I’ve quoted only your tag line, but your entire post was little more than a negative personal commentary. Stick to arguing the debate points and leave comments about posters for The BBQ Pit.
[ /Moderating ]
It’s a silly idea, which means it will probably play very well with voters.
I understand the flaws in a BBA, but something has to be done. We’ve run a deficit for the past 42 years through good economies and bad (and yes, Clinton NEVER had a surplus). Congress and the President, no matter the party, have proven that they do not have the discipline to control spending.
Something has to be done to force them to control spending. Maybe modify the BBA so if you run a deficit X number of years, then you must run an $X surplus within so many years.
Maybe modify the BBA so that you run the surplus X number of years FIRST, then and only then maybe you can run an $X deficit AFTER within so many years. We have to make sure that a surplus will actually occur. Secondly, only AFTER running surpluses could you determine how big a deficit could be. Of course, in an ideal world, what our true goal should be, is that not only would a BBA require you to run surpluses first, but you also would pay off the entire federal debt first.
Why do you keep referring to it as a spending problem? A deficit is a mismatch between revenue and spending – why do you think you can blame the entire problem on one side of the equation?
I’ve never understood this complaint. Every single member of Congress, and every single President, has been elected by the American people. If they don’t do what you want, vote in somebody else!
There is exactly one reason politicians want a BBA - they want to be able to cut popular programs (Medicare in particular) without having to actually vote for cutting Medicare.
I think that this is an inherent flaw in representative democracy. Too many people will vote for the person who will promise them massive spending and lower taxes, even if it means putting it on the credit card.
Republicans want to make modest cuts to social programs: They are starving granny!
Dems want to have modest tax increases: They are socialists! They will stifle the economy and take more of YOUR money!
Forget about any serious progress towards a balanced budget. Even the modest steps are demagogued.
I’ve made the same point here several times.
Duh! That’s the whole point! You say that like it’s a bad thing.
I think that in a representative democracy it is a bad thing to have the representatives unable to represent the desires of the people. The answer to bad politicians is to elect better politicians, not to change the constitution to lock in a certain budgetary policy.
Would folks be OK with a BBA that mandated tax increases without having to vote on them? That’s the same idea, and would be just as effective at balancing the budget.
If we pass enough laws that establish limits like the BBA, then we won’t need Representatives at all. We could put the government on automatic pilot.
While most states do require a balanced budget, most also can do a form of deficit spending by issuing bonds.
An effective BBA would be:
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Revise federal accounting to included current account (salaries, etc.) and investment account (highways, aircraft carriers).
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Require all investment account spending to have a lifecycle and repayment (i.e. if a bridge is expected to last 30 years, the debt for it should be paid off in 30 years or less).
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Require each year’s budget to include current account spending in total and servicing of the debt from investment account.
At that point we would be running our government like we should run our family budgets. I’m living in a house for many years and I’m paying for it over time while I live there. If I’m still paying for the food I ate last year, that’s a warning sign.
The popular thing for some sides is to talk about the debt we are leaving for our children and grandchildren. How about talking about the assets we are leaving them: Interstate highway system - government buildings - national parks - established judicial system to address problems - etc.
Of course, it doesn’t fit a 10 second sound bite so it doesn’t have a chance.
Oh, don’t worry. This bit does…
…which is convenient, because now I can skip the rest of your post. Government and family budgets bear absolutely no relationship to one another, for reasons that most people find obvious.
Why can’t we just say “Cut every program 5%”? Just cut everything equally by the same percentage until needs are met? Remove superfluous bloat, etc?
Because government doesn’t work like that.
Congress passes legislation that mandates that X be done (or not done). It doesn’t pass legislation that mandates that Y be spent to do X.
You could cut spending bills by 5%, but you’d also have to reduce staffing, equipment, hours, facilities and so on commensurately. You’re talking about redrafting half of the federal legislation currently in effect.
Anyway, I wouldn’t want to be the one who tells the troops overseas that they’re all having their pay cut by 5%. I certainly wouldn’t want to be the one who has to do it knowing that my salary was also just cut by 5%.
As for “removing superfluous bloat”, do you not think people have tried?
So what’s the straight view on the debt ceiling/spending/economy?
What’s the “intelligent approach” to this? What are the big figures/evidence?
I’d consider myself very versed in things like science but woefully ignorant about government/economics. I’d love to get an intelligent outlook on this problem in the same way someone would teach me about quantum theory/evolution/abiogenesis/the Big Bang/cosmology if I were to ask about our universe.
I had always thought our problem right now was really more of a revenue issue. But then I don’t understand why we aren’t raising taxes. It’s true that the ideal solution will likely need a combination of tax increase and spending decrease, but where must it be done and to whom?
I’m also under the impression that supply-side economics are a farce.
Please fix me up if I am wrong so far.
It’s both a revenue and a spending issue.
The collapse of the economy would have put has at a deficit even if the tax rates were the same as in 2000. However, the Bush tax cuts have put us in a much bigger hole, and unlike TARP and the ARRA (Obama’s stimulus) the tax cuts cost us a trillion dollars every year, instead of just once.
Why exactly were the Bush Tax cuts so bad and what has been done about them from the Obama administration’s point?
And yeah, according to some site I just read, a huge chunk of the TARP money has been repaid already (much of it from the top banks, no doubt) – exception being FM/FM, where it’s not clear that money will ever get repaid.
How does the deal described by the OP even make any sense at all? “We’ll agree to raise the debt ceiling if in exchange you agree to set the debt ceiling to zero”? That’s not what I’d call a “compromise”.
And if they want a balanced budget so badly, why don’t they ever propose one?
It’s not that the Bush tax cuts in particular were bad (although I would argue, as Gore did, that they were unnecessarily large and skewed towards the upper-income brackets), it was that Bush combined those tax cuts (which were initially his response to the budget surplus, but then became necessary to grow the economy) with rather large spending increases (Medicare Part D, NCLB, and two wars).
Obama has done nothing about them to this point (in fact, he has cut taxes further). When the Bush tax cuts expired Obama attempted to get the Democrats to make the middle-class parts permanent and let the top two brackets expire. However, the GOP (and conservative Dems) balked and so we got a two-year extension on all of the cuts. They will now expire at the end of 2012 - which will almost certainly be a debating point during the 2012 election.
One interesting point about that date, IMO, is that if Obama is not re-elected he can basically just veto any legislation that would extend the cuts and make them all expire. The next Congress/President might get them back, but if the GOP doesn’t have a filibuster-proof majority I’m not sure that they will be able to.