The Myth of only raising taxes on those making over $250,000

[Skeptik]

Republicans are profligate spenders.
Democrats are profligate spenders.

The only difference is that the Democrats want to pay for their excessive spending through taxes, while the Republicans want to do it through deficits. That's why you can see the deficit going up whenever the Repbublicans are in power.

Neither party is the party of fiscal responsibility.

Sooner or later, the country is going to have to quit living on its MasterCard.

Both candidates talk about tax cuts. No one is outlining any realistic spending cuts to go along with it.

To believe campaign promises about tax cuts is much like believing in Santa Claus.

 

[Care4all]

So it's not the Dems fault. Republicans put them on a path of spending that created huge deficits. Wasn't Obama in the Democratically controlled Congress, what happened to 'Change we can believe in'? Democrats have ballooned the annual budget, Republicans didn't hold a gun to their heads to make them spend money. They did that on their own, besides if they weren't wasting time and money on this crap.
IPI General Opinions - Editorial - Is This a Do-Nothing Congress?
Dr. Merrill Matthews of the Institute for Policy Innovation says yes, and that may be the good news.

The Wall Street Journal says this Democratic-led Congress has passed 294 bills, fewer than any Congress in the last 20 years.

But it’s also passed the largest number of resolutions—1,932.

Resolutions are usually expressions of support for something and don’t do much harm—or good. Taxpayers for Common Sense has identified its top 10 list. They include:

Designating July as National Watermelon Month;
Recognizing the 70th anniversary of the Idaho Potato Commission;
And naming June 30 National Corvette Day.

Democrats want to postpone passing real laws because they think a new President Obama will sign whatever they pass.

If that happens, voters may find themselves making a few of their own resolutions.

Maybe just maybe, they could pass sound legislation that actually helped reduce the national deficit.

paygo should help! If they would only follow it!

 

[Toro]

Republicans are profligate spenders.
Democrats are profligate spenders.

The only difference is that the Democrats want to pay for their excessive spending through taxes, while the Republicans want to do it through deficits. That's why you can see the deficit going up whenever the Repbublicans are in power.

Neither party is the party of fiscal responsibility.

Sooner or later, the country is going to have to quit living on its MasterCard.

Both candidates talk about tax cuts. No one is outlining any realistic spending cuts to go along with it.

To believe campaign promises about tax cuts is much like believing in Santa Claus.

BINGO!

And since this is true, I'd rather pay for it than live under the lie that we can continuously run deficits which will only mean my kid's taxes will be higher when he is grown up.

 

[jreeves]

paygo should help! If they would only follow it!

How about enforcing a spending freeze? Our major problem in this country is the rate at which spending increases. With all due respect, a payasyougo policy will not work. All politicians will do is take from trust funds to balance their pet projects or maneuver funds from other areas.

 

[Care4all]

How about enforcing a spending freeze? Our major problem in this country is the rate at which spending increases. With all due respect, a payasyougo policy will not work. All politicians will do is take from trust funds to balance their pet projects or maneuver funds from other areas.

good morning Reeves!
trust funds, like our social security trust fund are part of the federal budget and those ss surplusses will be used to balance the budget under republicans or democrats...only changing legislation to freeze them from using surplusses/trust funds would stop them from doing such....which i would definately be in favor of doing!!

Freezing spending could help things from getting any worse, but how would this help us reduce the deficit and billions monthly added to the national debt? Meaning: Freeze spending at what they are spending now? That won't help, because we are over spending hundreds of billions a year....?

Where or at what level would you freeze spending?

Care

 

[Skeptik]

good morning Reeves!
trust funds, like our social security trust fund are part of the federal budget and those ss surplusses will be used to balance the budget under republicans or democrats...only changing legislation to freeze them from using surplusses/trust funds would stop them from doing such....which i would definately be in favor of doing!!

Freezing spending could help things from getting any worse, but how would this help us reduce the deficit and billions monthly added to the national debt? Meaning: Freeze spending at what they are spending now? That won't help, because we are over spending hundreds of billions a year....?

Where or at what level would you freeze spending?

Care

Putting the Social Security fund in the general fund, which I believe happened back in the '60s in order to fund the war in Vietnam and Johnson's "great society", was a huge mistake, and needs to be reversed.

Take the money out of the general fund, put it in a real trust fund, and begin paying back those IOUs, and we'll have social security for our children and grandchildren. If we don't, they'll be left holding the bag.

