Pelosi et al are shameless

[Masark]

A selective application, sure. But this must be reinforced by the elimination of the government unions. That includes the Teachers, SEIU, and every other unionized federal/public organization. It does no good to slap tariffs on cheap foreign labor when you artificially inflate the cost of local labor. The reason it is cheaper to go overseas is only partly because of the lack of tariffs. The other problem is the inflated cost of local work due to sky-high labor, and soul-crushing regulatory restrictions.

Capital gains should be increased no higher than 22% to 25%. Making it equal to the income tax removes the incentive to invest, which in the current economy is a critically important function.

No. They're already like the 2nd highest in the world. Raising them is completely unnecessary.

1. What the heck does manufacturing labour have to do with federal employees?

2. I agree with you on the incentive to invest. I'd personally say run it on a progressive scale same as income tax, but at 50-75% of the rate and also provide small-scale strictly delimited dodges (limit of some thousands per year, like RRSPs* and TFSAs* here in Canada) on it to promote investment by the middle class.

3. By rate, they're the 2nd highest, but by actual tax paid, they're well down the list, but slicing the loopholes will take care of that, yes.

*Not sure where you live, but RRSPs and TFSAs are Canadian things.

An RRSP is a Registered Retirement Savings Plan. It allows you to put up to 18% of your pretax income (up to a current maximum of $23,820/year. The amount of indexed to the national average wage.) into investments (stocks, bonds, mutual funds, etc.) within the plan. This amount is removed from your taxable income and no capital gains tax is paid on any growth. Tax is only paid when you start withdrawing (usually in the form of a RRIF).

A TFSA is a Tax Free Savings Account. It's like an RRSP backwards. Same set of investments can go in it (Up to a maximum of $5500/year, with that amount indexed to the CPI) and income tax is still paid on the money going in, but capital gains tax is not applied to any growth inside the fund, nor on any money withdrawn.

[Prokne]

I'd say a 33% cut in the US Military would be sufficient. I favor the elimination of all European military bases. Let the EU fund its own defense. Also, cut all money that goes to the UN as well. Let them fund and maintain their own forces and facilities.

The only cuts that should be from the military are for money that goes to workers and companies outside the US. This means scaling back a lot of the foreign military bases which employ a lot of foreigners for maintenance and service. If you cut the military too deep you affect a huge portion of the economy, lowering corporate profits for government contractors and killing jobs. The sequestration isnt even close to as high as you want and it will cause a >1.5% drop in economic growth.

I agree - as long as cancelling subsidies includes any and ALL of the so-called "Green" energy companies. Solar, wind, tide, electric cars... Not a dime for any of them. If they can't survive in the market on their own then they are not ready for the big time.

Just rename them "research funds" and were all good. Thats what a lot of these payouts to green energy are: paying for R&D of the new technology. Its also a bad idea to destroy the future because of a bad economic environment right now. This kind of short sightedness is what got us here in the first place. I agree though that subsidies to large very profitable companies should be stopped unless they want more government oversight. Money for scientific research should be increased but it should also make sure it is being done on useful subjects.

A selective application, sure. But this must be reinforced by the elimination of the government unions. That includes the Teachers, SEIU, and every other unionized federal/public organization. It does no good to slap tariffs on cheap foreign labor when you artificially inflate the cost of local labor. The reason it is cheaper to go overseas is only partly because of the lack of tariffs. The other problem is the inflated cost of local work due to sky-high labor, and soul-crushing regulatory restrictions.

Raising tariffs is a bad idea because what happens is every other country does the same thing and then no one outside the US buys our stuff. Its better to just penalize US companies that offshore labor when they "import" their goods into the country to sell. Or you can add a corporate tax surcharge that depends on the percentage of workers that are outside the country.

But of course the best step to take is to immediately cut 33% from all social spending as well. 33% off the TOTAL budget - not the rate of growth. Then pass a law freezing it there until they pass a Balanced Budget ammendment.

A balanced budget amendment is the worst thing you can possibly do if you want the country to survive. Unless you really want to raise taxes a lot every time you want to go to war or there is a major recession. Deficit spending is sometimes very necessary and handcuffing the government will cause way more problems than its worth.


The thing is, the size of the deficit doesnt really matter. What matters is the ratio of the deficit to GDP. So if you cut spending but tank your GDP, youre right back where you were before except less people have jobs and companies are making less money and youve made yourself a recession. To actually fix the problem you have to find smart cuts for things that dont give a huge benefit to the country, things that dont create jobs, dont cause economic growth in our country. Then you invest in programs that create jobs and growth and your investment creates more tax revenue(without even raising taxes) and you debt problem goes away. So dont spend more unless its a positive investment and were all good. This is what Nancy Pelosi was saying.

