When Does Obama's Plan Balance the Budget? Hoyer: 'I Don't Know'

[rightwinger]

How do we balance he budget?

Get our troops out of Afghanistan and use the money to bay down debt
Raise taxes and use an improving economy to increase revenue
Slash spending 10%

As debt decreases our interest payments decrease correspondingly

 

[mikegriffith1]

The last budget that Obama submitted (FY 2013) calls for $1 trillion to $600 billion deficits for the next 10 years and would increase the debt to over $20 trillion. But, hey, that's what a slim majority of Americans voted for, so we all have to suffer now.

The problem is that the Democratic Party is now dominated by people who believe in Greek, Spanish, and Italian economics--that government spending, a massive welfare state, and high taxes on the rich lead to prosperity. Never mind that Greece, Spain, and Italy are economic basket cases with chronically high employment and debt that exceeds 100% of their GDP.

 

[Oldstyle]

How do we balance he budget?

Get our troops out of Afghanistan and use the money to bay down debt
Raise taxes and use an improving economy to increase revenue
Slash spending 10%

As debt decreases our interest payments decrease correspondingly

How does raising taxes improve the economy and increase revenue? Perhaps you slept through Econ 101 but raising taxes generally slows down an economy which is why raising them right now is fiscally idiotic.

We're borrowing money to pay for our troops to be in Afghanistan...you can't use money "saved" to pay down debt when that money is borrowed in the first place. I mean I know that's what this White House is advocating but it's smoke and mirrors like most of Barry's economic plans. His idea of "cutting spending" is only asking for 1.2 trillion more in new spending instead of 1.5 trillion. It's like someone saying they "saved" a hundred dollars because the new hat they just spent two hundred dollars on was originally priced at three hundred. You didn't just save a hundred...you just spent two hundred! Barack Obama never REALLY cuts spending...he just doesn't increase the spending by as much and CALLS that cutting spending. It's laughable.

 

[midcan5]

Somehow, somewhere, some something, I missed, and everyone missed all those jobs Bush II created with his tax cuts. Where are they folks? Anyone know. Obama's stimulus did what no republican has ever done. Insanity thy name is republican. PS The rich do not create jobs, demand creates jobs and demand requires decently paid workers.

http://www.usmessageboard.com/economy/220510-the-greatest-job-creator-of-all-time.html

"The prevailing world depression, the enormous anomaly of unemployment in a world full of wants, the disastrous mistakes we have made, blind us to what is going on under the surface to the true interpretation. of the trend of things. For I predict that both of the two opposed errors of pessimism which now make so much noise in the world will be proved wrong in our own time-the pessimism of the revolutionaries who think that things are so bad that nothing can save us but violent change, and the pessimism of the reactionaries who consider the balance of our economic and social life so precarious that we must risk no experiments.

My purpose in this essay, however, is not to examine the present or the near future, but to disembarrass myself of short views and take wings into the future. What can we reasonably expect the level of our economic life to be a hundred years hence? What are the economic possibilities for our grandchildren?" http://www.econ.yale.edu/smith/econ116a/keynes1.pdf

 

[rightwinger]

How do we balance he budget?

Get our troops out of Afghanistan and use the money to bay down debt
Raise taxes and use an improving economy to increase revenue
Slash spending 10%

As debt decreases our interest payments decrease correspondingly

How does raising taxes improve the economy and increase revenue? Perhaps you slept through Econ 101 but raising taxes generally slows down an economy which is why raising them right now is fiscally idiotic.

We're borrowing money to pay for our troops to be in Afghanistan...you can't use money "saved" to pay down debt when that money is borrowed in the first place. I mean I know that's what this White House is advocating but it's smoke and mirrors like most of Barry's economic plans. His idea of "cutting spending" is only asking for 1.2 trillion more in new spending instead of 1.5 trillion. It's like someone saying they "saved" a hundred dollars because the new hat they just spent two hundred dollars on was originally priced at three hundred. You didn't just save a hundred...you just spent two hundred! Barack Obama never REALLY cuts spending...he just doesn't increase the spending by as much and CALLS that cutting spending. It's laughable.

