On May 27, 6:47*am, bob haller wrote:
On May 26, 11:46*pm, "
wrote:
On May 26, 11:15*pm, bob haller wrote:
Republicans are going to REFUSE to raise our countries debt limit.
While demading the disassembly of medicare
Cutting of SS benefits:
( and lowering the tax rate on the super wealthy familys making over
250 grand from 35% to 25%
I agree excess spending must be cut, but leave my SS medicare etc
ALONE!
End the 3 wars, close all military bases in peaceful places in the
world, like japan and germany. Offer to leave the bbases operating if
the host countries pay the operating expenses.
I agree that it's time to re-examine the US strategic needs and
some bases in countries like Germany, Japan, etc should be
on the list for closure.
However, if you look at the budget, the core problem is in the
overwhelming part that is non-discretionary, which represents
about two thirds of the total budget. * If you put off limits that
portion then it can't help close the deficit. *You also have
interest on the national debt which is growing larger each
year and you can't cut it. * What is left of the discretionary
budget is so small that even drastic cuts in it, which clearly
no one is in favor of, will not have a big enough impact on
reducing the deficit.
Here's another way of looking at it. You suggested some
reasonable cuts in defense. *Let's go even further.
*If we cut defense by 10%,
that would reduce the $1.7 tril deficit by only $67bil.
Until enough Americans wake up to the real scope of the problem
and it's true sources, we will never reduce the deficit by a
meaningful amount. * And right now, everyone just wants
to pretend that some magical cuts that aren't painful here
*and there is all that's needed. *In reality, the longer this
is put off the worse and more unmaginable the problem
becomes.
I believe there is a high probability that the period we are
in now will be looked back at like we now look back at
what lead up to WWII. *Just like today, what was
happening was clear, but everyone wanted to pretend
that what was right in front of them wasn't happening
and refused to act until it was too late.
Leave pre supplied hardened bases with skelton crews for security and
minimal maintence
we can no longer afford to be the worlds cop
leaves bases in bad areas like s korea- Hide quoted text -
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CUT ALL SPENDING DRAMATICALLY
You really are conflicted. First you said Medicare and Social
Security are completly off the table, which represent a huge
portion of spending. Now you say cut all
spending dramatically.
Increase taxes on super wealthy a extra 10% a year till the deficit is
gone.
Or until the wealth flees the US for better opportunities elsewhere.
Or until the wealthy stop spending, investing and creating jobs,
rolling over the economy into another recession, which in turn
causes all tax revenue to decline and spending to increase
even more. It' bizarre economics to suggest with the economy
barely starting to slowly recover from the worst recession in 80
years that anyone would want to increase taxes. Whether you
believe in Conservative economic principles or liberal Keynsian
ones, almost everyone would agree that is absolutely the wrong
thing to do.
The upper 2% of income earners are paying around 45% of the
total tax burden already. How much is enough for you? Taxing
too little has never been the problem. The problem is spending
too much. You could raise taxes all you want and we'd still have
about the same deficit because politicians would just spend that
too.
doing these 2 will balance the budget
go to fair tax national sales tax and stop using taxes to micro manage
citizens lives- Hide quoted text -
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Again, you are contradicting yourself. A national sales tax would
hit
everyone and it is regressive, hitting low income earners harder
than the rich, who only spend a small percent of what they earn.
Actually what is discussed in this area is a VAT tax, but it has
exactly the same problem. There are ways to try to fix that and
a VAT tax instead of an income tax might be worth looking into,
but again the real problem is not that govt doesn't tax enough, but
that it spends way too much.
What was your position on the latest massive addition to govt
spending and micromanaging citizens lives, Obamacare?