The Nation's Financial Condition

[a fan]

https://www.cnsnews.com/news/article/te ... 4b-deficit Our nation seems to keep following this same effed up pattern. The nation continues to collect record taxes. The nation continues to spend more than it brings in... by a long shot. Where do we find the solution here? Both parties want to spend like drunken sailors albeit on different agendas. A fan is enamored with raising taxes. Nobody here besides my self is enamored with cutting spending. When you continue to raise record tax revenue and continue to spend more than you take in, even with record tax revenue added in to the mix, you don't have a Democrat problem, you don't have a Republican problem, you have a national crisis looming right in front of you. This isn't a Trump problem, Obama problem, Bush problem, Clinton problem.

This is a problem ingrained in the simple fact that none of these folks in Washington DC have the integrity/honesty to tell the American people we all have to suffer a little bit to get back on the strait and narrow. The can has been kicked down the road as far as it can go. America has reached a dead end. I am all for 2 solutions... raise taxes and cut spending. Both solutions have to be done with the cold hard reality that we have no other choice. One can't work without the other. It is easy to raise taxes. When you talk about cutting spending, and I mean cutting spending... not baseline budgeting, The discussion becomes much more complicated. No one in Washington DC ever wants to face the reality they have to do more with less. That is not the kind of crazy talk that gets one re-relected to anything.

I'm on board with raising taxes AND cutting spending, my friend. If all you do is cut to match how absurdly low our taxes are for a 1st world nation we will go right in to a depression.

That, and our seniors will have the worst health care imaginable, because that's where all our money goes----to Medicare.

While I'd prefer my consumption-only tax, and get rid of income tax and all other Federal taxes....if we are to stay on income tax, we have to give folks 30-65 a choice.

And that choice is: we can triple your Medicare withholding tax, and keep increasing that amount to keep pace with increases in Medical care costs.....or we can cut your benefits by 1/3rd when you retire. Your choice. Pick one.

If we do that one thing, our borrowing will plummet. I'm all for it. But as cradleandshoot knows, Americans want both. They want Cadillac care, but they don't want to pay for it. So that's EXACTLY what Congress---R's and D's---give them.

[foreverlax]

Yup...and they hide behind the most bullshirt reasons.

They will not allow healthcare to be non-profit. And thats the only solutions.

[cradleandshoot]

https://www.cnsnews.com/news/article/te ... 4b-deficit Our nation seems to keep following this same effed up pattern. The nation continues to collect record taxes. The nation continues to spend more than it brings in... by a long shot. Where do we find the solution here? Both parties want to spend like drunken sailors albeit on different agendas. A fan is enamored with raising taxes. Nobody here besides my self is enamored with cutting spending. When you continue to raise record tax revenue and continue to spend more than you take in, even with record tax revenue added in to the mix, you don't have a Democrat problem, you don't have a Republican problem, you have a national crisis looming right in front of you. This isn't a Trump problem, Obama problem, Bush problem, Clinton problem.

This is a problem ingrained in the simple fact that none of these folks in Washington DC have the integrity/honesty to tell the American people we all have to suffer a little bit to get back on the strait and narrow. The can has been kicked down the road as far as it can go. America has reached a dead end. I am all for 2 solutions... raise taxes and cut spending. Both solutions have to be done with the cold hard reality that we have no other choice. One can't work without the other. It is easy to raise taxes. When you talk about cutting spending, and I mean cutting spending... not baseline budgeting, The discussion becomes much more complicated. No one in Washington DC ever wants to face the reality they have to do more with less. That is not the kind of crazy talk that gets one re-relected to anything.

I'm on board with raising taxes AND cutting spending, my friend. If all you do is cut to match how absurdly low our taxes are for a 1st world nation we will go right in to a depression.

That, and our seniors will have the worst health care imaginable, because that's where all our money goes----to Medicare.

While I'd prefer my consumption-only tax, and get rid of income tax and all other Federal taxes....if we are to stay on income tax, we have to give folks 30-65 a choice.

And that choice is: we can triple your Medicare withholding tax, and keep increasing that amount to keep pace with increases in Medical care costs.....or we can cut your benefits by 1/3rd when you retire. Your choice. Pick one.

