The not particularly right-wing Lane Kenworthy writes:
From what we’ve seen the Obama administration is savvy enough not to directly raise taxes on the middle class, but there are stealthier ways to pluck that goose besides an income tax hike.
No, it wasn’t unsustainable. It IS retired debt. Your interpretation of what everyone else is saying is exactly wrong: we have never used the term “unsustained.” We’re all saying that “unsustainable” means that a person will not be able to retire the debt.
The $150 debt someone incurred would be unsustainable if, say, he lived in a poor country and his income was only $150 per year, and the interest on the loan made it such that there was (a) little chance the debt could be retired, and (b) servicing the debt substantially impacted other important financial matters.
The President spent $400,000 to fly to Denver to sign a trillion dollar spending bill that nobody read and he’s just now realizing it’s not monopoly money?
If only there were people in Washington who’d stood up and said we were spending too much money.
At that cost, if the President canceled 4.5 million trips to Denver, we’d be in a surplus!
It’s not the trips to Denver, but the signing of the trillion dollar spending bills when he gets there that is the problem…
Right - and before it’s retired, it’s sustainable (i.e. it has good prospects of being paid off).
But in post #41, you said “Your example of student loans being “sustainable” is the complete opposite of sustainable. If debt is being paid down, it is not being sustained.” - which certainly seems to conflate sustained (the final word you use) with sustainable (a word of mine that you quote).
Good - that’s exactly what I believe - which is why I feel that a student debt that stops increasing and starts being paid back after 4 years of college is accurately described as a sustainable debt.
I’ll note that Obama’s use of “unsustainable” matches mine - he’d talking about debt that will lead to increasingly severe long-term consequences (he’s certainly not talking about debt that is promptly repaid).
Then we appear to be in violent agreement, with the exception that debt that is being retired I would not categorize as debt being sustained.
I agree - and would add that such debt is not unsustainable (indeed, the fact that it was retired - provided this was not done by “rolling it over” - more or less proves it was sustainable).
I always understood the term “sustainable” as it related to money as “If we keep doing exactly what we are now, can we keep doing it forever?”
If yes, then it is sustainable
If no, then it is not.
That’s how I understand it, more or less.
Add the trip to Albuquerque to announce the debt is unsustainable, all his road trips to colleges, town hall meetings and vacations and his personal tab for Limo-1 would put a lot of people back to work.
Frankly, I’m amazed he found time to figure out he’s on the wrong track.
Here’s an idea, why doesn’t he stay in Washington long enough to bitch slap Pelosi into writing a spending bill people can read that isn’t wall to wall earmarks. It wouldn’t surprise me to see a future earmark for replacement AF-1’s because of metal fatigue.
Here’s another idea: earmarks are less than 1 percent of the budget. Your fixation on the government spending $400k on presidential travel and all the various pork projects does nothing – nothing – NOTHING to solving any substantive budget problems.
Your way of thinking about the budget is not unlike the morbidly obese man who orders a Diet Coke while wolfing down a triple Whopper with cheese and extra large fries.
He understands that, which is why he agreed not to raise taxes on the rich until the tax cut runs out next year. The trick will be to increase taxes after the economy starts improving strongly enough so that the tax increases won’t hurt. What he is doing is setting the debate so that when the tax increases are needed, and the Republicans start having a fit, he can say that they must be in favor of gigantic and continuing deficits.
The way to go is tax cuts and increased spending during recessions, and tax increases and naturally reduced spending (less need for unemployment, for instance) during prosperity. The Republican mantra of tax cuts during prosperity is why we’re in this mess, especially when combined with big spending increases.
Does the fact that whenever any so-called conservative gets into a position where they have to do something, not just write about it they turn into big government lovers tell you something about the how well your vision of conservatism works in the real world? Conservative politicians aren’t stupid (at least not all of them.) They know that if they tell their constituents that thanks to their principles they’ll vote against the new highway or military base in their district that they are not going to last long. Your hero Reagan raised taxes in California when he had to and raised taxes to save Social Security. Your conservatism works fine in a think tank but not so well in the real world.
While I agree with this strategy in principle, I don’t think it can be feasibly implemented by the Federal Government. Budget estimates for FY2010 are projecting a $1.17 Trillion deficit on spending of $3.55 Trillion. When the economy recovers, it’s assumed that tax receipts will rise, shrinking the yearly deficit to around $600 Billion or so. Through tax hikes and spending decreases, you somehow need to make up the shortfall and also run some kind of surplus on top of it so that you can pay down the accumulated debt from prior bust years.
In this $3.55 Trillion in spending, $2.18 Trillion of this is mandatory spending, and the spending rises over time. This leaves $1.37 Trillion in discretionary spending in which to try to find your “naturally reduced spending.” About half of this discretionary spending goes towards defense, leaving about $695 Billion in non-defense discretionary spending. How many billion can you reasonably expect to squeeze out of $695 Billion, even during good times? 10% maybe? 15%? On the tax hike side of things, receipts are projected to be about $2.38 Trillion in FY2010. How much of a tax increase do you need in future years (even taking into account receipt increases) just to raise a couple hundred billion and balance the budget, nevermind pay down debt?
