How do you see our long term budget outlook?

With no solution yet on the horizon to deal with our current budget crises I understand it will be hard to give a accurate projection at this time. However, how confident are you that our leaders will find a lasting solution to our debt?

I feel very strongly that regardless of what the house comes up with that it will only be a temporary solution to a very long term problem. I feel that our government will make an attempt to pass cuts/taxes that will make it appear that they are serious about correcting our budget but in reality it will only be an attempt to appease the voters with no real substance.

The primary reason I am against tax increases is because I have no faith that anything will be corrected and we will only end up taxing people more and that we will ultimately achieve little. I am however for fixing loopholes.

My belief is that we will see one or two things happening. We will make cuts that take affect 5-10 years down the road to make the numbers look good but in that 5-10 years when the public voice has diminished spending will have increased above current levels and we will once again see ourselves in this situation and with even more debt added. The second is we will be given inflated numbers that will look much better then what we will actually have. Meaning we will hear something like 4T will be saved over 10 years but in reality we may see 1.2T in actual money saved.

I fully believe that in 15 years we will be no better off financially as a country then we are right now. We need to change how Washington works if we are serious about saving this country. Until then we will see half hearted attempts with little result which will continue to drag this country down into oblivion.

Baralis said:

I fully believe that in 15 years we will be no better off financially as a country then we are right now. We need to change how Washington works if we are serious about saving this country. Until then we will see half hearted attempts with little result which will continue to drag this country down into oblivion.

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You certainly could be correct, but I hope not. It is really up to the voting public. If voters want to continue to send politicians to Washington who want to spend, spend, spend and not believe in the original intent of the Constitution, we will have more of this. If voters continue to want the nanny state, entitlements, et al, we will have more of this.

If, on the other hand, voters decide to restore sound financial principles to government by voting for honest, responsible politicians, we can turn this mess around and keep it turned around. If polls are correct, oh my!

I can really only sum it up with one visual image.

Sorry guys.

I think in 15 years, it will be better off, or the U.S. as we think of it today won't exist.

I'm by nature very optimistic (even foolishly so), so I think we can figure things out before then. We have countless times before, and I don't see why not now.

I don't see a budget, period if the republicans don't knock it the hell off so we can avert the August 2nd disaster.

If we continue to elect and empower Democrats and Statists over the next 15 years.........Worse.....

....for we will simply follow in the same bankrupt and failed footsteps of all the Leftist countries ahead of us............



Can we catch up to the rest of the world?....Yes We Can!
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:caution: PARTISAN HACKERY ADVISOR :caution:

:doh

It will be better, most definitely. We really hit a perfect storm with this crisis, after a decade of unpaid for wars, an expensive prescription drug program, and other various spending measures, we have an economic collapse, and had to spend our way to avoid it being worse then the Great Depression. With all of this piled up, it looks really bad, but we will get through it. While the political landscape is pretty volatile right now, we will eventually solve this, and it our budget will get back to what it was before all of this, and hopefully it won't get like this again for a very long time.

Your Star said:

It will be better, most definitely. We really hit a perfect storm with this crisis, after a decade of unpaid for wars, an expensive prescription drug program, and other various spending measures, we have an economic collapse, and had to spend our way to avoid it being worse then the Great Depression. With all of this piled up, it looks really bad, but we will get through it. While the political landscape is pretty volatile right now, we will eventually solve this, and it our budget will get back to what it was before all of this, and hopefully it won't get like this again for a very long time.

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Cool! I take it the GOP sweeps both Houses and the Executive in 2012. I love it! Sorry, I could not pass this up. :roll:

I'm optimistic in that it will be a long, protracted battle, that will eventually allow us to move ahead. It will take a political generation of maneuverability, but it can be done.

