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Do you support repealing the automatic trigger or changing it?

Thread title

  • No repeal, no changes.

    Votes: 20 66.7%
  • Yes to repeal.

    Votes: 2 6.7%
  • Shift cuts from defense to social programmes

    Votes: 3 10.0%
  • Shift cuts from social programmes to defense

    Votes: 5 16.7%

  • Total voters
    30
your right there are still many more problems too deal with, but by your logic we should just ignore them all unless we can solve all of them at the same time!

No, I am saying address the cause of the debt over the last 30 years rather than throwing seniors under the bus.
 
Congress agreed to the deficit reduction deal; Republicans need to live up to their claim of "government living within its means" and stop crying wolf over defense cuts.

Will they be a tough pill to swallow? Yes! Absolutely! But just as our Defense Department made tough decisions and adjustments after Vietnam, so also will it adjust after Iraq and AfPak are done. Besides, if you allow the Bush tax cuts to expire particularly on the wealthiest Americans who themselves have been saying "tax me more - I can afford it," the Treasury will find ways to divert funds to DoD as necessary. They always have and they will continue to do so. Why? Because it's constitutionally mandated that Congress "provide for the common defense" of the nation.

There's nothing to fear here, folks, except the rhetorical :spin: that somehow our nation will become defenseless with cuts to DoD. Got news for you...

AIN'T GONNA HAPPEN!!!
 
Any cuts are better than no cuts. Everything should be on the table for consideration.

We should also include foreign aid cuts. Everyone starts at zero and has to justify the aid.
 
No, I am saying address the cause of the debt over the last 30 years rather than throwing seniors under the bus.

how is making congress do their job throwing seniors under the bus?
 
I am all for INCREASING the Automatic Cuts to both Defense AND Social Spending. Then again, I'm also the person who wants to see EVERY SINGLE PENNY of unConstitutional spending done away with before the Government raises even another penny in revenue.
 
Defense cuts are necessary, but we would be deluding ourselves if we thought that our entitlement programs did not need serious cuts and reform.
 
Defense cuts are necessary, but we would be deluding ourselves if we thought that our entitlement programs did not need serious cuts and reform.

I don't think anyone's making that argument, DA, that there aren't needs to cut entitlement spending as well. As I see it, what's at issue is "Do you cut benefits many Americans have paid into over time and ARE entitled to because they've worked until retirement and are entitled to what they've paid into said social programs? Or do you eliminate the waste associated with these programs?"

Frankly, I believe most people would agree to cutting the waste which in large part is what the President has shown a willingness to do. Of course, if you pay close attention to how the argument has been phrased lately, the issue has only recently turned from "cut entitlement spending" to "reform entitlement programs". And who has been leading that refocused charge? Here's a clue: It ain't coming from Blue-bird crowd. But perhaps it should...

In any case, you have to pay close attention to what's being said coming out of Washington DC. Otherwise, it's real easy to get tripped up in the rhetorical blame game.
 
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A deal is a deal.......any cut in the growth in spending is a good start. I hope the brainiacs here know the future nominal spending in any program will not actually decline. If our National security is diminished by this POS deal, people will die and those responsible for this deal should enjoy hell. Is it a wonder why most voters hate DC?
 
how is making congress do their job throwing seniors under the bus?

The Republicans have addressed none of the causes of our debt over the last 30 years - tax cuts, too much military spending and lack of US jobs creation. What they have proposed instead is more trickle down economics that has failed the middle class over the last 30 years. And to pay for the additional tax breaks for the rich they want, they have suggested to cut health and safety regulations, funding for education, Department of Energy and in Ryan's budget plan to cut retirement benefits to seniors.

Cutting spending and increasing revenues does not require throwing our seniors under the bus as the Republicans claim it does, we just have to go after the sources of our debt over the last 30 years - unfunded tax cuts and and too much military spending, then raise the cap on SS and switch to a single payer health care system as the rest of the industrialized world has done.

That is what Congress should be doing.
 
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The Republicans have addressed none of the causes of our debt over the last 30 years - tax cuts, too much military spending and lack of US jobs creation. What they have proposed instead is more trickle down economics that has failed the middle class over the last 30 years. And to pay for the additional tax breaks for the rich they want, they have suggested to cut health and safety regulations, funding for education, Department of Energy and in Ryan's budget plan to cut retirement benefits to seniors.

Cutting spending and increasing revenues does not require throwing our seniors under the bus as the Republicans claim it does, we just have to go after the sources of our debt over the last 30 years - unfunded tax cuts and and too much military spending, then raise the cap on SS and switch to a single payer health care system as the rest of the industrialized world has done.

That is what Congress should be doing.

The teatards need not piss off the babyboomers, they are still the largest voting block and they are not stupid...they are paying attention....they could easily give this election to either side if you piss them off enough..
 
