Frankly, I hope you are right. They can own the wrath of working-class conservatives who discover their paycheck is smaller next week.
Of course, for people like you it’s all about apportioning the blame. The good of the country doesn’t enter into the calculations.
You owe me a new irony-meter. You broke this one.
The Dems flatly refused to consider the chained CPI, a modification that would have impacted benefits by about 1%. A 1% reduction was beyond the pale. More important that we debate a meaningless tax-the-rich strategy.
Romney ran on pushing up the retirement age for SS, block granting Medicare to the states, providing a competitive option system, and capping Medicaid growth.
A minor nitpick, but I think you reversed Medicaid and Medicare here.
Oops. The point remains, I think.
The rich have most of the money in the country, and the proportion that they have has been growing. We either tax them more, much more or the country collapses. The rest of us can’t afford to carry them on our backs indefinitely.
It’s like talking to a wall. There aren’t enough rich people (who already pay most of the Federal taxes in this country). The math doesn’t work. If Dems want to tax their way out of this debt, then own that strategy and tax the middle class. The current approach is nonsense.
A middle class tax increase is going to happen regardless of what House Republicans do.
Certainly folks like Romney and others who have zero retirement worries and could, in fact, retire today, have no compunction about increasing the retirement age on others not so well off. Do YOU want to work until you’re ready for the grave? Quality of life deteriorates rapidly after about 60-65 for most people. Waiting until you’re 70 means you might get another 10-15 years if you’re lucky. But it’s not going to be the retirement you dreamed about.
Retiring on the Social Security payments? THAT is not the retirement you dreamed about at any age.
Chefguy, the point is this: It doesn’t matter if we really, really want something, or if the angels are on our side, or if the baby Jesus cries when we increase the retirement age. We can’t afford things the way they are, by a long shot. Period. We have to install reforms so that we can actually have these programs in place for the people who need them, and those reforms mean that some of the things that were promised (by both sides of the aisle) will not be possible. Keeping benefits as they are is simply not an option.
There are a few very rich people who pay very low income taxes, and that’s one thing, but since the top 5% (let’s call them “the rich”) pay about 60% of all income taxes, please don’t go on about you carrying them on your back!
No, you don’t understand, Dems are trying to keep the Republicans from tanking the economy once again. That is the goal, not debt reduction. Debt reduction should not even be on the table until the economy is back on track. You are crying about water damage to the firemen putting out the fire in your home.
But they will get blamed by the working-class conservative, their base. There will be fewer and fewer Republicans elected in future elections, and we can get back to pro-growth economic policies. History has shown liberal economics result in greater prosperity for more people; conservative economics creates misery for more people. The sun is setting on the conservative economic lie.
Where are the spending cuts in this “deal.” All I see are tax increases. Where are the entitlement reforms? What did the GOP get out of this except $450k instead of $250k? I thought the deal was that if we agreed to tax hikes that they be greatly offset by spending cuts. We have agreed to tax hikes with no promises at all of spending cuts. How is that a “deal”?
Cantor just came out against the Senate bill. That will make it very tough to pass.
I find that math works better when you use numbers that reflect reality instead of fantasy. Income taxes made up only 42% of federal revenues in 2010 (compared to 40% from payroll taxes) so obviously “the rich” don’t pay most of the federal taxes (unless you define the term into meaninglessness). Nor is the debt some huge pending issue. Despite the white hot focus on the issue it’s not even clear that there is a structural deficit problem. The large shortfall is due to declining revenue because the economy has stalled. Getting it moving again will eliminate all or most of the problem and with some modest revenue increases and we can start paying down the Reagan/Bush Jr legacy. There are long term entitlement issues but we are talking about a small fraction of GDP. The idea that we can’t tax the wealthy to cover this is laughable.
I think the deal is foolish. Not only did Obama fail to get debt ceiling fix but he made that fight next month much more likely to end badly by showing yet again that he is a pussy who can be counted on to walk back from every line he draws in the sand. Far better, IMO, to have kept his word about his negotiating position, gone over the “cliff”, pocket the tax increases on the wealthy, and fight to get back the entitlement cuts by painting the GOP as anti-middle class and talking about Jobs, Jobs, Jobs.
Of course they pay most of the taxes; they have most of the money. But they have most of the money because they’ve been impoverishing everyone else and shifting the tax burden to the rest of us.
Nonsense. Without any changes entitlements will still be less than 25% of GDP in 2050. And nearly all of the increase is from Medicare and Medicaid. Or to put it another way, we don’t have an entitlement problem we have a health care cost problem. Bring those in line with inflation and all this Sky If Falling! talk goes up in smoke.
This is true, as I acknowledged earlier.
This is not true.