i would like to see the numbers ran on cain's 9-9-9 plan. its a shame that the guy took his self out of serious consdieration with idioic comments about mosques, but he's the only one in the race that has proposed an idea.
Today I got a mailer from my representative, Pete Olson, regarding the debt situation. Attached was a questionnaire, with three simple questions... 1) Do you support measures that would amend the US constitution to require a balanced federal budget? 2) Do you support entitlement reforms on Medicare and Social Security to reduce our nation's debt? 3) Do you support measures that wold cut all spending not related to homeland security or defense spending across the board by 1-5%? These guys are truly nuts. 1) NO. Absolutely not. That might be the dumbest thing I've ever heard of. 2) Maybe, if done very carefully. 3) HELL ****ING NO. The FIRST thing to cut is homeland security and defense. By a lot more than 5% too. What the hell...
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I'm still shaking my head over this. Recall that the day before 9/11 Rumsfeld admitted that DoD had ~2.3 TRILLION unaccounted for. The same article links to a myriad of totally believable accusations that the accounting within the pentagon is crooked and systemically altered to hide corruption, waste, and just plain irresponsibility. After 9/11 we inflate the pentagon budget even more, add on a grotesquely wasteful and ineffective "homeland security" department, and to top it all off invade two nations where we continue to hemorrhage money with virtually no accountability. And this is what my congressman wants to shamelessly protect from austerity cuts in the name of "deficit reduction". Tell me again why we cannot afford single-payer healthcare? Tell me again why federal disaster relief is unaffordable without matching cuts from other reasonable programs? Tell me again why this stuff is immune from budgetary oversight, nevermind severe cuts?
