.8 trillion in specific spending cuts in the House Republicans' Budget Alternative: www.house.gov .3 trillion in specific spending cuts offered by House Budget Committee Republicans: www.house.gov A plan to pay off our crushing burden of debt, reform our tax code to promote growth and job creation, and reform our entitlement programs to save these programs: www.americanroadmap.org Democrats' plans to get a grip on the explosion of government spending, balance the budget (or simply offer a budget), promote economic growth and private sector job creation: ???
Paul Ryan just ate Chris Matthews’ lunch
@86Gramms the board of trustees for SS and medicare have said that SSDI will be exhausted in 10 yrs, medicare will start running deficits in a few years and be exhausted near 2030. SS retirement will be exhausted near 2040. reforms have to be done now so drastic measures arent needed later
I agree with you about the wars, we should stop them all immediately. I would disagree with you about unions being the great benefit they are portrayed as, especially as they are operate today
@86Gramms federal debt has not been paid down over a fiscal year since 1957. Much of his economy was also a low interest rate fueled bubble economy. People often forget the dotcom bubble and many of the housing regulations put in during his terms contributed to the housing bubble. that said, his economy was still preferable compared to bush’s and obamas, that goes without saying.
SS and medicare need reform. reform doesnt mean throw grandma out in the street. in their 2010 financial report…
@86Gramms revenues rise and fall with economic growth. tax rates play a small part. for the past 60 years tax receipts as a % of gdp have always been been around 18% of gdp and thats been during various brackets. during bushs terms only during 03-04 were revenues low (16.2% avg). from 05-08 they were back around the normal moving averages. it wasnt til 09 when the economy really went sour did revenues fall off.
while we had surpluses toward the end of clinton, the debt was not paid down, ….
The biggest piece of our structural debt is the Bush tax cuts. Ryan is full of shit and in knee deep with big business. He will say ANYTHING to convince people taxes dont need to be raised on the wealthy. Notice how he always talks about “small business”
ITS A PLOY DUMBASS! He’s trying to make you think he’s really on the side of the middle class. He’s not….and i pity you if you can’t tell.
What a lie! The tax cuts took $1.35 trillion out of our tax coffers. This country was in super shape in 2000 with a paid down debt and taxes were higher. What kind of morons reduce taxes and start a $3 trillion+ war? They raised the debt ceiling 7 times and blamed it on someone else. Read Eisenhower’s 1956 Address to the Union. He said no tax cuts. Ryan, you and your chronies are trying to destroy everything this great man worked for: unions, Medicare, decent standard of living for Americans
@bobshenix Then a group of pro-regulation bureaucrats should have come in, had complete unfettered access to the books and papers, found instances of wrong doing, pressed charges against or fired the individuals responsible. Believe me, have to take a compensation/pay cut from $600,000 (average Goldman Sachs compensation) to the AT ABSOLUTE MOST $123,000 of the Government with CEOs earning only $200,000, for them, would have been a severe chastening.
@bobshenix If the Federal Reserve was in fact not made up of the people who are the ones being “regulated” and were run as a Federal Agency, with no private interests being able to make decisions, what should have happened is the bailed out institutions should all have had to go onto the General Schedule as they were being bailed out, second they should have restructured their debt in acknowledgement of the fact that the paper they held had depreciated.
@tbwil11 What was then? Because the Act was a considerable contributor.
@bobshenix Second there needed to be a bailout so people did not lose their money and I mean ordinary people. But the Fed really has been a villain in all this under Greenspan and Bernanke. The Fed is not representative of the Federal bureaucracy. The Fed has more power than the CIA and more so than CIA, FBI, DoD, sees itself as above the system, it really was catering to its cronies.
@bobshenix I forget who coined the phrase but there are two cities. Washington and Versailles sur Potomac. Versailles is what most people mean when they say Washington. Washington, not Versailles, has real people with real problems like anywhere else. People who wanted to stop what was going on were sidelined or fired. The people in charge were people who detested the mission of Agencies they ran. Like the people at the SEC.
@bobshenix Washington always has been more affluent than the average, but the ridiculousness of what is happening, started with the extensive influx of wingers and contractors under Reagan, slowed under Clinton and accelerated under Bush. FBI, DoL, DoE bureaucrats don’t buy those big homes. Private people leaching off IRS funds do that.
@bobshenix 1: When you say Washington I know what you mean and I resent it. To me Washington is not the talking heads in Congress, the President and the media like that hypocrite Charles Krauthammer, it is a city of ordinary people, like Federal bureaucrats. Who are not overpaid or overcompensated, who work hard and do a lot with a little. By and large POLITICALS mess things up when they tell professionals “Don’t regulate and if you do you will lose your job.”
@bobshenix I would agree with you largely, but this will required a more detailed response so here goes:
@rodge2001 I hope you mean Congress and not the Federal Bureaucracy.
fuck the government.
They’re both at fault [Wall St & Washgtn] and rest assured the crooks on all fronts got taken care of in the end, in one way or another. I agree that the government legislation needs to make the private sector work for the people, but you underestimate the role government played in precipitating this mess and in rewarding bad business behavior.
Why not let the failed banks fail and make some room for the more honest bankers who didn’t overreach… why is it always about propping the system up??
@Meade556 Gramm Leach Bliley was not the cause of the meltdown.
@Meade556 Have you been listening to the news lately? My 401 has done far better than a what I hope to get from SSI even through the troughs and its MINE and its FAIR because personal accountability was the catylist behind the contributions. Think of the possibilities if I could have contributed even more thru the years. SSI age for me has ALREADY gone to 67, it will go up again for sure. Personal retirement accounts are superior in every way as evidenced by the many nations switching.
@bobshenix A lot of left wingers predicted it would happen. Like Joseph Stiglitz and Paul Krugman, two STATIST minded people. They were right about regulation. And the techicalities are relevant. The Street is trying to shift blame to Washington, when Washington is not at fault because it did not write most of the mortgages, it withdrew the safety net and these idiots were not counting on any safety net, but property prices to continue rising.
@tbwil11 Social Security won’t be broke for another 25 years and even then it will be able to service 78% of its obligations if no change is made. What private sector scheme can say that? None. And as for your 401k those are in the hands of a bunch of compulsive gamblers, so kiss your money goodbye, that 401k you worked your whole life for, will make up the salary of just one banker for one year of work.
@Meade556 I see what comes out of my check and I know what employers pay. SSI is a pay as you go system that will be broke. Personal retirement accounts are a much better plan.
Regardless of details when and how the ‘safety nets’ were made official, the technicalities are now irrelevant. The whole debacle went down exactly how guys like Peter Schiff and Ron Paul — who both predicted this crisis YEARS beforehand — said it would. Paul himself had warned multiple times on the House floor that an eventual bailout was “inevitable”.
Bottom line– the safety net WAS there and it WAS abused to the fullest. The moral hazard of bailout economics can scarcely be overstated.
@bobshenix Safety nets when they were public but they took on a lot more toxic products after they were privatized. When public subprime loans made up a small part of their balance sheet. Besides you want to blame people blame Alan Greenspan, the Republicans and a good deal of the Democrats too. We did not have these problems between 1933-1981, periods of high regulation and high taxation.
There WERE gov’t guaranteed safety nets for giants like Fannie and Freddie… do some homework. In any case, look how the financial collapse played out; when all was said and done the most reckless were bailed out with taxpayers’ money!
Given the current state of politics in Washington and the prevalence of the entrenched establishment, it’s not much of a stretch to presume that backdoor deals and private conversations amongst major power players were going on while the bubble was inflating.