Steve Benen does a pretty good job of explaining why I am not eager to discuss our budget and our deficits. Talking to Republicans about finances is like being in a Lewis Carroll novel. It’s so pointless that it just makes you want to give up, which is probably part of the point. At its most basic, it’s the same as debating the merits of socialized medicine with someone who hates the idea but doesn’t want you to lay a hand on their Medicare. How is it worth it to continue the conversation after you point out the irony once to no effect? It’s the same with jackoffs like Jim DeMint and Mike Pence. That they can decry the deficit spending in Obama’s budget proposal in the morning and then turn around in the afternoon and propose huge permanent tax cuts that are not paid for, well…it’s just too stupid to really respond. So, I won’t.
About The Author
BooMan
Martin Longman a contributing editor at the Washington Monthly. He is also the founder of Booman Tribune and Progress Pond. He has a degree in philosophy from Western Michigan University.
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If you want to know why those on the left are pissed, I suggest you read this:
http://www.cogitamusblog.com/2011/02/the-obama-budget-i-think-you-ought-to-know-im-feeling-very-depr
essed.html
Here’s the truth. The budget now is bullshit. What is real is the appropriations bill figures. But Paul Ryan is saying that it would be better to do without a budget for the next two years. So where we are is rolling cuts to continuing resolutions. And now the process as well as the policy is broken completely.
But the Obama budget is good reading to discover what his priorities actually are. And there are some farm stuff in his cuts that Republicans are trying to dodge dealing with by doing rolling continuing resolutions. They don’t want to lose them, but they have backed themselves into a corner so they can’t defend them.
because Obama rolled over yet again.
There are no words to describe the cravenness of cutting people’s home heating assistance money to pay for infrastructure work. He could have gotten a new New Deal two fucking years ago if he hadn’t pissed away the most powerful year he’ll ever have passing a half-assed healthcare plan. He continues to bow down to Republicans who have IQs comparable to their shoe size.
What a shameful waste.
Boy are you on the outer reaches of political reality. He could have gotten a New Deal if only he hadn’t gone for health care reform? As if …
As for the decrease in assistance for home heating, the problem with your attack is that you are ignoring the basis for the cuts. The assistance was put in place when home heating oil was $150 a barrel. It is now somewhere around $70 a barrel, having risen from an even lower point in the last couple of weeks. The assistance was pegged to the cost. The cost has gone down. Therefore, the assistance has gone down. It’s too bad, but the cuts have to be made somewhere and this was always seen as a temporary increase based on the increase in cost.
Did Obama have the balls to make cuts where the money is? The Defense Department?
No.
He’s never had the backbone to stand up against the nuts on the right.
What?
Very brave.
It’s all irrelevant. Congress does the appropriating. Obama does the spending. The administrative savings are more likely to occur than the rest of the budget. And there is a lot of room for administrative savings in the Defense Department. That’s what Obama can control. And ending two wars.
BTW, the Egypt effect might spill over into Afghanistan. Talk about interesting times.
Very interesting
it seems those with the biggest “balls” on the Hill also have the least common sense, political skills and/or brains. That’s what happens when you lead with your other head instead of reality and facts.
And you’re asking us to cut a deal with people who aren’t negotiating in good faith regarding MY retirement money because…?
This is an issue where I would cut my nose to spite my face, Booman. We will not default on our debt, period. The oligarchs will not allow that to happen. And I’ll be damned to see the GOP ride the old people’s vote on “Obama cut your Social Security”.
You keep saying that the biggest threat to this country are the Republicans getting into power. Well then act like it, because if the president cuts ANY deal on SS, even one that doesn’t come into effect until 5000 years from now, he will get railed for it to the point where we might lose. Kids my age have bought into the idea that there won’t be money for them when they retire; old people think Medicare isn’t a government program by just shy of a majority. It won’t be hard to demonize to the point that a lot of the country is spooked into voting GOP, or the Dems just stay home.
I want to be responsible, but it’s useless when there’s a band of craven criminals on the other side who are after that money and will do anything they can to get it. You think it’s better to deal with it now? Forecasting that far into the future on economic matters is silly. But let’s be honest: what’s not silly is the forecasts that continuously show the climate models being wildly short of what the actual temperatures turned out to be. The tiny bleep that SS’s eventual shortfall will make will be child’s play compared to the climate refugees we will bring to our shores when THAT crisis comes to pass. And unlike the economy, we only have one shot.
are the forecasts*
ugh, we need edit buttons. There’s too many grammatical errors to correct. Oh well.
I’ll tell you what. I’d settle for the lockbox.
In 2020, we’ll owe the Social Security Trust Fund $3 trillion. And that’s assuming we don’t waste all the surplus over the next decade. Let’s stop raiding the trust fund and hold the problem steady.
If Social Security has a true problem it is that we are supposed to be saving for future shortfalls, and we’re not only not doing that but we’re just taking that surplus and making it so we have to pay it off twice and with interest (twice).
If we can’t stop doing that, we’re in much better shape.
But, we can’t even kill the Bush tax cuts with 59 senators and control of the House. We’re not going to raise taxes enough to pay for the shortfall, so we’re going to have to tweak Social Security itself. Personally, I would put in a true lockbox and pay for all the shortfalls by raising the ceiling on the payroll tax. But if we have to get a deal, we have to realize that a deal involves compromise.
Sometimes I feel like a Republican trying to argue with my Republican friends that we’re going to have to accept a tax hike or nothing will get done. And they tell me that a tax hike is grossly unfair since they don’t need the social insurance.
It’s compromise people. You’re not supposed to like it.
Did you read what I posted at the top? Do you remember what happened with health care? Where they fixed the Medicare donut hole and yet the Pukes still ran on the claim that Obama was cutting their Medicare? And you want to do a deal with them on Social Security? Are you out of your mind?
How does that lockbox work? Under what you outlined (raising the income cap), you are just buying more government debt (and lowering the interest rate as a by-product). If what we have now is not a lockbox, that is not either.
Tell me how we are paying interest twice? We are offsetting interest on national debt by the Social Security Trust Fund buying that debt? That interest is effectively transferred from the general fund to the Social Security Trust Fund increasing the value of the trust fund.
The responsible plan would be to run surpluses in the general fund and pay off all debts ahead of schedule. That would compound the savings by the amount of the interest on the national debt. Social Security is just another creditor of the US government.
The responsible thing to do relative to Social Security is to ensure that there are sufficient funds to cover benefits each year into the future.
It’s compromise politically, but it’s based on a false understanding of the issue. And what is done in this Congress can be undone in a future Congress.
Folks who say they don’t need Social Security are fools. They do not know what will happen with their finances over a lifetime. Business failures, longterm unemployment, bad investments, underfunded pensions, scam investments, economic depressions–all of these have made folks who prepared for retirement over a lifetime reliant on Social Security as their sole source of income. Even billionaires can crash to nothing.
In 1999, I had saved a substantial amount for retirement and my parents’ estate had added to that savings. In 2001 I was laid off in the IT recession. All of that savings was gone by the time I got a job a 2/3 the salary 3 1/2 years later. That is why Social Security is my primary income.
Here is what I can tell you. Social Security benefits are premised on the elderly having their mortgages paid off. Or being able to find inexpensive rent.
Also, any increase in the retirement age should come with a very strong age discrimination in employment provision. I doubt if that will be part of the compromise for these heartless Republicans.