The Republicans have addressed none of the causes of our debt over the last 30 years - tax cuts, too much military spending and lack of US jobs creation. What they have proposed instead is more trickle down economics that has failed the middle class over the last 30 years. And to pay for the additional tax breaks for the rich they want, they have suggested to cut health and safety regulations, funding for education, Department of Energy and in Ryan's budget plan to cut retirement benefits to seniors.J

Cutting spending and increasing revenues does not require throwing our seniors under the bus as the Republicans claim it does, we just have to go after the sources of our debt over the last 30 years - unfunded tax cuts and and too much military spending, then raise the cap on SS and switch to a single payer health care system as the rest of the industrialized world has done.

That is what Congress should be doing.

I get it, we can not stop our downhill trajectory without a lot more socialism and entitlements that have been growing exponentially since the libtards began the war on poverty. Do you know the definition of insanity?
 
They made a deal, I think the trigger should be binding.

Obama promised to veto any changes.

I support him 100% on this.

If Congress doesn't want these cuts in 2013, they will grow the **** up, put blind ideology aside, and come up with a damn plan on their own.
 
Defense cuts are necessary, but we would be deluding ourselves if we thought that our entitlement programs did not need serious cuts and reform.

Entitlements don't need cuts, but they definitely need reform, no doubt about that. Social Security reform is easy. Raising the FICA cap for SS fixes that for the forseeable future.

Medicare/Medicaid reform will require our eventually going to a single payer system to address the underlying cause of the cost to the government, the most expensive health care system in the world. Otherwise, the most expensive health care cost in the world will just get passed on to consumers, who cannot afford their share of costs already.

The Republican alternative of an insurance mandate is just a bandaid for our current health care cost crisis.
 
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the trigger is there for a reason.

to FORCE Congress to stop being babies, and do the Peoples' work.
 
The teatards need not piss off the babyboomers, they are still the largest voting block and they are not stupid...they are paying attention....they could easily give this election to either side if you piss them off enough..

That seems to have been overlooked in the GOP fervor to cater to the far-right base who think tax cuts for the rich are a higher priority than honoring our commitment to seniors, who are already suffering from the recession. It is very surprising the GOP has forgotten that seniors were the ONLY large demographic they carried in the last presidential election. I have a hunch it will be the GOPs turn to be very surprised when the seniors don't give their majority vote to them next November.
 
I get it, we can not stop our downhill trajectory without a lot more socialism and entitlements that have been growing exponentially since the libtards began the war on poverty. Do you know the definition of insanity?

No, we don't need to go that far at all, we just need to get our tax rates a little more progressive, and cut wasteful spending on the military/industrial complex. Closer to the way we did in the 40's, 50's, 60's and 70's. Was that socialism back then that our parents, grandparents, and great-grandparents supported for half a century?
 
No, we don't need to go that far at all, we just need to get our tax rates a little more progressive, and cut wasteful spending on the military/industrial complex. Closer to the way we did in the 40's, 50's, 60's and 70's. Was that socialism back then that our parents, grandparents, and great-grandparents supported for half a century?
How progressive should the rates be......50%, 60%, 70% marginal rates while 50% of the wage earners don't pay squat? Do we want the top 1% to pay 50%, 60%, 70% of the taxes? Look at the numbers before you answer. The top 1%'s share of total domestic income dropped from 20% to 16% in one year .... do you think relying on a very select few to pay most of the bills is a smart thing to do? I don't, I think that kind of tax policy would be idiotic. The "tax the rich" mantra is a chant that impresses bone headed, class envious, self loathing failures.
 
I honestly don't give a flying **** anymore, to be honest.

Still, im feeling the same way...Im so tired of reading the same things over and over...and it all amounts to no one has done anything.
 
How progressive should the rates be......50%, 60%, 70% marginal rates while 50% of the wage earners don't pay squat? Do we want the top 1% to pay 50%, 60%, 70% of the taxes? Look at the numbers before you answer. The top 1%'s share of total domestic income dropped from 20% to 16% in one year .... do you think relying on a very select few to pay most of the bills is a smart thing to do? I don't, I think that kind of tax policy would be idiotic. The "tax the rich" mantra is a chant that impresses bone headed, class envious, self loathing failures.

No one is suggesting effective tax rates anywhere near as progressive as under Republican presidents Eisenhower, Nixon, and Ford. I haven't seen any proposals for more than a 5% increase on effective tax rates on income and capital gains.

The middle class has decided that being shat upon for the last 30 years is quite enough. Viva la election 2012!!!!
 
No one is suggesting effective tax rates anywhere near as progressive as under Republican presidents Eisenhower, Nixon, and Ford. I haven't seen any proposals for more than a 5% increase on effective tax rates on income and capital gains.

