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Breaking: Agreement has been reached on raising the debt limit....

Re: Obama: We have a deal

Sigh.
When you have $X, you can only run a deficit if you choose to spend >$X.
This is true even when X goes down from one year to another.

Interesting concept, liberals have. Problem is there never will be enough money to fund the liberal appetite for spending as they attempt to make this country into a wonderful European socialist utopia.
 
Re: Obama: We have a deal

It is true, period.
Every single dollar spend is subject to revision, every single benefit represented by non-discretionary spending can be reduced or eliminated.
SocSec, Medicare - spending all entitlement programs can be cut.


This is covered by discretionary spending.

No, that is simply incorrect. If you "revise" your decision to pay obligations that you have already incurred, you will not end up saving money for the government. Quite the opposite, in fact. Contractors will, going forward, charge a higher rate to account for the risk that some genius in the past decided the government could simply choose not to pay for already-completed work. If anyone is willing to lend to the government they will only do so if they receive a much higher interest rate to account for the risk that some genius decided that the government could simply *choose* not to pay its bills. Actions have consequences.
 
Re: Obama: We have a deal

treasury.gov is a talking point, is it?


Spits the Conservative who claimed all of the following numbers that the CBO added to their FY2009 budget forecast revision:

$700B
$500B
$461B
$180B
$398B
$180B

Which one have you settled on?


Cries a Bush 19% JAR supporter. :roll:

Guess Bush won't win the 2012 election. Amazing how you continue to make Bush, Reagan, and Clinton the issue as they don't matter. What matters is what Obama is doing and I doubt he will get the support of the 24 million plus unemployed or under employed Americans to vote for him. Based upon the lastest results he has 40% support as more and more people actually see his results and how they affect them. Wonder when you will wake up?
 
Re: Obama: We have a deal

Interesting concept, liberals have. Problem is there never will be enough money to fund the liberal appetite for spending as they attempt to make this country into a wonderful European socialist utopia.
FY2009, the US government took in >$2.1T
Only in the mind of a liberal is this not "enough".
 
Re: Obama: We have a deal

No, that is simply incorrect. If you "revise" your decision to pay obligations that you have already incurred, you will not end up saving money for the government. Quite the opposite, in fact. Contractors will, going forward, charge a higher rate to account for the risk that some genius in the past decided the government could simply choose not to pay for already-completed work. If anyone is willing to lend to the government they will only do so if they receive a much higher interest rate to account for the risk that some genius decided that the government could simply *choose* not to pay its bills. Actions have consequences.

Adam, do you realize that the fiscal year of the U.S. Govt. runs from Oct to Sept? that is the term of the budget as well so the fiscal year 2011 budget ends the end of next month as do the obligations for the non discretionary spending.
 
Re: Obama: We have a deal

Guess Bush won't win the 2012 election. Amazing how you continue to make Bush, Reagan, and Clinton the issue as they don't matter. What matters is what Obama is doing and I doubt he will get the support of the 24 million plus unemployed or under employed Americans to vote for him. Based upon the lastest results he has 40% support as more and more people actually see his results and how they affect them. Wonder when you will wake up?



And what is the approval rating for the Republicans in Congress?
 
Re: Obama: We have a deal

No, that is simply incorrect.
It is absolutely correct.

If you "revise" your decision to pay obligations that you have already incurred
Entitlement benefits -- the vast majority of mandatory spending - are not 'already incurred'.
All entitlement spending can be cut; the only mandatory spending that cannot be cut is debt service.
 
Re: Obama: We have a deal

And what is the approval rating for the Republicans in Congress?

Didn't know they broke out Congressional Approval ratings by party. Why such loyalty to Obama?
 
Re: Obama: We have a deal

Adam, do you realize that the fiscal year of the U.S. Govt. runs from Oct to Sept? that is the term of the budget as well so the fiscal year 2011 budget ends the end of next month as do the obligations for the non discretionary spending.

