No, intragovernmental debt is still debt owed to someone. Why are you trying to differentiate between public and intragovernmental debt? TOTAL national debt increased. Your example is like saying you make 40K a year and borrow 5K from a friend. You spend 42K so you have a 3K surplus. Hooray! Don’t you see the absurdity of this situation.
Again, my point is that revenues exceeded outlays. In my example total gov’t revenues exceeded outlays while total debt still went up. We can debate whether or not that should “count” as a surplus afterwords, but do you agree that it is the case? If not, can you point out the flaw in my example?
Interesting:
“France, which has a far higher debt per capita ratio than the U.S., still enjoys a AAA rating.” (cite)
So why the US?
To answer for anyone who doesn’t read your link, France doesn’t have the Republicans trying to steer it towards disaster.
The AMT already excludes people below a certain income level. The AMT is, in essence, a “rich” tax.
So we’re back to the “tax the rich” thing? All right. Here’s a simple question for you. At what income level should the AMT kick in? And should it be adjusted for inflation (which it is currently not)? Do you seriously not realize that there simply aren’t enough rich people in the U.S. to sustain such a tax increase required to balance the Federal budget?
Medicare
Medicaid
SS
No, you don’t need to get rid of them completely, but their benefits need to be slashed or time-capped or something.
No they don’t. Medicare is more efficient than private insurance in every possible measure, from cost of overhead to reimbursement times, payment accuracy and use of technology (Humana & Cigna are still cutting checks – in 2011! Medicare has moved to electronic transfers).
Social Security has absolutely nothing whatsoever to do with debt or deficits, so why you think that needs to be cut is beyond my imagination.
And doing away with medical care for the poor and impoverished is just, well, sickening.
I don’t know if what you’re saying is true or not, but is that really the issue, though? I mean, lets assume it’s 100% and Medicare is more efficient than any private insurance. But the inefficiency in private insurance plans isn’t paid for by the government. It’s paid for by the people who have the insurance. So from the standpoint of the federal budget, the increased health care cost doesn’t matter.
In other words, if there was a procedure that cost $100 if Medicare covered it, and cost $120 if a private insurance company covered it, but the first was being paid for out of the budget and the second wasn’t, if I wanted to balance the budget, I’d get rid of the second and keep the first.
I really don’t get the mindset that argues for taking health care away from the ill, poor and elderly before taking more money from the wealthy. Why are rich people’s bank accounts more important than human lives?
Atrios: “Apparently we’re supposed to care about what some idiots at some corrupt organization think about anything.”
Why?
(ETA) You can say we should slash their benefits, but demonstrate to me that we need to, please.
As a nation, we can certainly afford the 6% of our GDP that would maintain Social Security indefinitely. And pretty much every other advanced nation can afford to provide health care for its citizenry; how come the Greatest Nation That Ever Was can’t?
The question that needs to be politically addressed is why we spend twice as much as everyone else in the world on health care without getting noticeably more out of the deal.
From the outside it looks more like the sentiments expressed in this post, and most of this thread, is the single largest problem. The USA is a divided house. The right is more concerned about blaming the left, and the left is more concerned about blaming the right, than either are about solving the problems of the nation. Bickering while Rome is burning. I don’t know where the article gets its numbers from either. France has a debt to GDP of about 85%, and a deficit in 2011 of about 5.7%, which with current initiatives will be reduced to 3-4% in 2013. The USA (IMF) has a debt to GDP of close to 100%, and a deficit at close to 10%, which Obama has promised to cut to only half by 2013. Also Germany has France’s back, or some of it. Nobody is standing with the USA. In any case, France should probably be downgraded too.
Oh, garbage, that’s standard right wing rhetoric. Trying to deflect blame for their actions by insisting there’s no difference between right and left, both sides are equally to blame, etc. No; overwhelmingly the problem is the Right. They aren’t merely more concerned about blaming the Left than they are about solving the problems; they aren’t interested in solving the problems at all. On the contrary, they are trying as hard as they can to make those problems worse. And pretending that they are well meaning, pretending that they have the slightest concern for the welfare of this country just makes it easier for them to drive the country off the economic cliff. Something they’ve just demonstrated their willingness to do.
