Yes, I read it. If you're looking to assign blame I'd say you have to start with the American voters who keep re-electing these clowns and until the Tea Partys came along pretty much kept their mouth shut. Politicians pretty much go where the money is, but they also pay attention to polls and they're pretty good most of the time at reading the public's whims. Then you got the media who have lost most of their objectivity and have not been telling us the real truth for a long time IMHO.
How to fix it? It took about 50 years to get this far into this mess, I'd say it'll take twice that to get out of it. Job 1 is to get more people back to work and get the economy growing stronger than it is now. To do that I'd cut corporate taxes and capital gains taxes down to about 10%. I'd look at every single deduction, tax break, subsidy, or loophole to see if it is cost effective. If it ain't, and most of 'em aren't, kill the damn thing.
Then I'd tell the Defense Dept they're going to get cut by 100 billion, but they get to decide where to cut without Congressional approval. We don't need politics getting inthe way of saving money while keeping our military as strong as possible.
Then I'd raise the Social Security ceiling to an amount that is a reasonable adjustment to what it should've been, and I'd tie future adjustments to the rate of inflation and wage growth, maybe a average of the 2. Then I'd raise the age limit by a year in 2022, and another year in 2032, and one more year in 2042. And finally I'd put in means testing - we don't need to be sending SS checks to millionaires.
Paul Ryan's budget uses block grants to contain the costs of healthcare. Sounds good to me, I think in order to keep costs down you have to have some skin in the game by the patients.
The GAO came out a few weeks ago with a report about waste and duplicative programs that could save maybe a couple of hundred billion. Do that as soon as possible. Then - and only then look at raising taxes or changing the whole thing to a flat tax or consumption or perhaps a combo of the two. Nothing too drastic to torpedo the struggling economy, but increased revenue should be part of the deal.
How to fix it? It took about 50 years to get this far into this mess, I'd say it'll take twice that to get out of it. Job 1 is to get more people back to work and get the economy growing stronger than it is now. To do that I'd cut corporate taxes and capital gains taxes down to about 10%. I'd look at every single deduction, tax break, subsidy, or loophole to see if it is cost effective. If it ain't, and most of 'em aren't, kill the damn thing.
Then I'd tell the Defense Dept they're going to get cut by 100 billion, but they get to decide where to cut without Congressional approval. We don't need politics getting inthe way of saving money while keeping our military as strong as possible.
Then I'd raise the Social Security ceiling to an amount that is a reasonable adjustment to what it should've been, and I'd tie future adjustments to the rate of inflation and wage growth, maybe a average of the 2. Then I'd raise the age limit by a year in 2022, and another year in 2032, and one more year in 2042. And finally I'd put in means testing - we don't need to be sending SS checks to millionaires.
Paul Ryan's budget uses block grants to contain the costs of healthcare. Sounds good to me, I think in order to keep costs down you have to have some skin in the game by the patients.
The GAO came out a few weeks ago with a report about waste and duplicative programs that could save maybe a couple of hundred billion. Do that as soon as possible. Then - and only then look at raising taxes or changing the whole thing to a flat tax or consumption or perhaps a combo of the two. Nothing too drastic to torpedo the struggling economy, but increased revenue should be part of the deal.
