Thread: Vetting Obama-Your Right To Know

Axe HUD, the small business administration, department of health and human services, the energy department, and the labor department. Drop personal income tax and switch to a national sales tax to cut the IRS by half. Notice we don't even have to touch Social Security.

Federal Budget Spending and the National Debt

gunnut, dale,

Hell, it's easy - lose the Energy Dept, the Education Dept, and kill farm subsidies.

-dale

Axe HUD, the small business administration, department of health and human services, the energy department, and the labor department. Drop personal income tax and switch to a national sales tax to cut the IRS by half. Notice we don't even have to touch Social Security.

easy only if you're not a politician. energy department will not be axed because it runs nukes. health and human services runs CDC (along with plenty of other things), vital for health security. axe education department and you're tagged as abandoning children. labor department has job adjustment programs- axe that and suddenly free-trade deals become that much more unpopular/economically painful.

i personally think the "low-hanging" fruit here was the wasteful farm subsidies, but hell, congress couldn't even take a pass on that one. biggest change will need to occur in medicare and social security: reform these two and the rest of government expenditure really just amounts to a small hill of beans. without cuts in those two areas, taxes will need to be raised to cover the expanding deficits. continuing along the current road will mean an explosion in deficit spending and interest payments, easily wiping out any economic gains created by tax cuts.

Originally Posted by gunnut

Axe HUD, the small business administration, department of health and human services, the energy department, and the labor department. Drop personal income tax and switch to a national sales tax to cut the IRS by half. Notice we don't even have to touch Social Security.

Federal Budget Spending and the National Debt

HHS runs Medicare, and the federal part of medicaid, labor runs unemployment benefits. It's not really politically feasible to cut entitlements without a viable option for people. A sales tax would not be smart, it's regressive, and could affect spending habits. A flat income tax is preferrable, like oh just about every nation in the former Eastern bloc now has, including Russia. Actually the biggest budget buster is DOD , but I guess cutting that is off the table.

Originally Posted by Herodotus

HHS runs Medicare we didn't have it before Johnson and did fairly well , and the federal part of medicaid same with this crap , labor runs unemployment benefits it's not a benefit, it's a charity. It's not really politically feasible to cut entitlements without a viable option for people end result is more and more social programs without limits. A sales tax would not be smart, it's regressive, and could affect spending habits incentives for people to make more money. A flat income tax is preferrable, like oh just about every nation in the former Eastern bloc now has, including Russia I can live with flat tax. Actually the biggest budget buster is DOD , but I guess cutting that is off the table.

Clinton cut DOD. Look what happened. We are just trying to get back to where we were. Defense accounted for nearly 10% of GDP for much of the Cold War. Now it's just over 4%.

Let's play a game. You want to cut DOD. I want to cut everything else. You let me keep DOD. You can keep whichever single department you want. Cut the rest. Even 10% across the board from the rest would be a HUGE savings. That's not to mention Obama wants to substantially increase the "entitlement" programs on top of what we already have.

Originally Posted by gunnut

Clinton cut DOD. Look what happened. We are just trying to get back to where we were. Defense accounted for nearly 10% of GDP for much of the Cold War. Now it's just over 4%.

Let's play a game. You want to cut DOD. I want to cut everything else. You let me keep DOD. You can keep whichever single department you want. Cut the rest. Even 10% across the board from the rest would be a HUGE savings. That's not to mention Obama wants to substantially increase the "entitlement" programs on top of what we already have.

Well for starters your not in a cold war with imminent threat of nuclear destruction requiring hundreds of bombers, thousands upon thousands of fighters, maintaining a nuke arsenal capable of nuking the entire world 10 times over, having ridiculous numbers of Strategic nuke subs chortling round the ocean etc etc, taking into account the policy of being able to fight & win two wars at once. That all takes money. You simply don't need the force structure you had back then. You may need it in the future, thats why you keep the knowledge to return to that.

Only one I see there is farm subsidies. If you can't make a business profitable, you shouldn't be in business. But if you stop the farm subsidies, then you need to stop subsidies in other areas.