If we do that one thing, our borrowing will plummet. I'm all for it. But as cradleandshoot knows, Americans want both. They want Cadillac care, but they don't want to pay for it. So that's EXACTLY what Congress---R's and D's---give them.

Love the consumption tax. headbang1 It makes a level playing field for all of us. You know as well as I a Fan... that won't get you re-elected by a country mile. When you are bringing in record tax revenue and still outspending what you bring in... Houston... we have a problem. I love spending money for the military but when you are spending 750 billion a year on defense... someone has to justify that to me. I can't advocate more with less and not leave the Pentagon out of the equation. All options should be on the table. Problem with Medicare is that the gubmint made this promise to the future seniors a very long time ago. The gubmint never had the temerity to tell these folks that they could not hold up their end of the bargain. It is not the fault of the people collecting benefits they were promised via money deducted from their paychecks every week. The gubmint should have addressed this shortfall in revenue a long time ago. Small increases over a longer period of time would have addressed the crisis that the country now has to deal with.

[Jim Malone]

Anyone see this week’s report on Fed?
Investments marked to market show approximately $66B loss that will put the approximate $39B in Capital to a Deficit.
Full steam ahead!

[old salt]

https://www.cnsnews.com/news/article/te ... 4b-deficit Our nation seems to keep following this same effed up pattern. The nation continues to collect record taxes. The nation continues to spend more than it brings in... by a long shot. Where do we find the solution here? Both parties want to spend like drunken sailors albeit on different agendas. A fan is enamored with raising taxes. Nobody here besides my self is enamored with cutting spending. When you continue to raise record tax revenue and continue to spend more than you take in, even with record tax revenue added in to the mix, you don't have a Democrat problem, you don't have a Republican problem, you have a national crisis looming right in front of you. This isn't a Trump problem, Obama problem, Bush problem, Clinton problem.

This is a problem ingrained in the simple fact that none of these folks in Washington DC have the integrity/honesty to tell the American people we all have to suffer a little bit to get back on the strait and narrow. The can has been kicked down the road as far as it can go. America has reached a dead end. I am all for 2 solutions... raise taxes and cut spending. Both solutions have to be done with the cold hard reality that we have no other choice. One can't work without the other. It is easy to raise taxes. When you talk about cutting spending, and I mean cutting spending... not baseline budgeting, The discussion becomes much more complicated. No one in Washington DC ever wants to face the reality they have to do more with less. That is not the kind of crazy talk that gets one re-relected to anything.

I'm on board with raising taxes AND cutting spending, my friend. If all you do is cut to match how absurdly low our taxes are for a 1st world nation we will go right in to a depression.

That, and our seniors will have the worst health care imaginable, because that's where all our money goes----to Medicare.

While I'd prefer my consumption-only tax, and get rid of income tax and all other Federal taxes....if we are to stay on income tax, we have to give folks 30-65 a choice.

And that choice is: we can triple your Medicare withholding tax, and keep increasing that amount to keep pace with increases in Medical care costs.....or we can cut your benefits by 1/3rd when you retire. Your choice. Pick one.

If we do that one thing, our borrowing will plummet. I'm all for it. But as cradleandshoot knows, Americans want both. They want Cadillac care, but they don't want to pay for it. So that's EXACTLY what Congress---R's and D's---give them.

Love the consumption tax. headbang1 It makes a level playing field for all of us. You know as well as I a Fan... that won't get you re-elected by a country mile. When you are bringing in record tax revenue and still outspending what you bring in... Houston... we have a problem. I love spending money for the military but when you are spending 750 billion a year on defense... someone has to justify that to me. I can't advocate more with less and not leave the Pentagon out of the equation. All options should be on the table. Problem with Medicare is that the gubmint made this promise to the future seniors a very long time ago. The gubmint never had the temerity to tell these folks that they could not hold up their end of the bargain. It is not the fault of the people collecting benefits they were promised via money deducted from their paychecks every week. The gubmint should have addressed this shortfall in revenue a long time ago. Small increases over a longer period of time would have addressed the crisis that the country now has to deal with.

Tariffs are consumption taxes.

