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Wed 21 Sep, 2005 10:36 am
The cost for the cleanup and rebuilding as a result of Katrina to the US treasury is estimated at $200. There has be much said and written on what should be done to make the funds available.
What in your opinion course of action should congress and the administration follow to make them available? And further what do you believe they will do to make them available.
Borrow, cut pork barrel spending, revisit the tax cuts, what?
In order:
1. Borrow
2. Repeal the repeal of the Estate TAx
woiyo
Should they not revisit the recently passed highway legislation and remove all of the pork barrel spending.
As to tax repeal, should they not consider repealing some of the give away to the rich.
In addition the recently passed Medicare prescription benefit, which is primarily a benefit for the pharmaceutical and insurance industries should be at the very least delayed.
What they should do and what they will do are 2 different things.
I would not support postponing the MEdicare prescrition benefit nor the highway legislation.
I already stated they should not repeal the Estate TAx.
As far a pork barrell spending, well, we can dream I suppose.
If we get the troops out of Iraq and Afganistan and everywhere else they should NOT be, I am sure we would have the means to rebuild.
OP ed. piece from NY daily news
Quote:
The Curse of Texas, revisited
On Aug. 3, 1967, President Lyndon B. Johnson sent a message to Congress in which he said that the U.S. could not continue to fight a war in Vietnam and at the same time continue his Great Society programs without, among other things, raising taxes. President Bush ought to read that message. It was titled "The Hard and Inescapable Facts."
For Bush, facts are neither hard nor inescapable. He believes in "magical math" - that somehow something will happen to make everything come out right. This is the economics practiced by the dreamy who think that today's credit card purchase will never come due.
For Johnson, the realization that bills come due came too late. Early on, he said, "We can continue the Great Society while we fight in Vietnam," but he sensed that the American people would pay for the former but not, if they had to choose, the latter. When Johnson finally had to ask for a tax increase, he was on his way out as President.
Bush cannot seek reelection and so he may never become politically accountable for his mismanagement of the nation's finances. As Johnson initially attempted, Bush is telling the American people they can have both guns and butter - two for the price of one. In Bush's case, "butter" is domestic programs such as enriched Medicare along with the war on terror. But he has not only refused to raise taxes, he has actually lowered them. LBJ could only marvel.
Ever since the war in Iraq went from "Mission Accomplished" to the ugly quagmire it has become (almost 2,000 U.S. dead), commentators have been making comparisons to Vietnam. Robert Hormats, a former assistant secretary of state and now a vice chairman of Goldman Sachs International, has found that, initially, both wars were financed on the cheap because interest rates were low.
Hormats is finishing a book, "The Price of Liberty," on how America paid for its wars. Most wars forced the government to revise priorities. In other words, cut spending and increase taxes. Not so Vietnam - not for a long while, anyway. LBJ ultimately hit the fiscal wall and when he did so, Americans had to decide whether Vietnam was worth the bucks. His political position worsened.
Bush came into office - as he did life itself - with a huge surplus. He spent it. He now has a huge deficit. The Federal Reserve is increasingly concerned about inflation and this week raised interest rates for the 11th consecutive time. Sooner or later, Americans are going to have to choose guns or butter. Not surprisingly, they overwhelmingly tell pollsters they'd choose butter.
The curse of Texas is once again upon the land - an elective war, important enough to fight, not important enough to pay for. Up to now, it's been manageable if only because few have been asked to sacrifice anything for the grand cause of ... well, it's hard to say, isn't it? On a national scale, the casualty rate is bearable and the financial cost has not been felt because the money was first looted from the surplus and then borrowed. But that borrowing will drive up interest rates, including mortgages, and it might, as happened with Vietnam, trigger inflation that lasted longer than the war itself. Everything is going to get more expensive and voters are going to get more grumpy and it's all going to look like it once did to LBJ. That's not someone's nightmare scenario. That's "the hard and inescapable facts
."
woiyo wrote:
I already stated they should not repeal the Estate TAx.
ld.
After all why rollback a tax break for the wealthiest 1.5% of Americans. This is an aristocracy after all, right? Jeff Sessions is still looking for a dead hurricane victim who would actually be subject to the estate tax that only affects the wealthy. I mean, why should the heirs of the richest 1.5% sacrifice? I mean who could get by on 1.5 million (The untaxed amount) and 81% of the balance of the value of the estate?
!. Cut Pork
2. Get the hell out of Iraq and care for our own.
3. Cut services to the needy and postpone the due bill until our children and grandchildren grow up.
Place your bets ladies and gentlemen.
1. Reconsider the full rebuilding of New Orleans, Biloxi, and other coastal towns: it doesn't make sense to keep pouring capital into super-high risk cities.
2. Reduce long term liabilities, like ridiculous Medicare spending, and perhaps future SS benefits (I would prefer not to cut into current benefits, as people rely on this for financial planning).
3. Re-write the Transportation bill (and reconsider other stupid pet projects, like the missile shield).
4. If we plan on continuing our spending binge, we must raise taxes to a sustainable level. We could either raise taxes across the board or nix certain non-sensical deductions, including mortgage deductions and benefits deductions.
To conclude, I'm sick of hearing about "sacrifices" when all this entails are the sacrifices made by our children and grandchildren, who bear the cost of our deficit spending. Why do current voters gag when they hear that their benefits (Medicare, for instance) must be cut to finance spending? The same goes for tax increases. If you want government goodies, you need to pay for it.
I'm betting on sticking it up the grandchildren.
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