The next Prez of the U.S.A would have a lot more credibility if they pledged to help 'free trade' be 'fair trade'. I.E, you can trade with us freely if you have comparable regulations, standards etc.

we didn't have it before Johnson and did fairly well

it's not a benefit, it's a charity

Regardless of your personal opinions on entitlements they still exist and millions of people depend on them. Without a viable alternative there will be possibly social upheaval, crime would increase. Who is going to bear the cost of medical expenses for the poor and elderly, or keep the unemployed from being homeless? Is private enterprise going to pick up the cost? Even Reagan was in favor of Social Security.

incentives for people to make more money.

What do you mean by that? The sales tax will be an incentive?

Originally Posted by gunnut

Clinton cut DOD. Look what happened. Yeah we balanced the budget, and had a surplus. We are just trying to get back to where we were. Yeah becasue the budget is out of wack. Defense accounted for nearly 10% of GDP for much of the Cold War. Now it's just over 4%. Twice as much as Iran spends, and on par with China and russia. Of course our GDP is larger too.

Let's play a game. You want to cut DOD. I want to cut everything else. You let me keep DOD. You can keep whichever single department you want. Cut the rest. Even 10% across the board from the rest would be a HUGE savings. That's not to mention Obama wants to substantially increase the "entitlement" programs on top of what we already have.

Total outlays for DOD for FY 2009 are 651 billion dollars including the add-on funding for the wars. http://www.csbaonline.org/4Publicati...09_Request.pdf Could that be cut, yes, more feasibly than Social Security or Medicare. Discretionary funding is where cuts need to be made, and DOD has the biggest budget of discretionary funds; half of all discretionary funds.

Mandatory funding: Social Security, Medicaid, Medicare, unemployment, food stamps, and interest on the debt have to be funded. This goes to my earlier point above. If you can figure out a way to gut/eliminate those programs, keep every single person who uses them, or could potentially use them 100 percent happy with the cuts, balance the budget, pay off the debt, keep taxes low, and be able to spend lots of money on defense let me know, and I will elect YOU for president.

Taxation is still a crucial issue for drawing the conservative-liberal contrast. Indeed, it is inconceivable that a Republican could win the presidency without tapping into the still-strong anti-tax sentiment among voters. McCain used his brief remarks to remind Americans there is a big difference between the parties on taxes again this election year. Even with a stagnant economy and job losses, Obama remains committed to a massive and damaging tax hike. McCain, on the other hand, is promising no tax increases, targeted tax relief to strengthen families, and business tax cuts to spur growth.

Per McCain:

"Small businesses are the job engine of America, and I will make it easier for them to grow and create more jobs. My opponent wants to make it harder by imposing a “pay or play” health mandate on small business. This adds $12,000 to the cost of employing anyone with a family. That means new jobs will not be created. It means existing employees will have their wages cut to pay for this mandate."

“Pay or play” advocates argue that it is the most direct way to cover the uninsured, most of whom work or are in households with those who do. But the real issue for these workers is affordability. Health-insurance premiums are paid by households, not businesses, even if the company is sponsoring the insurance plan. In a competitive labor market, employers only pay workers what they are worth to the firm. The more they are required to pay in benefits, the less there is to pay cash wages. Low-wage workers are going without coverage mainly because the premium costs for insurance would take too big of a bite out of their take-home pay. “Pay or play” ignores this reality and attempts to force workers to pay these premiums anyway.

The consequences for the lowest paid workers would be devastating. For those earning just above the minimum wage, employers would not be able to take the full cost “pay or play” out of wages because it would push cash compensation below the minimum allowable. These employers would therefore have no choice but to eliminate these jobs, lest they end up paying more for their workforce than it is worth to the firm. Katherine Baicker of Harvard and Helen Levy of the University of Michigan estimate that an employer health-insurance mandate would destroy about 224,000 low-wage jobs, with the losses disproportionately concentrated among non-whites, high school drop-outs, and women.

