@dyslexia,
Quote:No, I haven't noticed that, in fact, I have noticed a large number of institutions advocating increased saving and less spending
that is reallocating resources, what I am talking about is the expectation that one will have fewer resources than they are accustomed to having. A big difference to my mind. The current goal of a lot of the government programs is to get people to take on debt again, to get the debt markets working again so that they can. If we were going to actually try to live with-in our means this would not be a priority.
@hawkeye10,
hawkeye10 wrote:
Quote:Our government needs to downsize, but PrezBO wants to expand it like never before.
our entire society needs to downsize, to live with-in our means. We have made a string of bad choices, and now we need to move to a lower standard of living. We can live better on less, but we are so out of practice that it never occurs to us that this is what we need to do.
Agreed, but I think the president and Congress should set the positive example for society to follow.
@hawkeye10,
well, obviously you are a lot wiser than I am because what i see is the government trying to make capital investment more available by loosening institutional credit. Unless, you are among those silly ass conservatives that think the government budget should operate as does a house-hold budget. I defer to your vastly superior knowledge.
@hawkeye10,
We should certainly downsize the military. For instance, we are spending untold billions for the defense of our wealthy allies, much more than they spend themselves. The F22 serves no valid purpose, and will also cost untold billions. Further, the very wealthy should at least pay taxes at a rate they did when Clinton was president. Etc.
The biggest drain for this country is the foreign oil expense. The government should mandate autos that get at least 50 mpg. (which is what the Prius gets).
White House senior adviser David Axelrod said the president won't rule out a health care reform bill that includes a middle-class tax hike.
"The president had said in the past that he doesn't believe taxing health care benefits at any level is necessarily the best way to go here. He still believes that," Axelrod told me on This Week, "But there are a number of formulations and we'll wait and see. The important thing at this point is to keep the process moving, to keep people at the table, to the keep the discussions going. We've gotten a long way down the road and we want to finish that journey."
I pressed Axelrod on whether Obama will draw a line in the sand and veto any bill that funds health care reform with tax hikes for people making under $250,000 a year -- despite a pledge Barack Obama made during the 2008 presidential campaign not to raise taxes on the poor and middle-class.
"One of the problems we've had in this town is that people draw lines in the sand and they stop talking
to each other. And you don't get anything done. That's not the way the president approaches us. He is very cognizant of protecting people -- middle class people, hard-working people who are trying to get along in a very difficult economy. And he will continue to represent them in these talks," Axelrod said.
"But they're also dealing with punishing health care costs, and that's something that we have to deal with."
The GOP point man in Congress on health care, Sen. Charles Grassley, R-Ia., suggested Obama has his work cut out for him in trying to win over Republicans to get a bipartisan bill with his preferred public option that doesn't raise taxes.
"I'm asking, and I think the White House knows my view and the view of a lot of other Republicans. Since the president denigrated John Cain's -- John McCain's effort to move in this direction during the campaign, it's going to take, in order to win over Republicans, presidential leadership in that direction," Grassley told me.
--George Stephanopoulos
@au1929,
an un-named White House adviser said the president won't rule out nuking the Republic of North Korea, Iran, or Toledo Ohio.
@au1929,
au1929 wrote:
I pressed Axelrod on whether Obama will draw a line in the sand and veto any bill that funds health care reform with tax hikes for people making under $250,000 a year -- despite a pledge Barack Obama made during the 2008 presidential campaign not to raise taxes on the poor and middle-class.
Yep, citizens that make less than $50K per year may escape this tax hike, but don't count on it.
@Advocate,
Advocate wrote:
The biggest drain for this country is the foreign oil expense. The government should mandate autos that get at least 50 mpg. (which is what the Prius gets).
The biggest drain for this country is Obama's ever growing deficit.
@H2O MAN,
Quote:Sorry - wrong answer
we will down size the military. We can't afford to be the global police man, and we no longer have the moral authority to be the police man.
@hawkeye10,
We will downsize the government. We can't afford to become more vulnerable, and we can't allow Obama to castrate our military.
@H2O MAN,
What part of govt. would you downsize? The real fat is in the military.
We should cut back NASA and the International Space System. Virtually all this money is wasted. They are planning to spend untold billions on going back to the moon. I don't what there is new to find out about the moon. Moreover, I guess they don't realize that it is uninhabitable.
@Advocate,
We are at war...
Do you honestly want to weaken our military and make all US citizens more vulnerable?
@hawkeye10,
Quote:we will down size the military. We can't afford to be the global police man, and we no longer have the moral authority to be the police man.
OK, how about we start with these types of missions...
Quote:• On March 5, a U.S. Air Force C-130 Hercules cargo plane delivered another $30,000 of emergency relief supplies -" including water containers and pumps -" to flood-devastated eastern Bolivia, where 70,000 families have been affected by months of heavy rainfall. The United States has donated nearly $1 million in disaster assistance since Bolivia declared a national emergency.
• On February 26, U.S. military engineers in Assamo, Djibouti, a village near the Ethiopian border, surveyed a site for a new water well scheduled to be dug in April, part of an ongoing project to aid communities in the Horn of Africa region.
• For nine days in late February, a team of 20 Air Force medics provided health care for more than 6,500 people La Pita, El Sol and Santa Teresa, Nicaragua, while an Army veterinary team vaccinated more than 3,300 animals for farmers in 10 communities. Follow-on medical teams are working in Nicaragua through mid-March.
• On February 18, U.S. Marines and Navy construction crews completed a new elementary school for 100 children in General Santos City, the Philippines, as part of a 10-day visit called Project Kaibigan "- Tagalog for “friendship” "- in which more than 1,000 American military people helped build or renovate schools in three communities.
• In January, a U.S. military medical team spent three weeks in Choculeta, Honduras, where they saved the lives of four newborns, performed 167 major surgeries and conducted 500 medical exams at the regional Hospital del Sur.
Quote:In Latin America and the Caribbean, the U.S. Southern Command (SOUTHCOM) is scheduled to conduct 61 medical exercises in 2007 in 14 partner nations, command officials said. In 2006, the command’s medical exercises provided health care for more than 270,000 people in the region. SOUTHCOM has helped build or upgrade three regional emergency operations centers and 13 disaster relief warehouses, and the command has positioned emergency relief supplies across the region. Eight additional emergency operations centers and seven additional warehouses are under construction. Joint Task Force Bravo (JTF-Bravo) in Honduras deployed nine helicopters and airlifted more than 45,000 kilograms of emergency food, water and medical supplies when Tropical Storm Gamma struck Honduras in November 2005, killing 34 people.
Read more:
http://www.america.gov/st/foraid-english/2007/March/20070306101755MVyelwarC0.5818292.html#ixzz0Jm8r2bJZ&C
http://www.cnn.com/2008/WORLD/africa/06/10/us.africa.mission/index.html
Quote:CAMP LEMONIER, Djibouti (CNN) -- U.S. Marines at Camp Lemonier -- the only American military base on the African continent -- spend much of their time vaccinating livestock, repairing schools and giving medical training.
So if you really want to cut military spending, which of the programs I just listed would you cut?
@mysteryman,
Quote:So if you really want to cut military spending, which of the programs I just listed would you cut?
I'll take a wild guess that all of that stuff could be traded for one year of operational costs for one aircraft carrier. If we no longer police the oceans we no longer need more than a couple aircraft carriers.
@hawkeye10,
hawkeye10 wrote:
If we no longer police the oceans we no longer need more than a couple aircraft carriers.
That's the true spirit of progressive defeatism.
