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Thread: Sanders on the Fiscal Cliff

  1. #11
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    Mainecoons's Avatar Senior Member
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    Oh yeah, that one for sure.

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    @ CBO: America Faces "Fundamental" Budgetary Challenges That Will Require Big Changes
    The [new Congressional Budget Office (CBO)] report warns of “fundamental” challenges to the future budget, and repeatedly describes the nation’s current mix of spending levels and tax rates as “unsustainable.” The problem, in a word, is debt: Under our current policy trajectory, debt held by the public is set to his 90 percent of the economy in a decade and “continue to rise rapidly thereafter.” If that should happen, “the United States would quickly head into fiscal territory unfamiliar to it and most other developed nations.” In short: Congratulations to Congress and President Obama: You’ve just been elected to budgetary hell.

    ...Avoiding the worst won’t be easy. “Making policy changes that are large enough to shrink the debt relative to the size of the economy—or even to keep the debt from growing—will be a formidable task,” the report says. And transforming the entitlement system will almost certainly need to be part of the mix.

    Entitlements, especially Social Security and Medicare, are the biggest drivers of the debt. The CBO reports that it would be possible to leave them essentially unchanged—but “only by raising taxes substantially, relative to current policies, for a broad segment of the population.” Raising taxes on high earners, in other words, wouldn’t fix the problem. Raising tax revenues just a little wouldn’t fix it either: To close the gap with tax hikes would requiring raising tax revenues “significantly above their historical average as a percentage of GDP.”

    How big a tax hike are we talking about? Big. Very big....
    Sanders, like so many in our government, is plain out of touch.

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    Soaking the rich it bull$#@! pablum to the masses and anyone with half a brain knows it. The middle class is where the money is by sheer numbers. We're gonna pay til it hurts and then pay some more. And still, the spending will bloom. Entitlements are the bulk of the problem and wasteful spending on every damn thing imaginable is significant in the scheme of things to, because a million here and there and there and over there and.....it all adds up.

    Govt took our social security contributions and dumped it into the general fund. Then they spent it on everything imaginable and unimaginable. It's gone. It wasn't saved or invested for us. Austerity is coming and it's gonna be damned ugly.

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    Here comes the National Sales Tax...coupled with your normal tax. it is the only answer.



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    The fair and the unfair tax.

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    Government in America is consuming over 40 percent of the GNP and that doesn't include all the borrowing. No matter how you slice it, this is unsustainable. It simply diverts too much money from the efficient and productive to the inefficient and counterproductive.

    We are simply repeating history here. Time after time after time, government simply gets too big and costly and sinks the private economy that supports it. Like it or not, the only real solution here is to cut all government in America until it consumes maybe 25 percent at most. That is very generous considering that in 1960 we did just fine with government consuming less than 20 percent. In fact, we were wildly productive for decades.

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    Angry

    Granny says, "Dat's right - we so far gone we gonna have to take a bus to get back...

    Ron Paul: Already over fiscal cliff
    11/8/12 - Rep. Ron Paul (R-Texas) said Thursday that while President Barack Obama and Congressional leaders stake out their positions on a budget deal, the nation’s economy has already driven off the fiscal cliff.
    “We’re so far gone,” Paul said on Bloomberg Television. “We’re over the cliff. We cannot get enough people in Congress in the next 5-10 years who will do the wise things. We have to prepare for having already fallen off the fiscal cliff.”

    Paul, who did not run for reelection this year, said everyone is arguing about “what they’re going to protect” instead of focusing on cuts to the federal budget. “They’re just looking for the truth. They say well, all we need is a little compromise. Well, nobody expects that because they do not admit the truth, and the truth is that we are broke,” Paul said. How do you compromise? They only way you can compromise is if you agree on what to cut.”

    The Texas Republican also slammed President Barack Obama’s reelection for not changing Americans’ attitude about robust government spending. “That is why people were sort of surprised with these conditions that the president could get reelected,” he said. “That is a bad sign in that there are more on the receiving end. People do not want anything cut. They want all the bailouts to come. They want the Fed to keep printing money. They do not believe we have gone off the cliff or are close to going off the cliff.”

