What's Causing The Deficit

[ballpeen]

@heckofajobbrownie said:

I'm just wondering if you realize you just proposed a system for Social Security that includes the same type of government mandate that you think is unconstututional in Obamacare.

"I agree, for a kid like you, there has to be a way to pay off the obligations and keep you out of it and placed in to a better system,....a forced 401K of sorts. Everybody should be forced to save for retirement....be it called SS or something else, but it has to be run privately."

Most Republicans don't realize this, and are completely unaware of this obvious contradiction. They supported Bush's Social Security reform, which included a government mandate to purchase a product, in this case private retirement plans, mutual funds, etc., and would have penalized you if you didn't.

So, when Bush proposes it and the mandate is to set aside some of your income to buy private retirement vehicles, that's fine. There's no outcry. Not masses screaming out how Bush is ending freedom and liberty. Quite the contrary. You think it's a good idea. Most Republicans did.

When Obama proposes a mandate to buy private health insurance, everyone on the right shits themselves and screams that it's unconstitutional.

It's almost like it's just a partisan response that really isn't about government mandates at all, but who is proposing them.

You are right in a sense, but my wording may have been misleading....let's call it encourage rather than mandate. Just as a employer matches dollars in a 401, the government will match dollars in their plan. At tax time, people get a credit, say .50 cents on the dollar up to $2000 a year....a credit that isn't taken off their tax bill....a refund that is placed in to their account. This is above and beyond any refund a person might now be getting.

On the insurance end, they are going way overboard and messing with everybody. How about this. How about the government set up a group plan with a few carriers for a basic. plan...cover the basics...and see how many uninsured people jump at it. We might find many who will jump at the chance.

The government signs these people up, then goes to a carrier and hands them 10 million new customers.

I think the number of uninsured would drop significantly.

[Chicopee John]

>>So, when Bush proposes it and the mandate is to set aside some of your income to buy private retirement vehicles, that's fine. There's no outcry. Not masses screaming out how Bush is ending freedom and liberty.>>

Maybe no outcry from this miniscure sample, Heck.

Don't fool yourself. There was a loud outcry about just about anything Bush did, short of taking a piss at 9:00AM on Sunday.

[Chicopee John]

@heckofajobbrownie said:

Here you go, my brother.

My head is still pounding, Heck. Not exactly bedtime reading.

[heckofajobbrownie]

@chicopee-john said:

>>So, when Bush proposes it and the mandate is to set aside some of your income to buy private retirement vehicles, that's fine. There's no outcry. Not masses screaming out how Bush is ending freedom and liberty.>>

Maybe no outcry from this miniscure sample, Heck.

Don't fool yourself. There was a loud outcry about just about anything Bush did, short of taking a piss at 9:00AM on Sunday.

It's not a minuscule sample at all. Name me one Republican who said Bush's Social Security plan was unconstitutional because it had a mandate to buy private retirement plans in it. I can't think of a single one. Yet there's no difference between mandating you buy private retirement plans and mandating that you buy private heath insurance plans.

This is pure partisan hypocrisy, including on this board. Not one person in here ever even mentioned the idea that Bush's Social Security might be unconstitutional. They were all for it. Which is fine.

I'm just asking for a little self-awareness.

[heckofajobbrownie]

@chicopee-john said:

My head is still pounding, Heck. Not exactly bedtime reading.

Ha. No, it's not.

[Chicopee John]

@heckofajobbrownie said:

It's not a minuscule sample at all. Name me one Republican who said Bush's Social Security plan was unconstitutional because it had a mandate to but private retirement plans in it. I can't think of a single one. Yet there's no difference between mandating you buy private retirement plans and mandating that you buy private heath insurance plans.

This is pure partisan hypocrisy, including on this board. Not one person in here ever even mentioned the idea that Bush's Social Security might be unconstitutional. They were all for it. Which is fine.

I'm just asking for a little self-awareness./quote]

Fair enough. I was talking about folks on this board.

I HATE the standard practice of defining whether a proposal is 'Right' or 'Wrong' based on the source of that proposal.

IMHO, a lot of this is natural outcome from the two party political system.

We are all hypocrites and select issues we want to be hypocritical about.

Plenty examples of, probably, every President going back to Continental Times.

