Barrack Obama to reduce size of government

[Iriemon]

OHHH BOY...now we are in trouble. This is what liberals just don't understand. (and most of the republican party as well.) YOU CAN'T CUT TAXES AND INCREASE SPENDING!!!!!!!!!! IT DOES NOT WORK! Thats like me taking a pay cut from my job and then increasing my monthly expenses. Can anyone guess where that path is going to lead me?!?!?!

Where were folks like you in 2001?

A lot of us were complaining then too. why weren't you listening?

And why are the Dimocrats defending more of the same Bush policies that they say got us here in the first place.?

I was! I was doing all I could to keep the revenue cutters from taking office.

I defend Bush's policies? Hell if you read 10 of my posts you'd probably come across one where I said we gotta repeal the Bush tax cuts!

 

[Newby]

Rates as in expected age at death and deaths per 1,000 live births. The US is 45th in life expectancy, and 46th in infant mortality.

List of countries by life expectancy - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_infant_mortality_rate_(2005)
(CIA Factbook)

According to your Wiki link, the U.S. would be 33rd at approximately 6.2 deaths per 1000 live births, number one was Iceland at 3 deaths per 1000 live births. Huge difference there.

Yeah, amazing isn't it. With our supposedly superior health care system our nation has twice as many infants die at birth as Iceland, with its national health care.

Twice as many? You're too funny.... And you're right, health care is just deplorable in this country... Big difference between .3% and .6% of all live births....

 

[Skull Pilot]

Where were folks like you in 2001?

A lot of us were complaining then too. why weren't you listening?

And why are the Dimocrats defending more of the same Bush policies that they say got us here in the first place.?

I was! I was doing all I could to keep the revenue cutters from taking office.

I defend Bush's policies? Hell if you read 10 of my posts you'd probably come across one where I said we gotta repeal the Bush tax cuts!

But reducing government spending, and i mean really reducing it not this shit Obama is trying to sell, is not part of your answer is it?

Obama reduces government spending by a fraction of a percent.....chump change you can believe in.

 

[driveby]

Rates as in expected age at death and deaths per 1,000 live births. The US is 45th in life expectancy, and 46th in infant mortality.

List of countries by life expectancy - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_infant_mortality_rate_(2005)
(CIA Factbook)

According to your Wiki link, the U.S. would be 33rd at approximately 6.2 deaths per 1000 live births, number one was Iceland at 3 deaths per 1000 live births. Huge difference there.

Yeah, amazing isn't it. With our supposedly superior health care system our nation has twice as many infants die at birth as Iceland, with its national health care.

Those stats really prove me wrong because, of course any idiot knows that healthcare is the ONLY reason for the infant mortality rate, or lack of. It has nothing to do with the individual. What percentage of " American " infant deaths are something like, say, illegals that don't do any pre natal care, then 9 months later, just show up at a hospital ? How many die from their mothers being a heroin junkie ? What would the life expectancy be in sooper dooper Iceland if 20% of their population smoked, drank and ate McDonalds 3 times a day, 6 days a week ? Your weak argument and weaker wiki link have more holes in it than Oblahblah's budget. Thank you, drive thru .......

 

[Iriemon]

A lot of us were complaining then too. why weren't you listening?

And why are the Dimocrats defending more of the same Bush policies that they say got us here in the first place.?

I was! I was doing all I could to keep the revenue cutters from taking office.

I defend Bush's policies? Hell if you read 10 of my posts you'd probably come across one where I said we gotta repeal the Bush tax cuts!

But reducing government spending, and i mean really reducing it not this shit Obama is trying to sell, is not part of your answer is it?

Obama reduces government spending by a fraction of a percent.....chump change you can believe in.

I'm in favor of much bigger spending cuts than Obama proposes, tho' I can see the argument that these spending cuts (and tax increases) should be deferred until the credit markets are working and the economy is back on its feet.

Get out of Iraq, return military spending to 2000 relative levels, make SS/Medicare means tested and increase retirement age to 70. Those measures would probably save the government abotu $400 billion a year.

I recognize those spending cuts would not be favored by most conservatives. I'm willing to compromise as part of a deficit reducing program.

The problem is few people on either side are.

 

[Iriemon]

According to your Wiki link, the U.S. would be 33rd at approximately 6.2 deaths per 1000 live births, number one was Iceland at 3 deaths per 1000 live births. Huge difference there.

Yeah, amazing isn't it. With our supposedly superior health care system our nation has twice as many infants die at birth as Iceland, with its national health care.

