Republicans Propose Spending Cuts and Tax Increases

[Pi]

http://thehill.com/homenews/house/270649-house-republicans-make-22t-counter-offer-to-obama-in-debt-talksklj

2.2 Trillion is a start.  At least they are willing to consider both approaches.  As I predicted, Obama doesn't seem to want to make any cuts right now, and instead has said he wants tax increases and a stimulus to compensate for the effect of the increased taxes.

It think Obama's call for another stimulus just goes to show that he isn't really interested in reducing the debt.  It seems that he is most focused on making the rich pay more based on some sort of value judgement, and not for fiscal reasons.

[mary51802]

I am not sure why he called for a team to devise a plan under Simpson Bowles and then cast it aside after all the hard work. I do not know why no cuts either as there are so many places to cut. The top of the earners tax will just keep us afloat and not reduce anything.

[1911A]

It seems that he is most focused on making the rich pay more based on some sort of value judgement, and not for fiscal reasons.

No "seems" about it.  He said it:

http://taxfoundation.org/blog/obama-and-gibson-capital-gains-tax-exchange


"GIBSON: All right. You have, however, said you would favor an increase in the capital gains tax. As a matter of fact, you said on CNBC, and I quote, "I certainly would not go above what existed under Bill Clinton," which was 28 percent. It's now 15 percent. That's almost a doubling, if you went to 28 percent.

But actually, Bill Clinton, in 1997, signed legislation that dropped the capital gains tax to 20 percent.

OBAMA: Right.

GIBSON: And George Bush has taken it down to 15 percent.

OBAMA: Right.

GIBSON: And in each instance, when the rate dropped, revenues from the tax increased; the government took in more money. And in the 1980s, when the tax was increased to 28 percent, the revenues went down.

So why raise it at all, especially given the fact that 100 million people in this country own stock and would be affected?

OBAMA: Well, Charlie, what I've said is that I would look at raising the capital gains tax for purposes of fairness."

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=c4iy2OfScQE

He's more than willing to trade more revenue (with which to pay down the deficit -- yeah, right) for the opportunity to hurt people.

[Pi]

I've seen that exchange before 1911, and that is probably one of the most damning statements about Obama's economic policy.  The worst of it is, he said it himself.

Obama doesn't understand the economy.  This isn't the only time he has displayed a fundamental misunderstanding of financials.  If his defenders want to claim that he really does know what he is doing, then that is even worse.  That means he is doing this intentionally.  I'm not much for conspiracy theories, but just looking at his behavior with the economy:

1. Animosity toward coal energy, including clean(er) coal.
2. Support for alternative energy that didn't work out, despite clear evidence that the market could not support them.
3. Average spending of 228K for each job saved or created, despite the fact that some were temporary.
4. Ignorance about his own pension (Caymans/China).
5. Appointments of a bunch of tax dodgers to cabinet positions.
6. Obamacare and the additional burden of taxes it brings.
7. Dodd-Frank, which was supposedly meant to keep Wall Street honest, instead did nothing to stop people like Corzine but does manage to add untold millions of dollars in compliance costs to companies that could be using that to hire more employee or produce products, etc.
8. His budgets have been unanimously rejected.  He couldn't find a single Senator to vote for them I suppose.  Whether Sessions brought one of them up for a vote doesn't matter.  This one is a little harder to deflect:
http://thehill.com/homenews/senate/163347-senate-votes-unanimously-against-obama-budget

But the debt that he continues to create is worst of all.  Republican or Democrat, we seem to have become a nation that votes based on who gives a really good speech or who has the most Presidential hair.  Obama might be the kind of guy you'd want to have a beer with.  He plays basketball, he sucks at golf (to which I can relate), he likes to chow down on greasy hamburgers, and it looks as though he is a decent family man.  He gives great speeches, and is able to get an emotional response from those who lean progressive.  His speeches are well delivered, lofty and vague.

What we need is not just a President with lofty promises.  What we need is a President and most importantly a Congress that is willing to make changes across the board.  We need them to worry more about fixing our issues than getting re-elected.  We need selfless eggheads that understand, at a granular level, the issue that we face.  And we need a populace that understands the implications of an unaddressed debt.  But, culturally, so many voters have the mindset that "the world owes us a living".  We now have generations of people who do not adhere to the idea that one should try to finish school, go to college or get training, and get a job.  I don't know what percentage of people are perpetually on assistance versus those that are on it for a short period of time.  But I do know the burden is too much for the rest of us.

[1911A]

The whole point, Pi, is that he said it himself.

