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Attention: Deficit!

Unabogie said:
ETA: Oh, and I want to drastically reduce the defense budget, but last I checked, 99% of all GOPers want that to grow (see Ryan, Paul). So exactly what is your point? I'm in favor of budget reduction and ALSO moving money away from billionaires and war profiteers and over to the folks who are still hurting from 2008.
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That won't do it. It would be necessary to completely eliminate ALL defense and non-defense spending OR raise taxes by 50% just to continue to pay the current interest on the debt and cover mandatory spending on SS, Medicare and Medicaid, and of course those sacred cows can't be touched, which pretty much guarantees we are facing a Greece like situation.
 
WildCat said:
Dude, you're the one who brought up infrastructure spending. Now you want to abandon that issue? Ok.
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As an example of what people were actually arguing to combat your straw man characterization of the deficit arguments of 'the left' (which is significantly broad enough that you can pick different points from different people to condemn it), which you further straw manned into infrastructure investments being automatically a good thing.

So is our deficit and debt (now equal to GDP for the first time since WWII) A Good ThingTM?
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Why do you keep saying 'A Good Thing' when that's not what anyone has argued? I think that it is sadly a necessary thing right now, but certainly not a good thing.

Should we spend even more?
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In the near term yes, but cutting it down relatively quickly, letting tax cuts expire, and closing loopholes to raise revenues will have to come about too.

Situations change.
 
Neally said:
That won't do it. It would be necessary to completely eliminate ALL defense and non-defense spending OR raise taxes by 50% just to continue to pay the current interest on the debt and cover mandatory spending on SS, Medicare and Medicaid, and of course those sacred cows can't be touched, which pretty much guarantees we are facing a Greece like situation.
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The truth is that 2/3 of the US deficit goes away simply by ending the payroll tax holiday, returning to normal growth rates and returning unemployment insurance payouts to normal levels.

Every plan, Republican and Democrat alike depends on this as the primary mechanism for deficit reduction and then tinkers around the edge a bit. For Democrats the tinkering typically involves eliminating the Bush tax cuts, which would take care of a big chunk of what's left but you'd probably still need some adjustment to retirement age and maybe some smallish changes to SS premiums/payments.

Republicans plans involve fudging numbers and promising to spend less money without making any actual cuts. They do throw in cuts to programs they have an axe to grind against, but these are so small to begin with there are no meaningful savings from the cuts.
 
Tricky said:
Is it time to do something about this?

Budget office projects U.S. deficit to hit $477 billion



Is the sheer size of these numbers causing people to become numbed to them? How long can we continue to rack up such debt before we hit the wall?

Hard to believe that we had a surplus when this decade started. And it's getting worse. The projected deficit for the next decade has nearly doubled since August. Oh, but consumer confidence is up, so we're okay.
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Time to raise taxes.
 
tyr_13 said:
As an example of what people were actually arguing to combat your straw man characterization of the deficit arguments of 'the left' (which is significantly broad enough that you can pick different points from different people to condemn it), which you further straw manned into infrastructure investments being automatically a good thing.
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And what position did I assign to anyone that they didn't actually hold?

tyr_13 said:
Why do you keep saying 'A Good Thing' when that's not what anyone has argued? I think that it is sadly a necessary thing right now, but certainly not a good thing.
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Are you claiming that no one in that other thread advocared spending even more?

tyr_13 said:
In the near term yes, but cutting it down relatively quickly, letting tax cuts expire, and closing loopholes to raise revenues will have to come about too.

Situations change.
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You have recent examples of government spending getting "cut down relatively quickly"?
 
lomiller said:
The truth is that 2/3 of the US deficit goes away simply by ending the payroll tax holiday, returning to normal growth rates and returning unemployment insurance payouts to normal levels.
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(citation needed)

lomiller said:
Every plan, Republican and Democrat alike depends on this as the primary mechanism for deficit reduction and then tinkers around the edge a bit. For Democrats the tinkering typically involves eliminating the Bush tax cuts, which would take care of a big chunk of what's left but you'd probably still need some adjustment to retirement age and maybe some smallish changes to SS premiums/payments.
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Please list the Democrats who want to eliminate the Bush tax cuts, as opposed to just taxing "the rich" more. Because 80% of those tax cuts are from the middle class, not the rich.

lomiller said:
Republicans plans involve fudging numbers and promising to spend less money without making any actual cuts. They do throw in cuts to programs they have an axe to grind against, but these are so small to begin with there are no meaningful savings from the cuts.
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So you advocate cuts? Where and how much?
 
WildCat said:
And what position did I assign to anyone that they didn't actually hold?
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That posters on the left 'see no issue at all' with racking up huge debt. That's not true.


Are you claiming that no one in that other thread advocared spending even more?
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Stop JAQing. That's not what I said, that's a straw man, that's not the same as more debt being a 'Good Thing'.

You have recent examples of government spending getting "cut down relatively quickly"?
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Do I have any examples of something I think needs to be done fairly soon (as in in the near future) being done now?

