Obama ‘Abruptly’ Walks Out of Debt Talks

[Scott_Lafrance]

blogs.abcnews.com/thenote/2011/07/the-gang-of-six-is-back-and-presents-a-bipartisan-deficit-reduction-plan.html?nwltr=politics_featureMore

Whatcha think?

I wonder if any of them bought off on Colburn’s 9 trillion dollar plan he put out yesterday.

 

[rlg94086]

No details yet.

See the other thread…there is an executive summary that gilliam posted. It’s certainly more detailed than anything that has come out of the whitehouse!

forums.catholic-questions.org/showthread.php?t=581729

 

[sub_rosa]

I notice the abject silence of the rebuttal voices since Monte posted that long line of government sourced data regarding debt/deficit trends and military spending of GDP. Facts are interesting things.

I don’t consider wkipedia, coyoteblog, american thinker and grandfather economic to be a long line of government sourced data. do you? I am not going to even read this propoganda so I won’t be respondinng. Does anyone care if I respond or not?

 

[qui_est_ce]

I don’t consider wkipedia, coyoteblog, american thinker and grandfather economic to be a long line of government sourced data. do you? I am not going to even read this propoganda so I won’t be respondinng. Does anyone care if I respond or not?

Did you check the *sources *of the charts posted on these websites?

What do you think of Argentina, Zimbabwe, and Greece examples?

What about the below?

estesbob:

The top 25% of earners in this country party pay 84% of all federal income taxes. . How much do you think they should pay in order to pay their fair share? . Are you willing to pay more income taxes given the fiscal problems this country is in?

Do you agree with this statement?

estesbob:

The only way to significantly increase revenues is to increase the number of people working. You don’t accomplish this by increasing the cost of doing business.

What about this statement?

stevegravy:

The reason to keep insisting on cutting spending is the revenues will not be getting better even if taxes are hiked.

 

[kimmielittle]

I don’t consider wkipedia, coyoteblog, american thinker and grandfather economic to be a long line of government sourced data. do you? I am not going to even read this propoganda so I won’t be respondinng. Does anyone care if I respond or not?

Then you won’t be able to argue / debate the issues, now will you? How can you if you don’t read the points they make?

Attacking the premise…is how debate works. Not attacking the source…that becomes an ad hominem.

 

[kimmielittle]

Did you check the *sources *of the charts posted on these websites?

What do you think of Argentina, Zimbabwe, and Greece examples?

What about the below? Do you agree with this statement?What about this statement?

Exactly!!!

 

[qui_est_ce]

Then you won’t be able to argue / debate the issues, now will you? How can you if you don’t read the points they make?

Attacking the premise…is how debate works. Not attacking the source…that becomes an ad hominem.

I learned that in Philosophy 101, aka logic.

 

[rlg94086]

I don’t consider wkipedia, coyoteblog, american thinker and grandfather economic to be a long line of government sourced data. do you? I am not going to even read this propoganda so I won’t be respondinng. Does anyone care if I respond or not?

Why start responding now?

 

[Monte_RCMS]

I don’t consider wkipedia, coyoteblog, american thinker and grandfather economic to be a long line of government sourced data. do you? I am not going to even read this propoganda so I won’t be respondinng. Does anyone care if I respond or not?

Well, what happens is that the Government Printing Office publishes the data … and individuals and various research organizations take the data and present the data as graphs.

The GPO doesn’t publish graphs.

It’s not propaganda … it’s just our Federal government’s raw data … presented as graphs.

Read the text of my posts.

And in one of the posts, I actually give you the GPO published data … you can plot the graph yourself.

In fact, since my computer skills are so poor and since my machine is so old and so slow, I have asked people to take the GPO data and please, Please, PLEASE plot the data onto a graph format.

If you’re not going to believe the GPO data, then whose data are you going to believe?

 

[Trader]

. The only way to significantly increase revenues is to increase the number of people working. You don’t accomplish this by increasing the cost of doing business.

There are so many ways to cut spending and increase revenues at the same time. Too bad the President’s party won’t even consider them. One is to stop extending unemployment benefits which help people reject new jobs they consider to be below them, while they steadily become less employable as their former skills diminish and become less relevant in a changed economy. It would reduce the outlays for benefits and start collecting taxes from people who were now working in those new jobs.

This is more than theoretical for me. At the bottom of the 1982 recession I lost my $26,000 job. One week later a competitor had to rescind an offer to hire me at the same salary because of a company wide hiring freeze. After 6 months I accepted another job in the same industry at $18,000 per year at a company I really did not like, but at least I had a job and I was able to help them improve their company. After one year working there I got another job better than my original job that also included a company car and expense account. If I had held out and waited for the great job, I would never even have heard about the new job, but even with an inferior job I was again connected with other people who could appreciate the skills I had.