Actually, leading economists have already stated that the meager tax increase we are talking about will have minimal impact on the economy. The so called fiscal cliff is driven by spending cuts pulling money out of the economy.
Yes we are borrowing money to pay for Afghanistan. If you stop borrowing your deficit decreases.....simple math

Please post where President Obama has increased spending program by program. I would like to see it

 

[ba1614]

Somehow, somewhere, some something, I missed, and everyone missed all those jobs Bush II created with his tax cuts. Where are they folks? Anyone know. Obama's stimulus did what no republican has ever done. Insanity thy name is republican. PS The rich do not create jobs, demand creates jobs and demand requires decently paid workers.

http://www.usmessageboard.com/economy/220510-the-greatest-job-creator-of-all-time.html

"The prevailing world depression, the enormous anomaly of unemployment in a world full of wants, the disastrous mistakes we have made, blind us to what is going on under the surface to the true interpretation. of the trend of things. For I predict that both of the two opposed errors of pessimism which now make so much noise in the world will be proved wrong in our own time-the pessimism of the revolutionaries who think that things are so bad that nothing can save us but violent change, and the pessimism of the reactionaries who consider the balance of our economic and social life so precarious that we must risk no experiments.

My purpose in this essay, however, is not to examine the present or the near future, but to disembarrass myself of short views and take wings into the future. What can we reasonably expect the level of our economic life to be a hundred years hence? What are the economic possibilities for our grandchildren?" http://www.econ.yale.edu/smith/econ116a/keynes1.pdf

lmao, still Boooooooooossssssssshhhhhhhhhhhh lol it's Booooooossssssshhhhhhhs fault obummer and his senate hasn't passed a budget in 4yrs lol

 

[007]

How can you balance a budget when haven't even passed one in nearly 4yrs?

and this is the people they put back in charge of our country

how scary is that the VOTERS don't care

This is your typical obama voter, and yeah, it's scary, they now outnumber people that actually have an IQ higher than 50 and want to work and succeed...

[ame=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tpAOwJvTOio]Original Obamaphone Lady: Obama Voter Says Vote for Obama because he gives a free Phone - YouTube[/ame]

 

[007]

Somehow, somewhere, some something, I missed, and everyone missed all those jobs Bush II created with his tax cuts. Where are they folks? Anyone know. Obama's stimulus did what no republican has ever done. Insanity thy name is republican. PS The rich do not create jobs, demand creates jobs and demand requires decently paid workers.

http://www.usmessageboard.com/economy/220510-the-greatest-job-creator-of-all-time.html

"The prevailing world depression, the enormous anomaly of unemployment in a world full of wants, the disastrous mistakes we have made, blind us to what is going on under the surface to the true interpretation. of the trend of things. For I predict that both of the two opposed errors of pessimism which now make so much noise in the world will be proved wrong in our own time-the pessimism of the revolutionaries who think that things are so bad that nothing can save us but violent change, and the pessimism of the reactionaries who consider the balance of our economic and social life so precarious that we must risk no experiments.

My purpose in this essay, however, is not to examine the present or the near future, but to disembarrass myself of short views and take wings into the future. What can we reasonably expect the level of our economic life to be a hundred years hence? What are the economic possibilities for our grandchildren?" http://www.econ.yale.edu/smith/econ116a/keynes1.pdf

Listen to yourself man... whether you think so or not, or will admit it or not... you are a COMMUNIST.

 

[rightwinger]

How can you balance a budget when haven't even passed one in nearly 4yrs?

and this is the people they put back in charge of our country

how scary is that the VOTERS don't care

This is your typical obama voter, and yeah, it's scary, they now outnumber people that actually have an IQ higher than 50 and want to work and succeed...

[ame=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tpAOwJvTOio]Original Obamaphone Lady: Obama Voter Says Vote for Obama because he gives a free Phone - YouTube[/ame]

Oh look everyone

Conservatives are posting another "black people sure are stupid" video

And they wonder why they can't get elected?

 

[jillian]

lovely
links in article at site

SNIP:

By Elizabeth Harrington

November 30, 2012

(CNSNews.com) – House Minority Whip Steny Hoyer (D-Md.) said he does not know when President Barack Obama’s plan for the fiscal cliff will balance the federal budget.

