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.
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.
But really we should eliminate 100% of the spending for the war in Afghanistan, so it's a moot point.
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.
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.
A 1% increase in our interest rate would lead to an extra trillion dollars in interest payments (and therefore in government spending).
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?
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.
I found this infographic today in the New York Times...it fits this thread pretty well:
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
because there was no "spending" "cut". nothing was "reduced".
: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.
:lamo those idiots scored the tax cuts statically! :lamo
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:
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"
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 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.
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).
There absolutely is. Reducing the deficit reduces the interest payment, which is a form of spending. Therefore spending was cut.
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.
The US is in no imminent economic danger of not being able to pay its debts
This crisis is completely political.
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..
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?
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.
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.
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.
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.
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