[Typical Lax Dad]

Food for thought:

“A country can also adopt a beggar-thy-neighbor stance by deliberately turning the terms of trade in its favor through the imposition of an optimum tariff or through currency manipulation. In his economics textbook, Dominick Salvatore defines an optimum tariff as

that rate of tariff that maximizes the net benefit resulting from the improvement in the nation’s terms of trade against the negative effect resulting from reduction in the volume of trade. . . . As the terms of trade of the nation imposing the tariff improve, those of the trade partner deteriorate, since they are the inverse. . . . Facing both a lower volume of trade and deteriorating terms of trade, the trade partner’s welfare definitely declines. As a result, the trade partner is likely to retaliate. . . . Note that even when the trade partner does not retaliate when one nation imposes the optimum tariff, the gains of the tariff-imposing nation are less than the losses of the trade partner, so that the world as a whole is worse off than under free trade. It is in this sense that free trade maximizes world welfare.[9]

If both countries play this game, both will be worse off. However, if only one country pursues this strategy, it can gain at its partner’s expense”

[cradleandshoot]

https://www.cnsnews.com/news/article/te ... 4b-deficit Our nation seems to keep following this same effed up pattern. The nation continues to collect record taxes. The nation continues to spend more than it brings in... by a long shot. Where do we find the solution here? Both parties want to spend like drunken sailors albeit on different agendas. A fan is enamored with raising taxes. Nobody here besides my self is enamored with cutting spending. When you continue to raise record tax revenue and continue to spend more than you take in, even with record tax revenue added in to the mix, you don't have a Democrat problem, you don't have a Republican problem, you have a national crisis looming right in front of you. This isn't a Trump problem, Obama problem, Bush problem, Clinton problem.

This is a problem ingrained in the simple fact that none of these folks in Washington DC have the integrity/honesty to tell the American people we all have to suffer a little bit to get back on the strait and narrow. The can has been kicked down the road as far as it can go. America has reached a dead end. I am all for 2 solutions... raise taxes and cut spending. Both solutions have to be done with the cold hard reality that we have no other choice. One can't work without the other. It is easy to raise taxes. When you talk about cutting spending, and I mean cutting spending... not baseline budgeting, The discussion becomes much more complicated. No one in Washington DC ever wants to face the reality they have to do more with less. That is not the kind of crazy talk that gets one re-relected to anything.

I'm on board with raising taxes AND cutting spending, my friend. If all you do is cut to match how absurdly low our taxes are for a 1st world nation we will go right in to a depression.

That, and our seniors will have the worst health care imaginable, because that's where all our money goes----to Medicare.

While I'd prefer my consumption-only tax, and get rid of income tax and all other Federal taxes....if we are to stay on income tax, we have to give folks 30-65 a choice.

And that choice is: we can triple your Medicare withholding tax, and keep increasing that amount to keep pace with increases in Medical care costs.....or we can cut your benefits by 1/3rd when you retire. Your choice. Pick one.

If we do that one thing, our borrowing will plummet. I'm all for it. But as cradleandshoot knows, Americans want both. They want Cadillac care, but they don't want to pay for it. So that's EXACTLY what Congress---R's and D's---give them.

Love the consumption tax. headbang1 It makes a level playing field for all of us. You know as well as I a Fan... that won't get you re-elected by a country mile. When you are bringing in record tax revenue and still outspending what you bring in... Houston... we have a problem. I love spending money for the military but when you are spending 750 billion a year on defense... someone has to justify that to me. I can't advocate more with less and not leave the Pentagon out of the equation. All options should be on the table. Problem with Medicare is that the gubmint made this promise to the future seniors a very long time ago. The gubmint never had the temerity to tell these folks that they could not hold up their end of the bargain. It is not the fault of the people collecting benefits they were promised via money deducted from their paychecks every week. The gubmint should have addressed this shortfall in revenue a long time ago. Small increases over a longer period of time would have addressed the crisis that the country now has to deal with.

Tariffs are consumption taxes.

