What happened to all of the doom and gloom economic threads?

[Sean Renaud]

You know at some point you just look silly feeding the trolls right?

 

[mercury14]

You know at some point you just look silly feeding the trolls right?

You think Vette is trolling? He really believes this stuff. Doesn't matter if Bush's own budget office is quoted right in front of his face in giant font... That quote never happened. The funny thing is you know these chuckleheads did their own Google search to find out what the Bush Administration REALLY said... They had to be like "oh shit"... lol

 

[David_Clink]

You think Vette is trolling? He really believes this stuff. Doesn't matter if Bush's own budget office is quoted right in front of his face in giant font... That quote never happened. The funny thing is you know these chuckleheads did their own Google search to find out what the Bush Administration REALLY said... They had to be like "oh shit"... lol

its time to fix government, and NOT come to terms on the debt. time to put hand cuffs on obama, and here is the kicker, only allow obama to spend what obama takes in. its mind blowing

 

[Sean Renaud]

So the first step is to get psychic into the office so Obama will know what he'll bring in before he spends it. I'll get right on finding either a psychic or god willing a time traveler.

 

[Ulaven_Demorte]

its time to fix government, and NOT come to terms on the debt. time to put hand cuffs on obama, and here is the kicker, only allow obama to spend what obama takes in. its mind blowing

You know who holds the government's purse string right?

hint: It's not the President.

 

[busybody..]

Really? I just quoted the White House Budget Office's direct quote on the estimate of the Iraq war - and linked coverage of Bush giving that estimate to congress in a briefing. That would kick your ass in court.

who cares

 

[David_Clink]

You know who holds the government's purse string right?

hint: It's not the President.

clearly the "Rent is too high!"

point is, we must fix government. teach "them" simple accounting in that "they" can only spend what "they" take in (aka taxes or blood money)

 

[Sean Renaud]

clearly the "Rent is too high!"

point is, we must fix government. teach "them" simple accounting in that "they" can only spend what "they" take in (aka taxes or blood money)

Which is impossible. It's like telling people they can only drink as much as it rains. You don't know how much it's gonna rain and there is no way to know. You can make some educated guesses but you can't know. And sometimes shit catches fire.

 

[David_Clink]

Which is impossible. It's like telling people they can only drink as much as it rains. You don't know how much it's gonna rain and there is no way to know. You can make some educated guesses but you can't know. And sometimes shit catches fire.

why are you willing to accept that?

are you married? if so, would you allow your wife to spend, spend, and spend till all your credit cards are maxed out?

 

[koalabear]

You know who holds the government's purse string right?

hint: It's not the President.

No, he wastes too much time throwing baby fits and walking out of the meeting.

 

[David_Clink]

No, he wastes too much time throwing baby fits and walking out of the meeting.

maybe he went to the kitchen to eat his pea's

 

[mercury14]

clearly the "Rent is too high!"

point is, we must fix government. teach "them" simple accounting in that "they" can only spend what "they" take in (aka taxes or blood money)

Then stop electing candidates who support Medicare/Medicaid, social security, and defense.

 

[David_Clink]

You know at some point you just look silly feeding the trolls right?

hum...just how many people call you a troll. funny how that works

 

[David_Clink]

Then stop electing candidates who support Medicare/Medicaid, social security, and defense.

there is more to the massive spending than that. just like the rest of America, we need to downsize the government and cut pay and bennies for those who work in government

 

[mercury14]

there is more to the massive spending than that. just like the rest of America, we need to downsize the government and cut pay and bennies for those who work in government

No that's pretty much it. Discretionary spending is a mere 19% of the budget.

http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/thumb/7/7a/U.S._Federal_Spending_-_FY_2007.png/800px-U.S._Federal_Spending_-_FY_2007.png

 

[David_Clink]

time to change the laws so that we can trim the fat

No that's pretty much it. Discretionary spending is a mere 19% of the budget.

http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/thumb/7/7a/U.S._Federal_Spending_-_FY_2007.png/800px-U.S._Federal_Spending_-_FY_2007.png

 

[mercury14]

time to change the laws so that we can trim the fat

Which laws?

 

[David_Clink]

Which laws?

clearly everything must be trimmed, we have too many entitlements and too many government workers that are paid too much.

 

[Sean Renaud]

I know the 2010 budget is the most recent but it seems to me that (while nobody on either side is saying this) maybe the 09 and 10 budgets with TARP and the Stimulus Packages included aren't really the best to be basing our long term debating on. It's not like there is any sign of a NEW stimulus bill mucking up the next budget.

 

[mercury14]

clearly everything must be trimmed, we have too many entitlements and too many government workers that are paid too much.

Which entitlements would you like cut?

 

[RightField]

July 13, 2011
The Spending Is the Problem
By Larry Kudlow


There are a lot of pieces to the debt-ceiling deal. There are the taxes upon taxes, as the Wall Street Journal editors describe it. That's the roughly $1 trillion in new Obama taxes on top of what he's already signed into law. It's an economy and jobs killer.

