Death Of a Thousand Cuts
 

Today according to National Public Radio the Republicans threatened to cut Medicare if the Democrats attempted to raise taxes on the rich.

Paul Ryan's plan, the Republican loss of the 26 Congressional District in New York, attempts to privatize SS, now this?

Don't you people need Medicare?

Without it, one serious illness will bankrupt you.

NPR?; seriously?

No-one is proposing to do away with Medicare, and yes, I need it since no other medical insurance is available to me. What must be realized is that Medicare is rapidly going broke and will be out of money in a few short years. This is happening whether or not taxes are raised. The discussion of taxes on the ridge is simply a way for those who face the situation and choose to act irresponsibly in hope of one more term.

We have the choice of doing something now or having nothing later. I prefer to take action now rather than having nothing later. The Ryan plan is the first to face this situation in a realistic way. It may not be perfect, but it is the only plan on the table at this time.

Exactly right. The main thing to know is that the Democrats have no stated plan to concerning Medicare, other than demagoguery. The Ryan plan is the only plan proposed to actually try and save Medicare.

The only thing that maybe rates as a Democrat plan, or scheme really, is to roll everyone into rationed care under the new and massive ObamaCare plan beginning in 2014.

http://www.nypost.com/p/news/opinion...5dtW4V48o6KM3H

the only problem with the Ryan plan is it a total farce. It might be an attempt but it really a bad plan.

Waiting for the Democrat plan to save Medicare. Waiting, waiting, waiting, waiting.........................(sigh)

the affordable care act was an attempt to re-invent our health care system. Unfortunately the Dems are cowards and the party of no voted no on the entire package. By the way Ryans plan has a lot of the same basic parts as the affordable health care act. The other thing I find interesting is that NONE of the current Presidential candidates have endosed his plan. They are all dancing around it.

So why isn't the President trumpeting the provisions coming up in his plan if it is the answer to the Medicare problem? Wanna guess why?

Stubborn Republicans
 

According to the AP in the Daily Sun -

GOP negotiators abandon bipartisan debt reduction meeting over tax increases. The Republicans walked out of the meeting blaming Democrats for wanting tax increases as part of the deal rather than accepting $1 trillion in cuts to Medicare and other programs.

The Democrats do not support an approach that provides for a $200,000 tax cut for millionaires and billionaires paid for by a $6,000 a year hike in expenses and costs for seniors.

Rich maybe the Pres is giving the Repubs some of their own medicine although I doubt it. It seems our President dislikes confrontation and caves to the Repubs at every turn. While I'm at it what with the moron from South Carolina walking out of the budget meetings because he cant get his own way. Now that's being a responsible adult. I just don't get why repeal of tax cuts for the richest is so foreign to your side.

Can't expect liberals to understand when someone actually holds a principled position and refuses to compromise those principles for expedience. Let's see how it plays out.

Better than from FOX News
 

Another quote from NPR: US military spends 20 billion for air conditioning alone in IRAQ every year. This was quoted from a pentagon spokesman.

Not enough money for Medicare? Stop letting the Republicans give you a deadline.

Pat Buchanan
 

Pat Buchanan said: "Having a political philosophy is better than having an ideology because a philosophy can be adjusted when new facts are presented."

Ryan Plan
 

The Ryan plan is a voucher plan. I reiterate: one serious illness will bankrupt you unless you are very rich.
Also without Medicare there is no fee schedule, so everyone pays full price.

Democrats save Medicare?
 

Don't hold your breath. The Republicans control the house.

By the way, unemployment is 9.1 %. Have the House Republicans extended unemployment? Where is their commitment to the Middle Class? Non-existent. You betcha.

Follow the money. Every item on Fox News is designed to save corporations money. Tort reform, denial of global warming, establishing deadlines for the demise of SS and Medicare, etc., etc., etc..

When President Bush proposed privatizing SS, I don't recall a corporate match like they have for SS. The rich know that we will look to them when the Republican deadline for Medicare hits like an A-bomb.

Follow the money.

I just love it when the uber-conservatives (which do not represent the majority of American voters, by the way) just reply to serious messages by saying, "Leave it to liberals to talk that way". These people do not offer any ideas of their own.

Big Business does not want tax increases on the millionaires and have paid off their Republican cohorts in PACs to scare seniors and others into thinking Democrats are in favor of cutting Social Security and Medicare. It is the G'Nopers who are the enemy of the working class.