Very good point. They are bringing more money into the coffers that is being spent about 10 seconds after they get there. If that money was being spent to pay down the debt that would be a good thing. As far as I know, it is just being spent... period. https://www.msn.com/en-us/news/us/a-243 ... ar-BBQYtcD Maybe Old Salt you read this. I love fighter aircraft as much as the next person... but... 300 million a copy!! What kind of attrition rate would be acceptable with an aircraft like this?

[Typical Lax Dad]

https://www.cnsnews.com/news/article/te ... 4b-deficit Our nation seems to keep following this same effed up pattern. The nation continues to collect record taxes. The nation continues to spend more than it brings in... by a long shot. Where do we find the solution here? Both parties want to spend like drunken sailors albeit on different agendas. A fan is enamored with raising taxes. Nobody here besides my self is enamored with cutting spending. When you continue to raise record tax revenue and continue to spend more than you take in, even with record tax revenue added in to the mix, you don't have a Democrat problem, you don't have a Republican problem, you have a national crisis looming right in front of you. This isn't a Trump problem, Obama problem, Bush problem, Clinton problem.

This is a problem ingrained in the simple fact that none of these folks in Washington DC have the integrity/honesty to tell the American people we all have to suffer a little bit to get back on the strait and narrow. The can has been kicked down the road as far as it can go. America has reached a dead end. I am all for 2 solutions... raise taxes and cut spending. Both solutions have to be done with the cold hard reality that we have no other choice. One can't work without the other. It is easy to raise taxes. When you talk about cutting spending, and I mean cutting spending... not baseline budgeting, The discussion becomes much more complicated. No one in Washington DC ever wants to face the reality they have to do more with less. That is not the kind of crazy talk that gets one re-relected to anything.

I'm on board with raising taxes AND cutting spending, my friend. If all you do is cut to match how absurdly low our taxes are for a 1st world nation we will go right in to a depression.

That, and our seniors will have the worst health care imaginable, because that's where all our money goes----to Medicare.

While I'd prefer my consumption-only tax, and get rid of income tax and all other Federal taxes....if we are to stay on income tax, we have to give folks 30-65 a choice.

And that choice is: we can triple your Medicare withholding tax, and keep increasing that amount to keep pace with increases in Medical care costs.....or we can cut your benefits by 1/3rd when you retire. Your choice. Pick one.

If we do that one thing, our borrowing will plummet. I'm all for it. But as cradleandshoot knows, Americans want both. They want Cadillac care, but they don't want to pay for it. So that's EXACTLY what Congress---R's and D's---give them.

Love the consumption tax. headbang1 It makes a level playing field for all of us. You know as well as I a Fan... that won't get you re-elected by a country mile. When you are bringing in record tax revenue and still outspending what you bring in... Houston... we have a problem. I love spending money for the military but when you are spending 750 billion a year on defense... someone has to justify that to me. I can't advocate more with less and not leave the Pentagon out of the equation. All options should be on the table. Problem with Medicare is that the gubmint made this promise to the future seniors a very long time ago. The gubmint never had the temerity to tell these folks that they could not hold up their end of the bargain. It is not the fault of the people collecting benefits they were promised via money deducted from their paychecks every week. The gubmint should have addressed this shortfall in revenue a long time ago. Small increases over a longer period of time would have addressed the crisis that the country now has to deal with.

Tariffs are consumption taxes.

Very good point. They are bringing more money into the coffers that is being spent about 10 seconds after they get there. If that money was being spent to pay down the debt that would be a good thing. As far as I know, it is just being spent... period. https://www.msn.com/en-us/news/us/a-243 ... ar-BBQYtcD Maybe Old Salt you read this. I love fighter aircraft as much as the next person... but... 300 million a copy!! What kind of attrition rate would be acceptable with an aircraft like this?

We are spending $32 million per hour fighting wars since 2001. $32 million an hour...every hour... but some hobos that crawled here from Nicaragua are eating up our resources.

[a fan]

CNBC talking heads and guests are FINALLY talking about debt, and that Trump has given America candy with nothing healthy. Suddenly traders are "shocked" to find that both households, the Federal government, and corporations are leveraged to the hilt.


Welcome to the other shoe dropping.