Then there's the entitlement piece, which may be more interesting since Obama is apparently open to extending the Social Security and Medicare retirement age and using the so-called chained-CPI, which would lower cost-of-living adjustments (and increase income-tax thresholds). Whether the president is serious about these entitlement measures, no one knows. It's noteworthy that he's at least talking about them, although he's linking them to higher taxes.

But there's another piece to the debt-ceiling deal that hasn't yet seen the light of day. It's the non-entitlement spending piece. That is, domestic and defense discretionary spending plus so-called small entitlements like food stamps, unemployment benefits, and so forth.

Here's my thought: The public wants deep spending cuts. That's their first priority and that's why polls overwhelmingly show opposition to a debt-ceiling increase. So regarding those spending cuts, the only thing that matters is the first-year spending decline. That would be 2012. If the spending baseline is brought down significantly in year one, then the out-years will follow suit. The government's cost curve will ease down.

For example, go back to the Paul Ryan budget. Rep. Ryan includes a $110 billion reduction from the CBO baseline for fiscal year 2012, which reflects a $179 billion cut from the president's budget baseline. Over ten years, that's roughly $6 trillion in savings. That would be real money. It would be significant. In fact, Ryan's total budget in 2012 would actually come in about $100 billion below 2011. That's incredible. It's almost always that so-called spending cuts are mere reductions in growth. Hats off to Ryan.

But even so, his ten-year budget would still rise by about $40 trillion.

So, again, 2012 is the only year that really counts for spending cuts in the debt deal. My guess is that any entitlement reduction will take decades. So if Speaker Boehner sticks to his argument that there must be more than $1 worth of spending cuts to offset a $1 increase in the debt ceiling, then 2012 must be his target year.

As the congressional negotiators negotiate with President Obama, we the taxpaying public have no idea what they're cooking up on 2012 spending. It could be a worthwhile reduction or not. Out-year-discretionary decreases and small entitlement cuts for 2019 to 2021 are simply not reliable or credible. Congresses change. Deals are broken. Outcomes are, well, kind of like a scam.

And the public is onto this. The highly accurate IBD/TIPP pollsters have just released an incredible result. Get this: The public rejects a debt-ceiling increase by a huge 58 to 36 percent. That includes 59 percent of independents and even 38 percent of Democrats. That is the tea party revolt.

I believe the public agrees with people like Michele Bachmann. She told me in an interview this week that Congress can direct the Treasury to "first pay off the interest on the debt, make sure our military men and women get paid, and then deal with our priorities. Yes, we have very sacrificial consequences, but when are we going to get serious about deficit reduction?"

On this logic, Bachmann and other tea party Republicans -- including most on the presidential campaign trail -- oppose a debt-ceiling increase. This populist spending revolt runs directly counter to the Tim Geithner, Wall Street, big-business view that we must at all costs have a debt-ceiling increase to make good on our federal debt.

Tea party populists are saying no, no: We can still make good on our debt, but this debt bill is the only leverage we have to force Washington to cut spending.

Main Street is in revolt against Wall Street, although it should be noted that Wall Street bond investors are not panicked by any means. The 10-year Treasury continues to trade below 3 percent. Maybe that will change by August 2, or the next Geithner debt-limit drop-dead date. But right now the bond market seems to be aligned with the tea party movement.

President Obama says it's time to "eat our peas," meaning the debt deal should have huge tax increases. That argument is being rejected. Instead, the grassroots sees a big bowl of porridge and wants to shrink that bowl substantially -- no matter what the "sacrificial consequences."

I'm with the porridge.

 

[busybody..]

Which entitlements would you like cut?

YOU!@

 

[busybody..]

BTW, the same thing going on in Wisconsin

Conservative Principles In Action: Thanks To GOP Governor Mitch Daniels, Indiana Now $1.2 Billion In The Black…

Compared to their neighbors in Dem-controlled Illinois who are looking at a $15 billion deficit.

(Indy Channel) — Indiana leaders patted themselves on the back on Thursday because of a bigger than expected amount of money in the state’s checking account.

State Auditor Tim Berry said Indiana finished the fiscal year on June 30 with nearly $1.2 billion in the bank, more than 40 percent above last year’s finish, when tax revenues were plunging and budget makers were worried that the state would run out of money this year.

Berry said the rebound happened because of a recovery in tax collections and Gov. Mitch Daniels’ success in cutting the budget.

While the state received $1.34 billion less than it had anticipated over a two-year period, it spent $1.52 billion less than it had budgeted for in June 2009.

“Without raising taxes and by carefully watching spending, Indiana state government has continued to live within its means,” Berry said. “For those who believe that raising taxes is the only way out of a fiscal crisis, I say take a look at the Hoosier state.”

Indiana’s financial situation is far better than its neighboring states, particularly Illinois, which implemented massive tax increases to shore up its finances.

“More money in Hoosiers’ incomes and a terrific job of cost control by state employees working together combined to produce an even stronger result than we expected at budget time,” Daniels said. “With the national economy still limping badly, and downside risks still abounding, it is reassuring to have a safety margin that other states would love to have.”

But House Democratic Leader Pat Bauer said the surplus came at a cost and that the budget was balanced on the backs of schools and needy children.