 

[Monte_RCMS]

. The only way to significantly increase revenues is to increase the number of people working. You don’t accomplish this by increasing the cost of doing business.

Currently, the U.S. government’s Treasury Dept takes in about $5 Billion per day.

President Obama wants to spend … or IS spending … about $10 Billion per day.

You can do the long division.

The ONLY way to balance the budget without cutting spending by 50% … none of this $3 billion per year as the maximum spending cut “baloney” … which is you can do the numbers 1/500th of one percent or some such … is to increase tax revenues by 100% … in other words to double U.S. Treasury revenues from $5 Billion per day to $10 Billion per day.

So EVERY Federal tax would need to be doubled.

Not a small increase, but a doubling.

Run the numbers.

And that would only work for one year or even less than one year, because with that level of taxation, the economy would collapse.

The government now has an effective tax rate of around 40%, all things considered.

Doubling it would be an 80% tax rate.

A friend of mine lived through the Nazi occupation of France in World War II. The Nazi’s imposed, on France, a tax rate of 80%.

Just to provide a sense of comparative proportion.

 

[Monte_RCMS]

Some hands-on assistance from someone with better computer skills than me, would be appreciated.

You really need to look at the trends in Government spending … and you can tell that a lot of places that post numbers don’t really want you to know what the trend line really is on military spending of the United States.

Go to this Web page. It is by the Government Printing Office:

gpoaccess.gov/usbudget/fy10/pdf/hist.pdf

Visit Table 3.1

Just scroll down.

It shows from 1940 to 2014 spending … And at the BOTTOM, is National Defense spending as a percent of total Federal Government outlays.

Unfortunately, until someone here can find a graph that shows all that data in one graph, you [or someone here who has a better computer than I have] would need to manually write the data down and graph it and post the graph here.

But the current military spending as a percent of total U.S. outlays is about as low as it has ever been … except for Bill Clinton’s spending just before 9/11.

That’s the actual Federal government data.

Interesting stuff.

Could someone take the time to plot the data on their computer and post it here?

I can’t find that data plotted onto a graph by year anywhere and if someone would do it, they would be making an actual contribution to the world of research.

Thanks.

HERE IS THE FEDERAL GOVERNMENT DATA.

SOMEBODY PLEASE START POSTING IT PLOTTED ONTO A GRAPH FORMAT.

Don’t believe anyone.

Plot it yourself.

 

[ComputerGeek25]

There are so many ways to cut spending and increase revenues at the same time. Too bad the President’s party won’t even consider them. One is to stop extending unemployment benefits which help people reject new jobs they consider to be below them, while they steadily become less employable as their former skills diminish and become less relevant in a changed economy. It would reduce the outlays for benefits and start collecting taxes from people who were now working in those new jobs.

This is more than theoretical for me. At the bottom of the 1982 recession I lost my $26,000 job. One week later a competitor had to rescind an offer to hire me at the same salary because of a company wide hiring freeze. After 6 months I accepted another job in the same industry at $18,000 per year at a company I really did not like, but at least I had a job and I was able to help them improve their company. After one year working there I got another job better than my original job that also included a company car and expense account. If I had held out and waited for the great job, I would never even have heard about the new job, but even with an inferior job I was again connected with other people who could appreciate the skills I had.

Great story!

 

[kimmielittle]

HERE IS THE FEDERAL GOVERNMENT DATA.

SOMEBODY PLEASE START POSTING IT PLOTTED ONTO A GRAPH FORMAT.

Don’t believe anyone.

Plot it yourself.

Hiyas

You know I would help…But I don’t know how to plot a graph

 

[Scott_Lafrance]

Hiyas

You know I would help…But I don’t know how to plot a graph

I know how to plot a graph…But I don’t want to help.

 

[kimmielittle]

I know how to plot a graph…But I don’t want to help.

Mmmmmm I’m tellin’…Mom Scott’s being a meanie…

 

[Trader]

It is the responsibility of the House of Representatives [according to the Constitution] to prepare a budget and to approve it and to submit it to the Senate and to the President for approval.

The last budget was supposed to be prepared and approved by the House of Representatives when it was controlled by the Democrats.

THEY FAILED TO PREPARE AND APPROVE A BUDGET.

So, the President has just been spending money like the faucet was turned full on.

President Clinton saved all that money because he cut the U.S. military by around 50% in its operational units. Perhaps tomorrow I will post an essay here recounting the dozens of abdications of his responsibilities as Commander-In-Chief of the U.S. military.

As a result, the United States was unable to respond to enemy al Qaeda ] attacks and they blew up our embassies, barracks, and a warship. We did nothing to prevent the attacks or to hunt down the perpetrators.