I don't know if it will be better or worse off compared to today...but I do think that it will be GETTING better by then. Any deterioration that might occur will be mostly front-loaded: I suspect that we'll have a few more years of high deficits (still dealing with the aftermath of the recession), but we'll manage to tackle at least 2 of our 4 long-term deficit drivers (social security, defense, health care, tax policy). By 2015, I suspect that our debt-to-GDP ratio will be falling.

I think there is plenty of opportunity for deficit reduction via defense spending and tax revenue, specifically. Social security is a bit tougher to tackle politically, but since all of our long-term SS problems can be solved with some relatively minor tweaks, I hold out hope that an agreement can be reached on this issue as well. Health care is the only one that really seems intractable at this point in time, but there may be more opportunity to tackle that as well once the Affordable Care Act is fully implemented and passions around it die down.

I think we could do it, I just don't think we have the political will to do it. People want as many freebies as they can get whether we can afford it or not. They're not willing to accept the cuts we need to actually balance the budget, they think the gravy train can go on forever. I honestly don't think that's going to change any time soon.

I'm not a lawyer and that gives me an advantage of most politicians and I'm not a dumb-ass like who claims to genius but I could the recovery on track in a week and ceate jobs in a month.

Move number one is yo get rid of Obama. the good news would help with on hours.

Kandahar said:

I don't know if it will be better or worse off compared to today...but I do think that it will be GETTING better by then. Any deterioration that might occur will be mostly front-loaded: I suspect that we'll have a few more years of high deficits (still dealing with the aftermath of the recession), but we'll manage to tackle at least 2 of our 4 long-term deficit drivers (social security, defense, health care, tax policy). By 2015, I suspect that our debt-to-GDP ratio will be falling.

I think there is plenty of opportunity for deficit reduction via defense spending and tax revenue, specifically. Social security is a bit tougher to tackle politically, but since all of our long-term SS problems can be solved with some relatively minor tweaks, I hold out hope that an agreement can be reached on this issue as well. Health care is the only one that really seems intractable at this point in time, but there may be more opportunity to tackle that as well once the Affordable Care Act is fully implemented and passions around it die down.

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I don't think you understand. the ACA will never be fully implemented. Not just because Republicans will see to it, but because at this point it can't be fully implemented. The United States does not have and will very likely be unable to get anyone to loan us that much money.

as for our long-term budget; Social Security and Medicare are currently slated to rise by about 74% in the next 10 years. Medicare will go bankrupt. Social Security will be drawing funds out of the General Budget to the point that we will be unable to fund much else as we do today.

the government of 2021 will look drastically different from the government of 2011. specifically, it will look like Greece, but Greece without an IMF or EU to bail them out. and all the incentives for our political leaders are to do nothing about it.

cpwill said:

I don't think you understand. the ACA will never be fully implemented. Not just because Republicans will see to it, but because at this point it can't be fully implemented.

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I suppose I shouldn't have assumed its implementation in my previous post. Allow me to rephrase: Health care seems intractable now, but maybe in a few years our government can take it up again after the ACA is resolved one way or the other and passions around it die down.

The United States does not have and will very likely be unable to get anyone to loan us that much money.

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The CBO says that the Affordable Care Act will reduce our deficit over the next decade, and even more in the following decade. Therefore we won't need to borrow much money to fund it, except perhaps for the start-up costs.

In the news today...

House to Vote on Tea Party-Backed Debt Plan - FoxNews.com

But the White House attacked the cut, cap and balance idea as an assault on cherished programs. The measure doesn't contain any actual spending cuts but promises they will be made in the future.

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Which just helps support my view on how things will end. We still are not serious about making cuts. We will continue to kick the can down the road.

Baralis said:

Which just helps support my view on how things will end. We still are not serious about making cuts. We will continue to kick the can down the road.

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Of course, nobody wants to make any actual cuts, that's going to cost them votes. I'd be fine with the idea of cutting $3 in spending for every $1 in tax increases or borrowing, so long as it was real, immediate and demonstrable cuts from existing programs that stopped receiving funding tomorrow. That'll just never happen.

