Republican agenda for the House in 2011

[Thunder]

The GOP has no plan except to get Obama out of office. They will sacrifice the entire country to do this.

and it won't work.

the party in power isn't allowed to be the party of "no".

 

[Ziggurat]

You don't have to be consistently frustrated with what you deem to be the stupidity of others you know. I don't think I've ever seen you respectfully disagree, only ever seeing your posts littered with exasperated italics.

Then you haven't been hanging around here long enough. Now, do you have a criticism of the substance of anything I said, or do you just not like my style? (and in case the joke wasn't obvious, )

 

[DavidJames]

I'm happy to give the new House as much rope as they want.

 

[Beerina]

I suspect twisted numbers pulled out of one's ass and cherry picking. The Bush tax cuts occurred in 2001 and 2003, and the other graph clearly shows the yearly deficit not exploding until two years ago.

So it must be something else. Therefore you are wrong. Maybe...TARP spending and stimulus spending?


"Giving money and power to Congress is like giving whiskey and car keys to teenage boys." -- P.J. O'Roarke


Like a stepfather who is told, due to his stepdaughter's chronic condition, he should, absolutely has to have sex with her to save her life, so, too, did Congress hear "we have to spend our way out" and thus loosen their tie, sighing, "If we must...we must."







ETA, set aside from the above by vertical space: ZOMG, the charts don't even address the recent deficits, which are the real issue. Jeebus, people.

 

[Bob Blaylock]

Social Security is the easiest thing to fix. Just remove the cap on taxable wages.

You cannot fix a Ponzi scheme. It is fraudulent at its very core, and unavoidably doomed to collapse at some point, causing more damage to more people than any benefits that it would ever have produced.

 

[Bob Blaylock]

The GOP has no plan except to get Obama out of office. They will sacrifice the entire country to do this.

That's a bit like arguing that a doctor has to sacrifice his patient, in order to remove a cancerous tumor.

 

[thaiboxerken]

That's a bit like arguing that a doctor has to sacrifice his patient, in order to remove a cancerous tumor.

Exactly. The GOP will kill the patient just to remove "the tumor."

 

[Thunder]

You cannot fix a Ponzi scheme.

SS is not a Ponzi scheme.

Every generation of workers pays the SS benefits of their parents and grandparents. This will never change.

 

[Sam.I.Am]

SS is not a Ponzi scheme.

Every generation of workers pays the SS benefits of their parents and grandparents. This will never change.

Until there are way more parents and grandparents than there are children and grandchildren. That's what makes it a Ponzi scheme. It's unsustainable. It's all well and good for the people who got in early and as long as that number is large enough it can work but people stopped having as many kids and they live longer. That's a recipe for disaster in the long term.

 

[leftysergeant]

You cannot fix a Ponzi scheme. It is fraudulent at its very core, and unavoidably doomed to collapse at some point, causing more damage to more people than any benefits that it would ever have produced.

Bull flops.

Wall Street is a Ponzi scheme now. The stock market is no longer driving industry, it is pretending to be industry, but makes nothing that any American gets paid to make. It siphons money out of the country.

The housing bubble burst because it was based on a Ponzi scheme called credit default swaps.

 

[Thunder]

It's unsustainable.

says you.

 

[Ivor the Engineer]

Defence is one of the few things that the government is supposed to fund. A lot of the other stuff is questionable depending upon your point of view but defence is clearly spelled out in the constitution as something that the government must do. Think of it as an insurance policy, it's high on the list of bills that get paid first. We've let that insurance lapse in the past and ended up paying dearly for it both in people and treasure later on.

The US spends a HUGE amount of money on defence compared to other developed countries. Here's a map which shows spending on defence as a proportion of GDP:

So why not cut military spending to, say, 2-3% of GDP? That would still be much higher than what most rich European countries spend. That would give the Republicans plenty of money to give to the rich in the form of tax breaks to stimulate the economy and create jobs.

 

[mhaze]

You cannot fix a Ponzi scheme. It is fraudulent at its very core, and unavoidably doomed to collapse at some point, causing more damage to more people than any benefits that it would ever have produced.

