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Politics : Formerly About Advanced Micro Devices -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: Steve Dietrich who wrote (466027)	3/24/2009 2:08:04 PM
From: Tenchusatsu	Read Replies (2) \| Respond to of 1574439

Steve, I'm in a harsh mood today (and not because Korea lost to Japan, I swear), so I hope you'll forgive me for the tone I'm about to display: > You can start with Obama's switch to more honest accounting. Really? Obama was for earmarks before he was against them, and that's "honest accounting"? By the way, I don't see any evidence that Bush kept items "off-budget" to reduce the apparent size of the deficit. How is that even possible? Sounds like another kooky conspiracy theory from left-wing bloggers. > The deception of counting the SS surpluses as revenue will work itself out: As the baby boomers retire, SS will no longer be running a surplus. I think that happens in about 10 years. Nice try. Obama seeks to lift the FICA cap on all income above $250K, which essentially will be the single largest tax hike on the "rich" in modern history. That will ensure that the so-called SS "surpluses" keep on coming in. Once again, it's the same old tale of passing the buck. > It took 8 years for Clinton to get the budget in order, to the point where Bush thought he was inheriting surpluses as far as the eye could see. The dot-com bubble already started to collapse before the hanging chads were even counted in Florida. If surpluses were visible "as far as the eye could see," then apparently the eye could only see a few months ahead. > It will take time, a return to growth, and economic grownups who don't think tax cuts are the solution to every problem, but we can and will get back to fiscal sanity. There is no sanity when Obama is already growing government by leaps and bounds, thinking that's not going to be a huge drag on any future economic recovery. Might as well just nationalize everything. Tenchusatsu

To: Steve Dietrich who wrote (466027)	3/24/2009 2:19:04 PM
From: i-node	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 1574439

You can start with Obama's switch to more honest accounting. It's one reason his deficits are as big as they are: He's counting stuff that Bush kept off-budget. Uh, not exactly. Do you know that one of the most fundamental principles of accounting is "comparability"? That is, you don't just make changes in year x+1 that will make it more difficult or impossible to compare with year x. This is such an egregious violation that substantial portions of any accounting curriculum involve "accounting changes" and how revisions to accounting processes are incorporated into financial statements in such a way that comparability isn't compromised. The Obama budget is a PERFECT EXAMPLE of why we accountants have focused so much on comparability -- without comparability, the possibility of manipulation is greatly increased. And Obama budget is the subject of precisely this kind of manipulation. Here's the gimmick. You include the cost of wars in the Year 1 budget, knowing full well the cost of those wars will decline over time (since your plan is to take Bush's win and bail on one of them, and surrender on the other). Then, as those REAL costs are reduced, you simply increase spending in other places to absorb them. The public sees on a trillion a year (lol, that takes some getting used to -- "only" a trillion) in deficits, but in reality, it is far more when compared with budgets that would have been were Bush accounting still being employed. As to SS and Medicare, this is a $50-60 Trillion problem. To suggest that it is something that is just going to appear in 10 years is borne of total ignorance. Where were you when I spent all that time explaining it to RW (who finally, I think, got it through his head)?