U.S. Budget problem

Round two. The drop-dead date for getting a budget approved, else we go into a government shutdown, is April 8th. It's all over the news again. Some chatter about getting a (third) one-week extension in, but President Obama is opposed to that.

It seems that the Dems and Repubs have agreed on a dollar figure for the budget cut, but the problem is now that they don't agree on where the cuts are going to take place.

As mentioned in the previous iteration of this subject, there's a lot of cuts that the Congressional Budget Office listed in detail.

In local (for me) budget news, Hawaii may be raising the General Excise Tax by one percent for all transactions and repealing some GET exemptions that are in place for certain business sectors. GET is f=different from a sales taxin that it is levied against every business transaction, not just the transaction made by the end-consumer.

And the House Republicans have proposed a measure that would cut 6 trillion dollars in spending over the next 10 years compared to Obama and Democrats' plan which would do approximately less than a fourth of that for the same time period.

Actual proposal.

Though that's for the next budget, not the one they're currently fighting about.

I do agree with the statement by the Republican leader in the House that Congress has to look at "entitlement programs" too. Those programs constantly grow in cost, it seems, to the degree that if nothing's done, nobody will have any non-entitlement, non-military spending left.

Right now, both sides are doing the "If you think cutting the deficit is so important, why don't we cut some of the programs YOU care about, hmm?" dance.

GOP aren't going to go for military cuts, ever, Democrats aren't going to cut social services to the extent required to do anything significant about the deficit. Government shutdown ensues, GOP wins by default due to claiming that government is ineffectual.

Thus sayeth the disillusioned prophet.

Also, all those 'entitlement programs' would be fine if their reserves hadn't been constantly plundered for unrelated spending.

Well, some of them would be. Social Security, for example, works that way, I know. Is Medicare/Medicaid funded via the same model?

I'm actually open for some military cuts. F/A-18 Hornet, for example, is a decent enough fighter, we can delay replacing it for a time.

EDIT:

I'd like it if this iteration can avoid becoming a massive blame-game session and dives off into the weeds somewhere. That's what got it locked before - we have plenty of people in positions of leadership doing the blame game; we don't need to do that here.

edited 5th Apr '11 3:56:22 PM by pvtnum11

x5 This forum does not accept Faux news sources.

Here's a good video of Cenk Uygur tearing through their corrupt proposal.

Whatever 'cuts' the GOP claims they will make in savings would inevitably be unbalanced by the massive losses in revenue they try to push.

Here's the solution. Raise income taxes on those making 250k+ by 20%.

There you go, budget solved.

edited 5th Apr '11 3:56:38 PM by CommandoDude

^ I linked to the actual proposal. The Fox article is merely fluff for comparison.

Your wildly partisan response beyond that is not worth dealing with owing to closed minded "There is no spending problem" hiding.

Uygar isn't much better than Fox News.

I've never said there isn't a spending problem. Look through my posting history, you'll find me citing out of control military spending and ridiculous subsidies and rebates for multinational corporations who aren't paying any taxes.

Are you denying that there is a clear revenue problem?

That guy is literally the most trustworthy person on air.

edited 5th Apr '11 4:05:17 PM by CommandoDude

I think a J-curve hike, starting at the 250k income mark would work. So if you make say, 255k a year, you see only a negligable increase in taxes, but if you make say, fifty million a year, your tax rate will go up a noticeable amount. Something that doesn't hit the people right at and just above the 250k line harshly, and slides upwards in rate as income slides upward. Inflation would eventually require lawmakers to slide the low end of the J-curve to the right, or higher up in income. Who knows, in fifteen years, 250k might not be all that much anymore and the rate shoudl account for that so that we don't end up putting undue burdin on those who cannot afford to bear it. I hope that makes sense.

More is required according to their means, essentially.

Heck, just make the whole tax bracket a J-curve. You make less than [x] a year? No tax. You make more than that? This is your tax rate, according to the J-curve chart.

