User Tag List

+ Reply to Thread
Results 1 to 2 of 2

Thread: America’s Trillion-Dollar Bureaucracy

  1. #1
    Points: 665,270, Level: 100
    Level completed: 0%, Points required for next Level: 0
    Overall activity: 88.0%
    Achievements:
    SocialRecommendation Second ClassYour first GroupOverdrive50000 Experience PointsTagger First ClassVeteran
    Awards:
    Discussion Ender
    Chris's Avatar Senior Member
    Karma
    433316
    Join Date
    Feb 2012
    Posts
    197,552
    Points
    665,270
    Level
    100
    Thanks Given
    31,984
    Thanked 80,905x in 54,720 Posts
    Mentioned
    2011 Post(s)
    Tagged
    2 Thread(s)

    America’s Trillion-Dollar Bureaucracy

    Good grief! How can this be sustainable?

    America’s Trillion-Dollar Bureaucracy

    The Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) is America’s first $1 trillion bureaucracy. HHS will spend $1.1 trillion in 2016, which is one $1 million repeated one million times.

    You are paying for it, so you might want to know that:
    • The department spends more than $8,800 a year for every household in the United States.
    • It runs 528 different subsidy programs for state and local governments, businesses, and individuals.
    • The largest HHS subsidy program is Medicare at $589 billion in 2016, followed by Medicaid at $367 billion.
    • HHS has 73,000 employees.
    • Real, or inflation-adjusted, HHS spending has exploded ten-fold since 1970, as shown in the chart below.
    • At the 1965 signing ceremony for Medicare, President Lyndon Johnson said “No longer will young families see their own incomes, and their own hopes, eaten away simply because they are carrying out their deep moral obligations to their parents.” But since there is no Santa Claus, that is exactly what is happening today as government health spending is imposing huge debt burdens on young families.
    • HHS programs have huge fraud and abuse, which costs taxpayers tens of billions of dollars a year. The programs also distort the health care industry in serious ways because of their top-down structure and masses of regulations. The way to fix the mess is to slash federal spending and move toward a consumer-directed health care system.

    By the next president’s fourth budget, annual HHS spending will have grown another $300 billion or so to $1.4 trillion. That is another $300 billion the government will have to borrow from Wall Street, China, and other places that presidential candidates are abusing on the campaign trail. Along with exploding Social Security spending, rising HHS spending is not making America great again, but pushing us into a financial crisis. What are the candidates proposing to do about it?

    Tradition is not the worship of ashes, but the preservation of fire. ― Gustav Mahler

  2. #2
    Points: 39,654, Level: 48
    Level completed: 69%, Points required for next Level: 496
    Overall activity: 0.1%
    Achievements:
    VeteranTagger First Class25000 Experience PointsSocial
    waltky's Avatar Senior Member
    Karma
    5662
    Join Date
    Oct 2012
    Posts
    8,859
    Points
    39,654
    Level
    48
    Thanks Given
    2,515
    Thanked 2,140x in 1,616 Posts
    Mentioned
    46 Post(s)
    Tagged
    0 Thread(s)

    Angry

    Ayatollah in cahoots with Putin to overthrow the dollar...

    Khamenei to Putin: Let’s Ditch the Dollar and ‘Isolate the Americans’
    November 2, 2017 – Iran’s supreme leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei told Russian President Vladimir Putin Wednesday that their countries, both targeted by U.S. sanctions, should respond by ditching the U.S. dollar in trade transactions and use their national currencies instead.
    At a meeting with the Russian leader in Tehran, Khamenei said, “By ignoring the negative propaganda of the enemies, that seek to weaken relations between countries, we can nullify U.S. sanctions, using methods such as eliminating the dollar and replacing it with national currencies in transactions between two or more parties; thus, isolate the Americans.” Khamenei’s office, which quoted the supreme leader’s words to his visitor, did not say whether Putin responded to the comment. The Kremlin’s own readout of the meeting was brief, containing no details. For years critics have been calling for the U.S. dollar to be abandoned as the main global reserve currency, with Russia and China leading the charge, but support also from other countries hostile to the U.S., including Iran and Venezuela.


    In a message to the BRICS countries – Brazil, Russia, India, China and South Africa – meeting in China last September, Putin said his country shares its partners’ concerns about “the unfairness of the global financial and economic architecture, which does not give due regard to the growing weight of the emerging economies.” “We are ready to work together with our partners to promote international financial regulation reforms and to overcome the excessive domination of the limited number of reserve currencies,” he said, in a clear reference to the greenback. China, meanwhile, wants to persuade major oil suppliers to start pricing oil contracts in yuan rather than dollars, an announcement that caused a flurry of excitement in Russia and Venezuela.


    While the official Iranian report on the Khamenei-Putin meeting did not say whether Putin responded to the comment about using rubles and rials for trade rather than the U.S. dollar, he did, however, share his opinions about U.S. policy in Syria and towards Iran. Putin did not go as far as Khamenei – who claimed that the U.S.-led coalition “in support of terrorists” in Syria has been defeated – but he did criticize Washington’s approach to the conflict. “The United States wants to interfere in all matters of the world and the region,” Khamenei’s office quoted Putin as saying.


    MORE

    See also:


    Ayatollah Khamenei to Iranian Students: Don’t Forget U.S. Is the Main Enemy
    November 3, 2017 – Iran’s supreme leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei told a gathering of students Thursday that a path to a bright future requires them not to forget that the United States is their principal enemy.
    “The United States is truly the major malignant enemy,” Khamenei said, according to a speech posted on his official website. “I say this not based on prejudice or pessimism, but based on experience, correct analysis of situations, and observation of the realities within the field.” He advised the school and university students not to forget that the U.S. was the main enemy, adding, “This is the main condition to pursue a conducive path towards a bright future.” Khamenei said Iran’s enemies attempt to deviate the younger generation through “sex, drugs, [and] devious video games.”


    Despite that, he said, even millennials who weren’t alive to see the 1979 Islamic revolution or Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini still “follow the principles of the revolution with the same wisdom and persistence” as did the youth during the early years of the revolution. Khamenei said a recent remark by President Trump proved that the U.S. government is the enemy not just of the Iranian government, but the Iranian people. He quoted Trump as calling Iran “a nation of terrorists.” “These immature remarks prove that the Americans are not only the enemies of the Iranian government and its leadership, but they also reveal their hatred and hostility towards the Iranian nation, a nation that has bravely stood up to them,” he said.


    In fact, Trump on October 13 described Iran as “a terrorist nation like few others,” not as a “nation of terrorists.” The comment was in keeping with several previous administrations’ contention that Iran is the world’s leading sponsor of terrorism. In his speech, Khamenei said there were those who argue that Iran should “give in” a little to the U.S., in order for the U.S. animosity to ease. Accusing the U.S. of trying to wreck the nuclear deal, he declared that, “'Giving in to the U.S. would make them even bolder and more insolent. Resistance and persistence is the only way.” (An alternative translation of those words, on another official website, said, “Backing down against the Americans will make them pushy and brazen; therefore, the only way is confrontation and resistance.”)


    ‘US wants to control Iran’

+ Reply to Thread

Posting Permissions

  • You may not post new threads
  • You may not post replies
  • You may not post attachments
  • You may not edit your posts