BoatBanter.com - Winning elections is not good enough

On Tue, 22 Feb 2011 19:06:31 -0500, wrote:

On Tue, 22 Feb 2011 15:26:36 -0800, wrote:

On Tue, 22 Feb 2011 16:48:54 -0500, wrote:

On Tue, 22 Feb 2011 11:05:50 -0800, wrote:

On Tue, 22 Feb 2011 12:19:29 -0500, wrote:

On Mon, 21 Feb 2011 23:13:36 -0800, wrote:

On Mon, 21 Feb 2011 23:39:10 -0500, wrote:

On Mon, 21 Feb 2011 19:49:10 -0800, wrote:

It is not "long term" when you already can't pay your bills without
borrowing money and the serious obligations have not even hit yet.

Huh? People do this all the time when they use a credit card. While
not the best way to pay for things, it's fine if done responsibly and
in the short term.

If your credit card minimum payments are greater than your income you
are on the road to bankruptcy and that is what SS is doing right now.

And, that isn't the case for the US.

All of our government spending, including SS/Medicare is more than we
take in, right now. It is not just a little either, it is over 40
cents on every dollar. That is a problem today and there is no real
plan to fix it in the future.

It's only a problem "today" if the crazies in the house refuse to
raise the debt limit. It'll be a small problem if they refuse to pass
a reasonable budget. I certainly agree that it needs to be fixed and
we should just kick the can down the road, but there's no reason to
take draconian measures on the backs of the middle-class and poor.
Let's start with the rich.

We can go after rich people as a symbolic gesture but they are not
rich enough to fix this problem, even if we took all of their money.

It is not symbolic. It's going to help. It won't "fix this problem"
but it'll be better than throwing the mentally ill out on the street.

Now you are channeling the Carter administration?

Talking about what's happening in Arizona right now.

We always seem to find an excuse why we should not start now and we
kick the can.

I've suggested a way to start, but you're opposed to it because it
doesn't completely fix the problem.

I have said we should reset the rates to the 2001 level, or even
repeal the Clinton tax cuts.
The problem is if you don't attack entitlements, it is just symbolic.

No. It's one step that needs to be taken.

From the 2010 SSA trustees report
"Annual cost is projected to exceed tax income in 2010 and 2011, to be
less than tax income in 2012 through 2014, then to exceed tax income
in 2015 and remain higher throughout the remainder of the long-range
period."
Considering their track record on "predictions" I doubt the 2012-2014
surplus will happen. That assumes we are going to reproduce the Bush
boom years of 2004-2006 again.

Medicare has been upside down for years.
From the trustees' report

"HI expenditures have exceeded income annually since 2008 and are
projected to continue doing so under current law through 2013 ...The
HI trust fund has not met the Trustees’ formal test of short-range
financial adequacy since 2003."

Interesting that you didn't quote from the top of the report...

"For Medicare, it projects that changes put in place by the new health
reform law will help extend the life of the program's trust fund by 12
years – from 2017 to 2029. But this projection comes with cautions
that such gains will be dependent on the federal government achieving
significant health care savings in the years to come. Meanwhile, the
recession has worsened Social Security’s financial health – at least
in the near term."

Why quote a lie? That all assumes THREE things. One that there is
really a trust fund, there isn't
Two. it also assumes they will increase the taxes like the health care
bill calls for. They just reduced the taxes 2% across the board. Why
would I think those 2014 increases will stand.
It also assumes health care costs will go down.
They always go up.

YOU quoted the report and conveniently left out the part you didn't
like.

I left out the things that were conjecture, dreams and estimates. I
am showing what is already happening.

According to you.

According to that trustees' report. The quotes you posted are all
prefaces with assumptions. You can just go look at the OMB site and
see what is happening right now.
SS/Medicare is simply paying out more than it takes in, every month.

Which has nothing to do with short-term problems. Keep trying. You're
just thrashing around over a long-term problem. Nothing is happening
next week (yes, that's a metaphor).

It is happening TODAY. Wayne is right, there is a limit to how long
people will still be willing to buy our debt and when the auctions
start going up, they will go up very fast.

Yes, there's a limit. There's no indication that those who buy it are
going to stop any time soon.

So you think we should wait until they do stop buying our debt before
we act?
That is a hell of a game of chicken you want to play with the full
faith and credit of the US.

Never said that, as you know.

The 2014 thing assumes nobody changes the new health care law taxes.

The chance of that was only made worse by Obama cutting payroll tax
revenues by 2% (in the democratic congress) and they are even talking
about more cuts, perhaps dropping the payroll tax altogether.
They added taxes in the health care bill to get a good CBO cost
estimate and before the ink was dry they cut them again.
I think the plan is to dump the whole program into the general find
and remove any illusion that this is anything but a welfare program.
They have been spending any surplus as fast as it came in since 1939
so there is no "trust fund".

First sentence from the conclusion:

"Conclusion

The financial outlook for the Medicare program is substantially
improved as a result of the far-reaching changes in the Patient
Protection and Affordable Care Act."

The tax increases in that bill have already been gutted and they are
talking about removing the payroll tax altogether.

Just exactly what fixes do you see coming any time soon?
I know you say we need to raise taxes but your party does not seem to
agree. Both parties have bought into the idea that lower taxes creates
more revenue or that higher taxes stifle the economy (whether it is
down or if it is booming) .

This is totally untrue. The Dems have tried to raise taxes on those
over $250K, you even said as much, but the Reps won't have it. Get
your story straight. Did they or didn't they?

They talk about it but they had both houses of congress and the white
house. Nothing happened.

Which is a failing of the Democrats for sure. In any case, this is
what needs to happen. I think it will still happen in one form or
another.

They just want to use the platitudes you parrot that this will get
fixed some time in the future and they kick the can down the road.

Try again.

OK
They just want to use the platitudes you parrot that this will get
fixed some time in the future and they kick the can down the road.

Very unfunny. If you can't actually support your point of view,
perhaps it's time to retire from the discussion.

I am not sure what else to say. It is a fact that SS and Medicare
spend more than they make right now and you deny it. I have also never
seen any projection or guess than changes that in the LONG TERM.
I am not sure how to penetrate the dream world you live in.

No. I'm denying that it's a short term problem. I've said this several
times. Why is this difficult for you to get?

Because the long term failure has already started and there is no end
in sight. The projection of a surplus for a few years in the trustee
report is not valid now that Obama cut the total revenue by 14.2%
(taking 14% FICA down to 12%). It is like they just gave up on the
solvency of SS/Medicare.

No it hasn't. That's just FEAR not reality.

What is unreal about that? You are in the same kind of denial as those
people I tried to talk to in 2006. They kept saying house prices would
always go up. The huge debts they took on would never have to be paid
off because they could always sell the house for a profit.

You're mixing problems... if we had better regulation, the housing
bubble wouldn't have happened in such a terrible way. That's got
nothing to do with the long-term financial problems except
peripherally.

The level of denial is the same. Also the idea that nobody was going
to address the problem until the economy crashed. There were plenty of
signs and plenty of people who were predicting the housing crash. This
paranoid guy was one of them.

You've tried to change the subject. It didn't work. They are two
different issues.