 

[Care4all]

Putting the Social Security fund in the general fund, which I believe happened back in the '60s in order to fund the war in Vietnam and Johnson's "great society", was a huge mistake, and needs to be reversed.

Take the money out of the general fund, put it in a real trust fund, and begin paying back those IOUs, and we'll have social security for our children and grandchildren. If we don't, they'll be left holding the bag.

fyi
there were no social security surplusses when it was added to the general budget.

surplus social security funds did not begin untill Reagan in 1983 RAISED our social security taxes from about 3% for us and employer to about 6% each, giving us...the working middle, a 100% TAX INCREASE, while not affecting the wealthiest for the most part.

during the 60's, when ss was added to the general treasury budget, it was to MASK the cost of the vietnam war in our budget.

as example, lets say the war was running at 50% of our spending at the time, by adding in what we spent on ss in to the general budget, it then APPEARED that we were only spending 25% of our federal spending instead of the 50% on the war.....certainly, a smoke and mirror effort of johnson...

HOWEVER, because there were no surplusses in SS at the time, it really was not that bad of a thing...

ONLY when reagan doubled our tax rate on SS taxes so that a surplus of SS taxes were collected from us to SUPPOSEDLY pay for the boomer situation did it become a problem.

 

[jreeves]

good morning Reeves!
trust funds, like our social security trust fund are part of the federal budget and those ss surplusses will be used to balance the budget under republicans or democrats...only changing legislation to freeze them from using surplusses/trust funds would stop them from doing such....which i would definately be in favor of doing!!

Freezing spending could help things from getting any worse, but how would this help us reduce the deficit and billions monthly added to the national debt? Meaning: Freeze spending at what they are spending now? That won't help, because we are over spending hundreds of billions a year....?

Where or at what level would you freeze spending?

Care

What if we had froze spending back in 2001? Do you think the the federal budget would be balanced now? We have start somewhere a spending freeze seems like a logical start.

 

[Care4all]

What if we had froze spending back in 2001? Do you think the the federal budget would be balanced now? We have start somewhere a spending freeze seems like a logical start.

good point....let's start with freezing it, no expansions....if they want new programs, cut some old ones!

Care

 

[editec]

good point....let's start with freezing it, no expansions....if they want new programs, cut some old ones!

Care

They already voted to do this and then Bush II did NOT do it.

 

[Skeptik]

fyi
there were no social security surplusses when it was added to the general budget.

surplus social security funds did not begin untill Reagan in 1983 RAISED our social security taxes from about 3% for us and employer to about 6% each, giving us...the working middle, a 100% TAX INCREASE, while not affecting the wealthiest for the most part.

during the 60's, when ss was added to the general treasury budget, it was to MASK the cost of the vietnam war in our budget.

as example, lets say the war was running at 50% of our spending at the time, by adding in what we spent on ss in to the general budget, it then APPEARED that we were only spending 25% of our federal spending instead of the 50% on the war.....certainly, a smoke and mirror effort of johnson...

HOWEVER, because there were no surplusses in SS at the time, it really was not that bad of a thing...

ONLY when reagan doubled our tax rate on SS taxes so that a surplus of SS taxes were collected from us to SUPPOSEDLY pay for the boomer situation did it become a problem.

Good point. There is a long history of obfuscating just how much money the government is spending.

Then, in the '80s, the SS tax was raised in order to add money to the fund, which, being a part of the general fund by t hat time, was a de facto tax hike, mostly on the lower end wage earners. What a great end run to put in place a regressive tax that never would have passed muster had it been revealed for what it was.

 

[Zoomie1980]

I am going to keep posting this until it sinks in,

Bush has left us with no feasible option but to raise taxes

So, here is a little exercise for all of you out there that think we can balance the federal budget through spending cuts and can avoid tax increases. I pulled these figures from Wikipedia for the 2008 Federal Budget:

$608 billion - Social Security
$386 billion - Medicare
$209 billion - Medicaid and the State Children's Health Insurance Program (SCHIP)
$324 billion - Unemployment/Welfare/Other mandatory spending
$261 billion - Interest on National Debt
$481.4 billion- United States Department of Defense
$145.2 billion- Global War on Terror
$69.3 billion - Health and Human Services
$56.0 billion - United States Department of Education
$39.4 billion - United States Department of Veterans Affairs
$35.2 billion - US Department of Housing and Urban Development
$35.0 billion - State and Other International Programs
$34.3 billion - Department of Homeland Security
$24.3 billion - Energy
$20.2 billion - Department of Justice
$20.2 billion - Department of Agriculture
$17.3 billion - National Aeronautics and Space Administration
$12.1 billion - Department of Transportation
$12.1 billion - Department of Treasury
$10.6 billion - United States Department of the Interior
$10.6 billion - United States Department of Labor

For FY 2008 our estimated deficit will be $455 billion and our current national debt is $10.2 Trillion.

