Dollar amount or percent of GDP amount?
Dollar amount of course, as military threats are not proportional to our GDP. We just have to spend more than the next top spender.
Reasonable forecast.
Doesn't answer my question.
I answered it in the response to the other poster, and I provided you with a link to it.
We have never increased benefits in all the other times we have raised the SS cap. And yes, it does mean that the wealthiest in the country pay a little more, just as they have each time the cap has been increased in the past. But, I shouldn't feel too sorry for the rich as they have benefitted from 3 decades of tax cuts.
Irrelevant to your statement. Simply because those countries costs are half of what they are for the US does not mean that the US will cut ours in half. Is what they're spending currently half of what they were spending before? Could it possibly be that the size and scope and regulations and other differences of our country would create a different situation? Against, questionable speculation and guessing at best by you put across as a hard number.
I was talking about when the US gets serious about addressing its debt. We are not there yet, because we still waste so much on military spending and tax cuts for the wealthy. However, when we do get serious about the debt, we will have to upgrade our heath care system as the rest of the industrialized world has done. We have the most expensive health care system in the world.
Again, your opinion based on questionable reasoning and guesses at best, used to justify something as if its a hard and useful number.
Reasonable forecast based on the the past.
There's no specific budgetary or mandatory items that do or don't contribute to our debt. All of them do. We do not have a system in this country that allocates that tax dollar X goes specifically to spending project Y, so you can not declare that any singular entity of government spending does or doesn't contribute to the debt. As long as we are running a deficit, the spending of government as a whole is causing that debt.
Did you forget we keep an account of SS receipts and expenditures??? SS has a $2.6 trillion dollar surplus. It is the most well run program in the federal government.
The general fund has a budget problem, and when it gets serious enough we will cut our excessive military spending and tax breaks for the rich.
That's just plainly and factually false. That is not the "only way".
Its the only way without limiting access and quality of care.
Excessive Military Spending = Opinion
Fact, there is data that shows we spend almost as much as the rest of the world combined. We can no longer afford to do so.
Bitching about tax cuts for the rich = Emotional ploy
Bitching about the debt, without addressing the true cause = Emotional ploy.
We could cut every single solitary dime of defense spending and raise the taxes on the rich to Clinton levels and we'd still likely be running a deficit.
You ignore the fact that we will eventually emerge from the Bush Recession, and that we will eventually upgrade our health care system.
Romney only offers increased spending and more tax cuts for the rich = more debt!