AMT is not indexed to inflation so over time more and more people fall under it. You noted this yourself about what happens by 2035. What you are not taking into account is the CBO says revenue and expenditures will pretty much align by 2015 (it’ll race that way once the Bush tax cuts expire). As such it will not be a result of the AMT gathering in substantially more people under it to fix US deficit spending. Ending the Bush tax cuts will.
Further, as I mentioned, AMT could be easily modified to stop it from continuing to gather more people under it if congress wanted to (not saying they will or won’t, just saying they could).
Why are these “entitlements”? Ok, Medicaid is. Do you really want to, as Shayna mentioned, do away with medical care for the poor?
As for the other two, last I checked, I am paying for them. The government is not giving people a handout. It is giving them back money they paid in.
I grant the programs need modification because as they stand they are losing more than they are taking in. Social Security because the Baby Boomer population bubble is hitting and a shitty economy that does not see enough people with jobs paying into the system. Medicare because health costs are spiraling out of control far, far past the rate of inflation in the economy.
How about we fix the economy and get people back to work and then reign in absurd healthcare prices first rather than reducing benefits? How about making people who earn money via Capital Gains taxes (already substantially lower than the income tax) pay a percentage in FICA taxes? How about removing the cap in FICA taxes (or raising it)? These all seem better first steps than kicking grandma to the curb.
It may well be some modification to those programs will be needed anyway and I, personally, am not opposed to looking at doing that. Fix the real problems first though.
At least now we know where you’re coming from with the above comment - straight out of left field with no gloves.:rolleyes:
I think you’ve proved Rune’s point. He (she?) never said both sides were equally to blame. She (he?) said that bickering and finger-pointing was a large part of the problem. And you responded how? By ignoring the numbers and jumping up to make sure we blame the Republicans.
For the record, I don’t think you’re wrong about the Republicans. But realistically, how does blaming them solve our problems? Are you expecting the addlepates who vote for them to wake up and go, “oh, I get it now! Well, no more Tea Party for me, then”?
Even if we buy this, it completely misses the point. The concern is not how administratively effective we can distribute $450B every year. The concern is the $450B. How efficiently this is conducted–really, you think that’s the primary concern relative to the debt problem?
SS is currently unable to meet its obligations with current SS tax revenue:
As of 2011 it pays out more than it takes in. I’m going to keep it that simple, since this particular point invariably turns into an endless discussion of whether or not the SS Trust Fund holds “true” assets, what happens to mney put in the general fund, etc. Right now, we can’t pay out the currently due SS payments with the current SS tax revenue, and we need to fund the shortage with other sources, including the issuance of debt.
So we should just assume that since the angels are on our side, this will take care of itself?
40 cents of every dollar the Feds spend we have to borrow. Think about that. Doesn’t matter which party got us here–that’s where we’re at. About 2/3 of the Federal budget is for Medicare, Medicaid, SS benefits and defense. There is no solution to the debt crisis without addressing those expenditures. Hand-waving and hand-wringing will not get it done.
Actually, they may very well be doing just that. When was the last time you heard a Fox headline like “Tea Party rally draws one hundred million…”. Public opinion about them is decidedly negative. Lots of people would like to be part of a new, enthusiastic “grass roots” movement, damned few like being a joke. They had scheduled a whole bunch of conventions and conferences that have been canceled for lack of support.
Smart money, and mine as well, says they are toast.
Well, that’s great to hear, but dollars to doughnuts they’re still going to vote Republican and they’re still going to be bitterly opposed to a compromise with shudder Democrats.
Oh, sure, they’re the same 20% of the electorate they always were, the knuckle-walking right. Its simply that they are no more important than they were. Its a standard fantasy of the right that, really, deep down they are the majority, “America is a center-right nation” yadda-blah, yadda blah. The “Real” Americans, you know the drill.
The head of Std. and Poors was on CNN this morning. He said a big factor was the holding of the debt ceiling hostage. He mentioned that it was routinely raised in the past and now that has changed and bankers can’t trust it any more. He also mentioned that revenue was not included in the agreement ,nor were cuts as extreme as they expected.