[a fan]

More "I told you so...." (sorry, there's going to a be a lot of this)

So when we tried to tell you that cutting taxes wouldn't lead to more investment and job growth, and that they'd just take the cash and run?

https://www.cnn.com/2018/12/17/investin ... index.html


Republicans are in a unique position. Flyover America is still listening to you. Will you FINALLY stop with the Trickle down horse*hit, wake up, and understand what every business needs more than anything else are paying customers?

Because if you can manage that, and you can manage to stop with the "government is the enemy" crap, you can get off your **ss and lead this country.

The question is: how do we HELP the bottom 60% of earners get and keep good jobs? How do we get them educated and get the medical care?

Because if we don't answer this question, and we continue to let FoxNation (newsflash: Hannity and Rush are 1%ers, you idiots, stop listening to them) dictate governance, flyover is F'ed.

I keep reading article after article in lefty publications where they have woken up, and realized that flyover is taking their hard earned money so that they can keep their home States afloat, and so they can----in the lefty publications' views-----take away women's and minority rights. We can't allow this divide to continue. Because if we do, rural America is doomed. For me, this is unthinkable, and unacceptable.

So yeah, Mississippi can brag about super low taxes. What's that? Your bridges don't work? Oh, that sucks. Well. Your taxes are really low, so you win, right?

Mississippi, a relatively poor state, has never been known for its gleaming transportation network, but the situation today is worse than ever. Across the state, residents now have to circumvent nearly 500 closed bridges that have been declared unsafe, according to the Mississippi Office of State Aid Road Construction. Another 1,742 are posted with specific weight limits because of structural deficiencies. Combined, that accounts for more than 20 percent of the county and local bridges in the state.

Either this infrastructure will continue to crumble, or they're going to take money from guys like cradleandshoot to pay to fix it. And cradle gets stuck with super high taxes, and the residents of MS skate.....all while claiming to be libertarian do-it-yourselfers.

This cannot continue.

https://www.nbcnews.com/news/us-news/mi ... ds-n892571

[Typical Lax Dad]

More "I told you so...." (sorry, there's going to a be a lot of this)

So when we tried to tell you that cutting taxes wouldn't lead to more investment and job growth, and that they'd just take the cash and run?

https://www.cnn.com/2018/12/17/investin ... index.html


Republicans are in a unique position. Flyover America is still listening to you. Will you FINALLY stop with the Trickle down horse*hit, wake up, and understand what every business needs more than anything else are paying customers?

Because if you can manage that, and you can manage to stop with the "government is the enemy" crap, you can get off your **ss and lead this country.

The question is: how do we HELP the bottom 60% of earners get and keep good jobs? How do we get them educated and get the medical care?

Because if we don't answer this question, and we continue to let FoxNation (newsflash: Hannity and Rush are 1%ers, you idiots, stop listening to them) dictate governance, flyover is F'ed.

I keep reading article after article in lefty publications where they have woken up, and realized that flyover is taking their hard earned money so that they can keep their home States afloat, and so they can----in the lefty publications' views-----take away women's and minority rights. We can't allow this divide to continue. Because if we do, rural America is doomed. For me, this is unthinkable, and unacceptable.

So yeah, Mississippi can brag about super low taxes. What's that? Your bridges don't work? Oh, that sucks. Well. Your taxes are really low, so you win, right?

Mississippi, a relatively poor state, has never been known for its gleaming transportation network, but the situation today is worse than ever. Across the state, residents now have to circumvent nearly 500 closed bridges that have been declared unsafe, according to the Mississippi Office of State Aid Road Construction. Another 1,742 are posted with specific weight limits because of structural deficiencies. Combined, that accounts for more than 20 percent of the county and local bridges in the state.

Either this infrastructure will continue to crumble, or they're going to take money from guys like cradleandshoot to pay to fix it. And cradle gets stuck with super high taxes, and the residents of MS skate.....all while claiming to be libertarian do-it-yourselfers.

This cannot continue.

https://www.nbcnews.com/news/us-news/mi ... ds-n892571

I miss old Laxpower. I called this when those clowns first started talking about tax reform and how it was going to spur economic activity. Rates were low, companies were liquid and banks were desperate to deploy capital. Best return for many companies was a stock buyback and M&A. Basic finance/economics.