There have been numerous accounts of how Mr. Clinton was offered Osama bin Ladin in handcuffs … but Mr. Clinton just outright refused.

Numerous books and memoirs have been written by frustrated law enforcement officials who were repeatedly refused permission to arrest al Qaeda operatives and their financial backers.

Senator Karl Levin (D - Michigan) personally held up the confirmation of President Bush’s intelligence advisors for many months. You can put a lot of the blame directly on Senator Levin, personally.

As a result of our shortage of resources and of our internal bungling … look up the “Gorelick Wall” which prevented sharing of intelligence information among U.S. agencies and the politically correctness that was enforced,… the U.S. was perceived as weak and ineffectual … and our enemies attacked again on September 11, 2001.

In Fiscal Year 2003, President George W. Bush ran a deficit of $377 billion. Roughly one billion per day. This was right after the 9/11 attacks, which occurred right at the end of FY 2001. The fiscal year begins October 1st.

In Fiscal Year 2004, President Bush ran a deficit of $412 Billion

In Fiscal Year 2005, President Bush ran a deficit of $318 Billion. [the deficit … shortfall between Federal government revenues and expenses … started to go down]

In Fiscal Year 2006, President Bush ran a deficit of $248 Billion. [continuing to go down]

By this time Congress was in the hands of the Democrats.

In Fiscal Year 2007, President Bush ran a deficit of $160 Billion.

In Fiscal Year 2008, President Bush ran a deficit of $458 … that was the year we had the financial melt down … Fannie & Freddie … everybody panicked. In hindsight, it looks more and more as if the “crisis” was cooked up … the “October Surprise” that delivered the election to Mr. Obama … although Senator McCain was an ineffectual candidate.

In Fiscal Year 2009, President Obama ran a deficit of $1,412 Billion. With a Democrat President, Senate and House.

In Fiscal Year 2010, President Obama ran a deficit of $1,293.

In the current Fiscal Year 2011, President Obama is running a deficit of $1,645. Which is just under $5 Billion per day. The Federal government takes in $5 Billion per day in taxes, on a normal basis. Social Security and Medicare are around $2 Billion together. Interest is around $1 Billion per day. So there should be PLENTY of money for all operations. Instead Mr. Obama currently, without all the hits from Obamacare, is spending about $10 Billion per day, versus a government tax revenue of $5 Billion which is what the system collects and has been collecting.

Obamacare is going to cost around $3 Billion per day above what is being spent now.

So, Mr. Obama is going to be spending $13 Billion per day and the tax system can only collect $5 Billion per day.

Take the deficit numbers and divide by 365 and see what the shortfall per day is.

During President Bush’s administration, unemployment was around 5%. The media said that meant the economy was in a free-fall depression. The worst. You can look it up. In fact, 5% unemployment is virtually full employment; very difficult to get the numbers lower than that owing to normal turnover.

During President Obama’s administration, unemployment has been over 9%. Using U6, that would be a real unemployment rate of close to 18% according to one of President Obama’s advisors (Zuckberberg). Which puts unemployment at chronic European levels … close to the Great Depression level.

Source is the Bipartisan Policy Center … which includes Alice Rivlin, so it may be more of a left of center policy center.

It is hard to be more of a Debbie Downer, but the truth is even worse than the figures you presented. The billions of TARP dollars to shore up the big banks went out on the Bush budget, but came back with interest and profits into the Obama “budget”, which officially was never passed as a budget. Also, only government is allowed to use accounting that does not disclose the actuarial shortfall from Social Security and Medicare. The unaccounted for shortfalls for those programs are accellerating. If government had to account for the actuarial shortfalls, the Clinton budget surplusses would actually be in deficit too, but less than what we have now. The federal tax revenues were swollen by capital gains from an unsustainable boom in tech stocks, and some of those gains were not even real, ie Worldcom, Enron, Health South, Bernie Madoff, and many other smaller scams.

 

[qui_est_ce]

It is hard to be more of a Debbie Downer, but the truth is even worse than the figures you presented. The billions of TARP dollars to shore up the big banks went out on the Bush budget, but came back with interest and profits into the Obama “budget”, which officially was never passed as a budget. ** Also, only government is allowed to use accounting that does not disclose the actuarial shortfall from Social Security and Medicare. The unaccounted for shortfalls for those programs are accellerating. If government had to account for the actuarial shortfalls,** the Clinton budget surplusses would actually be in deficit too, but less than what we have now. The federal tax revenues were swollen by capital gains from an unsustainable boom in tech stocks, and some of those gains were not even real, ie Worldcom, Enron, Health South, Bernie Madoff, and many other smaller scams.