[theredviola]

Yeah kinda like that, in that they're both a problem with your perceptions.

Well I'll be damned. After a quick search (all of about 7 min via duckduckgo instead of google) I found that there are more senators pushing to restrict self-voting of pay raises. I stand corrected, thanks for bringing this to my attention!

But, that begs the question -- why did it take them so long to get to this point? In my searches, I did find that about 10 or so years ago, it was common place for politicians to vote themselves pay raises. Which goes back to my point that there would still need to be something in place that polices politicians if it took them... who knows how long to get to this point where politicians said "hey, maybe we should stop voting pay raises for ourselves."

[Prokne]

The annual salary of each Senator and Representative as of 2006, was $165,200

Make these guys live like the rest of us. They should not receive their full salaries after they retire. They should either serve term limits, or be required to work a certain amount of years to draw a retirement. They should be required to pay into a retirement plan like everyone else (401k). They should not be allowed to approve their own pay increases. They should not be allowed to run the country into the ground and then cash out. These guys can basically do whatever they want (which seems to be nothing most of the time) and then retire comfortably. F that!

Well they have to serve 5 years to get a pension and healthcare after they leave office. This means every senator gets it. Its prorated but the free healthcare is the big thing. It should be 20 years like the military. A cumulative 20 year federal government service and you get retirement. Otherwise they can have their own private retirement plans like everyone else. It wont save a whole lot of money but at least its fair.

---------- Post added 2013-02-11 at 11:18 PM ----------

First if you cut spending you will make the situation worse by increasing unemployment and lowering incoming tax revenue... but you know that all ready i hope.

whats needed is a spending freeze and let inflation take over and deprecated the debt over time. unfortunately it cant work because of social security.
That single program is whats forcing the debt ceiling higher and higher. it needs to be decoupled with the general fund. once hats done abolish the federal reserve.. its not even part of the federal government, its owned by an international banking cartel. please see fed reserve web sight for proof.... they are very open about it. in fact during a freedom of information act request they clearly stated they are a privet entity and not subject to the freedom of information act like the government is.
no federal reserve means no more making up cash when we want too.

You realize that social security funds have been loaned to the federal government for years right? SS isnt supposed to be in the red for a few decades. Maybe you mean Medicare? There are separate taxes for that too but rising healthcare costs are driving it into the ground. The best solution to that problem is nationalized healthcare where the costs can be controlled better.

[The Riddler]

The best solution to that problem is nationalized healthcare where the costs can be controlled better.

*snort!*

Oh yeah - nationalizing things REALLY helps to control the costs... Derp derp.

[atollon]

I'm not creating an echo chamber with those that agree with me. I'm creating a fiction-free zone. If some people can't even agree on what reality is, then they're not worth arguing with.

best two sentences in this whole thread. i laughed quite a bit at these.
This is the murky world of government finance. There's no such thing "truth" or "fiction". Look at the tax raises you claim already happened. They're actually, as has already been mentioned, just the expiration of existing tax breaks. Two things that have exactly the same monetary effect, while being completely different in every other respect. You can consider them a tax raise, as the amount of revenue garnered through taxes was increased, while the rest of us don't consider them increases, and no one's wrong. The sooner you understand that and get over your fact vs fiction tirade the better it will be for this discussion. (Or at least the half you haven't ignored)

[Zhangfei]

*snort!*

Oh yeah - nationalizing things REALLY helps to control the costs... Derp derp.

It's worked in countries that nationalised healthcare. Most First World nations spend less on it than America.

[Cthulhu 2020]

Nationalized stuff means that the government negotiates lower prices with health care providers and pharmaceuticals, at least that's the way it works in other countries. Although Lockheed Martin and other private contractors for public services have lately been able to go way over budget, so I kinda of question our government's ability to buy in bulk and negotiate lower prices at this point...

Part of the whole military budget being over inflated is not our presence in other countries or the size of it, but rather we're getting a lot of equipment we simply don't need. It was explained in much more detail earlier in this thread, let me see if I can find it.

Edit:

The problem of military budget cuts is so complicated a book could be written on it.

The problem isn't number of carriers or number of bases or our wars or our deployment. It's contracting, and how contractors are fleecing US Taxpayers like never before.

Let me give you an example. The second to last Nimitz class carrier, the USS Ronald Reagan, cost taxpayers $4 billion, in 2003. The last Nimitz Class carrier, a "transition" to the next class, the USS George H.W. Bush cost taxpayers $6.5 billion in 2007. The next class, the USS Gerald R Ford, is costing Taxpayers $14.5 billion in 2013.