[a fan]

So basic that even I understood it, foreverlax. Everyone here understands it too, but partisanship clouds what are very simply economic principles.

I'm NOT happy to be here telling the board I told you so. I'm patiently waiting for Republicans to grow the F up, and realize that cutting taxes does not lead to more revenue WITHOUT raising the deficit. In other words, it's the spending that leads to the increased revenue, not the cuts.

They don't want to hear it. So here we are again, in a massive debt hole, and right on cue, FoxNation is talking about "out of control spending" now that the Dems are about to take control.

F them. F them and their fake-ass brand of "conservatism". Im SO sick of their nonsense that's tearing this country apart. Meanwhile, REAL conservatives like you, and cradle, and MDlax could see this coming from 1000 miles away.

I wanted to throw my remote at the wankers on CNBC-----all of them cheered the damn tax cut because they're a bunch of 1%ers. But the millisecond that they are losing money....as they have been the last month......"suddenly" they get religion, and start talking about the foolishness of the fake, wholly borrowed "good economy" that Trump and the R's gave us.

I've said it 1,000 times---this fake economy is like borrowing $10K from the bank on the way home from work, and then declaring to your wife that you got a raise". Sadly, most of America bought the buffalo bagels.

Now the best part will be watching FoxNews explaining to its viewers over the next two years that the reason that they are all about to eat a *hit sandwich is, obviously, because of the out of control spending of the Dems, and that government is in the way of them getting six figure jobs. They've played that card for the last 40 years, so why change?

And viewers will buy this, and their fortunes will continue to sink, and the 1% will continue to take more and more of their money.

I hate it.

Edited for that train wreck of a sentence. Yikes. Sorry.

[Trinity]

Farmers need a second round of aid during Trump Economic Miracle.

[foreverlax]

Seriously, Just Order the Pentagon to Build the Wall

Understand, the Department of Defense has a budget in excess of $700 billion. The Pentagon is so big and bloated, with a budget process so unwieldy, that for years officials resisted any form of audit. Until this year, when the DOD spent more than $400 million auditing some $2.7 trillion in assets.

In September, the Pentagon was so flush with cash that it engaged in an obscene spending-spree in which it “rushed to spend $111 billion of its $700 billion budget before the end of the fiscal year.”

According to Open the Books, a nonprofit dedicated to government transparency, much of your money has been spent on things ranging from office supplies (such as coffee mugs for the Air Force costing $1,000 each) to weapons for non-military agencies, to alcohol supplies (you read that right). This isn’t the first time the Pentagon has opted to go on a last-minute spending spree. Last year, the Army spent “$6,600 on fidget spinners, $35,000 on an arcade machine and $62,000 on snowboards and paddle boards. In addition, defense contractors were paid $11 billion in seven days.”

Yea, our military is in such bad shape......they should ALL be sued for breech of fiduciary conduct.

Not another budget increase until DoD gets their financial house in order!!

[cradleandshoot]

Seriously, Just Order the Pentagon to Build the Wall

Understand, the Department of Defense has a budget in excess of $700 billion. The Pentagon is so big and bloated, with a budget process so unwieldy, that for years officials resisted any form of audit. Until this year, when the DOD spent more than $400 million auditing some $2.7 trillion in assets.

In September, the Pentagon was so flush with cash that it engaged in an obscene spending-spree in which it “rushed to spend $111 billion of its $700 billion budget before the end of the fiscal year.”

According to Open the Books, a nonprofit dedicated to government transparency, much of your money has been spent on things ranging from office supplies (such as coffee mugs for the Air Force costing $1,000 each) to weapons for non-military agencies, to alcohol supplies (you read that right). This isn’t the first time the Pentagon has opted to go on a last-minute spending spree. Last year, the Army spent “$6,600 on fidget spinners, $35,000 on an arcade machine and $62,000 on snowboards and paddle boards. In addition, defense contractors were paid $11 billion in seven days.”

Yea, our military is in such bad shape......they should ALL be sued for breech of fiduciary conduct.

Not another budget increase until DoD gets their financial house in order!!