The Democrats have offered compromises and the G;Nopers all say NO. Get off your fat butts and raise the debt ceiling NOW. If not, it is going to be economically disaster for all of us.

Yes; let's borrow trillions more and keep spending. That way we don't have to inconvenience anyone, and we'll let the grandchildren worry about the cost. The liberal solution.

Once again, Richie, you proved you do not understand what is going on. Just the typical G'Noper answer.

There are so many competing needs and goals that we need a strong leader with excellent comunication skills to establish a dialogue with the America people on our priorities. As important this leader must be of good moral character, fair and balanced. And finally most important of all she must be a REPUBLICAN.:D

You just try to make everything complicated. My take is short and sweet and maddeningly accurate for you, is all.

But at least I give you reason to use a new silly word of the week.

Why not Medicaid instead of Medicare??
 

Seems to me, but I could be way out in left field, but why don't they cut Medicaid to the bone? That's where myriad abuses are taking place. Getting a free ride all of your life isn't being fiscally responsible, at least in my book.

Oh, I know, yes Medicare is also abused, but believe me, Medicaid is hemorraging money by the billions.

Richie,

I really do like the phrase "maddingly accurate". I will try to include it in an arguement if I have one with my wife this week. It should bring an interesting aspect to the conversation, to say the very least.

5 Trillion dollar surplus
 

According to Paul O'Neil (Bush's first Sec. of Treasury) there was a projected five billion dollar surplus to be realized over the next ten years (2001 - 2010). This was projected three days after Bush took over the White House.

The surplus was squandered. Greenspan and O'Neil wanted to protect the surplus by controlling the "Tax Cut For The Rich" by a system of triggers. These triggers would reduce the tax cut if it threatened to turn the surplus into a deficit.

What happened?

Bush/Cheney through their Economic Adviser Lindsay ignored Greenspan and O'Neil and never wrote these triggers into the law.

I notice that you Republicans fail to acknowledge anything that might upset your Utopian view of Republican Nirvana.

I challenge you to address the issue that I presented above.

Medicaid
 

I have no problem with that. Nothing comes directly out of my paycheck for Medicaid.

It is so easy....eh?
Reduce all non essential spending by 20%.
Go back to the spending level of 2000.
No increased revenues need be considered.
The problem is it will take the dolts, both R & D too many years to determine what is non essential. They all subscribe to the only definition they know...essential are my programs, my donors programs, my lobbyists programs and first and foremost those programs that keep me in office.

Non essential are the other guys programs.

Hence the problem.

Do what is right for the country?:1rotfl::1rotfl::1rotfl:

btk

It Was Congress
 

The analysts now have realized that those 2001-2003 tax cuts, and then the 2010 extension, along with everything else that has happened since (two wars, the worst recession in almost a century, etc.) have resulted in a major component of the deficit we now have and which is growing exponentially.

But I must comment on this part of your statement. Bush and Cheney never wrote in any triggers because they never wrote the law. The Congress wrote the Economic Growth and Tax Relief Reconciliation Act of 2001 and the Jobs and Growth Tax Relief Reconciliation Act of 2003, not anyone in the White House. I certainly wouldn't suggest that the President didn't offer words of encouragement for the bills, but he certainly didn't write them. The people to blame, if blame is the game, are the members of the U.S, Congress.

Quickly
 

The only problem with statements like this, Billie, is that even if they were adopted tomorrow they wouldn't come within a country mile of balancing the budget or stopping the growth of the deficit.

Just a simple example. Let's say that we cut discretionary spending by 20%. That's a 20% cut of everything we know as "government" not counting any of the entitlement programs or defense. That would only produce a 3.6% reduction in government spending. ("Discretionary budget items" are only 18% of the federal budget.) In that about 40% of all our government expenditures are paid for with additional borrowed money, we'd still have an annual deficit of about $1 trillion! And the national debt would be increased by at least that amount every year.

No, the arithmetic is very clear. In order to balance the annual federal budget and begin to nick away at the national debt, there will have to be even deeper cuts in discretionary spending as well as massive changes in what we spend on entitlement programs and defense. Even then it's pretty clear that revenue (taxes) will also have to be increased.

