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Will Senate Democrats Put Out a Budget?

Will Senate Democrats put out a Budget?

  • Yes

    Votes: 1 7.1%

  • No - They will adopt the Obama Budget and try to pass it

    Votes: 2 14.3%

  • No - They will ignore their duty alltogether and hope the story goes away

    Votes: 8 57.1%

  • No - they will allow multiple factions to put forth budget proposals and let them all fail

    Votes: 3 21.4%
  • Total voters
    14
iguanaman said:
The extrreme part of the Ryan budget is the tax increases on the middle class which don't even reduce the deficit because of the TAX CUTS on the wealthy and corporations. No to mention the Voucher system that eliminates the Medicare garantee.
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1. Tax alterations are revenue neutral across brackets. You fail here because you focus on nominal rates for upper income earners or corporations, but effective rates for middle and lower income earners - comparing apples to oranges. the pro-growth savings here aren't in the form of decreased collection, but of decreased complexity costs.

2. One of the options in Medicare Reform is the exact same fee for service model that we currently have. Certainly it doesn't eliminate the "medicare guarantee", and certainly it doesn't do so off of current law, which does.

3. And it is indeed quite possible that, even if it were to pass, the Ryan Plan would not forestall the coming fiscal crises - it is more than merely a possibility that it is too little, too late. but that is not a function of extremism, but rather of it's need to remain within the bounds of the "politically possible". what a ridiculous phrase. as though the notion that something is "politically impossible" will make a nonce's worth of difference once you have no alternative.
 
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There won't be one. It's an election year, hello?

In fact, I am positively shocked that there's anything from the Republicans. Why do they want to take a position that their opponents can pull apart?
 
cpwill said:
1. Tax alterations are revenue neutral across brackets. You fail here because you focus on nominal rates for upper income earners or corporations, but effective rates for middle and lower income earners - comparing apples to oranges. the pro-growth savings here aren't in the form of decreased collection, but of decreased complexity costs.

2. One of the options in Medicare Reform is the exact same fee for service model that we currently have. Certainly it doesn't eliminate the "medicare guarantee", and certainly it doesn't do so off of current law, which does.

3. And it is indeed quite possible that, even if it were to pass, the Ryan Plan would not forestall the coming fiscal crises - it is more than merely a possibility that it is too little, too late. but that is not a function of extremism, but rather of it's need to remain within the bounds of the "politically possible". what a ridiculous phrase. as though the notion that something is "politically impossible" will make a nonce's worth of difference once you have no alternative.
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How can the plan be revenue neutral but include massive tax cuts for the rich and Corporations? Where do you think the revenue lost will be made up? The plan hides any mention of it.

Hidden in the document released today by House Budget Committee chairman Paul Ryan (R-WI) is a proposal to cut taxes for the wealthy and raise taxes for the middle class. Nowhere in the document does it spell that out. But it’s a matter of simple math. Any tax plan that purports to hold revenues steady while massively cutting taxes for the rich must make up the lost revenue by raising taxes on people who are not rich.

The House Republican budget hides this truth by refusing to disclose who will pay what rates or detailing what will happen to the tax provisions that middle-class Americans rely on—from the tax exclusion for employee health benefits to the mortgage and charitable deductions to the tax credits for parents and working families. Rep Ryan’s document is even vague on whether basic features of the tax system, like personal exemptions and the standard deduction, would be altered—though to make his plan add up these features might have to be on the table as well. At the same time, the House budget plan is very clear on the fact that it protects the biggest tax breaks for the rich.

While key details of the plan are deliberately hidden from public view, the thrust of the proposal is clear: It proposes an enormous, fiscally irresponsible tax cut for the rich—a bigger giveaway than former president George W. Bush ever dared to propose. For middle-class families, on the other hand, the House budget outline would raise taxes at the same time it cuts government investments and services on which most Americans rely.

The result would be a massive tax shift from the wealthy to the middle class, accelerating the income inequality that plagues our economy.
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Ryan?s Secret Plan to Shift the Tax Burden Onto the Middle Class
 
rocket88 said:
There won't be one. It's an election year, hello?

In fact, I am positively shocked that there's anything from the Republicans. Why do they want to take a position that their opponents can pull apart?
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Surely SOMETHING to be said about actually doing the job you were elected to do though...right? And since the dens couldn't be bothered to pass a budget when they controlled the house senate AND whitejouse, blaming this on republicans in the house today is kinda idiotic. Pelosis house could t do it and Reeds senate never has. The GOP held house has passed budgets. They just never clear the senate.

That's not to say both parties aren't incompetent and haven't contributed to the ever expanding debt hole. You may hate Ryan's plans...but do you hate your grand children more? That's who is going to be stuck with the responsibility for today's inaction.
 
rocket88 said:
In fact, I am positively shocked that there's anything from the Republicans. Why do they want to take a position that their opponents can pull apart?
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because we are facing a fiscal crisis of historic proportions?
 
iguanaman said:
How can the plan be revenue neutral but include massive tax cuts for the rich and Corporations?
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because you are confusing nominal with effective tax rates. the Ryan plan also does away with the loopholes and credits used mostly by those same wealthy and corporations.