[Westside Steve]

While we digress let me say it I was all for the social security plan.

I thought four percent was a little light actually.

And no shit.

We have to raise the retirement age and probably take some benefits as well as a means test.

I was talking with my doctor the other day about longer life for humans.

he said life span hadn't really changed only that we are keeping sick people alive longer.

Since there are going to be even less jobs for people who even want them we can't expect to hand everyone a living wage from 65 on as well as pay for 30 more years of expensive medical treatment.

Heck is right. We are not Greece .

Yet.

WSS

[Chicopee John]

>> Heck is right.>>

NOW I've heard everything.

[heckofajobbrownie]

I liked Bush's plan, too, in theory. I'm all for being able to harness the power of the market and giving Americans greater choice over the money they sock away. The problem is that, like always, he didn't want to pay for the plan, and it was very costly. He did this with everything.

Obviously, when you start allowing people under a certain age to take their payroll tax money out of the system and put it in a private account, suddenly there's hundreds and hundreds of millions of dollars that goes missing from the fund that pays the benefits for current retirees. It's a huge hole.

If you've read any of the histories of the Bush administration, when he came into office he was told by his Treasury Secretary, Paul O'Neill, who helped design the program, that since there was all this surplus money in the budget now was the time to roll with the Social Security reform he wanted. He told him you could use all of that money to plug the hole you're going to create by switching to private accounts, or you could do tax cuts, but you couldn't do both. It's too expensive.

Of course, Bush did tax cuts, then another round of tax cuts, then prescription drugs, two wars, and then wanted to try Social Security in the second term. He never proposed a way to pay for any of this.

This was the other main reason he was a lousy president.

[heckofajobbrownie]

As for Greece, their problems have far more to do with being in the Eurozone than with spending. David Frum had a really great post on the subject yesterday. Short version: Mitt knows better, but wants the base to believe he doesn't.

"Gov. Romney is getting much better at inviting hard-core conservatives to believe that he agrees with them, even when he obviously does not.

For example:

It's an article of faith among U.S. conservatives that the countries of southern Europe are in trouble—not because of the Euro currency—but because of excess public spending. It's an article of faith that the U.S. is in imminent danger of following.

On the other hand, the professional economists from whom Mitt Romney gets his advice believe neither of these things. And it's a fair bet that Romney inwardly agrees with his economists more than his base.

Now carefully read this extract from Romney's interview yesterday with Jim Geraghty of NRO:

"There is also a recognition in this country that what Greece and Italy and Spain are facing could conceivably be brought home to us. The recognition that you reach a point where the world decides that your obligations are perhaps not going to be met, or that they will be inflated away -- in which case people will ask for higher interest rates, and you'll find yourself in a doom loop."

That vivid phrase, "doom loop" gets the headline—and nicely obscures the way in which Romney has otherwise popped open the escape hatches from conservative doctrine.

"There is also a recognition in this country" nicely elides the question whether Romney himself believes in any parallel between America's situation and those of Greece, Spain, and Italy.

The "conceivably" is an elegant extra-distancing touch. A lot of things are conceivable, including many things that are impossible.

Can he keep it up? He may not have to. The conservative base's will to believe is a tenacious thing, and right now Mitt Romney is its primary beneficiary."

[Chicopee John]

>>I was talking with my doctor the other day about longer life for humans. He said life span hadn't really changed only that we are keeping sick people alive longer.>>

Maybe you should find another Doctor, Steve. Dr. Demento isn't really an MD, you know.

Re-read what you said he said.

[We need Tom Tupa]

I stop by to find some new ways to disparage the Weeden pick, and you suck me in with this topic. Well played, heck.

I'm sure it wont surprise you that I have several problems with this thread. Here's a few:

1) "Policies from Bush administration projected to be main source of future deficits"

Oh dear. This is painful on multiple levels.

The first and most obvious is that there is no good reason to stack these specific policies on top of all the others when making the chart. Couldn't we just as easily fill the chart with Social Security or Medicare? We could easily swap out the wars for ACA. The "main source" of future deficits should be the "main" expenses of the budget, no? The graph doesnt depict that.

