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Who do you trust to control the Deficit and solve our Debt Crises?

Who Do You Trust To Reduce the Deficit and Solve the Debt Crises?

  • Both Parties Seem Trustworthy

    Votes: 0 0.0%

  • Total voters
    61
Not agreeing with their own group is a GOOD thing... it means some in the GOP are thinking of something OTHER than their own asses and re-election. People are stupid when they blindly follow the talking points of partisans and propoganda.

Im sorry but you are a moron. I know its hard to accept failed leadership on the party you support, but wake up. Conservatives will sink this country, just like they do everytime they get in power. Please use your brain, denial is not going to help us.
 
70 percent of americans blame republicans for this mess, this forum must be the retarded 30 %
 
Im sorry but you are a moron. I know its hard to accept failed leadership on the party you support, but wake up. Conservatives will sink this country, just like they do everytime they get in power. Please use your brain, denial is not going to help us.

Since you will not be around very long, I want to at least provide you something constructive. Political groups do not always have to agree and in some cases it's best they do not. A robust debate is required in a free society and always has been.
 
Neither party can be trusted. BOTH parties are responsible for the unconscionable amount of debt we have incurred, and BOTH parties are responsible for the shameful overspending, overpromising and undersaving for the nation's entitlement programs. Why should I trust any of them to actually fix things?

The Dems are too busy pretending that Medicare is fine and that we can have all the spending we want and we'll make the rich guys pay for everything. The Repubs are too busy opposing EVERY single move and utterance the President makes, and pretending that taxes should be zero.

Oy vey.
 
I'm not sure how (if at all) the CBO tries to measure the costs of wars. It's difficult because presidents have a tendency to suddenly change their minds when it's time to act. I would agree that the surge in Afghanistan was (at least in theory) a short-term measure that should be discontinued anyway. But in practice, it may turn out to be more than that, as putting more troops into Afghanistan reduces the likelihood that we'll withdraw them soon. So I dunno, I can see some justification for including that as a spending cut if it's eliminated. It just depends how you measure the baseline spending.

they also claimed the "savings" from "cutting" the surge in Iraq. we leave Iraq in about 150 days. they want to claim a baseline of us Surging there for 10 years.

it's flim-flamery. there was nothing in there that we were actually going to spend money on that they have now decided not to.

But really we should eliminate 100% of the spending for the war in Afghanistan, so it's a moot point.

on there we're going to disagree; but it's a debate for another thread.

I strongly disagree with this. Interest payments are absolutely a component of our long-term budgetary problems. Reducing the long-term deficit will reduce our interest payments, and therefore reduce spending in the long term.

i agree that reducing the amount we go further into debt makes it easier later to maintain payments on the debt. but that's not quite what we are measuring here. For example, if we were to pass a measure that was nothing but a $2 Trillion tax increase... but that "saved" us $500 Bn in interest payments, Obama and Reid would claim that the tax-hike-to-spending-cut ratio was 4:1. that's bogus, there wasn't a single actual "cut" anywhere in the deal.

This is one of the reasons why I think it's so dangerous for us to have a debt ceiling in the first place...if the opposition (either next week or in a future debt ceiling debate) pushes it to the brink and is then unable to walk it back and make a deal to raise it, it will negatively impact our credit rating.

I look at that as sort of like getting the dead form of a virus to protect you from the real killer. the debt ceiling has been used on multiple occasions (the 50's, for example) to rein in an expansive administrations' spending.

A 1% increase in our interest rate would lead to an extra trillion dollars in interest payments (and therefore in government spending).

agreed. but the real threat to our credit rating is the debt, not the debt ceiling. the bond markets do not really care if we have to shut down the department of agriculture - they know they get paid first. but we are accumulating to the point where we risk becoming Greece, and everyone there knows that bohdholders will be taking a serious haircut.

Frankly I don't see how anyone could see it any other way. Why would reductions in interest payments from borrowing less not be a legitimate spending cut?

because there was no "spending" "cut". nothing was "reduced".

It depends what those efficiencies are, how important they are to the overall budget, and whether or not they're binding. So in my opinion the ACA would count as spending reductions from improving efficiency, whereas eliminating the occasional poster-child pork project or agriculture subsidy does not.

:lamo: the ACA? that behemoth?

