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To: ggersh who wrote (42381)	12/21/2012 9:52:12 PM
From: PJr	1 Recommendation Read Replies (2) \| Respond to of 221959

Aha! Now you're beginning to illustrate why our elected officials can't come to a decision to cut spending. You're starting to deviate from what initially sounded like an agreement to reduce spending levels to precisely the levels during the Clinton years in exchange for a return to Clinton tax rates. If we simply brought spending levels to the same proportionate levels that we had during the Clinton years, there might be a path to agreeing on raising taxes to Clinton levels. The problem is, we can't even agree to do that because some will say, in order to agree to the Clinton levels of spending we should reallocate how we spent the money during the Clinton years. Your preference seems to be to get back to those levels by reducing spending levels that went to the MIC during the Clinton years and redirect it to some other program or agency for which you have a preference. If you were truly happy with how slick the economy worked under Clinton, how about just agreeing to adjust the current spending levels to precisely the same relative amounts for each program/agency? If you were pleased with the results during the Clinton years, then surely you wouldn't want to risk that agreement just because you have preferences to spend the same amount but with different priorities. Unfortunately, this is a perfect illustration of why there will never be consensus in Congress to do the right thing. Sadly, once an agency or program run by the government gets an increase in funding, that agency or program will always claim that they can not survive a cut to their new level of funding. Witness the fact that we've spent literally trillions on the war on poverty and now have greater poverty levels than before we had such programs. We've increased our spending on education dramatically and have lower test scores and lower graduation rates than when we spent considerably less money on education. Yet some insist that we need to pay more for a government that delivers those kinds of results? I just find that logic incomprehensible ..... though I'd still agree to Clinton tax rates if we had Clinton spending levels. The spending levels HAVE to be curtailed. No amount of new revenue can balance the budget against the levels of spending that we currently have. I'm afraid the balanced approach that we heard about during the campaign seems to have morphed into plans for higher taxes accompanied by higher spending levels. Remember, "temporary" spending to get us through tough times is the equivalent of "new" permanent levels of spending. No one is even capable of reducing what was envisioned as temporary spending in the fantasy land of DC. How much more proof do we need? Just what catastrophe will we require to happen before we recognize the destructive path upon which we are headed? Pat

To: ggersh who wrote (42381)	12/21/2012 10:25:40 PM
From: Copeland	1 Recommendation Read Replies (4) \| Respond to of 221959

You can cut defense to zero, but you will still need to raise taxes by 30% to balance the budget without touching entitlements (SS, Medicare, Medicaid to states). As GZ and Brian have stated, you can only raise taxes so much before people decide that it isn't worth the effort to try for the higher income brackets or to expand (or even start) businesses. The only way we can solve our deficit issues is to cut government by 15% and increase taxes by 15%. This should be a broad, across the board cut, rather than simply cutting defense by 50%. In my ideal world, government should be cut by a third and taxes left the same (or even cut), but that will never happen. Here's a nice video on the subject: youtube.com In summary: Here's what we spent on for government in 2012: Military Spending: $709 Billion Everything Else in Government that Can Be Cut: $610 billion Total: $1.32 trillion Entitlement Programs (Stuff that Can't be Cut): Social Security: $773 billion Medicare: $478 billion Medicaid: $255 billion TARP: $35 billion Unemployment Benefits, Government Pensions, VA Benefits, Needy Family Aid (TANF), School Lunches (SNAP), et al: $635 billion Total Entitlements: $2.25 trillion Total Cost of Government (Discretionary and Non-Discretionary): $3.57 trillion ($3.7 including bond interest) Total Taxes, including Social Security/Medicare Payroll Taxes: $2.59 trillion Deficit: $1.127 trillion (Currently being paid out by Uncle Ben Bernacke and the Red Chinese) whitehouse.gov whitehouse.gov