On Jan 3, 5:05�am, John H. wrote:


Chuck, to keep a group of people, primarily undereducated, beholding to the
D's will require a *lot* of money for handouts, whatever form they take.

Let's not be coy.


That's a pretty frightening concept, especially if you are speculating
that
the D's will be handing out more money than the R's recently have
done. Of course it will go to different folks. The D's steal for one
group of special interests and the R's steal for another.....but both
steal as much as they can as fast as they can.

Huge culprit:

Enrollment in federal social programs grew 17% between 2000 and 2005-
the biggest 5-year increase since the days of Lyndon Johnson's Great
Society. I guess it's a good thing the R's were in charge for most of
that time, who knows where we'd be if the D's were at the helm.

Biggest culprits, by the way, are guys like you and in another 9 years
guys like me. We are the largest recipients of federal handouts, and
regardless of which party is in power the wheels are definitely coming
off shortly after 2011, sad to say. Far too many Boomers will be
standing at the pension window, no matter which party prevails in
2008.
Both parties have squandered the SS Trust Fund over the decades, and
*still* we are running these huge deficits and piling on the debt.

Fed Entitlements:

(some of these are worthy programs, IMO)

Medicaid: Handout to 53.4mm people in 2005 cost $198 billion.
Social Security: Handout to 48mm people in 2005 cost $519 billion.
Medica Handout to 42.3mm people in 2005 cost $294 billion.
Child Nutrition: Handout to 32.3mm people in 2005 cost $12 billion
Veterans Benefits: Handout to 3.5mm people in 2005 cost $40 billlion

You also need to add over $50 billion per year to the Medicare number
above to pay for the Prescription Drug program that began in 2006. How
did the R's let the D's slip this one through? A $50-billion transfer
of public funds to prescription drug companies and a condition that
the government is *prohibited* from negotiating for volume pricing?
You gotta watch those devious D's, they can raid the treasury even
when in the minority, can't they?

With the exception of welfare ("temporary assistance for needy
families"), the number of people qualifying for benefits intended for
low income people soared between 2000 and 2005.

The number of people receiving earned income tax credits for
impoverished, low wage workers was 21.2 million, up 13.3% between 2000
and 2005. Cost of the program, $35 billion in direct payouts plus
another $5 billion in effective tax reduction. This huge increase in
the number of people in this category during a time of general
prosperity can be somewhat explained by welfare reform enacted in the
1990s. Enrollment in welfare programs was down to only 5mm people,
down 18.2% between 2000 and 2005. Many of the former welfare
recipients "moved up" to minimum wage service jobs and thereby swelled
the ranks of people qualifying for the earned income tax credit.

Unemployment compensation cost $33 billion in 2005. 8.1mm Americans
received unemployment compensation during that year- a 16.8% increase
from the year 2000. (See the effects of welfare reform, paragraph
above).

Pell grants to low income undergraduate students cost $13 billion in
2005, and 5.1mm Americans benefitted from the program.

********

And that's the problem with trying to balance the budget through
spending decreases. We could have saved $21 bb a year by cutting off
welfare entirely after 2005, but isn't $21 bb just enough to pay for a
few weeks' expenditures in Iraq? Based on the above list, I'm not
convinced that "Democrat handouts to undereducated people" represents
a significant portion of our social expense.

Looks like we need to take away Grannie's arthritis prescription,
slash payments to Social Security retirees, turn our backs on our
veterans,
stop feeding poor kids free lunch at school, kick the poor people out
of college, and allow those who can't afford to pay privately for
medical care or insurance (due either to age or financial
circumstance) to sufffer and die untreated. Seems about the right
approach- that would preserve the very same tax cuts that have allowed
more Americans to step up to the V8 and leather seats instead of the
V6 and cloth upholstery in their new SUV's. Gotta have priorities,
right?

General point: There are some remedies available that would be far
more painful than adjusting income (taxes) to a level sufficient to
cover expenses.

If you know of a way to restore fiscal sanity to the federal budget
without increasing taxes or cutting expenses, (or a combo thereof),
I'm all ears. I try to learn something new every day. :-)


Statistical cite: http://www.usatoday.com/news/washing...itle-chart.htm,
based on reports form the Office of Management and Budget, the
Internal Revenue Service, and Medicare and Social Security annual
reports.