What happened to the Democrats??
- Thread starter NLXSK1
- Start date
NLXSK1
Well-Known Member
The moment the economy improves, Obama will take responsibility for it... But the bad stuff? That's all Bush...
NLXSK1
Well-Known Member
I dont know, I was not elected to political office...
I have alot of good ideas on how to do it and have posted them over multiple threads. Would me posting my ideas again help anything?
Well put Sir
londonfog
Well-Known Member
so you don't know how to cut our deficit, but you are hopeful that the Republicans will...lol..ok.....well can you tell us any ideas that the Republicans have to cut the deficit. and I would love to read on this thread (in which you are the OP) of your ideas to cut the deficit.
NLXSK1
Well-Known Member
No, I know how to cut our deficit, I dont know what the Republicans are going to do to cut the deficit.
Do you just want to hear me bitch about the Republicans? Ok, John Behnor(sp) who is going to be the speaker of the house got asked that question. And he said that as one of the things he is going to do is cut his budget by 5% and some other budgets or something that will add up to 25 million dollars. Now that is a token bullshit gesture. At 20% I would be relatively happy. Why doesnt he do something impressive though... Why doesnt he take a 50% pay cut or give his salary back to the government. Now that would make me happy. So, unless that was just the tip of an enormous spending cut iceberg the Republicans are going to unveil in January then it doesnt bode well.
My ideas?
Social Security: Means testing immediately. Anyone with an income of 100,000 or more while retired would not get social security payments. Possible further limitations, the numbers would have to be looked at. Anyone 50 or under would have the retirement age upped by 5 years. I would like to eliminate social security for anyone 40 or below.
Medicare: The government admits there is at least 20% fraud and if they admit that I suspect it is much higher. What we need to do here is hire a private company to create a system of electronic medical records for medicare and medicade patients. Medical procedures must always be tied to a patient record and it would all be in one location. There would be checks in the system to make sure a patient didnt have 12 procedures done on the same day or 2 in different states, etc. Also, have patients recieve notifications of what procedures their account is being charged so if it is being illegally used they can contact the authorities. This would cut quite a bit of waste and fraud out of the system.
Military:
Remove all troops from overseas including Germany, Japan, South Korea, etc. Pull out of Iraq and Afganistan. We should not try to be policeman of the world anymore. I would like to lead by example, not try to nation build. Cut the military down by 30-50% through attrition and re-design it to be a smaller, better trained and better equiped fighting force designed to meet the threats we will face in the current and future world. I think we could easily cut 20-30% out of the military budget over a period of time.
Subsidies... Eliminate all subsidies domestic and foreign. Face it, we are beyond broke. Any money we give foreign countries or to price fix is borrowed from China. So, no more payments to Israel, no more sugar subsidies, ethanol will have to pay for itself, bye bye funding for the institute of the arts, PBS, etc..
Congress: Instead of paying yourselves fat salaries of 150-200K why dont they get paid the average salary for an American? Or better yet the average salary for a soldier... Lets give the politicians a reason to help the middle class do better. Why do they get most of their expenses paid by fat expense accounts and then get 20K a month? Term limits should be imposed as well. I am tired of these crusty politicians with 10-20 year reigns because they manage to get the most pork back to their states.
Education? Lets face it, the current system is a failure. Eliminate tenure. Begin to institue private charter schools with vouchers and transition to a private education system with standards set by the government. Teachers should have no tenure protection, it is an antiquated benefit that now causes more problems than it is worth.
I could go on for a while but SS, medicare/medicade & the military are about 60% of the budget so that covers alot of it.
londonfog
Well-Known Member
I can agree with most of this except the SS.
NLXSK1
Well-Known Member
Well, right now when you pay in to SS you get 5-10* back due to the age expectations rising. It is an AWESOME deal that will bankrupt us. It is a ponzi scheme and it is unconstitutional. It might have been constitutional when it was a trust fund but that time has long passed. So something has to be done about it and soon.
NLXSK1
Well-Known Member
They tapped their way to the bottom of the cookie jar and now the SS system is 3 trillion dollars in IOU's. One of the reasons the deficit jumped as much as it did was due to this. Not only do they have to pay the SS but they cant borrow from it anymore.
London, there is no money, just empty promises of politicians and some of them are long dead. They promised YOUR income to someone else.
Yeah they had spent every penny of the SS fund long ago and replaced the cash with IOU's. The ACTUAL SS trust fund was created in 1983, but it is a misnomer, the fund is nothing more than a accounting device for placing any surpluses produced by the Social Security program. These surpluses are invested in government bonds and, as a general rule, all future pension payments will be made either from the returns on those government bonds and/or from the taxes of future workers. Current treasury yields have been rising alarmingly fast, making the invested funds worth less. The 30 year has risen to 4.32% and just one year ago it was at 3.87%. That .45% extra will cost US taxpayers an additional 65 billion. Fed Reserve POMO action is hot and heavy when yields rise, but it is obvious to anyone who looks that the Fed has absolutely no control and cannot pump the system fast enough to keep interest rates down.
Skunk.n'the.Trunk
Well-Known Member
The misconception of cutting taxes is that though its true that we don't have the immediate income that would result from collecting those taxes; we will make up that money and then some down the road with the resulting increase in business.
It was said earlier that one needs to look at the forest instead of just the tree. Meaning in this case that you have to look at the whole picture not only now, but what this legislation means 2 years from now, 5 years from now, and so on. History shows us this in the Warren Harding admin. in the early 1920's. They were in a post war recession and unemployment was 12%. Taxes on the wealthy were cut on all classes and businesses could hire. The 20's were roaring. Unfortunately people were borrowing money to invest in the stock market, over inflating everything, and recessions being cyclical the market crashed.
MrDank007
Well-Known Member
I'm not sure how you calculated the $65B, but if you look at the historical yield curve rates can bounce up and down a 100bps all year
No, they don't move by 1% all year long, it might take a WHOLE year to move a total of 1% but its not something that on a Monday yields are at 3.8% and then on Friday the following week they are at 4.7%, if that were to happen there would be mass panic in the streets.
65 billion is 1/2% of the national debt. That isn't counting any unfunded liabilities.
MrDank007
Well-Known Member
Right. I'm just saying it moves every day and 100 basis point swing during a year over time is nothing to be alarmed by.
Yep, but its the long term trend in the Face of increasing treasury purchases that worries me, the fed has lost control of interest rates. The Bond Vigilantes now have the USA's balls in their hand and they will start squeezing soon.