:) brother, the ACA is doomed. even if Republicans weren't going to kill it, it would never be fully implemented.
 
I found this infographic today in the New York Times...it fits this thread pretty well:
24editorial_graph2-popup.gif


:lamo those idiots scored the tax cuts statically! :lamo

"and other changes"

:lol:


don't get me wrong, Bush was a big spender you'll get no argument from me.

but this?

here, let's look at what the CBO has to say:

special-obama-budget-deficits-chart-sm.jpg


I like how they also don't bother to mention that the big spending didn't start until Democrats took over the House and Senate.

hey, according to the Constitution, who is responsible for generating spending bills, anywho? ....gosh it's on the tip of my tongue.... seems it should rhyme with "schmongress"...

And if you take out the specific items that are directly attributable to the recession and therefore short-term, Obama has barely increased the deficit at all: The only other items on his deficit list are non-defense discretionary spending ($278 billion), health care reform ($152 billion), and defense (savings of $126 billion)...for a total of $304 billion. And even THAT may be an exaggeration, since one of the goals of health care reform is to REDUCE the deficit in the long-term, and the CBO indicated that it will do just that.

nooo.... the CBO was ordered to double-count $500 Bn, count only 6 years of benefits in a 10-year window, assume 7.5% unemployment (currently), 4% growth (currently), and assume that no "doc fix" bill would be passed. The Medicare and Medicaid Actuaries, however, were under no such orders and they have made it clear that the ACA bends the cost-curve up and will help destroy Medicare.
 
they also claimed the "savings" from "cutting" the surge in Iraq. we leave Iraq in about 150 days. they want to claim a baseline of us Surging there for 10 years.

it's flim-flamery. there was nothing in there that we were actually going to spend money on that they have now decided not to.

Well, that's just a question of accounting more than a question of policy. It depends how you predict whether we would otherwise spend money on it (which is always somewhat subjective), and what baseline you use for your savings estimates (which is always subjective). We could actually make our debt-to-GDP ratio SHRINK over the next 40 years if Congress simply took no action at all to change the status quo on taxes and spending (...not that anyone actually thinks that would be desirable). But it's somewhat difficult to predict which laws will change and which will not.

i agree that reducing the amount we go further into debt makes it easier later to maintain payments on the debt. but that's not quite what we are measuring here. For example, if we were to pass a measure that was nothing but a $2 Trillion tax increase... but that "saved" us $500 Bn in interest payments, Obama and Reid would claim that the tax-hike-to-spending-cut ratio was 4:1. that's bogus, there wasn't a single actual "cut" anywhere in the deal.

There absolutely is. Reducing the deficit reduces the interest payment, which is a form of spending. Therefore spending was cut.

I look at that as sort of like getting the dead form of a virus to protect you from the real killer. the debt ceiling has been used on multiple occasions (the 50's, for example) to rein in an expansive administrations' spending.

Playing cute with the full faith and credit of the United States is not a good idea, regardless of whether you think it's for a just cause. In the future the shoe could be on the other foot; we might have a Republican president and a Democratic Congress (and therefore Congress would treat the debt ceiling as the Republicans' problem). Would you like it if the Democrats, under those circumstances, used it as a weapon to extract concessions from the Republicans on various items on the liberal wish list? If not, then I fail to see how this can possibly be viewed as a tool of good governance. We are the only nation in the world that has a debt ceiling (except Denmark, which keeps its debt ceiling at an impossibly high limit). Every single time we have a debate over the debt ceiling, there is a chance that the government will fail to act and we will default.

And no, it's not like getting a dead virus to protect you from the real killer. It's like shooting yourself because you got a virus. The US is in no imminent economic danger of not being able to pay its debts; bond interest rates are near their all-time low. This crisis is completely political.

agreed. but the real threat to our credit rating is the debt, not the debt ceiling. the bond markets do not really care if we have to shut down the department of agriculture - they know they get paid first.

If no agreement is reached (and if Obama chooses to not simply ignore the debt ceiling), then we'll have to cut federal spending by 43%. If you set aside money for the bondholders first, you need to cut everything else by 45% (assuming that interest rates didn't rise at all). If you assumed that it caused interest rates to rise by 1% immediately, and that 10% of bonds were not rolled over, then you'd have to eliminate virtually all other federal spending. A lot more than the Department of Agriculture would be affected.