Those stats really prove me wrong because, of course any idiot knows that healthcare is the ONLY reason for the infant mortality rate, or lack of. It has nothing to do with the individual. What percentage of " American " infant deaths are something like, say, illegals that don't do any pre natal care, then 9 months later, just show up at a hospital ? How many die from their mothers being a heroin junkie ? What would the life expectancy be in sooper dooper Iceland if 20% of their population smoked, drank and ate McDonalds 3 times a day, 6 days a week ? Your weak argument and weaker wiki link have more holes in it than Oblahblah's budget. Thank you, drive thru .......

Part of the problem with measuring health care is that it is difficult to get reliable, objective statistics and as you point out, there are many other causal effects that can be argued.

Still, being 45th in life expectancy or infant mortality is not a fact suggesting superior overall health care performance, even more dubious given the high cost of our current system.

 

[Iriemon]

According to your Wiki link, the U.S. would be 33rd at approximately 6.2 deaths per 1000 live births, number one was Iceland at 3 deaths per 1000 live births. Huge difference there.

Yeah, amazing isn't it. With our supposedly superior health care system our nation has twice as many infants die at birth as Iceland, with its national health care.

Twice as many? You're too funny.... And you're right, health care is just deplorable in this country... Big difference between .3% and .6% of all live births....

You're correct, my statement would have been accurate if I had written "twice as many die at birth per 1000", which is what I meant. Thanks for the correction.

 

[driveby]

Yeah, amazing isn't it. With our supposedly superior health care system our nation has twice as many infants die at birth as Iceland, with its national health care.

Those stats really prove me wrong because, of course any idiot knows that healthcare is the ONLY reason for the infant mortality rate, or lack of. It has nothing to do with the individual. What percentage of " American " infant deaths are something like, say, illegals that don't do any pre natal care, then 9 months later, just show up at a hospital ? How many die from their mothers being a heroin junkie ? What would the life expectancy be in sooper dooper Iceland if 20% of their population smoked, drank and ate McDonalds 3 times a day, 6 days a week ? Your weak argument and weaker wiki link have more holes in it than Oblahblah's budget. Thank you, drive thru .......

Part of the problem with measuring health care is that it is difficult to get reliable, objective statistics and as you point out, there are many other causal effects that can be argued.

Still, being 45th in life expectancy or infant mortality is not a fact suggesting superior overall health care performance, even more dubious given the high cost of our current system.

Now that's a more reasonable position ! rep for you .....

 

[xsited1]

This just in!

Obama: Cut the Budget by 1/35,000th

Obama Orders $100 Million in Budget Cuts, Worries About 'Confidence Gap' - First 100 Days of Presidency - Politics FOXNews.com

More cost-cutting!

SPIN METER: Saving federal money the easy way - Yahoo! Finance

Cut a latte or two out of your annual budget and you've just done as much belt-tightening as President Barack Obama asked of his Cabinet on Monday.

 

[Iriemon]

This just in!

Obama: Cut the Budget by 1/35,000th

Obama Orders $100 Million in Budget Cuts, Worries About 'Confidence Gap' - First 100 Days of Presidency - Politics FOXNews.com

More cost-cutting!

SPIN METER: Saving federal money the easy way - Yahoo! Finance

Cut a latte or two out of your annual budget and you've just done as much belt-tightening as President Barack Obama asked of his Cabinet on Monday.

Does this represent the entire cost cutting by Obama for the year? If so he'd have been better off just saying that he's not cutting costs because of the recession, as opposed to offer this meaningless gesture.

 

[xsited1]

This just in!

Obama: Cut the Budget by 1/35,000th

Obama Orders $100 Million in Budget Cuts, Worries About 'Confidence Gap' - First 100 Days of Presidency - Politics FOXNews.com

More cost-cutting!

SPIN METER: Saving federal money the easy way - Yahoo! Finance

Cut a latte or two out of your annual budget and you've just done as much belt-tightening as President Barack Obama asked of his Cabinet on Monday.

Does this represent the entire cost cutting by Obama for the year? If so he'd have been better off just saying that he's not cutting costs because of the recession, as opposed to offer this meaningless gesture.

I believe the numbers represent cost savings over several years, so it's less than that.

During a recession, companies have to cut spending and let people go. However, Obama has increased spending and increased the number of government jobs.

lol:...hysterical laugher...)

 

[Iriemon]

More cost-cutting!

SPIN METER: Saving federal money the easy way - Yahoo! Finance

Cut a latte or two out of your annual budget and you've just done as much belt-tightening as President Barack Obama asked of his Cabinet on Monday.

