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Obama Plans Huge Shifts in Spending

donsutherland1

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Today, President Obama unveiled a sketch of his Administration's first budget. For FY 2009, the OMB estimates a $1.75 trillion deficit. During the FY 2009-2011 timeframe, the cumulative deficit will come to just over $3.8 trillion. The New York Times reported:

President Obama’s new budget blueprint estimates a stunning deficit of $1.75 trillion for the current fiscal year, which began five months ago, then lays out a wrenching change of course as he seeks to fund his own priorities while stanching the flow of red ink.

By redirecting enormous streams of deficit spending toward programs like health care, education and energy, and paying for some of it through taxes on the rich, pollution surcharges, and cuts in such inviolable programs as farm subsidies, the $3.55 trillion spending plan Mr. Obama is undertaking signals a radical change of course that Congress has yet to endorse.

http://www.nytimes.com/2009/02/27/us/politics/27web-budget.html?_r=1&hp=&pagewanted=all

For those who are interested, one can find President Obama's speech and his budget sketch at the following links:

Speech: The White House - Press Office - Remarks by the President on the Fiscal Year 2010 Budget

Budget Sketch: http://www.whitehouse.gov/omb/assets/fy2010_new_era/A_New_Era_of_Responsibility2.pdf
 
Tax the rich, slash the military. Gee no dem ever did that before! :lol:


There are threads where his tax the rich math does not add up.
 
I don't know what to think here.

The debt is scary and I think it's a bad thing for a country to carry.

Yet I think the plans that Obama wants to carry though are top notch. There is no doubt to me that healthcare, education, infrastructure, and greener policies need to be either revamped or implemented.

Honestly, I don't know enough about econimics to know if what Obama plans to do is sucidal. I can't help but wonder if he's trying to do too much too fast.
 
From the article:

The deficit, which at 12.3 percent of gross domestic product is expected to touch its highest level since 1945, could grow this year if the economy worsens significantly and a new infusion of capital into distressed banks is ordered

When we came out of World War II, the top tax rate was an insane 91% to pay off the war debt. These projections for cutting the deficit in half by 2012, unless we see some solid economic growth, I don't see it happening. Of course, deficit projections have never been very accurate more than a couple of years out.

I just don't see how we are going to be able to afford to do Universal Healthcare right now. Debt service as a percentage of Federal Outlays could hit an all time high. It is foolish for Democrats to take on a huge expansion of public sector spending on Healthcare right now given the current deficits, and it was very foolish for Republicans to squander the large surpluses they inherited from the Clinton years. We were on a solid track to retiring a large amount of public debt had the Republicans not cut taxes twice and sent spending through the roof.

Just the same, the past cannot be changed and we have to contend with the hand we have been dealt. It seems to me that due to current deficits, the amount of money its going to take to recover from the financial crisis, and the amount of money its going to cost to fix Medicare, that Universal Healthcare has got to be off the table right now. We are going to have to cut Defense spending down to a military we can afford. We are going to have to completely eliminate the costly Medicare Advantage plans. We are probably going to have move to some kind of Medicare means testing. We are going to have to return marginal tax rates to 90s levels (but not until the economy starts recovering), we are going to have to do something about disability which is taking up more and more of federal outlays, and we are going to have to curb a lot of these farm subsidies.

Everyone, regardless of whether they are on the right or left is going to have to sacrifice spending priorities or we are looking at a disaster.
 
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By redirecting enormous streams of deficit spending toward programs like health care

Redirecting? Are you kidding me? What ever happened to cutting spending? Bush took hits from both parties over this and now after 8years we're giving it a free pass to double that spending...in 8 WEEKS?

These kinds of social programs can only be sustained during economic growth. Attempting to do it in the middle of a recession could lead to a depression. The amount of taxes that he's going to impose to pay for this stuff is going to stifle growth for sure. Even with Iraq winding down, the military budget isn't going to make up for the amount he wants to spend. Heck you could take the entire military budget and its still isn't going to cover the kind of spending thats going on here or the future spending that usually happens through the year.

The health of a nation's economy is NOT based off of how much a nation spends, only how much it owes. And this is just the beginning..... :confused:
 
The deficit is so astronomically huge, that I, not anything remotely close to an economics major, can't wrap my head around it. When my finances go into the red, I have to tighten the belt and make a mad dash for increasing my income or things start to fall apart badly. How has our government even been able to function for the past twenty-five years?
 
By redirecting enormous streams of deficit spending toward programs like health care, education and energy, and paying for some of it through taxes on the rich, pollution surcharges, and cuts in such inviolable programs as farm subsidies

Good idea? Definitely.
Will it happen? Not a ****ing chance.