If his defenders want to claim that he really does know what he is doing, then that is even worse.  That means he is doing this intentionally.

I'm most definitely not one of his defenders and I say I believe the worst -- that it's intentional -- and being a member of the tinfoil-hat wearing crowd is unnecessary.  They and he are doing this right out in the wide blue yonder open.

The evidence is what you listed in your post -- most egregiously, he keeps adding to the debt while making mouth-noises to the contrary.  With this guy, one has to watch both what he says AND what he does, because he has and will tell his plans ... and then implement them.  

And it doesn't all come directly from the WH; his agency heads keep right on issuing regulations that confiscate more and more wealth due to compliance costs and prohibitions -- EPA for one -- not to mention Interior's Salazar putting more and more acreage off limits to normal, human, wealth-creating uses.  

The latest was to provide additional "protections" for an "endangered species", the spotted owl -- that can, has and will live in a K-Mart sign, the original "protections" for which killed the timber and milling industries in the Northwest, and about which it's been documented that it isn't human encroachment that is harrassing this owl, it's another species of more aggressive owl and to the tune of a 40% decline in spotted owl population.  So, now land put off-limits to human uses for an owl that we cannot "protect" comes to 9.6 million acres.  

And please (I'm not so much addressing you with this, Pi) don't tell me which President of which Party started it all.  I no longer care, we don't have the time to dick around with this because this is where we are now and the current occupant of the WH is deliberately making it worse.

It's not accidental and he's not a bumbling incompetent.

[NC YIPPIE]

So are you not counting the Obama proposal that higher-income seniors would pay more for doctors visits and prescription coverage beginning in 2017 and all new enrollees will pay a $25 deductible as part of their Part B premiums as a spending cut to Medicare?

The Democrats’ starting point for Medicare and Medicaid cuts is what Obama proposed to trim from the programs in his 2013 budget. CBO estimated those cuts would total $351 billion over 10 years.
http://www.businessweek.com/news/2012-11-28/pressure-for-entitlement-cuts-is-on-medicare-medicaid

Maybe it is still a drop in the bucket, but is it factually true to say he has not proposed ANY entitlement cuts?

Likewise, the quote from the Gibson exchange (Hmm, didn't hear any complaints about the moderator using a conservative talking points...) was later referenced by Dean Baker, co-director of the Center for Economic and Policy Research:

"The evidence that a capital gains tax cut raises revenue is rather dubious, since most of the apparent increase is likely due to timing: investors delay selling stock when they know a tax cut is imminent. After the cut takes effect, they then declare their gains and pay taxes at the lower rate."
http://prospect.org/authors/dean-baker?page=289

However, I agree that more significant spending cuts are needed, and I don't think we need any more stimulus spending at all. As I mentioned in the other thread in relation to our debt, there are many specific options.

[1911A]

"The evidence that a capital gains tax cut raises revenue is rather dubious, since most of the apparent increase is likely due to timing: investors delay selling stock when they know a tax cut is imminent. After the cut takes effect, they then declare their gains and pay taxes at the lower rate."
http://prospect.org/authors/dean-baker?page=289

Yeah, how many then "pay taxes at the lower rate"?  From where do you think the higher revenue comes if the rate is lower?  Volume.

And this:

Likewise, the quote from the Gibson exchange (Hmm, didn't hear any complaints about the moderator using a conservative talking points...) was later referenced by Dean Baker, co-director of the Center for Economic and Policy Research:

Bullcrap.  "The moderator" was using practical economics.  You wanna call that "a conservative talking point", go ahead.  It just makes you look as ignorantly partisan as you are.

[NC YIPPIE]

You mistake economic theory for economic fact. I'm actually not advocating either viewpoint, which is hardly partisan. I'm simply pointing out that the framework of the question showed a bit of a conservative slant.

"Treasury Secretary John Snow conceded Tuesday that the much-touted tax cuts for capital gains and dividend income don't drive today's strong economy. Asked by Knight Ridder if the tax reductions paid for themselves, Snow acknowledged that they don't."
http://www.chron.com/CDA/archives/archive.mpl/2006_4118762/studies-tax-cuts-don-t-pay-their-way-economists-sa.html

This is not a merely academic debate, although no serious academic, including Mr. Bush's own economists, has argued that tax cuts produce enough additional economic growth to make up for lost revenue.
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2007/11/14/AR2007111402085.html

Even by the standards of political boosterism, this is extraordinary. No serious economist believes Mr Bush's tax cuts will pay for themselves. A recent study from the Congressional Budget Office suggested that, after ten years, up to one-third of the cost of a 10% cut in income taxes can be recouped from higher economic growth. That fraction may be higher for cuts in taxes on capital alone. But it is nowhere near 100%. What is true is that the timing of temporary tax cuts can affect revenues temporarily.
http://www.economist.com/node/5389645

[1911A]

Tax cuts don't need to "pay for themselves" because they are not a government expense.  It's not "lost revenue" when they are not permitted to seize from me what doesn't belong to them.