Does this represent the entire cost cutting by Obama for the year? If so he'd have been better off just saying that he's not cutting costs because of the recession, as opposed to offer this meaningless gesture.

I believe the numbers represent cost savings over several years, so it's less than that.

During a recession, companies have to cut spending and let people go. However, Obama has increased spending and increased the number of government jobs.

lol:...hysterical laugher...)

If that is all he is planning on cutting from the spending side, I'm going to be very disappointed. The Govt is going to have to significantly jack income tax rates to make the difference.

 

[Annie]

Does this represent the entire cost cutting by Obama for the year? If so he'd have been better off just saying that he's not cutting costs because of the recession, as opposed to offer this meaningless gesture.

I believe the numbers represent cost savings over several years, so it's less than that.

During a recession, companies have to cut spending and let people go. However, Obama has increased spending and increased the number of government jobs.

lol:...hysterical laugher...)

If that is all he is planning on cutting from the spending side, I'm going to be very disappointed. The Govt is going to have to significantly jack income tax rates to make the difference.

Ya think? This struck me truthful:

SPIN METER: Saving federal money the easy way - Yahoo! Finance

SPIN METER: Saving federal money the easy way
SPIN METER: Obama's latest budget-tightening effort hardly makes a dime's worth of difference

Andrew Taylor and Calvin Woodward, Associated Press Writers
Monday April 20, 2009, 6:30 pm EDT
WASHINGTON (AP) -- Cut a latte or two out of your annual budget and you've just done as much belt-tightening as President Barack Obama asked of his Cabinet on Monday.

The thrifty measures Obama ordered for federal agencies are the equivalent of asking a family that spends $60,000 in a year to save $6.

Obama made his push for frugality the subject of his first Cabinet meeting, ensuring it would command the capital's attention. It also set off outbursts of mental math and scribbled calculations as political friend and foe tried to figure out its impact.

The bottom line: Not much.

The president gave his Cabinet 90 days to find $100 million in savings to achieve over time.

For all the trumpeting, the effort raised questions about why Obama set the bar so low, considering that $100 million amounts to:

--Less than one-quarter of the budget increase that Congress awarded to itself.

--4 percent of the military aid the United States sends to Israel.

--Less than half the cost of one F-22 fighter plane.

--7 percent of the federal subsidy for the money-losing Amtrak passenger rail system.

--1/10,000th of the government's operating budgets for Cabinet agencies, excluding the Iraq and Afghan wars and the stimulus bill.

Obama only asked his Cabinet secretaries to identify waste in their annual operating budgets, which total a little over $1 trillion. He's leaving out war costs, the economic stimulus measure, the Wall Street bailout and benefit programs like Social Security and Medicare....

 

[Iriemon]

I believe the numbers represent cost savings over several years, so it's less than that.

During a recession, companies have to cut spending and let people go. However, Obama has increased spending and increased the number of government jobs.

lol:...hysterical laugher...)

If that is all he is planning on cutting from the spending side, I'm going to be very disappointed. The Govt is going to have to significantly jack income tax rates to make the difference.

Ya think? This struck me truthful:

SPIN METER: Saving federal money the easy way - Yahoo! Finance

SPIN METER: Saving federal money the easy way
SPIN METER: Obama's latest budget-tightening effort hardly makes a dime's worth of difference

Andrew Taylor and Calvin Woodward, Associated Press Writers
Monday April 20, 2009, 6:30 pm EDT
WASHINGTON (AP) -- Cut a latte or two out of your annual budget and you've just done as much belt-tightening as President Barack Obama asked of his Cabinet on Monday.

The thrifty measures Obama ordered for federal agencies are the equivalent of asking a family that spends $60,000 in a year to save $6.

Obama made his push for frugality the subject of his first Cabinet meeting, ensuring it would command the capital's attention. It also set off outbursts of mental math and scribbled calculations as political friend and foe tried to figure out its impact.

The bottom line: Not much.

The president gave his Cabinet 90 days to find $100 million in savings to achieve over time.

For all the trumpeting, the effort raised questions about why Obama set the bar so low, considering that $100 million amounts to:

--Less than one-quarter of the budget increase that Congress awarded to itself.

--4 percent of the military aid the United States sends to Israel.

--Less than half the cost of one F-22 fighter plane.

--7 percent of the federal subsidy for the money-losing Amtrak passenger rail system.

--1/10,000th of the government's operating budgets for Cabinet agencies, excluding the Iraq and Afghan wars and the stimulus bill.