The Obama campaign likes to say their plan would “build on” today’s system of job-based coverage, in large part because they believe “pay or play” would secure employer participation. But, understood properly, “pay or play” would have exactly the opposite effect. Employers would quickly figure out that “paying” would be less expensive and risky than continuing oversight of a company-sponsored plan prone to rapid premium escalation. Instead of bolstering private coverage, “pay or play” would become the excuse for companies to drop their plans and push their employees into pubic insurance. The Lewin Group estimates that the plan written by Commonwealth Fund executives would add 40 million people to a Medicare-like insurance option in year one.

Sen. McCain’s health-care plan attacks the problem of affordability head on. He would give low wage workers a refundable tax credit which would make private coverage more affordable. And he would pay for this tax credit by redirecting resources away from high wage workers, especially those enrolled in overly-expensive company-run plans. The contrast with “pay or play,” a regressive and job-killing tax on work, should be made plain and clear to voters.

James C. Capretta on Barack Obama, John McCain & Health Care on National Review Online

The main problem with the AMT is that it was never indexed for inflation, so what was rich in the 60s is now middle class. So how does this relate to Obama’s tax plan? Well, a family pays AMT when their AMT amount is more than their regular income tax.

So here is a simple example. Suppose a middle class family has a regular income tax liability of $7000, and an AMT liability of $6500, then they would pay the $7000 regular taxes. Now if Obama gives them a $3000 tax cut and doesn’t change the AMT liability, then their regular tax liability would be $4000and their AMT liability would be $6500. So they’d still have to pay $6500 under the AMT and the effective tax cut is only $500. McCain originally wanted to repeal the AMT all together, but now says he wants to do a phase out because the AMT is really a revenue machine for the government that is hard to get rid of. So even though McCain’s plan seem to give less tax cuts to middle income families, I think he could save a lot of middle class families money on the AMT by indexing it appropriately. On the other hand, I don’t think Obama’s plan really gives that much tax cuts to middle income families because he does not address the AMT.

How many people will the AMT affect? Well,without any change it is supposed to hit 30 million mostly middle-class taxpayers by 2010. According to this article, The Tax Policy Center estimates that by 2010, 89 percent of married couples with two or more kids and adjusted gross incomes between $75,000 and $100,000 will be subject to the AMT if nothing is done. So even if Obama cuts the regular income tax on these people, it would not matter at all because they will already be paying the AMT.

Finally, I think Obama’s plan to make “donut holes” and tax the rich sounds awfully like creating another AMT system, and I’m very wary of this need to punish the rich with more taxes. Obviously, every new attempt to make the rich pay more just creates more complexity in the tax system and create problems down the road and hurt the middle class. So yes, it looks like Obama will give the middle class a bigger tax break and tax the rich more right now on paper, but I highly doubt that is what will actually happen.

What About the Alternative Minimum Tax (AMT)? — The Baglady

Originally Posted by Herodotus

Mandatory funding: Social Security, Medicaid, Medicare, unemployment, food stamps, and interest on the debt have to be funded. This goes to my earlier point above. If you can figure out a way to gut/eliminate those programs, keep every single person who uses them, or could potentially use them 100 percent happy with the cuts, balance the budget, pay off the debt, keep taxes low, and be able to spend lots of money on defense let me know, and I will elect YOU for president.

Explain to me why unemployment charity and food stamps are mandatory. Why are medicare and medicaid manditory? These all came to be in the 1960s during Johnson's glorious "Great Society" and have been with us ever since. We were doing fine before that. Why all of a sudden they are indispensible?

These programs are like drugs. Once people depend on them, they don't want to get off. Politicians are like drug dealers. They push these welfare programs in exchange for votes. We have to do the hard thing and reduce welfare.

We need to privatize social security. Gradually reduce health insurance mandate on the employers and shift to employee based care. I hate to use this word, but "empower" the people. Let us choose.

Originally Posted by gunnut

Explain to me why unemployment charity and food stamps are mandatory. Why are medicare and medicaid manditory? These all came to be in the 1960s during Johnson's glorious "Great Society" and have been with us ever since. We were doing fine before that. Why all of a sudden they are indispensible?

