It is not the only way. But it has to be a big part of it. Everything should be cut. But it will never happen because we live in a democracy.
Government bailouts actually reduced the deficit. In the end, the net cost will be relatively small. The recession and lost tax revenue is what caused the deficit to go from $500B to $1.5T. Imagine how much more deficit you'd have if the economy collapsed further after all the banks went under? And imagine all the increased spending on basic social services like welfare and unemployment, etc. Public healthcare has costs, but it also cuts costs in other places (for example, if insurance rates rise more slowly, that saves money in the long run). And the net budget impact was neutral, so that can't account for the deficit.
I'm not sure if Glenn Beck can read simple graphs, but his audience thinks it's Obama's spending that's responsible for the budget deficit. CBO: http://www.cbo.gov/ftpdocs/106xx/doc10640/10-2009-MBR.pdf There's also the accounting changes such as correcting the AMT for middle class families, putting the 2 wars on the books, and Medicare reimbursements (such as Medicare D). Oh yeah, Bush had nothing to do with it at all.
Obviously you have to cut entitlements and/or raise taxes. VAT tax combined with reducing Social Security benefits for the wealthy?
Let Bush tax cuts expire. Cut the hell out of the military. I was wondering the other day how much $ the government spends on commericals, advertisements, and recuiters for the military. All of that needs to go away. If we need to advertise and pay recruiters to get people to join the military than we should realize the military needs to be a whole lot smaller.
I think we need to go ahead and start World War III. Then we can either threaten our creditors into cancelling our debt, or get beaten so badly that someone else takes over as a superpower and we can become a client state with no defense spending.
A couple of things, I wish the progressives would lay off Obama for this for catering to the tea partiers. Yeah, its just throwing them a bone but it doesn't hurt anything. He already got his stimulus through, these guys like krugman who think he can get a bigger stimulus package through in this political environment are crazy Secondly, if you could really limit military spending, how many more people would that put into the job market, from both the military and its supporting industries
I think it's a huge mistake, by throwing stupidity a bone you only encourage it and justify its existence. I heard John McCain whining this AM about how spending needs to be cut (amid the worst economic unemployment picture since the 30's). Guess what, we tried that in the 30's and the result was an even worse recession. Look at health care, they did nothing but concede and it got them nowhere in the end. When you see stupid, you have to punch it in the face. Triangulation - Clinton style -just isn't going to work with this brand of stupid.
Bingo bango. It's not a matter of effort for the media to focus on the negatives, but rather a matter of intensity. He just needs to keep his base energized and ready to get off their malnourished vegan asses when it's time to vote.
1) Although it would do the trick, no one is willing to raise taxes on the majority of Americans. The closest thing to that is letting the Bush tax cuts expire, but exempting the lower and middle classes will take a lot of air out of that solution. 2) I think we really need to trim down our defense spending, but that's also a hard political sell with so many hands in the pot. Getting out of Iraq would give us one less war to pay for, and Gates seems to be reasonable in his efforts to cut fat from the military budgets. 3) Finally, we have to confront the current and impending financial disasters that are our entitlment programs. Medicaid could probably use some tweaks, but Medicare spending is really the 800-lb gorilla int he room that no politician wants to take on. I have a hard time seeing Obama or anyone else making significant progress in any of these arenas, so we'll probably have to settle for spending freezes and hope the economy bounces back to to start re-flling some of the depleted coffers.
when you build a bomb and drop it, it doesn't do anything long term. whereas if you put money in R&D or education there are significant longterm returns. so cutting defense spending to a degree perhaps while increasing a bit of spending in other areas would net you more positive employment and such than the current scheme. if you want to reduce spending, you simply have to reduce military spending. its the biggest chunk of discretionary spending. the non-military discretionary spending simply doesn't account for enough.
The person that can fix the US economy hasn't been born yet. Focused on the deficit? Instead focus on the debt load. Let's do the simple math without the politics- The govt. has a limited amount to spend based upon revenue. The govt. is already more than 12 trillion in debt servicing it at somewhere over the rainbow numbers probably over 800 billion annually, and that doesn't include what it owes to the trust funds, which is a huge amount (many many trillions more). Here is a link to a weird picture of the debt issue-link The debt is being monetized, the fact that other currencies are far more shakey allows the dollar to be stronger and it also means that the global economy still is buying, but for how long? Right now we have the debt bubble of last resort a dollar bubble. What good does it do to think of the deficit- it is only an indication that we are going to borrow alot more money. Goverment is a service overhead item. An overhead item on the industry and wealth of a nation. Anything the government spends we owe it back to the lenders. Look at the deficit this way- 1. Would you rather die falling from the 18th floor of a building or the 32nd floor of the building.- As long as we have too much debt and we do, and as long as we are increasing it and we are- Then we are just going up to a higher floor in the building. To get back down to earth we have to save more than we spend and pay off the debt. Simple arithmetic. Taxation can only pay off this kind of debt by bankrupting the taxpayer which usually is not a good idea unless you do it by force.
Couldn't agree more, someone please remind me when all the troops will be out of Iraq, or why we still there?
The simple fact of the matter is that we cannot cut back on spending or raise taxes because we will make our economic condition worse. On the other hand, we cannot afford to keep borrowing and spending as we have been. There really is no good way out of this situation. We are starting to look like Japan.
Holy crap but we spend a lot on healthcare. So basically 2/3 of our budget is military and then a federal healthcare net that only extends to some small fraction of our population. Wow wow wow. I had never seen it so starkly as in that pie chart.
BTW, Major...fantastic thread topic. After reading posts in this forum about this topic, it appears that Republicans really have no basis to complain about income taxes being too high and complaining about the size of the gov't and the "liberal" programs that help