Could you explain this in lay terms?

 

[Monte_RCMS]

It is hard to be more of a Debbie Downer, but the truth is even worse than the figures you presented. The billions of TARP dollars to shore up the big banks went out on the Bush budget, but came back with interest and profits into the Obama “budget”, which officially was never passed as a budget. Also, only government is allowed to use accounting that does not disclose the actuarial shortfall from Social Security and Medicare. The unaccounted for shortfalls for those programs are accellerating. If government had to account for the actuarial shortfalls, the Clinton budget surplusses would actually be in deficit too, but less than what we have now. The federal tax revenues were swollen by capital gains from an unsustainable boom in tech stocks, and some of those gains were not even real, ie Worldcom, Enron, Health South, Bernie Madoff, and many other smaller scams.

Boo!!!

But you’re right.

The “official” [whatever that means] Federal government debt is $14 Trillion or so.

But when you include all the off budget shenanigans … the actual total is up around $120 Trillion.

Kind of like, I have a mortgage of $14 Trillion. And that is what I have on my personal financial statement. But I didn’t mention that I have credit cards, loans from shady characters, pay-day loans, IOU’s to everybody on the block, multiple home equity loans, markers to professional gamblers, stock market margin “bets” / “investments” / speculations, crop loans, forward sales of crops I don’t actually have because of the drought, eight different Ponzi schemes, fifty race horses that can’t run, etc.

Remember the film/ play … “Springtime for Hitler”? Some crooks wrote a Broadway play and since they knew the 99% of all Broadway investors lose everything, they purposely sold the play ten times over. I forget the numbers. But they sold a bunch of people 100% of the play. And when the investors … the “angels”, as they call them … lost everything, they would go away. Leaving The Producers … the name of the play … with millions in fraudulent money. And to guarantee failure, they named their play, “Springtime for Hitler” … a guaranteed spectacular flop. Only one problem … the play was a smash success … and the producers had to pay the investors ten times what the profits were.

Duhhhhhh.

Same deal with the national debt. It’s actually ten times what the stated amount is.

No secret Obama “stash”.

Technically speaking, for providing false information, the Secretary of the Treasury should be punished under felony perjury.

Alas and alack, Debbie Downer, you are correct.

Probably you didn’t actually realize how actually correct you actually are.

Like … if you know what I mean. Like.

 

[Trader]

Boo!!!

But you’re right.

The “official” [whatever that means] Federal government debt is $14 Trillion or so.

But when you include all the off budget shenanigans … the actual total is up around $120 Trillion.

Kind of like, I have a mortgage of $14 Trillion. And that is what I have on my personal financial statement. But I didn’t mention that I have credit cards, loans from shady characters, pay-day loans, IOU’s to everybody on the block, multiple home equity loans, markers to professional gamblers, stock market margin “bets” / “investments” / speculations, crop loans, forward sales of crops I don’t actually have because of the drought, eight different Ponzi schemes, fifty race horses that can’t run, etc.

Remember the film/ play … “Springtime for Hitler”? Some crooks wrote a Broadway play and since they knew the 99% of all Broadway investors lose everything, they purposely sold the play ten times over. I forget the numbers. But they sold a bunch of people 100% of the play. And when the investors … the “angels”, as they call them … lost everything, they would go away. Leaving The Producers … the name of the play … with millions in fraudulent money. And to guarantee failure, they named their play, “Springtime for Hitler” … a guaranteed spectacular flop. Only one problem … the play was a smash success … and the producers had to pay the investors ten times what the profits were.

Duhhhhhh.

Same deal with the national debt. It’s actually ten times what the stated amount is.

No secret Obama “stash”.

Technically speaking, for providing false information, the Secretary of the Treasury should be punished under felony perjury.

Alas and alack, Debbie Downer, you are correct.

Probably you didn’t actually realize how actually correct you actually are.

Like … if you know what I mean. Like.

But wait, there’s more. Obamacare so far is just a lot of tax increases. It has not provided health care for anyone yet, so it looks like a deficit reducing plan for this year. Once the benefits have to be paid and and Obama is out of office, the budget deficit explodes again and we will have to tax all the immigrants from Greece, Portugal and Ireland, unless Obamacare is repealed by Congress or found unconstitutional by the Supreme Court. If Obamacare succeeds in its not so secret plan to drive private insurance companies out of business, the federal government will be able to absorb the entire health insurance industry.

That is exactly what happened with Medicare. No private companies were able to compete with the heavily subsidized plan. Private companies now only offer Medigap coverage because their state regulators could not allow them to compete with Medicare. Pricing at Medicare levels would have made them all insolvent. Medicare gets to pretend it is solvent because they assume tax increases and borrowing can grow forever.