The money that rightfully belongs to me costs the government nothing.  Get that? 

Only in buying into the false premise that all money belongs to the government first and then we're allowed what they consider a "fair" share is such a concept possible.  And I don't buy in.

Keynesians, Snow, Bernanke et al.  Talk about "economic theory"; the only place that bullspit works is in the classroom.

Let me make something clear for the regular poster, the seldom-posters and the never-posters-but-readers of this site:

What Reid et al. (Senate), Boehner et al. (House) and Obongo are currently negotiating over is how much of MY STUFF to seize and redistribute for their purposes.

I've been hearing and reading, "the Republicans need to give .... "; "the Republicans need to put on the table ... " and what that means is what the Republicans need to give over, to "put on the table" is more of MY STUFF. 

Now repeat that in your heads and allow the "my stuff" to mean not 1911A's stuff, but YOUR STUFF.  Your money.  Not theirs, yours.

The money you've literally spent YOUR life's minutes and hours and days acquiring and perhaps accumulating. 

As for the charge of "protecting tax cuts for the rich", any of you who have had a relatively successful small business knows that $250,000 puts you nowhere in the vicinity of rich, but those are whom the looters are choosing as the starting target of "rich".

And John Boehner, the House Republican leader, is currently dickering with these other rat bastids over how much of THAT, which doesn't belong to him, he's going to give them.

And all the while, the president wants to borrow another 40% of a 1.2 TRILLION dollar "stimulus" -- the other 60% is to come out of your hides -- to lavish around on selected entities all over the country.

So spare me the convoluted and specious arguments about how much tax cuts "cost" and how much less "revenue" they "raise".

We don't have a taxpayer money deficit, we have a government spending addiction.  Until that's addressed in any meaningful way, the bleeding cannot be stopped and the gods-pounding crash is coming.

[Pi]

So are you not counting the Obama proposal that higher-income seniors would pay more for doctors visits and prescription coverage beginning in 2017 and all new enrollees will pay a $25 deductible as part of their Part B premiums as a spending cut to Medicare?

The Democrats’ starting point for Medicare and Medicaid cuts is what Obama proposed to trim from the programs in his 2013 budget. CBO estimated those cuts would total $351 billion over 10 years.
http://www.businessweek.com/news/2012-11-28/pressure-for-entitlement-cuts-is-on-medicare-medicaid

Maybe it is still a drop in the bucket, but is it factually true to say he has not proposed ANY entitlement cuts?

Likewise, the quote from the Gibson exchange (Hmm, didn't hear any complaints about the moderator using a conservative talking points...) was later referenced by Dean Baker, co-director of the Center for Economic and Policy Research:

"The evidence that a capital gains tax cut raises revenue is rather dubious, since most of the apparent increase is likely due to timing: investors delay selling stock when they know a tax cut is imminent. After the cut takes effect, they then declare their gains and pay taxes at the lower rate."
http://prospect.org/authors/dean-baker?page=289

However, I agree that more significant spending cuts are needed, and I don't think we need any more stimulus spending at all. As I mentioned in the other thread in relation to our debt, there are many specific options.

Sorry, if you look I said "meaningful" cuts to spending.  Sorry if I did not make that crystal clear at every juncture.  I'm surprised you don't want another stimulus.  Did you not support the first one?  I seem to recall you saying it was necessary.  Though things are a bit different now economically, they are still dire.  As an Obama supporter, how much of Obama's economic policy do you actually agree with?

Nice to hear you say we need to cut more.  And i STILL refer you to the two (2) times I have shown issues with the theory that you posted about that said that Capital Gains has little effect on economic growth.  I've not seen you respond to that yet.

[Tags:]

Jump to: Please select a destination: ----------------------------- Chatham County Online ----------------------------- => Chatham County Online => Chatham County Schools => Chatham County Food & Drink => Chatham County Music & Arts => Chatham Community Calendar => Free Classifieds & Help Wanted Ads => Noah's Ark - All Creatures Great & Small. => Neighbor to Neighbor => Gardening and Agriculture => Chatham County Real Estate => North Carolina => This, That and Everything Else