Sequestration is the dumbest thing that ever happened. It was intentionally dumb, it was designed to be so stupid that it couldn’t happen, because nobody would be so stupid as to let it happen. So, of course, it did happen. Then economic disaster happened.
That disaster had a cure, an opportunity to bend a disaster to a better outcome. We had the perfect opportunity to borrow and spend for a positive result. Money borrowed would never be so cheap, materials for infrastructure projects…concrete, steel, etc…would never be so cheap. Labor was standing idle, roads, bridges and rails are in perilous condition and must be fixed.
In modern economic terms, this was a no-brainer. We could have gotten the stuff we needed cheaper than it will ever be, and this shit has to be done. But it was Obama’s idea, therefore it must be resisted in favor of stupid.
I agree that government spending on certain things is good, especially in the long run, and should be increased, but what economic disaster happened after sequestration? Let’s not get carried away.
So I’ll tell you what… according to the USDA it costs about a quarter of a million dollars to raise a child born in 2013 to the age of 18 (Average cost of raising a child hits $245,000). So, if you’d like to have a say in the way your fellow Americans make reproductive decisions just pop half a million bucks into an escrow account (college costs around another quarter-million) in the potential child’s name. Sound good?
Remember when fretting and obsessing over the romantic, sexual (consenting, of course), or reproductive practices of anyone who was not you, your Significant Other, or your minor child was the exclusive domain of creepy losers destined for a life of social ostracism and involuntary virginity?
It would take a MUCH bigger hike to get the discretionary portion of the budget (relative to the economy) up to the levels of those big-spenders Reagan, Bush-41 or Bush-43. In fact, even with the hike Obama’s discretionary budget would still be the 2nd lowest (in relative terms) of any President since at least FDR. (Clinton’s 1998 budget, in the middle of a boom, was slighly lower.)
Sometimes you seem almost sentient! A problem is you can’t connect the dots when your back-to-back posts effectively contradict each other. It’s as though, when you want to criticize a Democrat, your mind goes blank or you pretend to be an imbecile instead of merely a moron.
Do you know why mandatory spending is called “mandatory”?
The budget for Social Security. which more-or-less pays for itself, can either be treated as independent of the Federal budget, or it can be amalgamated. Either approach is fine. What is NOT fine is to do what liars or fools like adaher do, to treat it whichever way supports their argument of the moment, sometimes switching frameworks in a single paragraph. They will ignore the effect of SocSec surpluses on non-government held debt when SocSec is running a surplus, but count its deficits when they occur.
It is the intelligent centrists who want to fund SocSec by raising the limit on taxable income. The liars want to “save” SocSec with their privatisation boondoggle.
Speaking of Medicare: Medicare obligations rose 9% from 2015 to 2016, and SocSec also rose, but fools like adaher blame this on Obama. And of course, a big reason for Medicare’s high cost is the gifts Bush-43 and company gave to Big Pharma.
So once again adaher and the other liars are blaiming the Democrats for their own thieving and incompetence.
When your entitlement spending is going way up, you don’t request $200 billion more in discretionary. Every year since the GOP has taken office, the President has asked for $200 billion or so more than he’s gotten. THat’s $1 trillion extra in debt we would have accumulated.
In any case, there’s already a bipartisan budget deal in place for the coming year. Which is about $200 billion below what the President wants. Might even be less, since Ryan is in the process of trying to cut a new deal with conservative Republicans for a smaller topline number.
You make it sound like: the craven evisceration of regulatory agencies; the removal of subsidies for modern energy so that China gets to be the technological leader in the 21st century; and degrading services like education for America’s poorest and most vulnerable citizens are good things. Oh wait …
Well, we can raise taxes on the middle class or cut entitlements or cut discretionary spending. The reluctant consensus seems to be discretionary spending.
How dare the president try to negotiate a budget when there’s already a deal in place!
Hooray for Paul Ryan trying to negotiate a budget when there’s already a deal in place!
Cut spending. (The military is bloated and wasteful right now. Just sayin’.)
Raise taxes. (On everyone, in a progressive fashion.)
Rely upon a moderate inflation rate to reduce the meaningful value of the debt. As time goes by, a “trillion dollars” will mean less than it used to.
Meanwhile, the ugliest part of the national debt is that interest payments are regressive. Interest on the debt is paid to the well-to-do, even though it is taken from us all. Interest payments transfer money “upward” and concentrate wealth among the wealthy. We need higher taxes to offset that, to help break up massive estates and holdings of the very wealthy.
Levels of taxes such as we had under Ronald Reagan would be an improvement. With some care, levels of taxes such as we had under Bill Clinton would be workable. We had a budget surplus when he was President.
Oh wait …