Now this is justified by saying that the cost of the ship over the life of the ship will be lower, but that's the difference between large upfront investment and protacted pay-as-you-go investment. As anyone we borrows knows, paying a little over a long time even if it is more is what makes life affordable. This has had already a terrible effect. Aircraft Carrier construction used to be on a 4 year schedule. Now it's a 5 year schedule. There is even talk of shifting to a 7 year schedule now, all because for the price of one Ford class, taxpayers could buy two George H.W. Bushes.

Then there is the F-35... how does Lockheed Martin get off the hook for billions in cost over runs, then deliver the first fifty copies of the fighter with incomplete software, then go charging $15 billion to fix it, coming to about $3500 per line of code.

Or how about the Army's future combat system and it's plans to "network" it's soldiers with wearable computers. Ratheyon made billions in the last year of its contract, 2010 despite the fact that these wearable computers were effectively superseded a hundred times by a little thing called the iPhone and Android. Guess which of these doesn't have the one pound battery?

This extends to all types of contracting. NASA's James Webb Space telescope, being built by Northrop, was approved in 2003 at a cost of $2.5 billion. It was supposed to launch in 2011. It is currently slated to launch in 2018 for a price of $8.9 billion.

No one loses their job over these cost overruns. Contractors never foot the bill.

It's also pork too. The Army asked General Dynamics to shut down the M-1 tank production line for the first time in 30 years from 2013-2016 until the M1A3 could be finished and initial production created. They said they wouldn't need more than the 9000 M1A1 and M1A2s they have until they could be replaced with far lighter, more advanced M1A3s. Congress said no. Now the Army is getting main battle tanks it doesn't need.

What lies at the heart of this problem is something called the "Cost-Plus Contract", which is a very technical thing (wikipedia it), but the problem is that military contracting went from using these things in special cases for only things where quality mattered over quantity (i.e. the B-2 Stealth Bomber, or a KH-11 spy sattelite) to pretty much everything. Cost-Plus, compared fixed cost, does nothing to control cost overruns because unless the contract states otherwise, Taxpayers foot the bill.

Now we can waste a whole lot of hot air over the next few years and sweat over which systems or bases or deployments to pointlessly cut. Obama is even doing it in trying to find savings on cutting Nuclear Weapons by a third. The problem, a problem that beat even Secretary Gates who tried to fight it, is that Military contracting is pretty much in "Everything Must Go" go. The $8.9 billion space telescope should not exist. The $14.9 billion aircraft carrier should not exist. Lockheed Martin should be eviscerated for letting the F-35 double in price on a per-unit basis from $66 billion to $128 million (F-16 was $55 million).

Any discussion of cutting military spending that doesn't tackle how the US Military is being directed to PAY for the things it needs, and is getting things it doesn't even want, is a load of hot air.

Let me put it another way. Talk about the expensive two wars all you want. US Taxpayers are going to spend $1 trillion on the F-35 ALONE through 2030. We're financing something as expensive as a major regional war, just to buy a plane meant to replace the F-16. Talking about operations costs is silly when the problem is the cancer of how things are being paid for.

So yeah, if we can follow the example of every other country that does nationalized health care, we should be fine. If we half ass it and "compromise" we're going to get a half-assed system like the countries that do it wrong. But again, I forsee our government being terrible at negotiating lower prices and allowed itself to be overcharged.

[Rukentuts]

*snort!*

Oh yeah - nationalizing things REALLY helps to control the costs... Derp derp.

So we're basically going to ignore almost every First World country that pays less per capita than the United States? Okay.

[Felya]

So we're basically going to ignore almost every First World country that pays less per capita than the United States? Okay.

It's why you are not supposed to compare us to anyone.

[Grizzly Willy]

Speaking of countries that have cheap, quality healthcare, I present: India.

Granted, they have a population that more than triples that of the United States, and society is structured differently. It certainly is an interesting solution, and it seems to be paying off for them so far.

[Kujako]

We've moved on to health care costs? OK, let me throw this out there then. One reason our health care costs more then just about every other place is we have much tighter regulations regarding medical equipment and items. Even in Canada, they will reuse items between patients while here we have to have sterilized ISO certified disposables for each person. Not that this is always a bad thing, but it is still a contributing factor.

[Felya]

We've moved on to health care costs? OK, let me throw this out there then. One reason our health care costs more then just about every other place is we have much tighter regulations regarding medical equipment and items. Even in Canada, they will reuse items between patients while here we have to have sterilized ISO certified disposables for each person. Not that this is always a bad thing, but it is still a contributing factor.