The second is that all of the policies listed are Obama policies too. The "Bush tax cuts" expired in 2010. Then they were passed again, after Bush left office, and signed by Obama. And Obama has campaigned on keeping 75% of them permanently. How are those still Bush's fault in 2019?

The third is the game of what the budget would look like "but for" the economic downturn. I understand the argument that Presidents shouldn't be blamed for deficits attributable to reduced revenues during a recession. But that graph blames at least a quarter of the 2019 deficit on the economic downturn. That doesnt work. Why not throw in the lost revenue from the downturn of the late 80's? And I don't recall any democrats adjusting Clinton's fiscal performance to take away the increased revenues caused by the tech boom.

Applicable to each of these points is that at some point the president has to accountable for the budget. It can't all be his predecessor's fault forever. He has to deal with the cards as they were dealt. If he can't or chooses not to, he shouldn't be let off the hook. Bush isn't president anymore. By the time that chart ends, there will be voters who weren't even alive to see his first presidential campaign.

2) As I recall it, Bush never proposed a SS mandate. He proposed that people be given the option to redirect a portion of their SS taxes into a private account. Your "gotcha" doesnt seem to be based on reality.

3)

As for Greece, their problems have far more to do with being in the Eurozone than with spending.

Really, "far more"? I'm not sure I see that you can even get to "more" based on the facts. Greece would have more options if it hadnt adopted the Euro, but they would all be ugly brutal options. You'll notice that the majority of Europe is doing MUCH better than Spain or Greece, despite their adoption of the Euro. That's because the root cause of the problems in those countries is fiscal. The solution would be clearer without the Euro, but they would still be in much worse shape than the rest of the continent, and in fact wouldve hit rock bottom much sooner - just ask Argentina.

Now if you have any good insults for Weeden, I'm all ears.

[heckofajobbrownie]

@we-need-tom-tupa said:

I stop by to find some new ways to disparage the Weeden pick, and you suck me in with this topic. Well played, heck.

I'm sure it wont surprise you that I have several problems with this thread. Here's a few:

1) "Policies from Bush administration projected to be main source of future deficits"

Oh dear. This is painful on multiple levels.

The first and most obvious is that there is no good reason to stack these specific policies on top of all the others when making the chart. Couldn't we just as easily fill the chart with Social Security or Medicare? We could easily swap out the wars for ACA. The "main source" of future deficits should be the "main" expenses of the budget, no? The graph doesnt depict that.

The second is that all of the policies listed are Obama policies too. The "Bush tax cuts" expired in 2010. Then they were passed again, after Bush left office, and signed by Obama. And Obama has campaigned on keeping 75% of them permanently. How are those still Bush's fault in 2019?

The third is the game of what the budget would look like "but for" the economic downturn. I understand the argument that Presidents shouldn't be blamed for deficits attributable to reduced revenues during a recession. But that graph blames at least a quarter of the 2019 deficit on the economic downturn. That doesnt work. Why not throw in the lost revenue from the downturn of the late 80's? And I don't recall any democrats adjusting Clinton's fiscal performance to take away the increased revenues caused by the tech boom.

Applicable to each of these points is that at some point the president has to accountable for the budget. It can't all be his predecessor's fault forever. He has to deal with the cards as they were dealt. If he can't or chooses not to, he shouldn't be let off the hook. Bush isn't president anymore. By the time that chart ends, there will be voters who weren't even alive to see his first presidential campaign.

2) As I recall it, Bush never proposed a SS mandate. He proposed that people be given the option to redirect a portion of their SS taxes into a private account. Your "gotcha" doesnt seem to be based on reality.

3)

Really, "far more"? I'm not sure I see that you can even get to "more" based on the facts. Greece would have more options if it hadnt adopted the Euro, but they would all be ugly brutal options. You'll notice that the majority of Europe is doing MUCH better than Spain or Greece, despite their adoption of the Euro. That's because the root cause of the problems in those countries is fiscal. The solution would be clearer without the Euro, but they would still be in much worse shape than the rest of the continent, and in fact wouldve hit rock bottom much sooner - just ask Argentina.

Now if you have any good insults for Weeden, I'm all ears.

Yay!! Tupa! I thought you were dead.

Okay, let's go.

