I’d look at every single one of those discretionary items. Those are all big increases relative to the size of the respective departments. The Dept of Education, for example, has seen major funding increases all through the Bush years as well as the Obama years. I think a National Infrastructure Bank is just a slush fund for political favoritism and crony capitalism, and does more harm than good. State has also seen large previous budget increases, as has HUD. I’d CUT their budgets, not increase them.
The DoD increases need to be seriously evaluated, as DoD is already operating well above its historical funding levels, and the Iraq and Afghanistan war costs are declining.
And while you didn’t list the other departments who got increases of less than 1 billion, how much cumulative money is that?
Also, you’re comparing this against 2009, which again had some large increases baked into it. How about we compare the funding levels of the various government agencies against the 2008 budget instead?
I’d think I agree, with a caveat for the infrastructure bank = slush fund claim - I’d have to research that more. I wouldn’t be shocked if it was.
Obvious to everybody except the GOP candidate for President, who actually wants to increase it to 4% of GDP (as a hard floor on the DoD budget).
Well, it depends on how far into the weeds you want to go - the ones I listed capture most of it, to be honest. A few departments (Justice, GSA, HHS) actually had spending cuts.
I did 2009 because the claim was that there should have been a drop after TARP and the other bailout programs dropped off. That didn’t happen, of course, because of more stimulative efforts (primarily shown under the Welfare/Unemployment line and on the receipts side - big tax cuts). Comparing to 2008 would be helpful, but I just don’t have time to go into those details right now.
Obviously since the 2010 budget the basic levels have only been changed by various debt-reduction and tax-cut-extension deals. A comprehensive budget has not been passed since then.
Exactly. If you’re with the social good, that’s good. If you’re against it, you’re the enemy. Are you really here to argue that the wishes of the one outweigh the needs of the many? Or that being anti-social is “good”?
:rolleyes: The Republican plan to reduce the deficit has for years been as follows:
Grow the economy to such a degree that the debt, while never paid down, is a smaller part of the economy; and the deficit is also smaller relative to the economy. This is what we did with the WWII debt.
Sunset tax cuts so that they rise again when Democrats are in power. The deficit shrinks, but the Democrats can be blamed for raising taxes.
In practice, we can add three steps:
3) Forget (1). Just cut taxes to the rich. Blame your own poor employees for being underpaid; blame the self-employed for being unable to find customers in a demand crisis. Shrink the economy, grow the deficit, and pretend it’s somebody else’s fault.
4) Forget (2). Never raise taxes, pretend that (1) is still working.
5) Vote for a Democratic president and a GOP congress so Congress can run the country into the ground and blame the poor sucker in the White House, because destructive politics is more fun than responsible statesmanship.
Note the weaselly use of “firm.” Let me clarify your post:
“Democrats’ only FIRM offer is to raise taxes on the wealthy, solving a mere 10% of the deficit over the next ten years.”
Suddenly that changes everything, doesn’t it? We could rather easily tax an additional 11% of GDP and run surpluses, while redistributing wealth to the depressed sectors of the country. And honestly, it wouldn’t hurt the pocketbooks of the 1% all that much. For some reason, Democratic pols don’t say this. I don’t really know why.
Hey, maybe we’ll start paying the same amount in tax when we share the same amount of profits! Good grief, man, do you actually believe in this flat tax jive?
Have you read Krugman’s indictment of the Ryan budget? Because that’s pretty much Ryan’s problem. He won’t specify cuts. At all. It’s just cut taxes and…nothing, really.
This is just ditto-head nonsense. Before the Great Bush Recession when I had a nice corporate job and was making good money, I was in fact happy to pay my share in taxes…and since I was single with few deductions, that share was quite healthy. Nonetheless, I not only did not complain but I actually was against the policies of showering tax cuts on people like myself because I didn’t feel like I need them.
However, now I find that I was paying federal taxes at a considerably higher rate than the standard-bearer for the Republican Party (especially when you consider ALL federal taxes, including payroll taxes) and that said standard-bearer is so morally-challenged that he has no plans to reform the tax system to make people like himself pay more but instead wants to give himself and his friends more tax breaks (although perhaps not quite as many as Paul Ryan wants to give them).