Cephus said:

Of course, nobody wants to make any actual cuts, that's going to cost them votes. I'd be fine with the idea of cutting $3 in spending for every $1 in tax increases or borrowing, so long as it was real, immediate and demonstrable cuts from existing programs that stopped receiving funding tomorrow. That'll just never happen.

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Fred Barnes (the conservative editor of the Weekly Standard) pointed out the problem with that approach in an op-ed piece last week: cuts to discretionary spending are easily reversible. I agree with him. Furthermore, there just isn't that much spending to cut from the (non-defense) discretionary budget. Ultimately I think we're going to need to tackle the things that aren't directly funded through the annual budgetary process at all: Pensions and health care.

Kandahar said:

I suppose I shouldn't have assumed its implementation in my previous post. Allow me to rephrase: Health care seems intractable now, but maybe in a few years our government can take it up again after the ACA is resolved one way or the other and passions around it die down.

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that might be truer. but since it will be resolved in a way that reduces expenditures, i doubt it.

The CBO says that the Affordable Care Act will reduce our deficit over the next decade, and even more in the following decade. Therefore we won't need to borrow much money to fund it, except perhaps for the start-up costs.

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yes, that is because the CBO was ordered to double-count no less than $500 Billion, assume that unemployment would be at about 7.5% by now, pretend that Congress would actually slash reimbursement rates to providers by 30%, and assume 4.5% growth in order to spike revenues. So when Republicans took over Congress, they asked the CBO to score Obamacare without the gimmicks. the "it reduces the budget" line was the chief whopper of that sale, right next to "if you like your health insurance you can keep it"

It's a budget-buster. Even the Medicare / Medicaid Actuaries say that it bends the cost-curve up. Especially once you score it's first 10 years of operation.

cpwill said:

yes, that is because the CBO was ordered to double-count no less than $500 Billion,

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The CBO merely notes that the Affordable Care Act will produce savings in both Medicare spending and the federal budget (via the Hospital Insurance Trust Fund); just because the same policies produce savings in both areas doesn't mean they are double-counted.

assume that unemployment would be at about 7.5% by now,

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From the long-term perspective of its impact on the federal budget, the current rate of unemployment is a trivial factor in its overall impact on the debt.

pretend that Congress would actually slash reimbursement rates to providers by 30%,

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This was a problem BEFORE the Affordable Care Act became law, and would continue to be a problem with or without the Affordable Care Act. The CBO is decidedly NOT assuming that Congress would slash reimbursement rates by 30%; in fact, the ACA essentially codifies the "Doc Fixes" that Congress had previously been passing every year, thus ruling out those savings. The question is whether or not that should be included in the cost of the ACA. The Congressional Budget Office didn't score it as such, since Congress had been passing the fixes every year anyway.

and assume 4.5% growth in order to spike revenues.

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Where does this number come from? The most recent CBO estimate that I've seen places an upper limit of 3.3% growth on any year until 2017.

So when Republicans took over Congress, they asked the CBO to score Obamacare without the gimmicks.

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They sure did. And the CBO still told them that repealing it would add $230 billion to the deficit.

the "it reduces the budget" line was the chief whopper of that sale, right next to "if you like your health insurance you can keep it"
It's a budget-buster. Even the Medicare / Medicaid Actuaries say that it bends the cost-curve up.

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Don't get me wrong; the CBO isn't infallible...but they aren't reliable optimists either. So while they could be wrong (and probably WILL be), I'd say it's about equally likely that they're wrong in either direction. So the ACA could result in huge savings or a modest deficit. And even the latter situation wouldn't be that bad, as it would still reduce private expenditures and extend coverage.

Especially once you score it's first 10 years of operation.

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Since the CBO's estimate indicates that savings will be greater in the SECOND decade than the first, the argument that revenues kick in before expenses due to accounting gimmickry doesn't seem to stand up to the financial analysis.