. Nowt’s to Newt’s the new diagonal a Jacobian song played jacks or better or who has the best poker face booked too.
Please excuse my rambling for poetry is not my forte and don’t wish to know what my gradient is but after reading the adventure of the second stain a lot of politics seems to be “forced to fit”. As in a screwed up derivative that all the world seems to be paying for. Yes that derivative that should be held accountable as in Mr. Madoff screwing billions out of the system. From my view it is out of alignment to observe a billionaire person like Bloomberg valued at 27 billion in all his stock market savvy could not see Madoff tapping and tampering the system for 60 billion. It is odd and suspicious and socially wired. Think about it the sequester is about the same amount. Very interesting.
Just for the record I've just got an idea I would like to share with numbers freaks on how we can balance our National budget and have a $10 Billion surplus.
I call this the 25% plan.
The overall national budget outlays for 2012 is $3.803 Trillion. The overall revenue is $2.902 Trillion. $1.359 Trillion is derived directly from payroll taxes. An additional $959 Billion is collected in Social Security taxes. This leaves a total budget deficit of $901 Billion. 1
Reducing the deficit. Rounding off the overall military budget to a conservative estimate of $1 Trillion; and, cutting that by 25% reduces the debt by $250 Billion. Eliminating the DHS (Department of Homeland Security) gives an additional projected savings of $ 55.4 Billion. Ending the War on Drugs contributes an additional $26.5 Billion. The total savings in turn total $331.9 Billion; thus reducing the deficit to $569.1 Billion.
Increasing revenue. I would propose an across the board income and social security tax increase of 25%. The total increase from payroll would then be $339.75 Billion and from social security taxes $239.75. Of course this tax would have to be proportionate to income level. I'm not suggesting a flat tax only an 25% increase in overall revenue. The total increase on revenue would be $579.5 Billion.
Therefore Gentlemen, as you can see, by eliminating gross waste and with a small sacrifice by all we can balance our budget with a $10.4 Billion surplus.
This approach doesn't cost our social safety net one dime.
1 http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2013_United_States_federal_budget
Louise Hartmann wrote ~ "And with the decline of pensions, we saw a rise in 401(k) retirement plans, however that experiment has been a complete disaster. According to Alternet, “401(k)s are volatile, complicated, expensive, and inadequate,” and they don't provide retirement security for workers. "
Were just figuring that out now? Well thank you Captain Obvious! Anyone with a calculator can figure that out. I once sat down and figured with my 401k I could easily retire at the age of 65 and continue to live my present life style. The only problem was the I would have to get a raise totaling 7 times what I made at the time, and put every dime of it into the plan. Right!
A far better approach to retirement is to create a savings account in a proved high yield, low risk mutual fund. At least then you eliminate the middleman and always have direct control of your savings in case of an emergency. However, even this won't be adequate in most cases because people live paycheck to paycheck. Only Social Security has the ability to payout a substantial amount for average people. The problem here is that the fund needs to be expanded by putting it to work for the future recipients in the form of government loans and investments.
It's a crime the way we Americans mismanage our resources!
The 40 year war on drugs has wasted billions of dollars incarcerating harmless dime bag users as if they were violent rapist murderers.
If you wanna get a true grip on our drug laws and their history read Judge James P. Grays book "Why Our Drug Laws have Failed and What We Can Do to Change Them". What's interesting about this book is that its author served on the California Circuit Court and later its Appeals Court, and gives a first hand account of the mess our government has created a much larger mess with it's Zero Tollerance Drug Laws. As well he shares with the reader some history regarding Americas hang-ups with drugs and the fear campains used to get the public on board with a "War on Drugs", which is actually a war on you and me weither you use drugs or not.
As well he shares what other countries have done to successfully quill the issue of "crime" that comes with such irrational drug laws by actually legalizing drugs and offering state funded drug rehabilation clinics to the general public...Which has proven successful in grossly lowering street crime and reducing prison population of non-dangerous people; all at a cost of less than 1/2 of what it annually cost to incarcerate a person here in the U.S.
STOP the insanity...LEGALIZE & EDUCATE!!!
Another great book on Drugs is Mark Torgoff's "Can't Find My Way Home" Here you can read timeline anacdotes about 20th century America's drug history as told by those that lived through it's different periods.
Do you think it is just rhetoric when they say balance the budget and destroy the economy.
