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...floor speech delivered not so long ago by a certain member of Congress who offered this counterargument to automatic debt ceiling increases:"The fact that we are here today to debate raising America's debt limit is a sign of leadership failure. ... It is a sign that we now depend on ongoing financial assistance from foreign countries to finance our government's reckless fiscal policies."Which die-hard Tea Party wingnut said that? It was none other than Sen. Barack Obama, D-Ill., speaking on the Senate floor in 2006 just before he voted against raising the debt ceiling. Obama was right. America would be in better financial health today if the Republican Congress in 2006 had stopped spending billions more tax dollars than the U.S. Treasury collected and ended the borrowing of countless billions of dollars from China to support continued deficit spending.
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that's a shame that they want to cut SS when SS is pulling in a surplus in tax revenues....and has been for 20 plus years
they should cut discretionary spending instead.
First, SS is a wonderful system, but it is not as solvent as you think it is.
This year, the system will pay out more in benefits than it receives in payroll taxes, an important threshold it was not expected to cross until at least 2016, according to the Congressional Budget Office. Stephen C. Goss, chief actuary of the Social Security Administration, said that while the Congressional projection would probably be borne out, the change would have no effect on benefits in 2010 and retirees would keep receiving their checks as usual.
http://www.nytimes.com/2010/03/25/business/economy/25social.html
I wish people would stop spouting talking points and keep to the real facts.
Second, the fund has been raided to pay down the debt for years, so it is nothing but a house of cards anyway.
Third, refusing to put everything on the table, including the sacred cows like SS and defense, is not going to get us out of this mess. We need to have a real discussion about the problems we face, and stop the nonsense. No one wants to mess with the gray voting block, but the only way to deal with the mess we have is to be honest and admit that we are in serious trouble. Putting SS on the table, and fighting to keep it, will give us a chance to eliminate the stuff that needs to be cut. Keeping it off the table will only encourage others to keep their favorite spending off the table, and get us nowhere.
"The fact that we are here today to debate raising America's debt limit is a sign of leadership failure. ... It is a sign that we now depend on ongoing financial assistance from foreign countries to finance our government's reckless fiscal policies."
Is he right?
Now all of a sudden I head Democrats concerned with our Credit Rating.
Now that we're going to take away their credit card, they complaining about the loss of our Credit Rating.
Obama was right , Consider if the debt ceiling isnt raised the global economy will collapse we wont be able to pay our bills.
There will be riots in the streets inside of 3 weeks .
Which is fine with me.
Im ready for the meltdown as much as one can be.
Lets see, obama and his socialist cronies increased the debt in two years more than the first 110 congresses combined. Then they wonder why the last election went the way it did. The idiots are clueless. Lets see the clueless come on here now and blame Bush. Idiots.
Lets see, obama and his socialist cronies increased the debt in two years more than the first 110 congresses combined. Then they wonder why the last election went the way it did. The idiots are clueless. Lets see the clueless come on here now and blame Bush. Idiots.
I see someone's been reading their non-factual talking points.
The National Debt on the first day of Obama's first fiscal year = 11,920,519,164,319.42
The National Debt as of today= 14,005,527,916,676.98
This clearly shows that Obama has not even come close to the total National Debt for a for all previous Congresses.
However, it's still way too much. Of course as facts show, the past budget, the current and future fiscal years budgets are mandated to pay for programs that Bush and the GOP controlled Congress legislated, like Medicare Part D for example.
We need to make cuts, there is no question about that. But what programs will Congress have the balls to cut that will actually make a difference?
Lets see, obama and his socialist cronies increased the debt in two years more than the first 110 congresses combined. Then they wonder why the last election went the way it did. The idiots are clueless. Lets see the clueless come on here now and blame Bush. Idiots.
I see someone's been reading their non-factual talking points.
The National Debt on the first day of Obama's first fiscal year = 11,920,519,164,319.42
The National Debt as of today= 14,005,527,916,676.98
This clearly shows that Obama has not even come close to the total National Debt for a for all previous Congresses.
However, it's still way too much. Of course as facts show, the past budget, the current and future fiscal years budgets are mandated to pay for programs that Bush and the GOP controlled Congress legislated, like Medicare Part D for example.
We need to make cuts, there is no question about that. But what programs will Congress have the balls to cut that will actually make a difference?
And you have to take into account simple facts like the bill for the interest on the debt that was accumulated BEFORE Obama ever took office that now has to be paid on his watch.
Our current President vehemently opposed and voted against raising the Debt. Ceiling in the past. In fact he delivered numerous pompous speeches on that. So why the sudden change of heart? The answer...Absolute Power corrupts Absolutely. It's very sad.
that's a shame that they want to cut SS when SS is pulling in a surplus in tax revenues....and has been for 20 plus years
they should cut discretionary spending instead.