What that curve would actually look like, though, I have no idea.

Okay well I skimmed through the document and ignoring the rather partisan literature that makes up 99% of the pdf, I'm not entirely clear on what the GOP is actually intending to cut. They just keep going "Obama is bad, democrats spend too much" but then when I finally get to the summary tables, they don't cut spending whatsoever. They just pretend that every year, revenue goes up substantially and that even though they absolutely refuse to reduce the defence budget, somehow spending will be stable for 10 years thereby "saving 6.2 trillion". They didn't save a dime. They just pretend that spending won't ever change for 50 years and therefore we would be awesome.

Uygar's argument is a giant red herring. He makes the argument about taxes (which is really a way of making it about redistribution of wealth) instead of actual ways to cut money.

edited 5th Apr '11 4:15:50 PM by silver2195

Hence why I would like to thump them with a bound copy of the CBO report, printed on some high-quality thick paper. Maybe some of the ideas will get lodged into their cranium and they'll spit out some stuff that makes sense after they recuperate in the hopsital.

Yes, a delicious idea, I'll do that after I thump the Democrats with it, too.

Well there's several things America can do. Aside from all the cuts we previously discussed in the other thread about the US budget, there's also tax collection issues.

Last year General Electric reported 12 billion USD in profits and didn't pay one dime in taxes. I paid more in [expletive] taxes than them.

The rich need to pay their share for benefiting from the services of the US government. Taxes from GE alone would pay the government salaries at all your departments.

EDIT: The lost tax from GE btw was worth 3.2 billion USD.

edited 5th Apr '11 4:23:22 PM by breadloaf

Because he and most American people would prefer to raise taxes then make cuts? That's not a red hearing.

Of course he's not going to talk about cuts. Fuck cuts.

edited 5th Apr '11 4:17:33 PM by CommandoDude

Even making the generous assumption that Uygar is arguing in good faith, no level of tax raises short of economy-crippling ones can pay off the national debt.

Exactly. You need both cuts and hikes. Cuts alone would be devastating to some sectors of the economy, hikes alone lead to the same outcome.

I'm not sure how to reply to this since it is untrue. Either you are lying or willfully ignorant.

Especially considering your rhetoric amounts to "Any increase in taxes is economically crippling!"

Oh yes, they'll certainly be in trouble if they can't maintain their hold on 80% of this country's wealth. Any less and they'll be unable to invest!

edited 5th Apr '11 4:26:59 PM by CommandoDude

NO U!

I never said that, unless you assume that any increase in taxes is enough to pay off the national debt.

"Well, some of them would be. Social Security, for example, works that way, I know. Is Medicare/Medicaid funded via the same model?"

To be fair to those in favor of social services cuts, Medicare, although funded by taxes, has exceeded its income in expenses in recent years. However, tackling this issue by depriving elderly people of easy access to medicine does not seem to be a particularly sustainable political position - older people vote plenty, and they won't take kindly to losing out on medicines they need to function comfortably in day to day life. It is a genuine issue, but it needs to be tackled from the other end, by making healthcare more affordable so that it costs less to provide, and by utilizing more preventative medicine where potentially serious problems are caught before they become serious (and expensive).

"I never said that, unless you assume that any increase in taxes is enough to pay off the national debt."

I suppose that depends on how fast you want to pay it off. ;) I don't think having a certain amount of national debt is a particularly bad thing, so long as it's being paid back regularly enough to keep the people's faith.

A fair point. I guess I got too caught up in the "Gotcha!" moment there.

Well it's also important to note what type of debt is being held and what the due dates on the debt is. Cycling through new debt is an indication that you might spending healthily because the debt you use allows you to grow the US economy greater than the interest paid on the debt. However, idling debt is a bad sign that you're just spending way more than you can afford in order to just maintain your system, not even to grow it.

^ Good point. Say, I got ten grand in credit card debt. I would be killing my budget if I set out to nuke my credit card debt in a year. But four years? Easily done.