CptStern
suckmonkey
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http://www.dailykos.com/story/2011/...n-and-Graham-promised-to-help-arm-Libyain2009
wasnt he recently in the news for criticising Obama for not bombing Libya?
Oh look John McCain is outed as a hypocrite ...again
- Thread starter CptStern
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http://www.dailykos.com/story/2011/...n-and-Graham-promised-to-help-arm-Libyain2009
wasnt he recently in the news for criticising Obama for not bombing Libya?
RakuraiTenjin
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John McCain lost all my respect when he called those demanding a balanced budget amendment "tea party hobbits" then refused to apologize for it at a town hall when called out for it by citizens.
RakuraiTenjin
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Why would you be against a balanced budget amendment to the US Constitution? Especially considering you live in Ireland. I'm not saying you can't have an opinion on US politics but can you even explain that one, or are you automatically going "Oh it has a reference to the tea party- I disagree with it"?
Thomas Jefferson said:
Absinthe
The Freeman
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IIRC he wasn't against a balanced budget amendment so much as the ridiculous expectation that such a thing could have been effectively passed at the time, and the tea party's obstinate insistence that one ABSOLUTELY AS OF THIS MOMENT RIGHT NOW had be put into effect before even considering raising the debt ceiling.
Just another example of Tea Party conservatism demanding everything it wants and unwilling to give up anything of its own, because compromise is for pussies.
Just another example of Tea Party conservatism demanding everything it wants and unwilling to give up anything of its own, because compromise is for pussies.
RakuraiTenjin
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The idea is not to keep raising the debt limit without a balanced budget being mandatory. IE: "NO, no new credit until you get your financial house in order." Instead we got downgraded REGARDLESS and still have no balanced budget. They never, never should have given in on this issue. Cut, Cap, and Balance. CC&B needs to be revived.
It really stumps me why someone would be opposed to a balanced budget amendment in principle. Why is spending less funds than is brought in such a crazy idea?
Absinthe
The Freeman
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He wasn't against it out of principle as far as I'm aware. That's the thing. He thought it wasn't possible to get one passed on the eve of negotiations, and the Tea Party's refusal to budge on the issue would only add further injury to the process. If they want it done seriously, it should be after dealing with the more short-term issue of raising the debt ceiling. You can say it should never have been done, but the fact is that it has been a routine practice for the United States for years. While it is somewhat reassuring that Americans have finally woken up to how ****ed our economic situation is, the hysterics and theatrics displayed over the issue showed that nobody was in a right frame to address such an amendment. Better to soak up another ceiling increase and then deal with the real crisis. Because let's be honest; almost every point in the debt debate got shamelessly whored out for political jockeying. Hardly the platform I want for a serious discussion regarding our long-term economic prospects.
RakuraiTenjin
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We're in crisis now. It would have been better not to have passed a debt ceiling rise and had across the board cuts as mandated by law. Passing another debt ceiling rise without anything to stop the debt from rising is pure idiocy and lunacy.
We have more than enough revenue monthly to pay our interest on the debt without the debt ceiling rise having been passed. The administration threatening default and cuts to social security was pure BS and scaremongering. The US brings in just under 200 billion per month in tax revenue. More than enough to pay social security, the minimum payments on our debt, and other necessary programs. There was no doomsday NOR any default imminent. It was all scaremongering by this administration.
Raziaar
I Hate Custom Titles
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That's pretty awesome actually. Tea Party Hobbits. Well it's no wonder they can teabag so well with such a stature.
RakuraiTenjin
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The spending and uncertainty about the spiralling debt is helping to fuel the slow economic growth. Cutting spending and government making a true effort to reform fiscally would be a boon to business growth. The key to creating jobs isn't any government program, creating an environment of confidence for business is. Government spending is not equal to private lending- so 'taking money out of the economy' doesn't really apply here- that type of phrase applies for lending when credit lines have dried up.
RakuraiTenjin
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The spending and uncertainty about the spiralling debt is helping to fuel the slow economic growth. Cutting spending and government making a true effort to reform fiscally would be a boon to business growth. The key to creating jobs isn't any government program, creating an environment of confidence for business is.
You know, weren't the hobbits the saviors in that series? Didn't they defeat Mordor and evil, and basically save the world? Perhaps it's not such an insult....
Yuri
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Hobbits are actually surly and stubborn, and not too fond of anyone but themselves and "the affairs of Hobbits" with no concern for the outside world whatsoever. The hero Hobbits of LOTR were all misfits as far as the race was concerned. Maybe he was making a really ****ing nerdy reference 
Don't know about the specific policy, but it sure as hell seems to apply to the Tea Party.
Don't know about the specific policy, but it sure as hell seems to apply to the Tea Party.
