Back To The Reagan Trajectory "Entitlements" Again

[mascale]

Probably the Democrats think that Ronald Reagan was some kind of liberal, lying his way into office with promises of balanced budgets. The Senator-Elect from Massachusetts lied his way into office, claiming to be a tax-cutter just like JFK, who really had low-income taxes to cut. Bush II tried tax cuts twice, and 45% of filers had no federal income taxes to cut, just like now--which Senator Brown will support.

It took an Osama bin laden to take credit for what the GOP thinks it is doing. 19 dead Saudi no-accounts, flew into buildings in New York City--and the invasions of Afghanistan and Iraq were on! Sending in troops without body armor, adequate weapons: And even the intelligence, went without saying. There were no Weapons of Mass Destruction, but the GOP kept the killing of Americans in the battlegrounds on-going anyway.

Even their buddies seemed to enjoy the killing of Americans. They still keep at the basis-free killing, of Americans!

http://www.dailyfinance.com/story/too-much-hope-why-the-obama-budget-is-unrealistic/19342212/

Now anyone can see how the Reagan Trajectory continues to work, even in the United States! Most of the budget goes to upper income medical and support staff, upper income defense contractors and support staff, and to Social Security Beneficiaries, victims of the fixed percentage COLA. Upper level beneficaries get more than the lower level beneficiaries, even in the lawful express of equal treatment in the law, in Social Security.

Food stamps these are not. Even after Reagan, then the budget amounts for upper income medical and support staff in the Medicare and Medicaid programs, the budget amounts for upper income engineers, defense support staff, mega-corporations, and their boards--in the defense sector--even were increased, beyond inflation.

Then there is the "other" part of the federal budget, of upper income NASA engineers, and support staff, and corporations, and the rest of the federal budget, and upper income lawyers, judges, bureaucrats, supportive staff and the rest of the contractors.

The Obama Administration is often accused of being Socialist. Anyone recalls the old Soviet Bloc rewards to upper echelon bureaucrats, fixed percentage national raises of incomes, lack of body armor for troops in the field, (which is actually America), and shoddy consumer goods, like Toyotas, (which is actually America), and the the lack of various consumer goods at all--which the unemployed especially understand, the foreclosed especially understand, and the bailed-out fail to understand!

Actually, like the Reagan-Trajectory the Obama Administration is Socialist. Actually the Republican Party has a flawed agenda, for the United States--and for the invaded other nations of the planet! One of the other party candidates actually managed to attract a lot of cross-overs, even in the other party's primary elections!

"Crow, James Crow: Shaken, Not Stirred!"
(Anyone can just how that comes about!)

 

[waltky]

Alan Simpson on entitlements...

Leaving entitlements on auto pilot will crush the U.S. economy, Alan Simpson says
February 06, 2011 | President Obama's calls for a five-year freeze on discretionary spending, as well as Republican demands to turn back the budget clock to 2008 spending, will save "peanuts" and do nothing to turn around the country's "sacrosanct" entitlement culture, one head of the president's deficit commission said Sunday.

Former Republican Sen. Alan Simpson, who was appointed by Obama along with former Bill Clinton chief of staff Erskine Bowles to lead the president's panel for reducing the nation's debt, said leaving Social Security, Medicare and Medicaid on auto pilot will crush the U.S. economy. "I'm waiting for the politician to get up and say, there's only one way to do this, you dig into the big four, Medicare, Medicaid, Social Security, and defense. And anybody giving you anything different than that, you want to walk out the door, stick your finger down your throat and give them the green weenie," Simpson said on CNN's "State of the Union."

Simpson, whose deficit reduction proposal was rejected in December by a supermajority of the 18-member panel appointed to propose debt reduction recommendations to a stalled Congress, said anyone claiming that fixing entitlements is the same as privatizing Social Security is strictly out for political gain. "These jerks who keep dragging that up are lying. We never suggested that. We're talking about doing a hideous thing, to change the retirement age to 68 by the year 2050. And hear people howl and bitch about that. Well, what do they care about their kids or their grandkids?" he asked. "If you don't do anything with Social Security when you waddle up to get your check in the year 2037, you'll get 22 percent less," he added.