“The President’s proposition was that—on the revenue side—to balance the spending cuts we needed to raise additional revenues,” Hoyer said during a Capitol Hill pen and pad briefing with reporters on Friday. “We are now collecting revenues at about 15 percent and spending at about 22 percent of GDP [Gross Domestic Product].”

ryan didn't know when his plan would 'balance the budget' either.

and it's not like you spend like drunken sailor rightwingnuts cared before this president was in office.

*shrug*

 

[CrusaderFrank]

As retardation continues to plague the minds of the right in America proof of the failure of their policies lost them the election, the senate, and several house seats. It would seem stupidity, once embedded in an American conservative is terminal. Austerity policies have failed since the great depression and they will always fail. You cannot make something grow when there is no nutrient. It is the same with economies. Europe is proving again dumbness has lots of adherents. And so it goes. A few pieces below for those who want America to move forward and not die under republican intransigence.

"As economic adversity continues to spread, from Athens to Madrid, London to the Beltway, austerity has become a most dangerous idea. What now dominates the world is the popular theory that if countries just tighten their belts, strong growth and lower unemployment will soon follow. It is the opposite of the Keynesian lessons learned from the Great Depression and is supported by neither historical nor empirical evidence. The world’s leading economic commentators, Nobel Laureate Paul Krugman of the New York Times and Martin Wolf of the Financial Times, have regularly railed against austerity, but to little avail. Advocates of austerity in Western Europe have claimed that it would rapidly reduce budget deficits and calm financial markets. Instead, it has failed in every country in which it has been applied." 'The Austerity Myth' By Jeff Madrick Harper's Magazine

"Wealth inequality. This is now at levels unprecedented in modern history, the greatest gap between rich and poor since the Great Depression. The Occupy movement's "one-percent" rhetoric is easy to deride, and their lack of concrete policy easy to dismiss, but there is no arguing with the numbers, Taking the extreme but leading example of the United States, one finds that the richest fifth of the population controls 85% of the country's wealth, while the poorest fifth controls an amount so much lower than one percent that it registers statistically as zero. Despite these facts, people remain confused about the realities of wealth distribution: in surveys a majority of Americans regularly report their belief that the top quintile controls only 60%, and further reported that the fair figure would be closer to 35%-that is, fully 50 points below the actual distribution, and against a background of commitment to free enterprise, individual effort, and success." Mark Kingwell 'Unruly Voices: Essays on Democracy, Civility and the Human Imagination'

"Recently, Obama has been re-elected for a 2nd term by an illiterate society and he is ready to continue his lies of less taxes while he raises them." Pravda, after reading the abovw

The irony of this must be lost on the poster - communist propaganda now informs the minds of the conservative American of the right. There are no words to describe retardation at this level, nor the irony. Stupid hardly touches the right today, we'll soon need a new vocabulary of dumb.

"Conservatives thrive on a world filled with mysterious evil and unfathomable hatreds, where good is always on the defensive and time is a precious commodity in the cosmic race against corruption and decline." Corey Robin 'The Reactionary Mind'

"american Progressives embrace a failed economic ideology, they have been humped and dumped by their elder brothers in economic faith: the ChiComs, Russians, Vietnamese and now the Cubans. Worse, they embrace an economic model that is failing right in open in Europe" -- me

 

[ba1614]

and this is the people they put back in charge of our country

how scary is that the VOTERS don't care

This is your typical obama voter, and yeah, it's scary, they now outnumber people that actually have an IQ higher than 50 and want to work and succeed...

[ame=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tpAOwJvTOio]Original Obamaphone Lady: Obama Voter Says Vote for Obama because he gives a free Phone - YouTube[/ame]

Oh look everyone

Conservatives are posting another "black people sure are stupid" video

And they wonder why they can't get elected?

Not all black people, but this stupid bitch sure is at the bottom of the gene pool.