Obama only asked his Cabinet secretaries to identify waste in their annual operating budgets, which total a little over $1 trillion. He's leaving out war costs, the economic stimulus measure, the Wall Street bailout and benefit programs like Social Security and Medicare....

Sure, that was my point.

 

[garyd]

And name me one cabinet secretary that ever found one of the programs he oversaw unneccessary.

There is no program without it's constituancy. And constituancies are composed of voters that no one wants to piss off. Which is why we still have a federal helium reserve...

 

[frazzledgear]

Let's see the conservatives spin this one negatively.........

Obama To Ask Agency Heads For Budget Cuts

WASHINGTON — President Barack Obama said Saturday he will ask all of his department and agency heads for specific proposals for cutting their budgets at his Cabinet meeting early next week as he searches for ways to streamline [COLOR=#038258 ! important][COLOR=#038258 ! important]government [COLOR=#038258 ! important]spending[/COLOR][/COLOR][/COLOR].
Obama, who is attending the Summit of the Americas in Trinidad this weekend, said in his weekly radio and Internet address that he would make the request for cuts Monday at a Cabinet meeting.
"In the coming weeks, I will be announcing the elimination of dozens of government programs shown to be wasteful or ineffective," he said. "In this effort, there will be no sacred cows and no pet projects. All across America, families are making hard choices, and it's time their government did the same."

You are kidding, right? You mean this actually works for you? Because it doesn't work for me any more than when liberals claimed Obama cut income taxes when he simply reduced the witholding rate -but without reducing the tax rate one bit. Yet I not only hear Obama's press secretary insist this is a "tax cut", I also hear idiots claiming every day that Obama gave them a tax cut. Just wait until tax time next year when they find out they still owe every cent of that money and government expects them to have it and fork it over and not have spent it! I always knew it was pretty easy to dupe liberals - but THIS easy? Oh please LOL.

First Obama increases the size of government with a mindboggling, massive, outrageous 2010 budget of $3.6 TRILLION dollars, doubling and tripling the budgets of more than a dozen government agencies -then because he turns around and asks his cabinet heads to come up with a piddly total of $100 million in cuts after that, essentially just not spend a mere 2/10ths of 1% of all that money - you mean liberals are going to insist this represents a REDUCTION in the size of government instead of the massive expansion of government it is? Are you for real? ROFLMAO! Wow, the liberal "intellect" is truly a scary thing, isn't it?

 

[Iriemon]

Why would we need to "spin" it at all? We'll just use CBOs' actual numbers:
Congressional Budget Office - Budget Projections
Click on the "Supplemental Data" link and an .xls chart will come up.
2010-2019 Baracks Deficit: 4.4 Trillion
2010-2019 CBO Deficit: 9.2 Trillion

Let's see the Liberals "spin" that one positively.

Sidebar: If you can't download .xls files because you don't have MS Office. Here's a great alternative that I've been using for years, Open Office. The price is right too, Free!:
OpenOffice.org - The Free and Open Productivity Suite

How exactly can figures for 2010 onward possibly be actual numbers?

I find it strange that you wouldn't understand the meaning of "actual", but you asked, so here goes:
DavidS' said Conservatives would spin the numbers but I countered that we need not "spin" anything, actual numbers from the CBO website, which I cited, will do just fine.
Obama says one number, the CBO says another. The numbers that they have on their website are considered "actual", not based on fantasy. The CBO by the way is neither Fox News nor Rachell Maddow so it's pretty reliable.

Here's a definition of "actual" in case you still don't understand:
actual - Definition from the Merriam-Webster Online Dictionary

1obsolete : active
2 a: existing in act and not merely potentially b: existing in fact or reality <actual and imagined conditions> c: not false or apparent <actual costs>
3: existing or occurring at the time : current <caught in the actual commission of a crime>

If you're still struggling, just print this post out and have someone read it to you aloud.

There term "actual" as used in economics and budget generally refers to figures that have actually ocurred as opposed to future projections (consistent with the second definition in your quote) or inflation adjusted numbers.

Numbers based on future projections (or "merely potential") are generally not referred to as actuals. But I understand your meaning.

 

[Iriemon]

Social Security, Medicare and Medcaid add up to $53 Trillion dollars of UNFUNDED Obligations in the next 30 years as the baby boomers retire. There are 138 million taxpayers in the US. That amounts to $384,000 per taxpayer. That is all in today's dollars BTW...We are already running deficits and we haven't even started retiring BAby Boomers yet.
As they retire, the taxes they pay into the system will plummet, and their costs will skyrocket.