Krynn72
The Freeman
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They also were gay for each other, had hairy feet, and were stoners and drunkards.
RakuraiTenjin
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Hey, none of those things really go against the tea party issues though- tea party's all about fiscal discipline. leave the social issues for the religious right lol
Eejit
The Freeman
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If they were to set out clear short-term plans of stimulus with the deficit and medium-term plans to tackle it you don't have the uncertainty problems. And I'm not talking about creating jobs, massive budget cuts would result in huge losses of existing jobs as well as ending or reducing contracts with private firms.
CptStern
suckmonkey
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Sulkdodds
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Oh my god, Samwise is suggesting that the rich should be taxed in proportion to their wealth and Frodo's all like BFFHFAGRHSKSKDA
Cutting spending alone won't solve the problem.
Don't believe me? It's all in the numbers.
Did you know that while federal spending has increased since 2001 by about 5.6% GDP, revenues have declined in the same period by 4.6% GDP? And that between 1971 and 2008 average spending increased by 3.2% of GDP while average revenue decreased by 3.3%? In other words, you have a revenue problem that is about as big as your spending problem, and the politicians attempting to tackle deficit with only spending cuts are living in a dream world. The Bush tax cuts especially have created a large revenue shortfall, as was predicted and their extension is predicted to add 2% GDP's worth of debt to the public deficit. Relative to GDP, income tax revenues declined substantially since their institution (as during the 1980s).
Did you also know that S&P's explanation on why they downgraded the US credit rating contains the following sentence? "“We have changed our assumption on this because the majority of Republicans in Congress continue to resist any measure that would raise revenues, a position we believe Congress reinforced by passing the act.” It talks frequently about uncertainty and a lack of business confidence - but these have to do not with the simple matter of 'government spending' but with the "political brinksmanship" that both parties displayed and the "instability" of the resulting legislative gridlock. This company, whose job it is to know what other business value, criticises not the actual level of government spending (as you suggest) but instead at the failure of the political process to reach sensible agreements. And, sensibly enough, it includes revenue as a part of the equation.
Unsurprisingly, it's clear that the public debt has risen most during the terms of Republican presidents who insisted on major tax cuts (though most of them, from Reagan to Bush, also spent plenty). And especially in the last decade the economy was until the credit crunch in a fine state. Moreover, observe this graph of marginal tax rates for the highest and lowest income brackets over the 20th century compared with the US public debt. Tax for the rich has been dropping for a long long time, and, it must be noted, doing so in concert with the rising deficit (though correlation is not causation). Note also that wages for much of society have remained where they are even as incomes for the upper echelons shot up. Meanwhile, corporation taxes have also been lowered, globalisation has increased the possibility of making savings abroad, unions have lost their bite or been defanged, and financial regulation has been generally decreasing.
The upshot: businesses have had 30 years of near complete certainty that their taxes would go down, that wages would stay low, that unions would be powerless, that regulation would decrease, that outsourcing would be easy, and, in some cases, that they'll be bailed out if they fail. The prevailing economic orthodoxy has supposedly been good for business. This is especially true of the Bush tax cut years. And yet it seems business has not yet been so generous to American jobs over the same period. The jobs that are created are bad ones, and their beneficiaries do not stand much chance of contributing back into the economy on that kind of income. Indeed, as this article points out, minimum-wage employment strategies cost the government by ensuring that those who get paid need to rely on food stamps.
In reality, the US National Academies have set forth more than one strategy for deficit reduction. Some of these options include scope for higher taxes. But the same political reality which dictates that starve the beast can never work - when presidents are forced to lower taxes they rather pass on debt to the next term than suffer the consequences in theirs for also lowering spending - means nobody is prepared to discuss the possibility of raising taxes, even for the income brackets which have soared away from the rest over the past few decades. The study I just linked includes scenarios which rely mostly on spending cuts, but by virtue of its priorities it can only calculate the effect on the deficit, not the social or economic cost (cutting government cuts hundreds of thousands of jobs, for a start). I haven't even mentioned 'public goods', social cohesion, and all the many, many things that mean cutting welfare has massive hidden costs to the rest of the country that are undervalued in purely economic analyses. And I could talk about that without bothering to address the sheer cruelty to ordinary people of trying to reduce the deficit solely on the back of cuts. The Tea Party's crazyness is to be expected, but Obama's absolute failure to even consider trying to get more income - as well as merely tightening a national belt that he won't have to fit - indicates that he, like them, is working in a fantasy.
Cutting spending alone won't solve the problem.
Don't believe me? It's all in the numbers.