So (using easy math), if you made 500,000 a year, and your nominal tax rate was 35%, but by utilizing a series of shelters you were able to lower the tax money you actually sent in to 100,000, then your effective tax rate is 20%. The Ryan plan is to simply drop your tax rate to 20%, while also removing all of the shelters you use to lower your tax bill. What You Pay stays the same, it's simply that now you aren't wasting resources trying to move everything into one shelter or another.



mind you if we end up increasing the burden of the middle class relative to the upper income earners, i am also fine with that. we currently have the most lopsided, 'progressive' tax code in the industrialized world, after all. It just doesn't happen to be part of the current from the House of Representatives.
 
cpwill said:
mind you if we end up increasing the burden of the middle class relative to the upper income earners, i am also fine with that. we currently have the most lopsided, 'progressive' tax code in the industrialized world, after all. It just doesn't happen to be part of the current from the House of Representatives.
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We also have the biggest Rich Man/Poor Man gap in the industrialized world, so the tax disparity doesn't seem to be a problem.
 
MoSurveyor said:
We also have the biggest Rich Man/Poor Man gap in the industrialized world, so the tax disparity doesn't seem to be a problem.
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yes, but that is not because our poor are poorer, but because our rich are so much richer. That's a position I'm willing for us to be in. Even then, for their percentage of the national income, our top income earners pay the highest percentage of tax revenue out of the entire OECD.
 
cpwill said:
yes, but that is not because our poor are poorer, but because our rich are so much richer. That's a position I'm willing for us to be in. Even then, for their percentage of the national income, our top income earners pay the highest percentage of tax revenue out of the entire OECD.
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Again, it doesn't seem taxes are much of an issue, then - unless you think European millionaires are somehow more stupid than American millionaires.
 
MoSurveyor said:
We also have the biggest Rich Man/Poor Man gap in the industrialized world, so the tax disparity doesn't seem to be a problem.
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That gap is a good thing. It means that as a young person just starting out, you can go as far as you want to work for.
 
Diogenes said:
That gap is a good thing. It means that as a young person just starting out, you can go as far as you want to work for.
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The facts beg to differ. Social mobility in the United States shows that it is much more difficult to rise in income than in OECD countries, which is the specific group MoSurveyor was talking about.
International Comparisons of Economic Mobility
 
repeter said:
The facts beg to differ. Social mobility in the United States shows that it is much more difficult to rise in income than in OECD countries, which is the specific group MoSurveyor was talking about.
International Comparisons of Economic Mobility
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that is not an accurate depiction of those numbers. what they demonstrate is that wealthier parents have greater ability to ensure that their kids remain wealthier as well. rather than demonstrate (for example) the ability of an individual to earn more than his parents, it simply demonstrates (again) that our wealthy are much wealthier than other nations' wealthy.

It is easier to rise from 35K a year to 75K a year in France than it is to rise from 45K a year to 450K a year in America. Shocking. :)
 
cpwill said:
that is not an accurate depiction of those numbers. what they demonstrate is that wealthier parents have greater ability to ensure that their kids remain wealthier as well. rather than demonstrate (for example) the ability of an individual to earn more than his parents, it simply demonstrates (again) that our wealthy are much wealthier than other nations' wealthy.
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To my knowledge, there isn't a study that deals directly with absolute mobility in the United States, so I settled for the next best, the intergenerational studies. And your statements are a complete mischaracterization of the study. The study implicitly states that a man in the United States is more likely to have the same income as his father than men in the mentioned Nordic countries. Furthermore, there is general consensus that social mobility is declining in the United States, even while the income gap continues to grow to levels not seen since the Gilded Age.

cpwill said:
It is easier to rise from 35K a year to 75K a year in France than it is to rise from 45K a year to 450K a year in America. Shocking. :)
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Don't know how that's relevant to the study, but obviously yes.

Moreover, I'd like to direct your attention to these links. They both have links inside them to support their claims as well.

Harder for Americans to Rise From Lower Rungs

The Economist on "Meritocracy in America"
 
Diogenes said:
That gap is a good thing. It means that as a young person just starting out, you can go as far as you want to work for.
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As has always been the case regardless of the disparity. Rockefeller did just as well in his day as Gates did yesterday.

cpwill said:
that is not an accurate depiction of those numbers. what they demonstrate is that wealthier parents have greater ability to ensure that their kids remain wealthier as well. rather than demonstrate (for example) the ability of an individual to earn more than his parents, it simply demonstrates (again) that our wealthy are much wealthier than other nations' wealthy.

It is easier to rise from 35K a year to 75K a year in France than it is to rise from 45K a year to 450K a year in America. Shocking. :)
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So the "lopsided, 'progressive' tax code" you complained about has apparently had no ill effect on them at all. All you've said in the last two posts is that, if anything, they're thriving in it.
 
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