First, SS is a wonderful system, but it is not as solvent as you think it is.
http://www.nytimes.com/2010/03/25/business/economy/25social.htmlThis year, the system will pay out more in benefits than it receives in payroll taxes, an important threshold it was not expected to cross until at least 2016, according to the Congressional Budget Office. Stephen C. Goss, chief actuary of the Social Security Administration, said that while the Congressional projection would probably be borne out, the change would have no effect on benefits in 2010 and retirees would keep receiving their checks as usual.
I wish people would stop spouting talking points and keep to the real facts.
Second, the fund has been raided to pay down the debt for years, so it is nothing but a house of cards anyway.
Third, refusing to put everything on the table, including the sacred cows like SS and defense, is not going to get us out of this mess. We need to have a real discussion about the problems we face, and stop the nonsense. No one wants to mess with the gray voting block, but the only way to deal with the mess we have is to be honest and admit that we are in serious trouble. Putting SS on the table, and fighting to keep it, will give us a chance to eliminate the stuff that needs to be cut. Keeping it off the table will only encourage others to keep their favorite spending off the table, and get us nowhere.
If you consider it raiding the social security fund to pay for what income taxes should have been paying, then PLEASE admit that the famous line that continually is said by the 'right side of the aisle' of "there are 47% of the people in this country that pay no tax to fund the gvt" is simply A LIE. Eh??? Is it not a lie? When all of these working poor are OVER PAYING social security taxes on every dime they earn, and their money is used to pay for what income taxes are SUPPOSE to pay....
Also, is it better for the gvt to borrow their revenue shortfall from communist China, Saudi Arabia, and Japan.... or better for National Security reasons, to borrow this money from Social Security surplus monies?
Oh lookie here, from CATO!
George W. Bush: Biggest Spender Since LBJ
The Congressional Budget Office has released final budget numbers for fiscal year 2009. The numbers allow us to take a last look at the Bush administration’s record on spending from a statistical point of view.
The following three charts show annual average real (or constant dollar) outlays during the tenures of recent presidents. Presidents were in office for either 4 or 8 budget years, except JFK (3 years), LBJ (5 years), Nixon (6 years), and Ford (2 years).
President George W. Bush’s last year was fiscal 2009. Outlays that year were $3.522 trillion, according to the CBO. However, $108 billion was spending for the 2009 economic stimulus package passed under President Obama. Bush was thus roughly responsible for $3.414 trillion of spending in 2009, which includes outlays for the financial bailouts enacted under his watch. (For FY2009, $154 billion for TARP and $91 billion for Fannie and Freddie).
Spending in Bush’s first year (FY2001) was $1.863 trillion, thus he presided over an 83-percent increase in overall federal spending, which includes defense, domestic, entitlements, and interest. Even without TARP and Fannie/Freddie, spending was up a huge 70 percent under Bush over eight years. By contrast, total spending under eight years of President Clinton increased just 32 percent. These are the overall increases in nominal dollars
For more go to this link; George W. Bush: Biggest Spender Since LBJ | Cato @ Liberty
Which brings me to piece written by former Ronald Reagan adviser Bruce Bartell;
Republican Deficit Hypocrisy
The human capacity for self-delusion never ceases to amaze me, so it shouldn't surprise me that so many Republicans seem to genuinely believe that they are the party of fiscal responsibility. Perhaps at one time they were, but those days are long gone.
This fact became blindingly obvious to me six years ago this month when a Republican president and a Republican Congress enacted the Medicare drug benefit, which former U.S. Comptroller General David Walker has called "the most fiscally irresponsible piece of legislation since the 1960s."
Recall the situation in 2003. The Bush administration was already projecting the largest deficit in American history--$475 billion in fiscal year 2004, according to the July 2003 mid-session budget review. But a big election was coming up that Bush and his party were desperately fearful of losing. So they decided to win it by buying the votes of America's seniors by giving them an expensive new program to pay for their prescription drugs
Recall, too, that Medicare was already broke in every meaningful sense of the term. According to the 2003 Medicare trustees report, spending for Medicare was projected to rise much more rapidly than the payroll tax as the baby boomers retired. Consequently, the rational thing for Congress to do would have been to find ways of cutting its costs. Instead, Republicans voted to vastly increase them--and the federal deficit--by $395 billion between 2004 and 2013.
However, the Bush administration knew this figure was not accurate because Medicare's chief actuary, Richard Foster, had concluded, well before passage, that the more likely cost would be $534 billion. Tom Scully, a Republican political appointee at the Department of Health and Human Services, threatened to fire him if he dared to make that information public before the vote. (See this report by the HHS inspector general and this article by Foster
For more go to Republican Deficit Hypocrisy - Forbes.com
When one reads Bartlett's piece, pay attention to who were the those in Congress then who were pushing the spending, oddly, these are todays fiscal hawks.