 

[Votto]

As retardation continues to plague the minds of the right in America proof of the failure of their policies lost them the election, the senate, and several house seats. It would seem stupidity, once embedded in an American conservative is terminal. Austerity policies have failed since the great depression and they will always fail. You cannot make something grow when there is no nutrient. It is the same with economies. Europe is proving again dumbness has lots of adherents. And so it goes. A few pieces below for those who want America to move forward and not die under republican intransigence.

=

Speaking of the ignorant and illeterate mind, tell us, what is the history of fiat currency systems?

 

[Vel]

How do we balance he budget?

Get our troops out of Afghanistan and use the money to bay down debt
Raise taxes and use an improving economy to increase revenue
Slash spending 10%

As debt decreases our interest payments decrease correspondingly

Pssst. We're BORROWING the money to stay in Afghanistan. How do you propose to use borrowed money to pay your debts?

Raising taxes AND an improving economy? Ok.

Sorry for the repeat. I didn't see Oldstyles post.

 

[Oldstyle]

It's pretty dismal. When currency isn't tied to gold and governments are allowed to print as much of it as they please it inevitably becomes worth less. We're experiencing that right now. "Quantitative easing" is another word for "devaluing your money". Every time that it happens it's like some invisible hand slips into your pocket and steals from you.

 

[Votto]

lovely
links in article at site

SNIP:



By Elizabeth Harrington

November 30, 2012

(CNSNews.com) – House Minority Whip Steny Hoyer (D-Md.) said he does not know when President Barack Obama’s plan for the fiscal cliff will balance the federal budget.

“The President’s proposition was that—on the revenue side—to balance the spending cuts we needed to raise additional revenues,” Hoyer said during a Capitol Hill pen and pad briefing with reporters on Friday. “We are now collecting revenues at about 15 percent and spending at about 22 percent of GDP [Gross Domestic Product].”

“You can’t do that for very long,” he said. “Even the richest country on the face of the earth can’t do that forever without having serious adverse consequences.”

“Almost everybody you speak to says you’ve got to bring those into balance,” Hoyer said.

However, when CNSNews.com asked the second-ranking Democrat in the House when the president will achieve that balance, Hoyer said he did not know.

CNSNews.com asked: “You said that we have to bring spending and revenue into balance. So, when does President Obama’s plan, specifically—what year—does he balance the federal budget?”

“I don’t know the answer to that question,” Hoyer said. “If it’s the $4 trillion and it’s the percentage of GDP that he arrives at.”

“Do you have any idea what percentage of GDP they would be balanced at?” CNSNews.com then asked.

“Uh, James [Leuschen, senior policy adviser] is not in the room, is he?” he said. “I’m sorry, I don’t know. I can get that for you.”

The federal government collected $2.4 trillion in revenue in FY 2012—which ended Sept. 30—or 15.8 percent of GDP. Spending accounted for 22.8 percent of GDP at $3.5 trillion, according to the Congressional Budget Office. This is the fourth year in a row where the deficit topped $1 trillion.

Thursday on Capitol Hill, Treasury Secretary Timothy Geithner, negotiating on behalf of the president to avert the so-called fiscal cliff, proposed $1.6 trillion in tax hikes and at least $50 billion in additional stimulus spending.


all of it here with comments
When Does Obama's Plan Balance the Budget? Hoyer: 'I Don't Know' | CNS News

This simply can't be true. Democrats have no idea what a budget actually is.

 

[FJO]

and this is the people they put back in charge of our country

how scary is that the VOTERS don't care

This is your typical obama voter, and yeah, it's scary, they now outnumber people that actually have an IQ higher than 50 and want to work and succeed...

[ame=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tpAOwJvTOio]Original Obamaphone Lady: Obama Voter Says Vote for Obama because he gives a free Phone - YouTube[/ame]

Oh look everyone

Conservatives are posting another "black people sure are stupid" video

And they wonder why they can't get elected?

If that lady in the video were lily white and utter the same words, she would be just as stupid.

Race is not the issue here, stupidity is.