Like what? What items should be reused to save costs?

[Eomar]

Wow there are so many delusional people on here.

[Skroe]

This thread is a living breathing picture of the problem. Seven posts up we have a guy who says "I think a 33% cut to defense would be sufficient". That's an arbitrary number. How about 25%? How about 46%?

It's entirely MEANINGLESS. A flat percentage number is a soundbite. All that will happen in the remaining two thirds is we'll get even more overcharged because contractors will seek to maximize their profit making in the sectors that remain. For example if you have Lockheed Martin equipping the Air Force with twelve wings worth of F-35s, and cut it down to 8 wings, Lockheed will make those 8 wings cost as much as the 12 wings. They will do this because the contracts are structured on deliverable systems first, unit cost second. The $15 billion taxpayers paid to Lockheed to fix their software s going to be paid to them regardless if we buy 2500 F-35s or 25 F-35s.

Want to cut the Pentagon? Audit the department of defense and reform GOVERNMENT contracting. NASA, which uses the same contractors as the Pentagon is facing exactly the same problem. Contractors low-bid contracts, fail to control costs, and then once so much has been invested, have the political support to prevent cancellation.

Lets talk James Webb Space telescope. Hubble's $8.9 billion successor, being built by Northrop. It's now known as the beast that ate Space Science Mission Directorate. As its costs exploded over the past five years, the number of missions NASA is funding through 2022 related to space science (that is, not Mars rovers, not manned and not Earth monitoring) is pretty much zero. There's nothing more than a few "Discovery" class missions that clock in at $500 million. This megaproject grew and grew and grew and just ate up MORE of ispace science's slice of the pie, while overall NASA"s budget was flat or shrunk depending on the year.

The same thing will happen to the Pentagon, so in 2025, we'll be paying the same amount, but have 7 carriers instead of 11.

Any cuts to government have to start with entitlements. After that the Pentagon. But "emotional" percentage based cuts to the pentagon dances around the problem. Pentagon Contracting (along with Tricare) is at the heart of the problem of defense expendiature growth. If people talk "cuts to the Pentagon" without talking about contracting reform, they just have a political interest in less carriers, less tanks and our foreign policy, not actually how American taxpayers are getting historically ripped off.

[Sky High]

i'm all for cutting spending. but guess what? the things i want to see cut, along with I hope a majority of americans want to see cuts to are: the military industrial complex, oil subsidies, corporate welfare. but does any washington politician want to touch any of that? fuck no.

[Prokne]

i'm all for cutting spending. but guess what? the things i want to see cut, along with I hope a majority of americans want to see cuts to are: the military industrial complex, oil subsidies, corporate welfare. but does any washington politician want to touch any of that? fuck no.

Yeah nothing that benefits the employers of lobbyists and the people who fund elections is going to get cut. And thats the stuff that probably should be cut. Cutting social programs is easy though since that money goes to normal people who only vote with ballots.

[Sky High]

Yeah nothing that benefits the employers of lobbyists and the people who fund elections is going to get cut. And thats the stuff that probably should be cut. Cutting social programs is easy though since that money goes to normal people who only vote with ballots.

money needs to get out of polotics, state level politicians know this, thats why they are going to start a convention to do so, while waving a big middle finger to washington.

[Prokne]

Nationalized stuff means that the government negotiates lower prices with health care providers and pharmaceuticals, at least that's the way it works in other countries. Although Lockheed Martin and other private contractors for public services have lately been able to go way over budget, so I kinda of question our government's ability to buy in bulk and negotiate lower prices at this point...

You can also prioritize preventative healthcare which makes people more healthy so that they dont have to use the expensive corrective medicine. Insurance companies work off of risk of having to use service at all so they would rather pay for part of your heart bypass than for you to go to a doctor on a regular basis so you know that your arteries are getting bad and to eat healthy to prevent a bigger problem. Since health problems come more often when people get old, and old people are on government Medicare, most of the risk is passed on to the government and they dont get to collect on those 65 years you are more healthy.

[Felya]

Since health problems come more often when people get old, and old people are on government Medicare, most of the risk is passed on to the government and they dont get to collect on those 65 years you are more healthy.

Yep, it's why preexisting conditions existed. It was a way to regulate their risk, because preexisting conditions is not a risk, but a loss.

The healthy pay for the sick through insurance, while Medicare picks up a major portion of high risk. Unlike Medicare, insurance have a large pool of young and healthy to cover the cost of the sick. It's why places like harritage like to use avarage cost of the patient, because they rely on people not realizing that Medicare covers higher risk folks than insurance does. Medicare patients are simply more expensive.