    Read more: http://www.politico.com/news/stories...#ixzz2Bm6ZzPER
    See also:

    CBO: Fiscal cliff will mean recession, rise in unemployment
    11/8/12 - The Congressional Budget Office offered a sobering assessment of the economic implications of plunging off the fiscal cliff Thursday, just as lawmakers prepare for a fight over taxes and spending.
    If Congress and the Obama administration allow scheduled tax increases and spending cuts to occur, the economy will shrink by 0.5 percent in 2013. The unemployment rate would soar to 9.1 percent — up from 7.9 percent today. Senate Finance Committee Chairman Max Baucus (D-Mont.) asked for the report and said the findings are another reminder of the need to find an alternative to the tax increases and spending cuts that make up the fiscal cliff. “The consequences of inaction will deliver a dramatic, short-term blow to the economy,” Baucus said in a statement. “We need to build a bridge over this fiscal cliff. We need to work together — Republicans and Democrats — on a solution that provides some certainty to American families and businesses, while also bringing down our deficit and debt.”

    The report largely echoes earlier CBO projections about the fiscal cliff’s impact. An aide for House Ways and Means Committee Chairman Dave Camp (R-Mich.) said the report “confirms that raising taxes on all taxpayers will result in fewer help wanted signs hanging in the windows of businesses across the country.” “Job creators agree and have made it clear that raising taxes will result in a weaker economy and fewer jobs for the millions of Americans struggling to find work,” the aide said. “They are depending on the administration to provide the certainty they need to invest, hire and plan for the future. Achieving that certainty begins with stopping all tax hikes and focusing on pro-growth tax reform. The House stands ready to work with the White House and Senate to achieve those goals.”

    The CBO said the outlook would be much more positive if Congress extended some or all of the expiring tax cuts and blocked the $109 billion in spending cuts slated next year for discretionary and mandatory programs. If Congress blocked the spending cuts and extended all of the expiring tax cuts — except for the payroll tax break — the economy would grow by 2.25 percent next year. Adding the payroll tax cut and an extension of unemployment benefits would nudge the growth closer to 3 percent. The report also demonstrates that extending all of the soon-to-end tax cuts would provide the biggest boost to the economy. Continuing the breaks for all taxpayers would boost GDP by 1.5 percent. An extension just for families making less than $250,000 and individuals earning less than $200,000 — the level that Democrats are seeking — would expand the economy by 1.25 percent.

    Read more: http://www.politico.com/news/stories...#ixzz2Bm8vM8LV
    Last edited by waltky; 11-09-2012 at 07:37 PM.

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    KC (11-09-2012)

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    Quote Originally Posted by waltky View Post
    Granny says, "Dat's right - we so far gone we gonna have to take a bus to get back...

    Ron Paul: Already over fiscal cliff
    11/8/12 - Rep. Ron Paul (R-Texas) said Thursday that while President Barack Obama and Congressional leaders stake out their positions on a budget deal, the nation’s economy has already driven off the fiscal cliff.
    More of Granny's homespun wisdom.

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    The First -- or Last -- Tytler Election opens with a familiar quote:

    It is said that just over 200 years ago, Professor Alexander Tytler wrote:
    A democracy cannot exist as a permanent form of government. It can only exist until the voters discover that they can vote themselves a generous gift from the public treasury. From that moment on, the majority always votes for the candidates promising the most benefits from the public treasury, with the result that a democracy always collapses over loose fiscal policy, always followed by dictatorship. The average age of the world's greatest civilizations has been 200 years …
    It then ties this to the campaigns and election:

    The tendency to turn elections into an auction of promises to be paid for from the public treasury has been growing steadily for a long time -- some would say at least since the birth of modern democracy in the late 18th century -- that is, since a little more than 200 years ago.

    The 2012 U.S. presidential election, however, might be said to be the first fought almost purely in accord with Tytler's predictions....
    It goes on to compare the US now to recent economic events in the EU and the aftermath of WWII. Then...

    This has been the first presidential election in which the successful candidate has appealed more or less exclusively to hedonism, ease, softness and entitlement. Plans for repaying, or even holding in check, the monstrous national debt were, relatively speaking, hardly raised or analyzed.
    And concludes:

    What I call the "Tytlerization" of American politics (like "Orwellian," a word its author would not have wanted his name hi-jacked for) has with this election become nearly total. Although conservatives should remember nothing in politics is irreversible, I cannot see that America is facing anything but economic catastrophe.

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