 

[Oldstyle]

Somehow, somewhere, some something, I missed, and everyone missed all those jobs Bush II created with his tax cuts. Where are they folks? Anyone know. Obama's stimulus did what no republican has ever done. Insanity thy name is republican. PS The rich do not create jobs, demand creates jobs and demand requires decently paid workers.

http://www.usmessageboard.com/economy/220510-the-greatest-job-creator-of-all-time.html

"The prevailing world depression, the enormous anomaly of unemployment in a world full of wants, the disastrous mistakes we have made, blind us to what is going on under the surface to the true interpretation. of the trend of things. For I predict that both of the two opposed errors of pessimism which now make so much noise in the world will be proved wrong in our own time-the pessimism of the revolutionaries who think that things are so bad that nothing can save us but violent change, and the pessimism of the reactionaries who consider the balance of our economic and social life so precarious that we must risk no experiments.

My purpose in this essay, however, is not to examine the present or the near future, but to disembarrass myself of short views and take wings into the future. What can we reasonably expect the level of our economic life to be a hundred years hence? What are the economic possibilities for our grandchildren?" http://www.econ.yale.edu/smith/econ116a/keynes1.pdf

LOL...you are SO right about the Obama Stimulus doing what no Republican ever has! If you took the amount of money spent on that plan and divided it by the number of jobs it created you come out with a figure upwards of $200,000 spent per job! That's AMAZING, Midcan!

As for what creates jobs? I would suggest that it is the anticipation of profit that creates jobs. I base that on what I learned in Economics in college and what I've learned running businesses in the real world ever since. Workers are paid because the person paying them anticipates that by doing so that a profit will be created from whatever good or service that work force is laboring to produce. Demand by itself does not create jobs because demand without potential profit does not induce investment. There would be a huge "demand" for $10 all you can eat Maine lobster dinners yet you'll never see that because there is no profit to be made selling lobsters at that price. Jobs are created when investors see the potential for profit. No profit...no job creation. It's a concept that you progressives just don't seem to "get" which explains why Obama and the Gang That Can't Shoot Straight are presiding over the weakest recovery from a recession in a long, long time.

 

[CrusaderFrank]

and this is the people they put back in charge of our country

how scary is that the VOTERS don't care

This is your typical obama voter, and yeah, it's scary, they now outnumber people that actually have an IQ higher than 50 and want to work and succeed...

[ame=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tpAOwJvTOio]Original Obamaphone Lady: Obama Voter Says Vote for Obama because he gives a free Phone - YouTube[/ame]

Oh look everyone

Conservatives are posting another "black people sure are stupid" video

And they wonder why they can't get elected?

 

[midcan5]

"A people that values its privileges above its principles soon loses both." Dwight D. Eisenhower

"What all this shows is that growth is not absolutely correlated with taxes, and both liberals and conservatives have problems in trying to make a case. Far more serious factors affect growth, although, in truth, economists do [not] know exactly what they are. Nobel laureate Robert Lucas, one of the world's most famous conservative economists, has spent over a decade looking for the secret to economic growth, and has not found it. Nobel-bound Paul Krugman, one of the world's most famous liberal economists, admits that the mystery of growth is "deep and poorly understood."People who claim that tax rates affect growth are not serious economists; more often they are journalists, radio-talk show hosts, politicians and other types of snake oil salesmen with easy solutions to complex problems. You can dismiss their bumper sticker slogans with perfect confidence.

Fortunately, there is a policy implication in all this. If taxes have such a weak effect on growth, then we should consider tax cuts or hikes for their other effects, like income distribution or alleviation of poverty. Conservatives can no longer decry these programs on the basis that they will harm economic growth, since these assertions are completely unfounded. "

Tax cuts spur economic growth


Contrary To GOP Claims, Small Businesses Say Taxes And Regulation Aren't Holding Back Hiring | ThinkProgress


REPORT: 25 Corporations Paid More To Their CEO Last Year Than They Paid In Taxes | ThinkProgress


"Faced with looming deficits, Reagan raised taxes again in 1983 with a gasoline tax and once more in 1984, this time by $50 billion over three years, mainly through closing tax loopholes for business. Despite the fact that such increases were anathema to conservatives–and probably cost Reagan’s successor, George H.W. Bush, reelection–Reagan raised taxes a grand total of four times just between 1982-84."

Newsflash: Ronald Reagan Raised Taxes (You Idiots) | Firedoglake