The Republicans are out of ideas

Democrats Control 2008 Presidential Campaign

To my way of thinking, the single, most serious problem this country is facing is the way we seem intent on handling the National Budget. This is both Parties' fault.

Except for two/three years, this country has run a deficit budget ever since '69. (President Clinton can claim the balanced years.) That is a LONG time to run up the "credit card" debt. In the mean, the interest on that debt has gone from a tolerable 2/3% to near 10% of the budget. That 10% does not "pay down" the debt, only maintains the status quo. I don't know about you, but if my family budget was paying out 10% just in "minimum payments" for credit cards, I would consider my budget in trouble.

We need to have a Congress that is financially responsible and we need to enforce a balanced budget. We need to stop "earmarks" that buy campaign money. We need to stop Congressional voter block buying with "special" programs.

Initial effort: Allocate that 10% for the interest on the National Debt, plus 5% of the budget toward the paydown on that debt. ALL ELSE on the budget gets figured from there with an eye on NO deficit spending. At the very least it will strengthen the dollar and reverse the inflationary trend.

At both the Macro AND Micro level, this is called "living within one's means." Borrowing to maintain one's "standard of living" is, in the long run, self defeating. It cannot be continued for ever.

How to arrive at such a far reaching goal.....well, that's what we hire Congress to do; Take care of the Country's business. In the final analysis, remember, Congress does not "pay the bills", we (the people) do. Like the man says "You can pay me now, or you can pay me later."

Halfback

Then by your admission, just about every spending program mentioned by any candidate would have to be shelved or you would raise taxes even higher than they are now.

You do realize that, don't you?

woiyo wrote:

Then by your admission, just about every spending program mentioned by any candidate would have to be shelved or you would raise taxes even higher than they are now.

You do realize that, don't you?

Are you kidding? I support raising taxes! I've supported it for years!

Yes, I want my personal taxes to be higher, and yours too. America doesn't work without money invested into it by its' constituents, and I'm not willing to shirk that responsibility any longer, just so I can buy a new playstation or something.

Cycloptichorn


No, our taxes are not high as compared to Canada, but we are not discussion ratios.

So you want to increase spending on a variety of social issues, raise taxes, reduce only the military budget. Did I miss anything?

once again, on edit: You do realize that our taxes are historically lower then they've been in pretty much the last 100 years? During a war? You say 'even higher then they are now,' but they aren't high now at all.

[W]ith the honorable exception of long-shot candidate Mike Huckabee, the Republican field seems content with an economic program that comes down to opposing whatever Hillary Clinton proposes. [..] A tax credit for parents struggling to pay their children's college tuition? Matching funds for 401(k)s? Baby bonds? Crazy notions all, not because of their substance -- Rudy [Giuliani] can't be bothered with their substance -- but because they were proposed by [..] Hillary [..].

As a road map to governance, this is both dim and skimpy. President Giuliani, Romney, McCain or Thompson can reliably be counted on to be against whatever Clinton is for. Beyond that, if we total up their domestic and economic policy proposals, they intend to do almost nothing at all.

Romney will punt to the states the problem of the decreasing willingness of employers to provide health insurance. Giuliani says everybody should just buy their own policies -- and if the insurance companies don't want to sell to the sick or middle-aged, that's just too bad. John McCain focuses on the rising costs of treating chronic diseases rather than the declining level of coverage. Fred Thompson wants to take a whack at Medicare. [..]

The serious postmortems for President Bush's ultra-Reaganite and uber-Goldwateristic plan to privatize Social Security -- the questioning of the sanity of such a proposal at a time when employer-provided pension plans were dropping like flies -- have yet to be conducted in conservative circles. Indeed, Fred Thompson is still mumbling about cutting Social Security. Ol' Fred may have slept through 2005 -- the year of privatization's protracted stillbirth -- but did the entire party?

I thought maybe Meyerson was being unfair. So I went to Mitt Romney's website to look at his healthcare plan. Here it is: "The health of our nation can be improved by extending health insurance to all Americans, not through a government program or new taxes, but through market reforms." That's the whole thing. The rest of the page has a pair of quotes from two years ago, a single short video taken at a campaign event, and a couple of outside links.