I agree with you forever. Like every American I want a strong defense. When you are going to budget 750 billion dollars to defense they damn well better be able to justify every penny. That is an obscene amount of money to give anybody to spend. I posted a link here a couple of days ago that the next gen fighter jet could cost at least 300 million dollars a plane. That is insane, who in the hell spends that kind of money on one plane? Apparently the USA is willing to do it. https://www.popularmechanics.com/milita ... -jet-cost/

[cradleandshoot]

https://www.cnsnews.com/news/article/te ... 4b-deficit Our nation seems to keep following this same effed up pattern. The nation continues to collect record taxes. The nation continues to spend more than it brings in... by a long shot. Where do we find the solution here? Both parties want to spend like drunken sailors albeit on different agendas. A fan is enamored with raising taxes. Nobody here besides my self is enamored with cutting spending. When you continue to raise record tax revenue and continue to spend more than you take in, even with record tax revenue added in to the mix, you don't have a Democrat problem, you don't have a Republican problem, you have a national crisis looming right in front of you. This isn't a Trump problem, Obama problem, Bush problem, Clinton problem.

This is a problem ingrained in the simple fact that none of these folks in Washington DC have the integrity/honesty to tell the American people we all have to suffer a little bit to get back on the strait and narrow. The can has been kicked down the road as far as it can go. America has reached a dead end. I am all for 2 solutions... raise taxes and cut spending. Both solutions have to be done with the cold hard reality that we have no other choice. One can't work without the other. It is easy to raise taxes. When you talk about cutting spending, and I mean cutting spending... not baseline budgeting, The discussion becomes much more complicated. No one in Washington DC ever wants to face the reality they have to do more with less. That is not the kind of crazy talk that gets one re-relected to anything.

You give yourself too much credit regarding the spending habits of congress....you are not alone on that topic.

You first, what are you willing to give up, candy-wise?

I am willing to look across the board. Every single department in our government should be under the microscope. That will likely never happen because there are too many sacred cows in DC that have very strong representation that will never let any programs to ever be cut. That is how you get to 22 trillion in debt. Everybody wants their cake and wants to eat it too. A Fan has been advocating for a consumption tax since forever. Why will it never happen? That takes too much power out of the hands of too many people. The simple fact it would work simply and quickly will always make it DOA in Washington DC.

[foreverlax]

More "I told you so...." (sorry, there's going to a be a lot of this)

So when we tried to tell you that cutting taxes wouldn't lead to more investment and job growth, and that they'd just take the cash and run?

https://www.cnn.com/2018/12/17/investin ... index.html


Republicans are in a unique position. Flyover America is still listening to you. Will you FINALLY stop with the Trickle down horse*hit, wake up, and understand what every business needs more than anything else are paying customers?

Because if you can manage that, and you can manage to stop with the "government is the enemy" crap, you can get off your **ss and lead this country.

The question is: how do we HELP the bottom 60% of earners get and keep good jobs? How do we get them educated and get the medical care?

Because if we don't answer this question, and we continue to let FoxNation (newsflash: Hannity and Rush are 1%ers, you idiots, stop listening to them) dictate governance, flyover is F'ed.

I keep reading article after article in lefty publications where they have woken up, and realized that flyover is taking their hard earned money so that they can keep their home States afloat, and so they can----in the lefty publications' views-----take away women's and minority rights. We can't allow this divide to continue. Because if we do, rural America is doomed. For me, this is unthinkable, and unacceptable.

So yeah, Mississippi can brag about super low taxes. What's that? Your bridges don't work? Oh, that sucks. Well. Your taxes are really low, so you win, right?

Mississippi, a relatively poor state, has never been known for its gleaming transportation network, but the situation today is worse than ever. Across the state, residents now have to circumvent nearly 500 closed bridges that have been declared unsafe, according to the Mississippi Office of State Aid Road Construction. Another 1,742 are posted with specific weight limits because of structural deficiencies. Combined, that accounts for more than 20 percent of the county and local bridges in the state.

Either this infrastructure will continue to crumble, or they're going to take money from guys like cradleandshoot to pay to fix it. And cradle gets stuck with super high taxes, and the residents of MS skate.....all while claiming to be libertarian do-it-yourselfers.