And bondholders are not quite that stupid; just because the government prioritized THEIR payments for a few days doesn't mean that they would be unable to recognize the political dysfunction of our Congress. Many of them would, quite reasonably, conclude that our nation was not trustworthy for paying its debts in the future...and that in any prolonged standoff, the prioritization of their payments would not be politically sustainable. Maybe they'd tolerate it for a few days (and by "tolerate" I mean only increase our long-term interest expenses by another trillion or so dollars)...but a longer standoff would be viewed as a default, whether or not the creditors were still getting their money or not. No one wants to invest in an entity that isn't making good on its OTHER obligations.

but we are accumulating to the point where we risk becoming Greece, and everyone there knows that bohdholders will be taking a serious haircut.

No we aren't. We are nowhere close to Greek levels of debt. If we were, why have bond interest rates been so low up until now?

because there was no "spending" "cut". nothing was "reduced".

This is semantics. We would be paying a lesser amount toward an expenditure (i.e. debt interest) than we otherwise would, in the absence of action. That is a spending cut by any definition of the word.

:lamo: the ACA? that behemoth?

:) brother, the ACA is doomed. even if Republicans weren't going to kill it, it would never be fully implemented.

Then Medicare/Medicaid truly will go bankrupt if the Republicans succeed in stripping out the cost control provisions, such as the Heritage Foundation-designed individual mandate. And our nation will too. It's **** like this that explains my answer to the poll question. Republicans - at least the current breed of them - don't give a damn about the deficit.
 
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:lamo those idiots scored the tax cuts statically! :lamo

Yes I'm sure that the tax cuts will bring in untold trillions in revenue, like manna falling from heaven...but since this is nothing but conjecture (and against the opinion of the majority of economists), the NYT's infographic chose to use the same scoring that the CBO does. :roll:

My point is that when you take out the things which are directly related to the recession, Obama hardly looks like a spendthrift.

don't get me wrong, Bush was a big spender you'll get no argument from me.

but this?

here, let's look at what the CBO has to say:

special-obama-budget-deficits-chart-sm.jpg

The NYT's infographic I provided breaks that spending down and shows you exactly where that money is going. Heritage's chart does not.

like how they also don't bother to mention that the big spending didn't start until Democrats took over the House and Senate.

Post hoc ergo propter hoc. Would you like to compare the state of the economy from 2008-2011 with the state of the economy from 2004-2007? But I think that rather than us getting in pissing contests showing who spent more, apportioning blame is ultimately more of an academic point than anything else. After all, the only thing that the current Congress or president ever has total control over is discretionary spending, which is slightly less than half of all federal spending. Their control over entitlement spending, unemployment spending, and the amount of tax revenue is limited at best (and they're to blame only to the extent that they didn't change what was already in place)...and it is precisely these things which are driving most of the deficit increase in the last few years.

hey, according to the Constitution, who is responsible for generating spending bills, anywho? ....gosh it's on the tip of my tongue.... seems it should rhyme with "schmongress"

What's your point?

nooo.... the CBO was ordered to double-count $500 Bn, count only 6 years of benefits in a 10-year window, assume 7.5% unemployment (currently), 4% growth (currently), and assume that no "doc fix" bill would be passed. The Medicare and Medicaid Actuaries, however, were under no such orders and they have made it clear that the ACA bends the cost-curve up and will help destroy Medicare.

I have already addressed these points elsewhere.
http://www.debatepolitics.com/polls/104507-do-you-see-our-long-term-budget-outlook-3.html
 
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I don't trust either party but would certainly give the edge to the Republicans. The liberals have no solutions for anything except to raise taxes and spend more money. Education? Raise taxes and spend more. Healthcare? Raise taxes and spend more. Only the government can have a program with a $60 million budget that fails miserably so they budget $600 million and think it will succeed.

In my opinion, power needs to shift back from the Imperial Presidency to the Congress and we need to hold our Congressmen strictly accountable.
 
I don't trust either party but would certainly give the edge to the Republicans. The liberals have no solutions for anything except to raise taxes and spend more money. Education? Raise taxes and spend more. Healthcare? Raise taxes and spend more. Only the government can have a program with a $60 million budget that fails miserably so they budget $600 million and think it will succeed.