Mr. Obama takes credit for $2 trillion in deficit reduction over 10 years, three quarters of which comes from lower expenses in Iraq and Afghanistan and most of the rest from tax increases on the wealthy and revenues from a market-based cap on greenhouse gas emissions.

These claims are just getting ridiculous.

Obama says he's going to save $1.5T by cutting costs in Iraq and Afghanistan over the next 10 years. How the **** is that going to happen? He could stop spending a penny on any war tomorrow and the total "savings" over 10 years wouldn't come close to $1.5T.

According to Peter Orszag in 2007, (pdf) the total cost to continue the Iraq and Afghanistan wars under the Bush plan from 2008-2017 would be $1.055T. So, considering that Obama has already pledged $140B for this year, that means that in order for us to "cut costs in Iraq by $1.5T" over the next 10 years, we need spend -$600B over the next 10 years.

Do they just make these numbers up or what? I've got no problem with optimistic projections based on facts, but these bull**** immeasurable statistics like "jobs created or saved" are really starting to irk me.
 
dc.jpg


:shock:
 
From the article:



When we came out of World War II, the top tax rate was an insane 91% to pay off the war debt. These projections for cutting the deficit in half by 2012, unless we see some solid economic growth, I don't see it happening. Of course, deficit projections have never been very accurate more than a couple of years out.

I just don't see how we are going to be able to afford to do Universal Healthcare right now. Debt service as a percentage of Federal Outlays could hit an all time high. It is foolish for Democrats to take on a huge expansion of public sector spending on Healthcare right now given the current deficits, and it was very foolish for Republicans to squander the large surpluses they inherited from the Clinton years. We were on a solid track to retiring a large amount of public debt had the Republicans not cut taxes twice and sent spending through the roof.

Just the same, the past cannot be changed and we have to contend with the hand we have been dealt. It seems to me that due to current deficits, the amount of money its going to take to recover from the financial crisis, and the amount of money its going to cost to fix Medicare, that Universal Healthcare has got to be off the table right now. We are going to have to cut Defense spending down to a military we can afford. We are going to have to completely eliminate the costly Medicare Advantage plans. We are probably going to have move to some kind of Medicare means testing. We are going to have to return marginal tax rates to 90s levels (but not until the economy starts recovering), we are going to have to do something about disability which is taking up more and more of federal outlays, and we are going to have to curb a lot of these farm subsidies.

Everyone, regardless of whether they are on the right or left is going to have to sacrifice spending priorities or we are looking at a disaster.

You make a lot of good points. Perhaps, Obama should focus on putting able-bodied welfare recipients to work instead of pushing legislation reversing the trend over the last 16 years to reduce the welfare roles. Also, excessive taxes on productive Americans (as you cited from many years ago) only slows the economy... doesn't help. And what about Obama and the Democrats' plans to eliminate the mortgage interest deduction above a certain level? How would that have any effect besides destroying the market for large houses? And eventually bringing the economy down another notch!
 
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That graph is equally misleading, because it only counts the on-budget numbers. When you include the off-budget numbers (i.e. Social Security) things look a lot different.
 
You make a lot of good points. Perhaps, Obama should focus on putting able-bodied welfare recipients to work instead of pushing legislation reversing the trend over the last 16 years to reduce the welfare roles. Also, excessive taxes on productive Americans (as you cited from many years ago) only slows the economy... doesn't help. And what about Obama and the Democrats' plans to eliminate the mortgage interest deduction above a certain level? How would that have any effect besides destroying the market for large houses? And eventually bringing the economy down another notch!

Welfare and other safety-net programs only amount to 6 to 8 percent of federal discretionary outlays. The big social programs are the entitlements: Social Security, Medicare, and Disability(SSI, SSDI). However, those are primarily funded out of payroll taxes, and in the case of Social Security, there is a current surplus.

If conservatives are going to have any credibility on reducing the fiscal size of government, then they can't argue for cutting programs like welfare in one breath, and argue for increasing defense spending in the next. Get rid of welfare entirely and you will have huge deficits. Defense spending will have to come under the budget ax just like other discretionary spending will have to be. This absurd garbage spewed by some that since defense spending is authorized by the constitution, that virtually any amount is ok, is a slap in the face to the founders. They did intend for this nation to spend more on defense than the next 18 nations combined. We have a bigger military than we can afford just like we have a bigger disability program than we can afford and its all going to have to be cut.

I would also point out that if there is any large federal program that is ripe for privatization its disability. Disability insurance is not overly expensive in the private sector. Instead of having this huge expensive federal program, just require individuals purchase the coverage themselves just like we require you to have insurance on a car.
 
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