President Barack Obama Message Board

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Politics : President Barack Obama

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Brian Sullivan

To: tejek who wrote (136779)	9/2/2013 11:51:53 PM
From: Bread Upon The Water	1 Recommendation Read Replies (1) of 149317

OK--forget those charts since you don't trust the source. There's plenty of other charts out there from other sources that will tell you the same thing--which is this. 1. We are spending about 50% of the budget on entitlements and the amount percentage wise is projected to grow in the future as more and more boomers retire (the percentage of the non-working to the working will rise). 2. Defense is about 27%. 3. And all the rest is about 23% I'm doing this from memory so I may be off 2 or 3 percent here and there. But the trends are in place and those trends will continue to enlarge entitlement spending absent major tax changes and/or spending reform across the Board. There is no room in the budget for voting more entitlement spending as it will increase of its own accord at a tremendous rate just because of the way our country is aging. There may be more room for an increase in welfare benefits if we are willing to take some of the benefits from SSI and Medicare and redirect it there. It is not and apples to apples comparison to cite the spending of other nations for welfare/entitlements as they do not have the same population numbers and aging to working ratios as we do--nor are they as heavily invested in defense spending as us. Plus many of the big welfare budget Northern Scandinavian Countries (Sweden/Norway) have small populations comparatively and access to oil revenue from the North Sea--so they can afford to spend more per capitia then us on benefits. Just saying the numbers are against legislating any increase in entitlement spending and dictate that we have to come up with a way to cut it somehow, and to come up with a way to restructure the tax code as well. I do agree that tax rates can be raised on upper income levels (let the debate begin about how much), but that by itself will not stop the growing piece of the pie consumed by entitlements. The debate should be about how to fairly share the pain, IMHO. And I believe this is the message the President has been preaching more or less in his bid to reach a consensus on the next budget(s).

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