Because it’s such a political challenge to slash programs outright (Obama found, what, $17 Billion to potentially cut?), it’s important to increase spending prudently in the recessionary environment, understanding you may be stuck with some of outlays year-after-year. Yes, you need stimulative spending and stimulative tax cuts during the bad years, but you have to set limits and accept that there will be additional suffering because of it. You can’t afford to continuously borrow dollar after dollar all in the name of temporarily propping up the economy. You certainly can’t afford to just toss around hundreds of billions in dollars in bailouts and subsidies. If you do so, you’ll wind up in a fiscal hole you cannot dig yourself out of.
That’s $30 Billion dollars (plus interest). If you don’t have the $100 for you and each of your siblings to cover it then just will the debt to your children.
The President just admitted the debt level is unsustainable and that’s before all his pie-in-the-sky programs have even been discussed. But if you want perspective, the President thinks bank executives shouldn’t make more than $500,000 but somehow it’s OK for him to wing out to a university for an honorary degree because:
A: We can print more money
b: He has nothing better to do
C: An honorary degree will make him smarter
D: It reduces the White house food budget because he feeds on an audience
I have to agree with Ravenman that Presidential travel costs seem like an odd thing to focus on. In recent decades, Presidents have always put in a fair bit of travel, and naturally it costs a fortune for them and their entourage to get places. Way back in 1990, the taxpayers dropped $1.5 million on “a five-day political and golf outing in the West” for the first President Bush (and that’s in 1990 dollars, natch: it would be way more expensive now). And Bush II’s many vacation days in Crawford and Kennebunkport also required a hefty chunk of change for transportation.
Are you trying to argue that Obama is spending significantly more on travel, or spending it more irresponsibly, than other Presidents in recent years? If so, do you have a cite for that? If not, why is it bothering you particularly in Obama’s case?
I never said I thought services could be substantially cut. Once in place, new programs are almost impossible to cut. That’s an argument for not implementing them in the first place.
Frankly, I think the U.S. is screwed. I don’t think there’s a will to cut a damned thing, and I think that if you fund the current round of spending with tax increases you will A) push the economy into a ‘double-dip’ recession, and B) once the deficit pressure is off, congress will simply find new ways to rack up more spending.
It will all come to a head when a fiscal disaster takes place. Either the U.S. will not be able to find buyers for all this debt, in which case you’ll see a rapidly rising inflationary spiral, or the government will simply run out of money, resulting in drastic, shocking reductions in services and entitlements. California is a possible model for the future of the entire country - Despite being nearly broke, it can’t find the will to cut even 1% of spending. This will continue until suddenly the state won’t be able to meet its obligations, pay government employees, and provide for services.
Americans have never experienced a sudden fiscal collapse like this, so they continue clamoring for more debt-financed services without end. But it can happen. It’s happened in numerous countries in the past. At some point, this craziness will be slapped down by reality. In the meantime, I fear it’s an unstoppable train on its way to a big wreck.
At this point, it’s almost impossible to balance the budget without cutting spending dramatically, or significantly raising taxes on the middle class. The rich don’t have enough money.
The cynic in me says that this was the plan all along. First, spend the money. Get people hooked on the services. Tell them it’s moral and good and will keep the economy from collapsing. Tell them it will pay for itself though a ‘multiplier’. Then, once the money is spent and you know it will never be taken back, then you suddenly become a fiscal conservative and raise taxes on everyone. This is less honest than just calling for a big tax hikes to pay for bigger government, but of course he would never have gotten the votes for that.
Look at the title of the thread. Today was the death of 2,000 car dealerships. It’s just another tick on the news channel.
We are going down the tubes and the response in this thread to a $400,000 trip (by the President) to sign a trillion dollar bill that adds to the unsustainability of our national debt is that it’s no big deal. He literally spent money we don’t have to make an unnecessary trip to sign a piece of paper. He made the announcement that our debt is unsustainable on another unnecessary trip. If he wants an honorary degree then they can mail it to him in a nice frame suitable for his office.
He made a trip to Columbus Ohio to highlight 25 new police officers that were created under the stimulus package. He could have stayed home and added a couple of more. He could have funded 10 officers in Denver and 10 officers in Albuquerque. Do you see a pattern to my feelings? Instead of all these town hall meetings to talk about the future and how he could stay home and do his job.
Sure, but you still seem to be obsessing over relatively trivial lost opportunities for penny-pinching. Hell, we’re spending something like $10 billion per month keeping our military in Iraq, for instance, and you think that the cost-saving measure Obama ought to be focusing on is trimming the White House travel budget?
For somebody who complained so vociferously about rhetorical grandstanding about “waste” in the case of the notorious AIG bonuses, you seem rather willing to indulge in the same practice yourself when the target happens to be one you dislike.