This cannot continue.

https://www.nbcnews.com/news/us-news/mi ... ds-n892571

Marco with the money shot -

Florida GOP Senator Marco Rubio said on Twitter last week that the tax code shouldn't encourage buybacks.
"When [a] corporation uses profits for stock buy back it's deciding that returning capital to shareholders is better for business than investing in their products or workers," Rubio said. "No surprise we have work life that is unstable & low paying."

[HooDat]

I am willing to look across the board. Every single department in our government should be under the microscope. That will likely never happen because there are too many sacred cows in DC that have very strong representation that will never let any programs to ever be cut. That is how you get to 22 trillion in debt. Everybody wants their cake and wants to eat it too. A Fan has been advocating for a consumption tax since forever. Why will it never happen? That takes too much power out of the hands of too many people. The simple fact it would work simply and quickly will always make it DOA in Washington DC.

I wish there was a way to make the default mechanism on all government programs that they stop after 2 - 6 years. And in order to continue, Congress would have to AFFIRMATIVELY vote to continue. Having to reps and senators put their name on every single gov program (even the "sacred cow"s) would force them to be a lot more serious about how they spend our money. That includes the standing military forces, the embassies, you name it. Make every single "Congress" affirm it all.

It would also open room for new/better programs to replace old entrenched ones.

The problem is - that creates its own bureaucracy, but at least it is one that works FOR the people. Maybe it is a branch of the OMB?

[MDlaxfan76]

I am willing to look across the board. Every single department in our government should be under the microscope. That will likely never happen because there are too many sacred cows in DC that have very strong representation that will never let any programs to ever be cut. That is how you get to 22 trillion in debt. Everybody wants their cake and wants to eat it too. A Fan has been advocating for a consumption tax since forever. Why will it never happen? That takes too much power out of the hands of too many people. The simple fact it would work simply and quickly will always make it DOA in Washington DC.

I wish there was a way to make the default mechanism on all government programs that they stop after 2 - 6 years. And in order to continue, Congress would have to AFFIRMATIVELY vote to continue. Having to reps and senators put their name on every single gov program (even the "sacred cow"s) would force them to be a lot more serious about how they spend our money. That includes the standing military forces, the embassies, you name it. Make every single "Congress" affirm it all.

It would also open room for new/better programs to replace old entrenched ones.

The problem is - that creates its own bureaucracy, but at least it is one that works FOR the people. Maybe it is a branch of the OMB?

How do you feel about applying that to Social Security, Medicare, Medicaid...and the interest on debt?

As the bank robber said, "because that's where the money is".

[HooDat]

How do you feel about applying that to Social Security, Medicare, Medicaid...and the interest on debt?

As the bank robber said, "because that's where the money is".

Social Security is easy (or it would have been easy in the 1980's when Charles Krauthammer was calling for this easy fix): we need to increase the eligibility age. When they set 64 as the age at which you could claim social security benefits, the average life expectancy was 62. Yes that is right, social security was a safety net for those who had prudently saved for retirement and had the misfortune of living longer than was prudently expected. If we had begun an easing in of extending out the eligibility age in the 80's when people like Krauthammer were calling for it, we would be looking at eligibility ages in the 70's now - and people could have prepared accordingly. The AARP fought the idea hard. Which is stupid because the folks who would have been impacted were in their 20's at the time and welcomed the concept. But the AARP is in the BUSINESS of collecting dues checks from retired people. You can't have people not retiring until they are in their 70's or you miss all those years of collecting those checks... bang1 The solution is still there, but we have to start enacting it now so people in their 20's and 30's can plan.

Medicare and Medicaid are harder - because I believe that the singularly most important thing a society can do is take care of its sick. We owe that to each other. We can argue for days about the best way to deliver that healthcare, but I believe that access to healthcare should be a right - above education, roads and even law enforcement. That is quite simply where we should be spending our tax dollars - the debate is about how. And I would say that while the concept of healthcare for all should be a constant, the method of delivering that healthcare should be reviewed on a fairly regular basis in order to weed out waste, sloth, and corruption. Look no further than the VA for a prime example.

just my thoughts....