Yes, I understand that. I also understand that you can't possibly crunch the numbers for the U.S. government the way you're trying to do it. For example, even if there is technically enough money to pay SS, the checks won't go out of you don't pay the government employees who process the checks. And you won't have the money you claim you have if you don't pay the IRS and other employees to actually collect the money.

At the moment we are only taking in about half the revenue we need to pay all our bills. Thus, obviously, if we don't borrow the rest we are going to default on about half of our obligations. Basic arithmetic.
 
Re: Obama: We have a deal

Didn't know they broke out Congressional Approval ratings by party. Why such loyalty to Obama?

Of course they break it down by party. FYI, the approval for Republicans in Congress is at 25% in the latest Pew poll. For Democrats it's at 30%. Kinda makes Obama's 41% look not so bad, eh?
 
Re: Obama: We have a deal

Yes, I understand that. I also understand that you can't possibly crunch the numbers for the U.S. government the way you're trying to do it. For example, even if there is technically enough money to pay SS, the checks won't go out of you don't pay the government employees who process the checks. And you won't have the money you claim you have if you don't pay the IRS and other employees to actually collect the money.

At the moment we are only taking in about half the revenue we need to pay all our bills. Thus, obviously, if we don't borrow the rest we are going to default on about half of our obligations. Basic arithmetic.

If you have half the revenue you need to pay your bills what do you do, increase your credit card limit or cut spending? There is enough money to pay the basic govt. obligations which I posted and leaves over 20 billion to fund the expenses of sending out those checks which is way too high. Anyway why are you so interested in sending more taxdollars to the Federal govt. that has created the current 14.4 trillion dollar debt? We have a spending problem, not a revenue problem as there never will be enough revenue to fund the liberal spending appetite.
 
Re: Obama: We have a deal

Of course they break it down by party. FYI, the approval for Republicans in Congress is at 25% in the latest Pew poll. For Democrats it's at 30%. Kinda makes Obama's 41% look not so bad, eh?

41% is a terrible number for a President running for re-election. Why would anyone vote to re-elect this individual? don't results ever matter to a liberal?

By the way national polls on Congress are irrelevant since Congressional Reps are elected locally. The only poll that matters with Congress are the local ones.
 
Re: Obama: We have a deal

Interesting concept, liberals have. Problem is there never will be enough money to fund the liberal appetite for spending as they attempt to make this country into a wonderful European socialist utopia.
You mean Liberal spending like we had during these years of Republican budgets which generated these deficits?

2004: 595,821,633,587
2005: 553,656,965,393
2006: 574,264,237,492

2007: 500,679,473,047
 
Re: Obama: We have a deal

You mean Liberal spending like we had during these years of Republican budgets which generated these deficits?

2004: 595,821,633,587
2005: 553,656,965,393
2006: 574,264,237,492

2007: 500,679,473,047

think any of those deficits matter today with Obama's trillion dollar deficits? Obama is on the ballot in 2012, not Bush and no matter how you spin it, Obama is making Bush look good.
 
Re: Obama: We have a deal

Didn't know they broke out Congressional Approval ratings by party. Why such loyalty to Obama?
Now ya know...

July:

Pew Research Center: 25%
USA Today/Gallup: 28%
NBC News/WSJournal: 25%
Quinnipiac: 26%

http://www.pollingreport.com/cong_rep.htm
 
Re: Obama: We have a deal

Now ya know...

July:

Pew Research Center: 25%
USA Today/Gallup: 28%
NBC News/WSJournal: 25%
Quinnipiac: 26%

http://www.pollingreport.com/cong_rep.htm

So when did Congressional elections become national? Presidential elections are national and Obama has a 40% approval rating. Doesn't really matter what someone from NY thinks about a Representative in Ohio.
 
Re: Obama: We have a deal

Glad to see this done, now lets get onto talking about what is actually important for our financial future.

Lets talk about significantly reforming and/or cutting entitlements and looking at what we can do to reduce military spending.