These programs are like drugs. Once people depend on them, they don't want to get off. Politicians are like drug dealers. They push these welfare programs in exchange for votes. We have to do the hard thing and reduce welfare.

We need to privatize social security. Gradually reduce health insurance mandate on the employers and shift to employee based care. I hate to use this word, but "empower" the people. Let us choose.

Tell it to the government. These programs are manadtory because the payments on them go out no matter what:

MANDATORY SPENDING refers to funds not controlled by annual decision of Congress.
These funds are automatically obligated by virtue of previously-enacted laws.

MANDATORY SPENDING

Bush and the Republican Congress had the perfect, perfect opportunity to privatize Social Security in 2005, or 2006, or even before that, but the weak-kneeed Congress failed to act on it, and they still lost their majority. I voted for Bush in part because of his promise to partially privatize Social Security, a promise he failed to deliver on. Now McCain wants to camapign on the same promise only he will face a hostile Democratic Congress; no thanks on that empty promise.

If it isn't going to be privatized at least make it solvent and Obama seems likely to do that with payroll tax increases. Balancing the budget would also help, and after eight years of Republican largesse, maybe the Dems will have more spending discipline.

The Jason Furman Saga: Has Obama Fired His New Economic Adviser Yet?
June 11, 2008 12:56 PM ET | James Pethokoukis | Permanent Link


So Barack Obama has named economist Jason Furman of the Brookings Institution as his top economic adviser. Very interesting pick. Already, liberal activists are in a tizzy because of his contrarian positions on some policy issues. Here is what I can tell you about Furman. (I have spoken with him on several occasions, and several conservative economists I know think highly of him.)

1) Furman is no protectionist. He understands the benefits that open trade brings America, such as low-priced goods at Wal-Mart and the intense competition that leads to innovation. The Hamilton Project, the program he ran at Brookings, is all about making sure the benefits of trade are more widely dispersed and the losers from trade taken care of—not scrapping NAFTA or the World Trade Organization. Here is what Furman told me back in 2007:

Jason Furman, director of the Hamilton Project, a centrist economic group, thinks there will be plenty of China-bashing rhetoric and talk of trade barriers—like one proposal to slap a 27.5 percent tariff on Chinese goods because of the weak yuan--over the next few years, not to mention a pause in new trade agreements. But in the end, he speculates, Democrats will mostly push for greater social insurance, such as vastly increased unemployment benefits. "Social insurance," he says, "can lead to a more dynamic society by letting people feel more comfortable taking risks."

Here is something else I wrote about Furman:

In the past, I have differentiated—using an idea stolen from economist Jason Furman at the Hamilton Project-between "pretax Democrats," who want to alter the trade environment such as reopening NAFTA, and "after-tax Democrats," who want to mostly deal with any negative trade effects after they happen, such as through an expanded social insurance program that might include wage insurance for displaced workers.

In other words, Furman would rather see expanded unemployment insurance, wage insurance, and more education for workers rather than trade barriers to protect their jobs. Unions tend to dismiss those sorts of policies, "burial insurance."

2) Furman is also skeptical about a major pillar of economic thought in the Democratic Party, that the past three decades have been terrible for workers because of "stagnant wages." He sees it as intellectually dishonest to ignore healthcare and retirement benefits when doing that calculation, as well as the falling price of everything from computers to airline tickets.

3) Furman also sees the value in a low tax rate with few deductions and is in favor of Charlie Rangel's proposed corporate income tax cut. This from a Washington Post op-ed:

We should consider tax reform in the classic 1986 mode: lower tax rates and broaden the tax base by limiting special exemptions. Both halves of this classic equation have the potential for helping the economy by eliminating the perverse incentives to invest in tax-favored activities rather than in more economically productive activities.... The centerpiece of [Rangel's] corporate tax reform is a reduction of the corporate tax rate from 35 percent to 30.5 percent .... Without adding to the deficit burden, this rate reduction would be fully paid for by a series of measures to broaden the corporate tax base to ensure that different forms of investments are taxed at similar rates

.