In my opinion, power needs to shift back from the Imperial Presidency to the Congress and we need to hold our Congressmen strictly accountable.

Wasn't the last administration the first tax cut and spend adminsitration and congress? Now that's something to trust. :coffeepap
 
Well, that's just a question of accounting more than a question of policy

:shrug: fine. by not lowering the top marginal tax rate to 5%, I posit that Republicans have already hiked taxes by 15 Trillion dollars over the next ten years, and demand that Democrats cut at least as much. They can do that by calling off the invasion of China, and so we break even and the deficit/debt crises will be fixed! yay! well. until we hit the 2020's. Then we become Greece. Because it turns out that reality doesn't care if we played make-believe with the baseline. Or it could happen earlier, as the Bond Markets realize that doing so means we aren't serious about getting our house in order.

It depends how you predict whether we would otherwise spend money on it (which is always somewhat subjective), and what baseline you use for your savings estimates (which is always subjective). We could actually make our debt-to-GDP ratio SHRINK over the next 40 years if Congress simply took no action at all to change the status quo on taxes and
spending (...not that anyone actually thinks that would be desirable).

that is incorrect - because increases in spending are written into the entitlements, which are set to expand dramatically.

There absolutely is. Reducing the deficit reduces the interest payment, which is a form of spending. Therefore spending was cut.

BS. no spending on anything was cut. It's a bogus abuse of the notion that writing something on paper makes it reality - much like the make-believe baselines above.

Playing cute with the full faith and credit of the United States is not a good idea, regardless of whether you think it's for a just cause.

the only thing currently threatening that is the debt itself, not the debt ceiling. everyone at this point holding bonds has realized that they get paid first and there is more than enough money to cover them. what would go are other government expenditures, in inverse order of their political importance to the President.

In the future the shoe could be on the other foot; we might have a Republican president and a Democratic Congress (and therefore Congress would treat the debt ceiling as the Republicans' problem).

that is, in fact, precisely what occurred in the 50's, when Dwight Eisenhower asked for a debt ceiling increase and Congress fought him on it under Democratic leadership.

Would you like it if the Democrats, under those circumstances, used it as a weapon to extract concessions from the Republicans on various items on the liberal wish list?

this isn't a Republican Wish List anymore - this is about us surviving the next two decades with any kind of economic order. Because under current law, we don't.

If not, then I fail to see how this can possibly be viewed as a tool of good governance. We are the only nation in the world that has a debt ceiling (except Denmark, which keeps its debt ceiling at an impossibly high limit). Every single time we have a debate over the debt ceiling, there is a chance that the government will fail to act and we will default.

that is incorrect, as you well know. we will not default on the debt by going past August 2nd. we will eventually default on the debt if we keep adding to it at the pace that the Administration currently has charted out for us.

And no, it's not like getting a dead virus to protect you from the real killer.

absolutely it is. reaction against the artificial debt ceiling serves as a potential ward against the danger of ever hitting the real debt ceiling.

The US is in no imminent economic danger of not being able to pay its debts

thank you, precisely.

This crisis is completely political.

of course it is - everything the government does is political. that's why we call it 'politics'

If no agreement is reached (and if Obama chooses to not simply ignore the debt ceiling), then we'll have to cut federal spending by 43%. If you set aside money for the bondholders first, you need to cut everything else by 45% (assuming that interest rates didn't rise at all). If you assumed that it caused interest rates to rise by 1% immediately, and that 10% of bonds were not rolled over, then you'd have to eliminate virtually all other federal spending. A lot more than the Department of Agriculture would be affected.

we have enough coming in to service the debt, pay off social security, and pay the active duty troops. that's not counting the other options available to the Treasury. a deal that is reached post-Aug-2 will include large economic disruptions, that is true; but it won't be a default.

And bondholders are not quite that stupid; just because the government prioritized THEIR payments for a few days doesn't mean that they would be unable to recognize the political dysfunction of our Congress. Many of them would, quite reasonably, conclude that our nation was not trustworthy for paying its debts in the future..

dude. our unfunded liabilities are larger than World GDP. we are already not trustworthy for paying off everything that we have promised. it is absent entitlement reform that we become untrustworthy, not August 3rd.

important note: "entitlement reform" does not include "add another hugely expensive entitlement"

No we aren't. We are nowhere close to Greek levels of debt.

yet. frankly, we'll never get to Greece's level of debt. There are entities capable of lending to Greece, capable of bailing Greece out. There is no such entity for the US.