More than half of our spending is tied up in entitlement payouts like Social Security, SCHIP, and Unemployment benefits. Add defense spending and you get almost 75% of our spending. Even if we were to cut every single solitary piece of government spending we have, including reducing defense to $0 dollars, we'd STILL be running a $43 billion debt each year. Cutting just the DOD's budget would still have us with with $750+ billion dollars in deficit.

With our current spending we'd need to increase revenues by almost 70% just to break EVEN. Cut the DOD and you'd still need to raise revenues by more than 35% to break even.

Is raising taxes possibly a part of the solution? Yes. But its not a much bigger part of it than cutting foreign aid or useless programs or various subsidies, etc. They're small drops into a bucket full of water. Until we honestly and seriously start acting like adults and look at these entitlement programs and decide what's FEASIBLE rather than what feels good, and realize that there is no perfect solution where no one gets hurt (that includes just letting them keep going), then we're never going to fix this issue.

We're just kicking the can down the road.

Significantly reform entitlements, significantly cut military spending, and then maybe we'll get financially solvent. Cut both by 1/3rd and they'd remain a clear majority of our government spending (2/3rds). That would cut the deficit by almost 2/3rds, from $1.4 trillion to $538 Billion. It would also bring us far closer to potentially balancing the budget by looking at smaller affecting things such as increased taxes, removal of waste and redundency, and cuts to non-essential government programs.
 
Re: Obama: We have a deal

peter beinert, anyone?

he was on cpsan saturday morning

Barack Obama may be president, but the Tea Party is now running Washington. How did this happen? Simple; this is what American politics looks like when there’s no left-wing movement and no war.

Let’s start with the first point. Liberals are furious that President Obama agreed to massive spending cuts, and the promise of more, without any increase in revenues. They should be: Given how much the Bush tax cuts have contributed to the deficit (and how little they’ve spurred economic growth), it’s mind-boggling that they’ve apparently escaped this deficit-reduction deal unscathed.

But there’s a reason for that: since the economy collapsed in 2008, only one grassroots movement has emerged in response, and it’s been a movement of the right. Compare that with what happened during the Depression. In 1933, Franklin Roosevelt assumed the presidency and launched the hodgepodge of domestic programs that historians call the first New Deal. By 1935, however, he was looking warily over his left shoulder at Huey Long, whose “Share our Wealth” movement demanded that incomes be capped at $1 million and every family be guaranteed an income no less than one-third the national average.

To be sure, FDR had vehement opponents on his right, but he was at least as concerned about the populist left, which helps explain why he enacted the more ambitious “second new deal,” which included Social Security, the massive public jobs program called the Works Progress Administration and the Wagner Act, which for the first time in American history put Washington on the side of labor unions.

Historians will long debate why the financial collapse of 2008 produced a right-wing populist movement and not a left-wing one. Perhaps it’s because Obama didn’t take on Wall Street, perhaps it’s because with labor unions so weak there’s just not the organizational muscle to create such a movement, perhaps it’s because trust in government is so low that pro-government populism is almost impossible.

Whatever the reason, it was the emergence of the Tea Party as the most powerful grassroots pressure group in America that laid the groundwork for Sunday night’s deal. The fact that polling showed Obama getting the better of the debt ceiling debate barely mattered. The 2010 elections brought to Congress a group of Republicans theologically committed to cutting government.

But it’s not just the absence of a mass left-wing movement that explains last night’s deal. It’s the end of the war on terror. From 9/11 until George W. Bush left office, the “war on terror” defined the Republican Party.

The Tea Party, by contrast, is a post-war on terror phenomenon. Many of the newly-elected Republicans are indifferent, if not hostile, to the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq. They’re happy to cut the defense budget, especially since cutting the defense budget makes it easier to persuade Democrats to swallow larger cuts in domestic spending. It’s the reverse of the cold war dynamic.