Obama himself has been critical of McCain's corporate tax cut.

The Jason Furman Saga: Has Obama Fired His New Economic Adviser Yet? - Capital Commerce (usnews.com)

Obama: Higher Taxes Are Bad for Economic Growth
June 12, 2008 01:48 PM ET | James Pethokoukis | Permanent Link


I just got off the McCain conference call on gasoline prices and taxes. Rep. Eric Cantor and economic policy director Douglas Holtz-Eakin did the talking for Team McCain. In addition to pushing McCain's summer gasoline tax holiday, Holtz-Eakin made a point of referring to Barack Obama's recent interview with CNBC's John Harwood in which Obama gave this answer about what he would do about his tax increases if the economy was weak in 2009. This was Obama's answer:

Some of those you could possibly defer. But I think the basic principle of restoring fairness to our economy and encouraging bottom-up economic growth is important.

"Why would you want to damage the economy at all?" asked Holtz-Eakin. I found Obama's answer particularly strange given that I have appeared on CNBC with many left-of-center economists who are completely dismissive of the negative impact of higher tax rates at any level less than 90 percent or so. But here's Obama clearly making the connection that higher tax rates somehow retard economic growth. New economic policy director Jason Furman must already be working his wonkish magic!

Obama: Higher Taxes Are Bad for Economic Growth - Capital Commerce (usnews.com)

I still think Obama's positions are more nuanced, and he isn't above changing them.

Originally Posted by Herodotus

Tell it to the government. These programs are manadtory because the payments on them go out no matter what:

MANDATORY SPENDING

Bush and the Republican Congress had the perfect, perfect opportunity to privatize Social Security in 2005, or 2006, or even before that, but the weak-kneeed Congress failed to act on it, and they still lost their majority. I voted for Bush in part because of his promise to partially privatize Social Security, a promise he failed to deliver on. Now McCain wants to camapign on the same promise only he will face a hostile Democratic Congress; no thanks on that empty promise.

If it isn't going to be privatized at least make it solvent and Obama seems likely to do that with payroll tax increases. Balancing the budget would also help, and after eight years of Republican largesse, maybe the Dems will have more spending discipline.

I agree with you. Conservatives are pissed off at Bush and the republican majority from 2001 to 2006 not doing a damn thing about this bloated government. In fact, they added to it.

The Lincoln Club has threatened to pull it's "contribution" to republicans in congress if they don't shape up.

The current crop of republicans are like democrat lite.

Here's a question: what do you get when you vote for a democrat or a democrat? Answer: you get a democrat.

Originally Posted by Herodotus

.

Obama himself has been critical of McCain's corporate tax cut.

The Jason Furman Saga: Has Obama Fired His New Economic Adviser Yet? - Capital Commerce (usnews.com)



Obama: Higher Taxes Are Bad for Economic Growth - Capital Commerce (usnews.com)

I still think Obama's positions are more nuanced, and he isn't above changing them.

I believe this is his "dash to the center" in preparation for the general election.

Nothing in his history/background suggests that he is all of a sudden a fiscal conservative.

Here's a blast of double-ought from Hugh Hewitt on Obama:

Click-clack - BOOM!

Only a MSM reporter has troubling pinpointing Obama's ideology. Obama's for sharply raising taxes and for massive increases in spending. He favors immediate retreat in Iraq and wants to parlay without preconditions with Ahmadinejad and Chavez. Obama supports the abortion on demand in every situation, and thinks Ruth Bader Ginsburg, one of the two most liberal members of the Supreme Court, the model for future SCOTUS appointees. Obama endorsed the D.C. gun ban that was struck down by the Supreme Court and Ibama endorsed the Court's decision conferring habeas rights on the Gitmo detainees. On immigration, Obama worked to undermine the flawed compromise of last year because the amnesty it offered was in his view not far reaching enough. Until this week he opposed the effort to extend the surveillance authority of the U.S..

Nice to see it all in one place.

-dale