The middle class has decided that being shat upon for the last 30 years is quite enough. Viva la election 2012!!!!

I see. So soaking the top 1% with a 5% added tax, on top of the new taxes they will have to pay thanks to BOCare, is supposed to help the middle class. LMFAO.....this is nothing but a class envy publicity stunt made to impress the econtards that vote for BO. The top 1%'s combined AGI was $1.3 trillion in 2009. Tacking another 5% tax on that would yield a whopping $64 billion per year. Now lets compare that paltry sum to the $1.4 trillion deficits. Are you really going to sit there and claim this 4.6% reduction in the epic irresponsible annual deficits is anything but a publicity stunt for morons?

You didn't answer my other question......how much of the federal budget do you want to be funded by only 1% of the wage earners? 50%, 60%? What happens to the federal budget when this tiny group of earners, 1.3 m people, have a bad year like they just had in 2009 when their share of the total AGI dropped from 20% to 16.9%?
 
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I see. So soaking the top 1% with a 5% added tax, on top of the new taxes they will have to pay thanks to BOCare, is supposed to help the middle class. LMFAO.....this is nothing but a class envy publicity stunt made to impress the econtards that vote for BO. The top 1%'s combined AGI was $1.3 trillion in 2009. Tacking another 5% tax on that would yield a whopping $64 billion per year. Now lets compare that paltry sum to the $1.4 trillion deficits. Are you really going to sit there and claim this 4.6% reduction in the epic irresponsible annual deficits is anything but a publicity stunt for morons?

No one, I repeat, no one, has suggested anything remotely close to soaking the rich. And the insurance mandate, what your refer to as "BOCare", was a Republican alternative to a single payer system, which is what we will eventually have to go to, just like the rest of the industrialized world has done to get our health care cost down.

We suffered $2.8 trillion dollars in lost revenue by the Bush tax cuts from the point they were given until today.

You didn't answer my other question......how much of the federal budget do you want to be funded by only 1% of the wage earners? 50%, 60%?

I think the effective tax rate on all income, including capital gains, should be somewhere between where it is now and where it was under Republican presidents, Eisenhower, Nixon, and Ford.

What happens to the federal budget when this tiny group of earners, 1.3 m people, have a bad year like they just had in 2009 when their share of the total AGI dropped from 20% to 16.9%?

We re-regulate the banks so that we don't have bust/boom cycles that create recessions and depressions. We pass House Bill 1489 to once again establish the firewall between investment banks and commercial banks, thereby preventing banks too big too fail.

Check out the 40's, 50's, 60's and 70's! Our debt was low, and the middle class was the strongest in history, the majority of Americans are willing to risk that kind of change.
 
Entitlements don't need cuts, but they definitely need reform, no doubt about that. Social Security reform is easy. Raising the FICA cap for SS fixes that for the forseeable future.

And what happens the population continues to age, and we have more and more people depending on the aid of the young? The problem is going to continue to grow, and the equal growth of our tax base is far from guaranteed.

Medicare/Medicaid reform will require our eventually going to a single payer system to address the underlying cause of the cost to the government, the most expensive health care system in the world. Otherwise, the most expensive health care cost in the world will just get passed on to consumers, who cannot afford their share of costs already.

The Republican alternative of an insurance mandate is just a bandaid for our current health care cost crisis.

The correct answer is to incentivize people people to control their own health care costs. We had a very distorted healthcare for some time.
 
And what happens the population continues to age, and we have more and more people depending on the aid of the young? The problem is going to continue to grow, and the equal growth of our tax base is far from guaranteed.

"Social Security is not at all 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 invested the surpluses in Treasury bills -- in effect, lending them to the rest of the government.

But now Social Security has started to pay out more than it takes in. So to keep it going, it collects only what the rest of the government is obligated to pay it. This will keep it fully solvent for the next 26 years."

"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."

- Robert Reich, Economist/Professor/Former Secretary of state under 3 presidents.
Robert Reich: Budget Baloney: Why Social Security Isn't a Problem for 26 Years, and the Best Way to Fix It Permanently

The correct answer is to incentivize people people to control their own health care costs. We had a very distorted healthcare for some time.

The leading cause in bankruptcy in the US is health care cost, you don't think that is an incentive? We don't need less health care, we need more affordable health care like the rest of the industrialized world.

That is why more and more Americans are forced to go to China and India and other countries for treatment where health care cost is much lower.

Affordable health care for the average American is being outsourced:

"Factors that have led to the increasing popularity of medical travel include the high cost of health care, long wait times for certain procedures, the ease and affordability of international travel, and improvements in both technology and standards of care in many countries.[7] The avoidance of waiting times is the leading factor for medical tourism from the UK, whereas in the US, the main reason is cheaper prices abroad."
Medical tourism - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
 
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