It does seem inevitable that taxes WILL have to rise, but NOT to the point that they will make up the difference to maintain status quo spending levels! Neither you nor I would tolerate that.

Yeah, the war would have to come to a screeching halt. (I was against this mess from the beginning) There were other ways we could have exacted "pay back" for 9/11, much more "cost effective" to boot.

Yeah, all the feel good programs that are being "promised" by ALL candidates will have to go into a holding pattern until the Congress can get it's house in order.

Did I say this was going to be easy? Hell NO! It's going to take a complete remake of how Congress does business AND a complete remake of how the population requires Congress to act on it's behalf.

I offer this as food for thought. My personal belief is that getting any control on Government Spending is damn near impossible. We are two generations into doing it the way we are. To stand in the way of a population near 300 million all heading in the same general direction.....

Well, sounds like a good way to get trampled to death.

Halfback

Halfback wrote:

It does seem inevitable that taxes WILL have to rise, but NOT to the point that they will make up the difference to maintain status quo spending levels! Neither you nor I would tolerate that.

Yeah, the war would have to come to a screeching halt. (I was against this mess from the beginning) There were other ways we could have exacted "pay back" for 9/11, much more "cost effective" to boot.

Yeah, all the feel good programs that are being "promised" by ALL candidates will have to go into a holding pattern until the Congress can get it's house in order.

Did I say this was going to be easy? Hell NO! It's going to take a complete remake of how Congress does business AND a complete remake of how the population requires Congress to act on it's behalf.

I offer this as food for thought. My personal belief is that getting any control on Government Spending is damn near impossible. We are two generations into doing it the way we are. To stand in the way of a population near 300 million all heading in the same general direction.....

Well, sounds like a good way to get trampled to death.

Halfback

I agree that earmarks have to be brought under control; just not that it's the solution to our money woes.

I think that you fellows seriously underestimate the amount of revenue that a modest increase in taxation would bring in. A 5% rise on the top bracket alone would net hundreds of billions in revenue per year. Combine that with a 1% rise for everyone else, while ending the war and poof - no more deficit.

Combine that with raising the cap from SS payments, along with the retirement age and a modest reduction of benefits over time, and SS lasts for the forseeable future.

Combine that with some sort of single-payer health care plan and our financial situation looks rosier all the time.

Combine this with some actual leadership on renewable energy technology and space utilization and we could be back on top quick enough.

More then anything else, Leadership is what we lack right now.

Cycloptichorn

Mysteryman, just to take one point, are you aware of the fact that the EFFECTIVE tax rate--the rate that the rich actually pay taxes, after the many deductions that they can claim, is in fact just about the same as the effective tax rate everybody else pays? They6're not getting soaked extra. They can afford it, though, so yes they should pay more. It's called progressive taxation. It was what we had through the country's explosive Post-WWII growqth, through the Clinton administration. It didn't damp our growth, despite years of Republican whining. And tax cuts that disporoportionately favred the rich, i.i. the whole Bush administration economy, has reduced an eight-cylinder economy to firing on about five cylinders--maybe six in a good season.

Cycloptichorn wrote:

Halfback wrote:

It does seem inevitable that taxes WILL have to rise, but NOT to the point that they will make up the difference to maintain status quo spending levels! Neither you nor I would tolerate that.

Yeah, the war would have to come to a screeching halt. (I was against this mess from the beginning) There were other ways we could have exacted "pay back" for 9/11, much more "cost effective" to boot.

Yeah, all the feel good programs that are being "promised" by ALL candidates will have to go into a holding pattern until the Congress can get it's house in order.

Did I say this was going to be easy? Hell NO! It's going to take a complete remake of how Congress does business AND a complete remake of how the population requires Congress to act on it's behalf.

I offer this as food for thought. My personal belief is that getting any control on Government Spending is damn near impossible. We are two generations into doing it the way we are. To stand in the way of a population near 300 million all heading in the same general direction.....