Our politicians can pontificate on their competing ideologies all they wish. In the end it will be the capital markets and those that lend to us that will dictate what changes will have to be made. In our case, we're not like Greece or Ireland or Italy. There is no European Union to bail us out, to make more loans. In our case, when the Chinese decide to stop lending and when the Treasury printing more money causes alarming high rates of inflation, all those things our politicians refuse to negotiate are going to happen. It's unavoidable.

You always forget one thing. JOB'S. Low unemployment = more tax payers = more revenues the government. Here's the dirty little secret. Less people taking, more people producing.

JOB'S JOB'S JOB'S JOB'S. More jobs, less taxes, smaller government, less spending, balanced budget amendment. Kindergarden 101.

Can anyone tell me how Obama's higher taxes he's locked into are going to produce more jobs?

[ame]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5HxJimGgu58[/ame]

The prolem is the fear in the workplace.

Why are there no new jobs when corporate profits are going through the roof? I believe it's because of something exemplified in a post I read on another board.

Guy finally gets a better job at a truck manufacturing plant. 10,000 applied for 800 jobs. They're having supply problems when it comes to parts as they are working their staff ridiculous amounts of overtime and refuse to hire new workers. People go along with this because they are 1) being bought off and 2) scared to say 'no'.

Those reason contributed to the failure of my 2nd marriage. We never spent time together (I worked days, she worked nights) and our jobs demanded our first loyalty instead of each other. By the time I realized this, it was too late for her.

Remember, under Bush we were losing 750,000 jobs PER MONTH. The tax cut extensions did NOT work and they WON'T work as long as we keep outsourcing everything we can. For some reason, the Canadians can add 50% more jobs than we did last month and they have an economy 1/10th the size of ours with FAR higher taxes.

To DKLASSEN
 

Yes jobs are the answer, but they must be good jobs. I work in IT. I now make twelve thousand dollars a year less than I made in 2000.

Why is that the case?

Service jobs have moved to India. Manufacturing jobs have moved to China.
The government didn't reduce the H-1b level even during the 2001 recession. I can speak for IT, but I suspect that the pain goes across the board.

Salaries have gone down by 20% or more. What this does is remove the cream from the milk because it was the higher paying jobs that produced the highest tax revenues.

[QUOTE=dklassen;371512]You always forget one thing. JOB'S. Low unemployment = more tax payers = more revenues the government. Here's the dirty little secret. Less people taking, more people producing.

JOB'S JOB'S JOB'S JOB'S. More jobs, less taxes, smaller government, less spending, balanced budget amendment. Kindergarden 101.

Can anyone tell me how Obama's higher taxes he's locked into are going to produce more jobs?

To answer your question directly, It doesn't produce more jobs because it is a revenue enhancement technique. The type of loopholes that Obama is trying to close have no stimulative effect because the rich people that are affected deny themselves nothing.

I must admit that Obama is waging economic warfare on the rich. The very wealthy are whores who are totally indifferent to the fate of the American Middle Class.

Let them eat cake. Marie Antoinette never said it, but it does indicate a supreme ignorance of the day to day struggle of the lower economic classes. N'est Pas?

By the way the corporations are sitting on two trillion dollars in cash. Why are they not helping out?

You're looking for the wrong cause and effect. It's not that high taxes cause jobs. Canada, for one, is demonstrating that jobs can be created despite high taxes - that if the situation is right, the higher taxes don't matter as much.

Among the other things they have going in their favor is that they didn't let their banks go so far out of whack that they needed unbelievable bailouts - and the government didn't go nuts on spending with the higher taxes. They raised the taxes first, THEN spent within their means (for the most part)

How about a simpler approach? American companies like GE are having record profits in their off shore operations. GE and all the others are keeping those profits over seas to avoid paying the taxes on bring that money home.
It has been proposed that a reduced rate be charged to incent these companies to bring the money back to the USA to invest in America.

As a result up to a trillion dollars is pent up in Europe alone.

And of course this would not be a good idea for Jeff Immelt at GE...as it could put GE in a position to pay taxes....remember GE paid less in taxes in 2010 than most of us did!!!!

Business as usual in Washington whether and R or a D is on the door.

btk

VK my suggested was not intended to solve the problem. Only to point out there are actions as simple as what I suggested that would reduce the speed at which we are ruining this country financially.

As in other posts of mine....when the government is not doing the basic business like blocking and tackling to put forth solutions that result in a different direct or out come....the as we the people have become accustomed to....nothing, as usual happens.

No accountability! No responsibility! Business as usual in Washington.....and at home!!

btk