It's possible, though to set up an indepedent (of politics) commission to straight out ask how to un-ponzi-scheme the Social Security mess, and one part of that would be to force payouts to not be higher than cash received.

I suspect this is possible by a combination of pretty obvious business like practices. Well, obvious to anyone in the real world - that wouldn't count fantasy economics driven liberals and also wouldn't count a lot of government employees and politicians.

But it's just worth noting that the scheme could, at least in theory, be un-ponzi-schemed.

<<how this is usually responded to>> Screams of you can't cut this and you can't cut this and what about the heartless repubs and the poor grandmother.

Buddy, let me tell you something. Don't expect sympathy when you are part of a ponzi scheme.

 

[dc1971]

I went to the GOP website. The only agenda I saw, was to lower taxes.

And sell t-shirts saying "I Fired Pelosi!"

 

[leftysergeant]

Buddy, let me tell you something. Don't expect sympathy when you are part of a ponzi scheme.

It isn't an investment. It's an insurance program.

Wall street is a crap shoot. We are betting that some dirt bag will not sell the farm out from under us and buy into a Ponzi scheme like the derivatives market.

The alternative to SS is for everyone to be paid a far higher minimum wage by law.

 

[Sam.I.Am]

The US spends a HUGE amount of money on defence compared to other developed countries. Here's a map which shows spending on defence as a proportion of GDP:

So why not cut military spending to, say, 2-3% of GDP? That would still be much higher than what most rich European countries spend. That would give the Republicans plenty of money to give to the rich in the form of tax breaks to stimulate the economy and create jobs.

I look at your map and where there is a very low % of GDP on defence they are either 3rd world countries or under the umbrella of other nations defences through various treaties. The other nations comparable to the US are dictatorships, something the US isn't nor ever has been (and presumably never will be no matter what the hyperbole being flung around by some people says or implies).

What you are suggesting is a return to isolationism, which looks good on paper but, as I mentioned earlier, ends up costing more in lives and treasure in the long run. To put that into perspective it's much cheaper in the long run to maintain a car than it is to fix it or get a new one after you neglect it for a long period of time. The same simple concept applies to defence only writ large.

Nobody knows what the future holds in store for us (if we did there wouldn't be a million dollar challenge now would there?). Prudence dictates that we be ready for what we think might happen and, based upon past experiences, prepare for those possible eventualities. Nobody wants their house to burn down but only the fool doesn't buy fire insurance because he thinks that it can't happen to him.

 

[WildCat]

So why not cut military spending to, say, 2-3% of GDP? That would still be much higher than what most rich European countries spend. That would give the Republicans plenty of money to give to the rich in the form of tax breaks to stimulate the economy and create jobs.

Do you think maybe Europe doesn't need to spend so much because of all those US bases there, and defense agreements with the US?

 

[Sceptic-PK]

I suspect twisted numbers pulled out of one's ass and cherry picking. The Bush tax cuts occurred in 2001 and 2003, and the other graph clearly shows the yearly deficit not exploding until two years ago.

So it must be something else. Therefore you are wrong. Maybe...TARP spending and stimulus spending?

If you’d like to analyse how the calculations were done, knock yourself out:

http://www.cbpp.org/cms/index.cfm?fa=view&id=3036

The first graph I posted includes both TARP & the stimulus, so not sure where you’re getting this crazy idea that they’re a) not included in the analysis or b) secretly responsible for the majority of the deficit(s).

 

[Ivor the Engineer]

Do you think maybe Europe doesn't need to spend so much because of all those US bases there, and defense agreements with the US?

No. I think European countries don't need to spend as much on defence because, in general, they have made more a rational assessment of what the threat of invasion of a European country is (with or without US army bases being present) than the US has.

But even that was the case, why are you happy for US citizens to pay for the defence of Europe from boogeymen?

 

[AlBell]

No. I think European countries don't need to spend as much on defence because, in general, they have made more a rational assessment of what the threat of invasion of a European country is (with or without US army bases being present) than the US has.

But even that was the case, why are you happy for US citizens to pay for the defence of Europe from boogeymen?

I'm happy because I prefer wars elsewhere rather than here.