You do not want to balance the budget (except in boom times when you want to slow the economy down).
The other way to say it is that balancing the budget means you are no longer investing.
Ravi Batra pointed out that whenever the deficit gets small (AKA balancing the budget) the stock market crashes. That is not a theory; it is the actual data.
HIgh yield, low risk. Isn't that called an imaginary fantasy?
You are actually suggesting a tax increase of over 500 billion dollars? You have got to be kidding!
You need to learn one truth, those who do not study history are doomed to repeat its mistakes. And England made the same "tax the rich" mistake you are making here in 2008. They had so many rich leave the country when they pushed the top rate fom 40% to 50% the country actually lost revenue, and they had to pare back the "tax the rich" tax increase substantially to stop the bleeding.
Here are some more numbers for you, all round numbers.
Last I looked those making over $200,000 a year made a total of 2 trillion dollars a year. Figure the Feds get about 25% of that, or around 500 billion. If you hit those households with all or most of this tax increase (which I assume you want to do) you will roughly DOUBLE their taxes.
Do you expect them to stick around and take that kind of a beating. Guess again, they didn't get rich by being stupid.
And remember the top 1% in this country pay 35% of all taxes, the top 10% pay 70% of all taxes.
And to those of you who say good ridance, when they leave who is going to pay for all these give away programs you feel are the lifeblood of this country?
If you are going to use history, we should know as much about it as possible. When the UK raised the top tax rate and the rich left the country, how did the economy do? When measuring an economy, I think one should look at how the 4 factors that Larry Beinhart pointed out. Namely, he said we should look at the changes in GDP (the usual metric that the creator of it said not to use), the stock market, the number of jobs, and the median wage. Also, since it was a time of worldwide economic distress, we need to compare the effect of the 40 to 50% tax rate increase to countries that did not change the tax rate. Another factor that seems to be ignored by all the economic commentators is that the average length of time for an economic policy to take effect is 7 years. I think the lag time for the effect of the rich leaving the country would be between 3 and 4 years. On the other hand, a stimulus package seed to have an effect within a month. One of the largest lag times IMO is the effect on the economy of educating the workforce.
I think one of the things history should teach us is that a high tax rate should be viewed as a stick and not a source of revenue.
And we can see what happens in France, their sky high top rates are about to set in the the rich are fleeing like rats off a sinking ship. Time will tell if the French made a good move, my bet is that they will end up hurting themselves.
The key thing the US economy has that no other economy has are people who will buy anything. That is, our consumers are powerful on the world stage. If we re-introduce the tax structure of the 1950's (30's, 40's, and 60's) with a top tax rate of 92%, then when the rich folk leave, they need to ask themselves where they are going to sell their products. The reason they need to ask that question is because the US tariffs were prohibitive in 1950's.
The rich will get the same income no matter where they live. It's just a matter of how much they are willing to pay in extra taxes to stay in the US.
How can they get the same income if the can't sell their products in the US?
Sorry, Mau, but there are many other options. Primarily import tariffs or VAT taxes. This is simple stuff. Our leaders of the past already figured these basic needs for surplus and balancing. Our problem is not "entitlement" programs that aren't even supposed to be a part of the budget -- even Reagan new that. All these corporations are using our infrastructure without paying for it or providing jobs in America -- like BP Oil, Carnival Cruises and Microsoft. What are we at...like 10% manufacturing now? So, get real. You can't suck water out of a rock (the poor and old) but you certainly can suck it out of a watermelon. Just look around at the countries in the present using ostentatious austerity measures. They've nearly become 3rd world countries and we are on their heels due to greed.
I am just seeking knowledge about the VAT.
My current unstanding of the VAT is that at 50,000 feet it looks like a tariff, but up close it is not. I would like to provide an example of why it looks like a tariff.
Let us say we produce a chevrolet in the US and want to sell it for $40,000. When we export it to Germany, for example, they say because the US does not have a VAT they are going to add $5000. Thus is sells for $45,000 in Germany.
Now, up close, if we add a VAT in the US then the Germans will not add any tax when we export it. However, we will still have had to add $5000 due to our own VAT tax. Therefore, with regards to international competition, we have gained nothing.
Also, the VAT, like sales tax seems regressive.
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The problem with cutting the pay of the congress is that it would increase the number of members in congress being paid by the corporatists (AKA Fascists).