Did you know that while federal spending has increased since 2001 by about 5.6% GDP, revenues have declined in the same period by 4.6% GDP? And that between 1971 and 2008 average spending increased by 3.2% of GDP while average revenue decreased by 3.3%? In other words, you have a revenue problem that is about as big as your spending problem, and the politicians attempting to tackle deficit with only spending cuts are living in a dream world. The Bush tax cuts especially have created a large revenue shortfall, as was predicted and their extension is predicted to add 2% GDP's worth of debt to the public deficit. Relative to GDP, income tax revenues declined substantially since their institution (as during the 1980s).
Did you also know that S&P's explanation on why they downgraded the US credit rating contains the following sentence? "“We have changed our assumption on this because the majority of Republicans in Congress continue to resist any measure that would raise revenues, a position we believe Congress reinforced by passing the act.” It talks frequently about uncertainty and a lack of business confidence - but these have to do not with the simple matter of 'government spending' but with the "political brinksmanship" that both parties displayed and the "instability" of the resulting legislative gridlock. This company, whose job it is to know what other business value, criticises not the actual level of government spending (as you suggest) but instead at the failure of the political process to reach sensible agreements. And, sensibly enough, it includes revenue as a part of the equation.
Unsurprisingly, it's clear that the public debt has risen most during the terms of Republican presidents who insisted on major tax cuts (though most of them, from Reagan to Bush, also spent plenty). And especially in the last decade the economy was until the credit crunch in a fine state. Moreover, observe this graph of marginal tax rates for the highest and lowest income brackets over the 20th century compared with the US public debt. Tax for the rich has been dropping for a long long time, and, it must be noted, doing so in concert with the rising deficit (though correlation is not causation). Note also that wages for much of society have remained where they are even as incomes for the upper echelons shot up. Meanwhile, corporation taxes have also been lowered, globalisation has increased the possibility of making savings abroad, unions have lost their bite or been defanged, and financial regulation has been generally decreasing.
The upshot: businesses have had 30 years of near complete certainty that their taxes would go down, that wages would stay low, that unions would be powerless, that regulation would decrease, that outsourcing would be easy, and, in some cases, that they'll be bailed out if they fail. The prevailing economic orthodoxy has supposedly been good for business. This is especially true of the Bush tax cut years. And yet it seems business has not yet been so generous to American jobs over the same period. The jobs that are created are bad ones, and their beneficiaries do not stand much chance of contributing back into the economy on that kind of income. Indeed, as this article points out, minimum-wage employment strategies cost the government by ensuring that those who get paid need to rely on food stamps.
In reality, the US National Academies have set forth more than one strategy for deficit reduction. Some of these options include scope for higher taxes. But the same political reality which dictates that starve the beast can never work - when presidents are forced to lower taxes they rather pass on debt to the next term than suffer the consequences in theirs for also lowering spending - means nobody is prepared to discuss the possibility of raising taxes, even for the income brackets which have soared away from the rest over the past few decades. The study I just linked includes scenarios which rely mostly on spending cuts, but by virtue of its priorities it can only calculate the effect on the deficit, not the social or economic cost (cutting government cuts hundreds of thousands of jobs, for a start). I haven't even mentioned 'public goods', social cohesion, and all the many, many things that mean cutting welfare has massive hidden costs to the rest of the country that are undervalued in purely economic analyses. And I could talk about that without bothering to address the sheer cruelty to ordinary people of trying to reduce the deficit solely on the back of cuts. The Tea Party's crazyness is to be expected, but Obama's absolute failure to even consider trying to get more income - as well as merely tightening a national belt that he won't have to fit - indicates that he, like them, is working in a fantasy.
RakuraiTenjin
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Gathering revenue should be done (in the current tax code) by closing the loopholes for escaping taxation. Mortgage interest deduction (yes- something I myself even deduct thousands on each tax year), interest decutions, EITC, tax credits for this and that, corporate welfare/tax breaks. All those are lost revenue. In 2007 we lost about 350 billion in revenues due to these loopholes. There is no need to raise the base tax rates to recoup that money. At all. Simplify the tax code to increase revenue.
And Stern: that is sad to see those numbers. That's not at all what the tea party is about. It seems to have been hijacked now numbers wise. Social issues are a completely seperate animal from fiscal issues, and why people seem to have so much trouble seperating the two I will never understand. I have been called a 'flaming liberal' before by some of those people. yeah- me
And Stern: that is sad to see those numbers. That's not at all what the tea party is about. It seems to have been hijacked now numbers wise. Social issues are a completely seperate animal from fiscal issues, and why people seem to have so much trouble seperating the two I will never understand. I have been called a 'flaming liberal' before by some of those people. yeah- me
Sulkdodds
Companion Cube
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I'm not familiar with the situation on loopholes etc in the USA - but I know that in the UK more money is lost to tax evasion each year than will be saved by the entirety of the suite of cuts our Conservative party are attempting to introduce over the next twenty. So I don't find it implausible.