If we were, why have bond interest rates been so low up until now?

1. Europe is facing alot of the same troubles, only as they are further along this path than we are, theirs are worse. So up until now, we have served as the "flight to safety" option. That appears to be shifting somewhat to Britain, though.
2. Up until very recently the Fed has been buying roughly 70% of our issuance, driving up price and depressing yields.
3. Everyone in the Bond Market knows that what you wrote up top about us going into Default is not accurate - we will not go into default.

This is semantics. We would be paying a lesser amount toward an expenditure (i.e. debt interest) than we otherwise would, in the absence of action. That is a spending cut by any definition of the word.

raising taxes does not get you spending reductions; certainly not when you are trying to trade the one for the other.

Then Medicare/Medicaid truly will go bankrupt if the Republicans succeed in stripping out the cost control provisions, such as the Heritage Foundation-designed individual mandate.

The Supreme Court is going to be stripping that one out. Republicans and Democrats will be stripping out the rationing board IPAB. Because there are much better ways to actually hold down costs rather than just expenditures.

And our nation will too. It's **** like this that explains my answer to the poll question. Republicans - at least the current breed of them - don't give a damn about the deficit.

BS: You don't like they way they go about solving it - but right now, that's their raison d'etre (raison d'ebt?), but Republicans remain the only party in Washington to have actually proposed Entitlement reforms and the only party in Washington that even pretends to be serious about the deficit.
 
Trust? I would lean towards Republicans at this time, two reasons ... first is Democrats have always been known as the tax and spend party ... and have certainly lived up to that since 2007. Now republicans certainly haven't been what anyone could call "Fiscally conservative" in our recent history either.

However the newly elected group seem to be sticking to their guns about doing what they were elected to do, one of which is to get our spending under control. So not saying I am trusting of them .... but at this time, they seem to be the only ones that are willing to tackle this problem head on. Trust is a big word when it comes to our government, they have been out of control for so long, as well as out of touch with the American people ....... at this time .. I won't say I trust them yet .... they have to show real results before I give them my trust .... lets say at this time .. I'm hopeful with the new batch of Republicans
 
With all of the stupid chest-thumping, grandstanding, blaming, and partisan hack accusations, I doubt either party will actually do anything but throw a grain of sand on the beach.

Sums up my views entirely.

As I fiscal conservative, I've frankly never trusted the Democratic party on this issue.

But the Republicans have zero credibility right now too. It was GW Bush and a Republican congress that spent money like drunken sailors for six years. The so called "historic" spending cuts the Republicans pushed through earlier this year was a sham made up mostly a bunch of hot air and budgetary tricks. And even the cuts they're talking about now aren't actual cuts. It's decreasing the amount of the spending increases.

And even the so called Tea Party zealots are largely opposed to serious (and necessary) cuts to social security and medicare. No one wants to tackle the issue head on.

The politicians will pass some temporary patchwork solution to kick the problem down the road, and they'll hail it as a "historic" agreement.
 
Considering Democrats havent released a budget in almost 3 YEARS..........and are unable to cut a cent of government spending, including Cowboy Poetry Contests........

.........The Tea Party remains our only hope of a balanced budget.........
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Perhaps you can explain to me how you can balance the budget without addressing the looming spending increases we have in social security and medicare that a vast majority of Tea Party supporters don't want to see cut.
 
Oh yeah the famous tax cuts bring revenue and JOBS....they forget to add to china..

http://www.boston.com/business/articles/2011/07
/26/ge_moving_x_ray_business_to_china/

How nice GE paid ZERO <0> in taxs on 15 billion in profits and to thank working class america they move their xray business to CHINA

No one believes that tax cuts do anything but give the rich more cash
 
Perhaps you can explain to me how you can balance the budget without addressing the looming spending increases we have in social security and medicare that a vast majority of Tea Party supporters don't want to see cut.

House 2012 Budget actually dealt with medicare and medicaid. though I would have liked to have seen SS in there too, it was probably too big to swallow in one bite
 
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