Simpson has been a rare -- if not, distinctive -- voice in the effort to include entitlements and defense spending in talks on reducing the size of the annual budget and decreasing the nation's $14 trillion-plus debt. That debt level is expected to reach a congressionally imposed limit by April, and without approval to lift the ceiling, the country will default. While Republican leaders in the House say they won't allow that to happen, they are tying new budgetary processes to any debt increase. "If the president wants our help to pay off his debts, he's going to have to begin the process of cutting up the credit cards. In other words, we need major spending cuts and major spending reforms," Rep. Jeb Hensarling, R-Texas, the No. 4 Republican in the House, said Saturday in the Republican radio address.

Read more: FoxNews.com - Simpson: Leaving Entitlements on Auto Pilot Will Crush the U.S. Economy

 

[waltky]

Robert Reich tells it like it is...

Budget baloney: Social Security isn't to blame for deficit
February 18, 2011 - Social Security won't be a problem for another 26 years, and even then, the problem can be solved.

New Jersey Governor Chris Christie, a Republican presidential hopeful, says in order to “save” Social Security the retirement age should be raised. The media are congratulating him for his putative “courage.” Deficit hawks are proclaiming Social Security one of the big entitlements that has to be cut in order to reduce the budget deficit. This is all baloney.

In a former life I was a trustee of the Social Security trust fund. So let me set the record straight. Social Security isn’t responsible for the federal deficit. Just the opposite. Until last year Social Security took in more payroll taxes than it paid out in benefits. It lent the surpluses to the rest of the government. Now that Social Security has started to pay out more than it takes in, Social Security can simply collect what the rest of the government owes it. This will keep it fully solvent for the next 26 years.

But why should there even be a problem 26 years from now? Back in 1983, Alan Greenspan’s Social Security commission was supposed to have fixed the system for good – by gradually increasing payroll taxes and raising the retirement age. (Early boomers like me can start collecting full benefits at age 66; late boomers born after 1960 will have to wait until they’re 67.) Greenspan’s commission must have failed to predict something. But what? It fairly accurately predicted how quickly the boomers would age. It had a pretty good idea of how fast the US economy would grow. While it underestimated how many immigrants would be coming into the United States, that’s no problem. To the contrary, most new immigrants are young and their payroll-tax contributions will far exceed what they draw from Social Security for decades. So what did Greenspan’s commission fail to see coming?

Inequality. Remember, the Social Security payroll tax applies only to earnings up to a certain ceiling. (That ceiling is now $106,800.) The ceiling rises every year according to a formula roughly matching inflation. Back in 1983, the ceiling was set so the Social Security payroll tax would hit 90 percent of all wages covered by Social Security. That 90 percent figure was built into the Greenspan Commission’s fixes. The Commission assumed that, as the ceiling rose with inflation, the Social Security payroll tax would continue to hit 90 percent of total income.

Today, though, the Social Security payroll tax hits only about 84 percent of total income. It went from 90 percent to 84 percent because a larger and larger portion of total income has gone to the top. In 1983, the richest 1 percent of Americans got 11.6 percent of total income. Today the top 1 percent takes in more than 20 percent. If we want to go back to 90 percent, the ceiling on income subject to the Social Security tax would need to be raised to $180,000.

Presto. Social Security’s long-term (beyond 26 years from now) problem would be solved. So there’s no reason even to consider reducing Social Security benefits or raising the age of eligibility. The logical response to the increasing concentration of income at the top is simply to raise the ceiling. Not incidentally, several months ago the White House considered proposing that the ceiling be lifted to $180,000. Somehow, though, that proposal didn’t make it into the President’s budget.

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