The good news is that the Tea Party, more than Barack Obama, has now ended the neoconservative dream of an ever-expanding American empire. The bad news is that it has also ended whatever hopes liberals once entertained that roughly 100 years after Theodore Roosevelt and Woodrow Wilson, roughly 75 years after the New Deal and roughly 50 years after the Great Society, we were living in another great age of progressive reform.

Given the era of fiscal scarcity we’re now entering, those neocon and progressive dreams are now likely dead for many years to come. Meanwhile, the Tea Party’s dream of a government reduced to its pre-welfare state size becomes ever real.

How the Tea Party Won the Deal - Yahoo! News

why does obama keep caving, what's he so scared of
 
Re: Obama: We have a deal

Kinda makes Obama's 41% look not so bad, eh?

you're comparing a PRESIDENT's popularity with generic congress?

LOL!
 
Re: Obama: We have a deal

Premises:
1) The Tea Party stands for cutting government funded health care and against raising taxes
2) These people are still alive and functional due to government funded health care
3) These people are members of the tea party

That is crazy talk. The idea there would be no Tea Party without government funded health care is hyperbole and just goofy.

Corollary:
a) The appellative “Tea Baggers,” taken initially by the Tea Party themselves in ignorance of the term’s derogatory connotations, is an unsubtle reminder that they have previously advocated positions without fully comprehending their larger ramifications.

Once again a fancy way of calling your opposition stupid.

But being ignorant at first of an obscure filthy epithet isn't really stupid. And the fact that this is important to you in your argument against the "Tea Party" conservatives reveals pettiness and a is great example of grasping at straws.
 
Re: Obama: We have a deal

You mean Liberal spending like we had during these years of Republican budgets which generated these deficits?

2004: 595,821,633,587
2005: 553,656,965,393
2006: 574,264,237,492

2007: 500,679,473,047

Yes, both parties have overspent. That's why we need a balanced budget amendment. I'm sure you'll agree that the amendment would be a good thing. Right?
 
Re: Obama: We have a deal

think any of those deficits matter today with Obama's trillion dollar deficits?
WTF?? You whine daily about the debt but you don't think that $2.2T added by Republican budgets matter today?

Oops, forgot I was talking to a devout partisan. Never mind.

no matter how you spin it, Obama is making Bush look good.
Only to Bush cultists.

After 29 months in office, Obama lost 2.4 million jobs; Bush lost 3.4 million jobs.

That makes Bush look good, right? :roll:
 
Re: Obama: We have a deal

WTF?? You whine daily about the debt but you don't think that $2.2T added by Republican budgets matter today?

Oops, forgot I was talking to a devout partisan. Never mind.


Only to Bush cultists.

After 29 months in office, Obama lost 2.4 million jobs; Bush lost 3.4 million jobs.

That makes Bush look good, right? :roll:

Bush isn't on the ballot in 2012 but you keep bringing him up. It will be the Obama record that matters not what Bush did or didn't do. Bush didn't spend over a trillion dollars in a stimulus and TARP spending to create a net job loss but that is ok, keep drinking the kool-aid.

Recession ended June 2009 and yet fiscal year 2011 first qtr GDP .4% and second qtr. 1.3% which is the preliminary number. Those are a success in the liberal world?

Obama record, 15.1 million officially unemployed TODAY 2 1/2 years later, 16.2% total unemployment or underemployment over 24 million TODAY, 4 trillion added to the debt as of the end of fiscal year 2011, and a rising misery index(7.83 to 12.67).
 
Re: Obama: We have a deal

Yes, both parties have overspent. That's why we need a balanced budget amendment. I'm sure you'll agree that the amendment would be a good thing. Right?
No, I don't. What happens in years like 2008 and 2009 when a recession wreaks havoc on the budget? We're supposed to be forced by the Constitution to cut much needed spending during a recession? That would surely doom the economy.
 
Re: Obama: We have a deal

Get with the program, man! We're supposed to pretend that the world was created the day Obama took office. And look what he did! His first month the economy lost over 700,000 jobs!! ;)
 
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