Easy question, what do you cut from the above to get $455 billion?

Bush had nothing to do with it.

Congress creates the budget, not the President.

 

[Zoomie1980]

Let me get this straight. Gov't employees pay taxes but our taxes pay gov't employees. Isn't that like taking a cash advance on one credit card to pay another???

Every tax dollar used for government jobs is a dollar that cannot be used for real job creation or consumption in the private sector. Every government job we eliminate will result in a net increase of tax revenue because taxes from non government jobs are actually paid from activities that contribute to GDP where taxes from government employees are merely dollars already collected as taxes and run through the system twice. I will go as far as to say that a tax dollar from a government employee is worth less than a tax dollar from the private sector because we are actually spending twice as much to collect the same dollar.


Yes we should get out of Iraq but only when doing so will not leave a worse situation than when Saddam was in power. There are plenty of other places to cut as well.

Yes SS is our money which is exactly why I don't want the government's greedy paws on it.

No Federal jobs program in the country has EVER had the effect it was intended to. Basically they NEVER work. Not even the make-work programs of the 1930's did anything to avert unemployment in any meaningful way. And when the construction was done....all those make work jobs ended. Fortunately for them, they all found employment killing Germans and Japanese.

 

[Zoomie1980]

good morning Reeves!
trust funds, like our social security trust fund are part of the federal budget and those ss surplusses will be used to balance the budget under republicans or democrats...only changing legislation to freeze them from using surplusses/trust funds would stop them from doing such....which i would definately be in favor of doing!!

Freezing spending could help things from getting any worse, but how would this help us reduce the deficit and billions monthly added to the national debt? Meaning: Freeze spending at what they are spending now? That won't help, because we are over spending hundreds of billions a year....?

Where or at what level would you freeze spending?

Care

Two things that most states have. Balanced Budget amendment and a Presidential line item veto. And that means if we can only have 46 F-22's instead of 300, then too bad, 46 is all we get!

 

[Zoomie1980]

They already voted to do this and then Bush II did NOT do it.

Bush II had NOTHING to do with. Congress did NOT do it. Bush was irrelevant.

 

[Skeptik]

No Federal jobs program in the country has EVER had the effect it was intended to. Basically they NEVER work. Not even the make-work programs of the 1930's did anything to avert unemployment in any meaningful way. And when the construction was done....all those make work jobs ended. Fortunately for them, they all found employment killing Germans and Japanese.

That's the ultimate make work job, isn't it, making war? It did get people back to work.

Posted by Zoomie 1980: Bush had nothing to do with it.

Congress creates the budget, not the President.

Failing to veto one single spending bill he was sent by the Republican controlled Congress in six long years didn't have a thing to do with the deficit. No siree, not a thing. Asking for Congress to pass spending bills didn't add to the deficit at all, either.

 

[editec]

Zoomie, the POTUS has VETO power.

Bush had everything to do with it, kid.

 

[Care4all]

Bush had nothing to do with it.

Congress creates the budget, not the President.

NO. The President CREATES the Budget....congress chooses to act on it or not act on it, then the President can veto it, if he does not agree with it or if it does not accomplish what the President wants, or signs it, if it does accomplish what the president wants.

just look at how many times Clinton used the veto pen....

 

[jreeves]

NO. The President CREATES the Budget....congress chooses to act on it or not act on it, then the President can veto it, if he does not agree with it or if it does not accomplish what the President wants, or signs it, if it does accomplish what the president wants.

just look at how many times Clinton used the veto pen....

You know, I am sure that a ton of spending isn't included in the President's budget? I wonder if the 700 billion dollar bailout was in Bush's budget? I wonder if the 300 billion dollar stimulus package that the Democrats want passed is in the President's budget?

 

[Care4all]

You know, I am sure that a ton of spending isn't included in the President's budget? I wonder if the 700 billion dollar bailout was in Bush's budget? I wonder if the 300 billion dollar stimulus package that the Democrats want passed is in the President's budget?

good point! and the answer is, none of what you listed is in the budget, including the wars in iraq and afghanistan, it is given as an emergency, outside of the budget request, by the president....

no wonder we are in a world of dodo....