WildCat, you're a poster who is perfectly capable of arguing rationally and comprehending what other people are actually saying. I don't believe for a minute that you're genuinely confused on this. You disagree, and that's fine, but you don't need to straw man this much at all.
 
I'm perfectly willing to assert that every GOP President since Richard Nixon has been absolutely horrible on fiscal responsibility, but let's also cast blame where blame is due.

In the two years after Obama was elected, he had as close to a monopoly on power as you can get. He had the White House. His party had a clear majority in the House of Representatives. His party had a filibuster proof majority in the Senate. There's no way he can say that whatever happened during those two years was anyone else's fault. He had no trouble getting his policies passed.

What were his policies? Cut taxes and raise spending.

(Note to our GOP friends: Obama cut taxes. Look it up.)

What were the results? Bigger deficits. Go figure.
 
Meadmaker said:
...

What were his policies? Cut taxes and raise spending.

(Note to our GOP friends: Obama cut taxes. Look it up.)

What were the results? Bigger deficits. Go figure.
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And you NEED that when you have what was actually the Second Great Depression and two ruinous wars to work out of.

Now that we have, however, time for tax increases. Big ones.
 
BenBurch said:
And you NEED that when you have what was actually the Second Great Depression and two ruinous wars to work out of.

Now that we have, however, time for tax increases. Big ones.
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If government had been more responsible in the past it would have been in a much better position to stimulate itself out of a recession. But because we spent, spent, spent, and spent during the good times rather than pay down debt we have no headroom left to take on so much more debt.

And lets face it, we got the government we deserved. We elected idiots who promised us ponies and didn't elect anyone who promised to pay down debt with new revenues rather than buy more bling.

Remember the "peace dividend"? There was about 3 seconds of talk of using it to pay down debt until it became about all the things we could spend it on.
 
Nobel Prize winning economist Paul Krugman...

...says now is the time to spend. Austerity isn't working for Europe. There is no reason for us to do it now. Austerity is self defeating.

 
Meadmaker said:
I'm perfectly willing to assert that every GOP President since Richard Nixon has been absolutely horrible on fiscal responsibility, but let's also cast blame where blame is due.

In the two years after Obama was elected, he had as close to a monopoly on power as you can get. He had the White House. His party had a clear majority in the House of Representatives. His party had a filibuster proof majority in the Senate. There's no way he can say that whatever happened during those two years was anyone else's fault. He had no trouble getting his policies passed.

What were his policies? Cut taxes and raise spending.

(Note to our GOP friends: Obama cut taxes. Look it up.)

What were the results? Bigger deficits. Go figure.
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To be fair, Obama crafted policies he could pass. I think he did the best he could. And it is clear that the GOP would not raise taxes. Last summer they were willing to let us go into default to avoid raising taxes.
 
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WildCat said:
If government had been more responsible in the past it would have been in a much better position to stimulate itself out of a recession. But because we spent, spent, spent, and spent during the good times rather than pay down debt we have no headroom left to take on so much more debt.
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Yep, Republicans did a great job at turning a surplus into record setting deficits. But like every abusive relationship they have changed this time...
 
I just wonder how we will but the baby boomers back to work to pay off all these debts they ran up.
 
Meadmaker said:
In the two years after Obama was elected, he had as close to a monopoly on power as you can get. He had the White House. His party had a clear majority in the House of Representatives. His party had a filibuster proof majority in the Senate. There's no way he can say that whatever happened during those two years was anyone else's fault. He had no trouble getting his policies passed.
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There never was a filibuster proof majority in the Senate. We had 59 Senators and Joe "I violently oppose this legislation that I supported yeaterday because I found out liberals liked it" Lieberman.
 
Bush and Reagan liked to blame the Democrats for not letting them pass enough spending cuts. Bunk! Those guys had control. Their policies passed. They, or we, reaped what they sowed. Same with Obama. He put forward policies. They passed. Sure, today they couldn't get through the House, but he had his chance, and he chose not to take it.

He didn't even have to propose a tax increase, let alone pass one. The Bush cuts had a sunset provision. If Obama would have done absolutely nothing, they would have vanished in a puff of smoke, not to mention much wailing and gnashing of teeth from the GOP.

When a politician has the power to do something, and he doesn't do it, I figure he probably doesn't really want to do it.


I still don't anticipate voting for Romney. Their policy for deficit reduction is to cut taxes for wealthy people and stop giving medicine to old people. That's even worse.

I just wish there were a fiscally responsible choice on the ballot.
 
Random said:
There never was a filibuster proof majority in the Senate. We had 59 Senators and Joe "I violently oppose this legislation that I supported yeaterday because I found out liberals liked it" Lieberman.
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And the ONLY way out of this mess is for us to GET a filibuster-proof majority or to vote the Senate back to "regular order" and force all filibusters to be carried out by an actual Senator reading Atlas Shrugged into the record or similar - you'd be amazed at how easy it is to break a filibuster like that 4-5 days on.
 
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