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

To: Tenchusatsu who wrote (701571)	2/28/2013 1:43:36 PM
From: i-node	Respond to of 1574180

>> When budget cuts happen, guess what gets cut first? Any reasonable attempt to cut costs should at least involve saying, "Hey, there's bound to be 3% waste in a budget this large. Let's identify it and get rid of it." The WH hasn't even TRIED. And the Rs really haven't, either. Boehner should come out and say, "We've identified waste in these particular areas. That money needs to be cut." But the WH position is by any measure, extreme. It is ridiculous to think even a cursory effort couldn't turn up a few percentage points in cuts without in any way injuring the services provided by government. Hell, waste fraud & abuse in Medicare alone is in the 100s of billions.

To: Tenchusatsu who wrote (701571)	3/2/2013 5:02:37 PM
From: SilentZ	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 1574180

>A complete lie. Federal spending went up from $3.1T to $3.8T in the space of four years. Yes, but what's that after you remove mandatory spending (which of course went up because of an aging population, more unemployed and poor people), interest on the existing debt, and inflation? Probably not much that was caused by any particular spending decisions that Obama and the Dems made. Unemployment increased a ton between June 2008 and March 2009. >The original Bush budget for FY 2009 was $3.1T. But the final budget was not signed into law until March 2009, two months into Obama's administration. By then the budget ballooned to $3.5T. So once again, what was the rest? Increases in benefits that were mandatory and had nothing to do with Obama. >Hence Obama is responsible for at least half a trillion dollars in spending increases. Over what period? >Now I'll wait while you tell me that this is OK because all that FUNNY MONEY went toward feeding the poor, Well, that it did. >lowering global temperatures I'm guessing not much went to that. >and giving health care to the yearning masses. Not yet. >Road maintenance makes up like what, 2-3% of the federal budget? Probably, yeah. But that was just one example that happened to be in my head at the time. Do I really need to list all of the other things that this country has done on a federal level that are great? >Of course, guys like you will cut that first. Did I say that? I would not cut that first. I want to vastly INCREASE it. >Don't you see how the game is played? When budget cuts happen, guess what gets cut first? That's right, the stuff that is MOST VISIBLE to the public. Parks get closed, airport security lines get longer, and even illegal immigrants set to be deported get released. What? Cutting Medicare, Social Security, Medicaid, and unemployment benefits wouldn't be just as visible? The things that are getting cut are the things that are logistically easy enough to cut -- discretionary spending, which encompass the things that you just listed. >Politicians make damn sure that the LAST thing that gets cut are their own pet projects, including Obama's biggest pet project, which is ObamaCare. 1. Why should that get cut? That's more than just a pet project. That saves lives. 2. The CBO and the Joint Committee on Taxation both recently forecast that Obamacare will increase deficits by a total of a bit over $100 billion over the next decade. That's $10 billion a year; chump change in this context. And once again, it's going to save lives. >This is the kind of insanity in Washington that you think is necessary to keep roads and bridges maintained. If anyone is playing dumb, it's you. So you're essentially advocating cutting healthcare over transportation? Even if it's an either/or proposition, that's having different priorities, not insanity. If it really came down to that, I'm not sure I'd disagree with you. But you're talking about a net savings of about a quarter of a percent of the federal budget each year, and that's not very material. Of course, if you believe that the CBO and JCT are wrong, please explain why. -Z