First of all, I don't love this graph either. I don't know why you make a graph of future deficits without including entitlement spending or defense spending. The point of the graph is to show the nuts that "Obama spending" is not the main driver of the long term deficit. And it isn't, as I'm sure you know. If you want to say that the ACA is a driver of future deficits you'd have to contradict the CBO, or point out how he recently pulled some of the cost savings to not scare elderly voters before an election. But to say that the ACA is going to cost the same as the wars so you might as well swap them out doesn't hold up so well. Clearly there are cost savings and taxes associated with the ACA, whereas as no savings or revenue were ever dedicated to pay for the wars. That was just borrowing, plain and simple.

As for your second point, I just had this argument in the office with people who trotted out a similar graph from the NYT. In my mind, Obama is on the hook for the Bush tax cuts from the moment he re-ups them in 2010. It doesn't matter so much that they're not what he wanted, especially when you consider that in his perfect world he still keeps most of them. He's also on the hook for Afghanistan spending from the moment he walks in the door, and especially from the moment he escalates.

As for counting the recession's effects in the out years, I don't see what the problem with that is, other than that no one really knows what the economy will be like in 2018.

As for Greece, we're talking around the same thing. Swap out "far more" for "more" or whatever you like. I'm talking about their problems being the severity of the crisis. Having them devalue and hit rock bottom sooner certainly would have been preferable to whatever is coming next. Lord knows what that is.

More later.

[We need Tom Tupa]

CBO's numbers and CBO's opinion of ACA have been two different things. And I'm not a big fan of counting ACA's net rather than gross impact, given the insane amount of budget gaming that went on. But that's an argument for another time, i guess.

Here's the problem with counting the effects of the recession in 2019: at that point it isnt some unexpected economic downturn that we could not have planned for. More than a decade after Lehman, politicians cant use a bad economy as an excuse anymore. If we are expecting the economy to be that slow, we have to deal with it. It's not a surprise, it's the new normal.

On Greece, yes, again, the Euro is part of the problem. But Romney is absolutely right that they had and are having a fiscal crisis. His economists believe that too, regardless of what Frum says, because all economists believe that. The solution is harder to come by because of the Eurozone, but the problem is real - fiscal meltdowns aren't a myth. The irony is that democrats are quick to realize this when they are warning of the doom Boehner is bringing with his debt ceiling showdown, but they think it's fiction when Romney is warning that it is something we need to be aware of.

[heckofajobbrownie]

I have don't have a problem with most of that, but I think what Frum's post is more about is the relentless and careful duplicity of Mitt Romney. The way he forms a sentence is enough to make the sleaziest mall lawyer take pride.

And yet we still agree that Romney was by far the best choice of the bunch. I would have prefer Daniels to Romney as well, though that was never in the cards.

As for the recession, I think we'd probably agree that while this may not be the new normal, it's certainly where we're going to be for a while, and no matter who is elected. You can't paper over our problems anymore.

Okay, what's next? You going to stick around for a while?

How about your belief that gay people should sit on their hands and not act on their attraction, or their love for another person? Have your libertarian leanings weaned you off that awkwardly squared circle yet?

[calfoxwc]

after all of Heck's spin while he tests bs that might get more votes for the eggsucking, slimesnorting, racist fascist ObaMao...

This graph tells more of what we need to know.

[calfoxwc]

Say, here's some great info that Heck won't want you to read.

Bad for getting Obamao more votes, you know.

http://blog.heritage.org/2009/03/24/bush-deficit-vs-obama-deficit-in-pictures/

http://dailybail.com/home/comparing-federal-deficits-bush-vs-obama.html

http://www.cbsnews.com/8301-503544_162-57400369-503544/national-debt-has-increased-more-under-obama-than-under-bush/

[Lady Z]

Thanks for the links CalFox.

So who is paying Brownie to blog for Prez Peace Price?

[MLD Woody]

@calfoxwc said:

after all of Heck's spin while he tests bs that might get more votes for the eggsucking, slimesnorting, racist fascist ObaMao...

This graph tells more of what we need to know.

What kind of graph has a y-axis scale that alternates between 2 and 3, lol

[Westside Steve]

@mld-woody said:

What kind of graph has a y-axis scale that alternates between 2 and 3, lol

And that bothers you because.....?

WSS