All three programs were put in place by Liberals, and Barak Obama is promising Universal Healthcare, (2009 down payment 678 Billion). So more voters who think they are getting something for free or cheap will vote for liberals who buy their votes with benefits. Who cares if future generations have to pay for it? That's the Liberal position in my view.

The whole thing is a ponzy scheme and the bill is coming due my friends
The bad news is that we are borrowing from China and Saudi Arabia to pay for these things. World wide borrowers are beginning to doubt that the US can really carry all of this debt. So we had to buy our own debt, because we could not sell it all.

So as a nation we are printing IOUs in one place, printing money in another, and buying our own IOUs (US treasury bonds) with our own printed money.
If this does tell you that we have reached the end of the debt road, I don't know what will...

Liberals never reply to these posts because they don't care about the debt, they just want the goodies that they want. They are the political equivalent of a 2 year old. They'll just keep screaming until Dad sticks something in their mouth. Only this time Dad is running out of money..

$54 trillion divided by 30 years is less than $2 trillion a year. You didn't give a cite to the date that supports this projection, but my guess is that most of that amount is in future years and enlarged by inflation.

Current gross income in the country is $12 trillion. If the economy grows at a historical 3% rate, that number will double in 30 years; more than triple by 50 years.

Last year the Govt took $2.5 trillion in revenue. It could in fact take in enough additional revenues to fund these future obligations, even if there was no change to them.

But I agree we need a change to them.

 

[Iriemon]

"Every other developed nation on Earth can afford to provide basic health care for its citizens."

MAny others indeed do, but they are going broke, European socialists are right now struggling with an aging population and out of control healthcare costs. Their model is not one to follow. People are dying waiting for care. They come to America and elsewhere for care.

Which European nations are going broke? It's been a while since I looked at it, but as I recall, few if any had the same relative level of debt that the US has.

"But the richest country in the world can't. America, the country of can't. "

America is not the richest country in the world. We are currently 10.6 Trillion dollars in debt because people think for some reason that if the government does something it is for free. No it is not free, the politician simply promises liberals all kinds of things, then goes and prints US savings bonds (debt) and sells it on the world market. But the world is beginning to shy away from US debt. China is now selling US savings bonds, and the US government had to buy its own savings bonds with its' own printed money.

Funny, I remember most the deficits in the past 8 years from conservatives promising things, like tax cuts and military buildups.

America is in fact the richest country in the world, unless you count the EU as a country. We do not have the highest GDP per capita, but pretty close. Many nations with per capita GDP much lower than ours find a way to provide health care to all their citizens.

"That's the loser kind of talk you hear a lot from the right these days.

"

I understand the moral / social justice argument, that in principle all people should be taken care of. The question is not whether or not it is good to house, feed, clothe and provide all kinds of help to people. The question is how to do it in a financially sustainable way, without using the power of the government to force people to do things that they would not normally do.

And again, if every other country can do it, I'm pretty sure the "can-do" Americans who put a man on the moon can figure out how to do it.

It just takes the will.

Liberals believe if we pass laws that take from the rich and give to the poor, we will have a more compassionate society. But the definition of compassion is not what you can force your neighbor to do, it is what you are freely willing to do yourself. Do not call yourself compassionate because you are willing to threaten your neighbor with jail if he does not pay taxes that support your ideas. That is not compassion, it is tyranny.

I disagree. I call it compassion. If the neighbor doesn't like taxes in the US he can move to some other country.

WHen you force people to give, you destroy the proper relationship between givers and receivers. IF a man is forced to give, he is indignant, and will refuse to give any more than what the government mandates. The receiver feels entitled, not grateful, because he is responding to the class envy rhetoric of the left. He hates the giver because he is envious. So we have indignance and hate, not a compassionate society.

The proper approach to a more compassionate society is to inspire people to greater freely given good, not to put a gun to their head and say give me your money.

Sounds like socialism, rely on the utopia of the goodness of the individual's spirit kind of nonesense. Doesn't work.

 

[Iriemon]

More cost-cutting!

SPIN METER: Saving federal money the easy way - Yahoo! Finance

Cut a latte or two out of your annual budget and you've just done as much belt-tightening as President Barack Obama asked of his Cabinet on Monday.

Does this represent the entire cost cutting by Obama for the year? If so he'd have been better off just saying that he's not cutting costs because of the recession, as opposed to offer this meaningless gesture.

I believe the numbers represent cost savings over several years, so it's less than that.

During a recession, companies have to cut spending and let people go. However, Obama has increased spending and increased the number of government jobs.

lol:...hysterical laugher...)

Actually, it was just for the next 90 days.