Well, sounds like a good way to get trampled to death.

Halfback

I agree that earmarks have to be brought under control; just not that it's the solution to our money woes.

I think that you fellows seriously underestimate the amount of revenue that a modest increase in taxation would bring in. A 5% rise on the top bracket alone would net hundreds of billions in revenue per year. Combine that with a 1% rise for everyone else, while ending the war and poof - no more deficit.

Combine that with raising the cap from SS payments, along with the retirement age and a modest reduction of benefits over time, and SS lasts for the forseeable future.

Combine that with some sort of single-payer health care plan and our financial situation looks rosier all the time.

Combine this with some actual leadership on renewable energy technology and space utilization and we could be back on top quick enough.

More then anything else, Leadership is what we lack right now.

Cycloptichorn

To be honest, you seem to have "class envy".
You are favoring a 5% increase on the top[ bracket, that means on the rich.

You are aware that the "rich" already pay the lions share of ALL TAXES, including income tax.
Why do you think its ok to raise the taxes on the "rich"?

If you want true fairness, shouldnt the taxes on the rich be lowered to the same rates as everyone else?
Instead of them paying over 50% of all taxes, shouldnt they pay in proportion to how many rich people there are?

By that I mean that if only 15% of the population qualifies as rich, then shouldnt they only pay 15% of the total tax bill?
Or,are you in favor of discriminating against the "rich"?

username wrote:

Mysteryman, just to take one point, are you aware of the fact that the EFFECTIVE tax rate--the rate that the rich actually pay taxes, after the many deductions that they can claim, is in fact just about the same as the effective tax rate everybody else pays? They6're not getting soaked extra. They can afford it, though, so yes they should pay more. It's called progressive taxation. It was what we had through the country's explosive Post-WWII growqth, through the Clinton administration. It didn't damp our growth, despite years of Republican whining. And tax cuts that disporoportionately favred the rich, i.i. the whole Bush administration economy, has reduced an eight-cylinder economy to firing on about five cylinders--maybe six in a good season.

The left keeps saying that tax cuts favored the rich, but I fail to see how.
If everyone got the same rate cut, say a 12% cut, then how does that favor the "rich"?
True, since they pay more,they will get a bigger saving, but they will still be paying more then anyone else.
Also,since several thousand people were removed from the tax rolls totally by the Bush tax cuts, how did the rich benefit more then those people did?

I am not against a progressive tax rate, but lets keep it fair.
If you raise taxes on the "rich", then taxes on EVERYONE should go up by the same percentage.
By constantly taxing the "rich", you are removing the incentive for anyone else to get rich, because they know they wont be able to keep what they earn.

Or, are you one of those people that think the "rich" all got that way by stealing their money or otherwise being dishonest.

username wrote:

Mysteryman, just to take one point, are you aware of the fact that the EFFECTIVE tax rate--the rate that the rich actually pay taxes, after the many deductions that they can claim, is in fact just about the same as the effective tax rate everybody else pays? They6're not getting soaked extra. They can afford it, though, so yes they should pay more. It's called progressive taxation. It was what we had through the country's explosive Post-WWII growqth, through the Clinton administration. It didn't damp our growth, despite years of Republican whining. And tax cuts that disporoportionately favred the rich, i.i. the whole Bush administration economy, has reduced an eight-cylinder economy to firing on about five cylinders--maybe six in a good season.

The left keeps saying that tax cuts favored the rich, but I fail to see how.
If everyone got the same rate cut, say a 12% cut, then how does that favor the "rich"?
True, since they pay more,they will get a bigger saving, but they will still be paying more then anyone else.
Also,since several thousand people were removed from the tax rolls totally by the Bush tax cuts, how did the rich benefit more then those people did?

I am not against a progressive tax rate, but lets keep it fair.
If you raise taxes on the "rich", then taxes on EVERYONE should go up by the same percentage.
By constantly taxing the "rich", you are removing the incentive for anyone else to get rich, because they know they wont be able to keep what they earn.

Or, are you one of those people that think the "rich" all got that way by stealing their money or otherwise being dishonest.