You have a lot of God-damn nerve telling us what Democrats do when you have nominated someone as morally corrupt as that!!!
Yeah…People like Omg a Black Conservative are easy prey for people like Rush Limbaugh and Sean Hannity since they seem unable to comprehend how income tax share convolves both income tax rate AND income share, and that their “proof” that the tax system is getting more progressive is just proof that income inequality is drastically increasing! Such is the intellectual state of the conservative movement that relies on mathematical ignorance to sell people lies.
How safe is Ryan’s seat? It would probally kill his political career if he lost both elections (& it’ be a bizarre historical footnote if he lost his seat while Romney won).
Don’t be silly, how would a reporter even be able to get in a situtation to ask such a question in the first place.
Oh really? And what was the MOE for that particular average of several polls? What formula did you use to calculate it?
IOW, when you say, “And that’s true,” exactly how do you know this, or are you just making it up? Is it something you’re saying IS true because you think it SHOULD be true?
Again, awaiting proof that this is “absolutely true,” for at least only moderately elastic values of ‘almost.’
My guess is that you have no idea what you’re talking about.
I disagree: it absolutely WAS partisan.
The Village Broderists notwithstanding, when two sides are behaving quite differently and you do your best to equate them anyway, that’s a partisan argument.
And that’s why I think it’s important that this sort of bullshit be confronted.
And you can’t even claim to be some sort of Broderist evenhanded centrist.
[QUOTE]
Quite aptly. You’ve never noticed the way the conservative movement maintains GOP groupthink? There’s nothing like that on the liberal side; we don’t have anywhere near that much power on the far left, and if we did, I hope we’d not use it like the right wing uses theirs. So there’s quite a spread of opinions within the progressive movement and the Democratic Party, and a much, much narrower range of opinions within the conservative movement and the GOP.
I hate to go over first-grade stuff here, but apparently it’s necessary.
Bolding mine. You’re joking, right?
I don’t disagree with it. It’s just not what you said. You didn’t say “A month ago, this race was almost within the margin of error. It’s changed since, but it’s a temporary blip IMHO.”
You only changed now because you were called on it.
But hell, if you want to fool yourself about the race being closer than it really is, be my guest. Maybe you can successfully spread the word, and be this season’s Arthur Fremantle.
If a reporter gets to ask a question at all, the reporter can ask that question. Why would it take some kind of miracle? The real miracle would be Romney answering in the way I want him to.
Absolutely. There are many, many ways to improve our society, a lot of things that need to be worked on to make progress, and the problem for the progressives is setting priorities. But there is no narrower range of opinion possible than No, or No and Go Back, which is all the regressives who control the GOP and enforce their wishes on its members stand for.
Remember, you’re addressing someone who thinks he can lecture the people of a foreign country about what they should *and do *think based on reading a few blogs. Maybe actually visiting the place and actually talking with a range of people would do him some good.
First off, what the rest of the board does is irrelevant to me. I never disparage anyone as a group, or individually, unless I have evidence to back it up. How do I disprove what “they” do, when you won’t say precisely who “they” are?
Note that libertarians always say that everything will be solved by the free market and private charity. So if you believe what Sam Stone says, does that mean that if/when private charity fails to pick up the slack left behind by gutting government services, they can just blame liberals for “not contributing enough”?
My goodness!
This pick could actually affect the outcome of the ongoing House and Senate races?
I thought Ms. Palin was the nadir of choices. Is Mr. Ryan actually a worse candidate for VP?
Yes. Palin didn’t really have any kind of record for the Obama campaign to drag out of the closet and wave around in front of the cameras, other than just being goofy and corrupt. Ryan has that in spades, in the form of his legislative record. His sponsored bills, his votes, seven congressional campaigns to sift through for stuff…it’s not going to be pretty.
And every single House Republican (with the exception of FOUR) and NO House Democrats, are tied by vote to the granny-starving Ryan budget.