Same tired old bull shit song

 

[busybody..]

The US will never recover with HO! and CO! in charge

WE MUST ELIMINATE THEM FOR GOOD!


The Disappearing Recovery What if the weak recovery is all the recovery we are going to get?By DANIEL HENNINGER


Barack Obama, John Boehner and Mitch McConnell have been performing an intricate scorpion dance over spending, taxes and the debt ceiling, premised on the belief that this is the deal that would ignite the recovery.

But what if it's too late? What if that first-quarter growth rate of 1.8% is a portent of the U.S.'s long-term future? What if below-normal U.S. GDP is, as the Obama folks like to say, the new normal?

Robert Lucas, the 1995 Nobel laureate in economics, has spent his career thinking about why economies grow, and in particular about the effect of policy making on growth. From his office at the University of Chicago, Prof. Lucas has been wondering, like the rest of us, why, if the recession officially ended in the first half of 2009, there hasn't been more growth in the U.S. economy. He's also been wondering why this delayed recovery resembles the long non-recovery years of the 1930s. And he has been thinking about the U.S. and Europe.

What if the weak recovery is all the recovery we are going to get?
.
Podcast: Listen to the audio of Wonder Land here. .In May, Bob Lucas pulled his thoughts together and delivered them as the Milliman Lecture at the University of Washington, an exercise he described to me this week as "intelligent speculation."

Here is the lecture's provocative final thought: "Is it possible that by imitating European policies on labor markets, welfare and taxes, the U.S. has chosen a new, lower GDP trend? If so, it may be that the weak recovery we have had so far is all the recovery we will get."

The Obama-will-turn-us-into-Europe argument is a staple of the administration's critics. Prof. Lucas's intelligent speculation, however, carries the case beyond dinner-party carping.

The baseline reality for any discussion of where we're headed is that from 1870 to 2008, the U.S. economy has had average GDP productivity growth of about 3% and about 2% on a per-person basis. Despite displacements—wars, depressions—we've always returned to this solid upward trend. From 1870 till recently, real income per person has increased by a factor of 12—"an ongoing miracle," Prof. Lucas notes, "mainly due to free-market capitalism."

The Obama economists like to argue that this recession was the greatest meltdown since the Depression. Prof. Lucas agrees. Most recessions, he says, are not very important events. This one, though, has taken U.S. GDP almost 10% off its long-term growth trend. The only downturn comparable to this in the past century is the more than 30% decline during the Depression.

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Barbara Kelley
.What discomfits him is the similarities in the policy choices that accompanied both delayed recoveries. By 1934, the Depression's banking crisis had been resolved, "yet full recovery was still seven years away," he said in the Milliman lecture. GDP stayed more than 10% below trend. "Why?" The answer, he says, was growth-suppressing policies, such as the Smoot-Hawley tariff, cartelization, unionization and, "most important but hardest to measure, FDR's demonization of business."

By the end of 2008, he notes, the primary storm of the financial panic was essentially over. We did get spending declines in GDP in that year's last quarter and in the first quarter of 2009. "But there is a world of difference," he says, "between two quarters of production declines and four years!" The persistence of growth 10 percentage points below its long-term trend line is troubling.

He credits the current Federal Reserve with avoiding the mistakes of the Depression, properly acting this time as the lender of last resort. With the financial side essentially in order and the recovery stalled, Prof. Lucas sees public-policy analogies to the 1930s: "The likelihood of much higher taxes, focused on 'the rich'; medical legislation that promises a large increase in the role of government; financial legislation that assigns vast, poorly defined responsibilities to the Fed and others."

The consensus assumption, however, is that the U.S. economy will return to its century-long growth trend. Prof. Lucas asks: "Is this really the case?"

Forgotten in most discussions of the U.S.-Europe comparison is that for the first 70 years of the 20th century, continental Europe's growth rose alongside that of the world-leading U.S. and U.K., especially after World War II. Through the 1960s, he says, there was every reason to expect a common, high living standard for all of us. Then, "in the 1970s, their catch-up stalled."

A 20% to 40% gap in income levels emerged between the U.S. and Europe, reflecting a lowered European work effort. In Prof. Lucas's view, that gap represents the cost (largely taxes) of financing a larger welfare state from 1970 onward. Other economists, he says, have cited a 30% loss in GDP per person in Western Europe since the 1970s.

The U.S.'s projected long-term welfare costs, including the new health-care law, are the justification the Obama economists give for pushing spending to 25% or more of GDP. The tax increase the president is fairly shrieking for this week isn't for the August debt limit. It's for the next 25 years.

"If we're going to move to a European welfare state," says Prof. Lucas, "we're going to have to pay a European price." And that price could be a permanently lower level of GDP per person. The U.S.'s amazing 100-year ride would slow.

Among the many things any such drop in GDP will siphon away is America's relentless productive vitality. "So much new happens in the United States," Prof. Lucas says. But will it still?

 

[Frisco_Slug_Esq]

Today In History: July 14, 2009, Obama Took Ownership Of The Economy…

And things have only gone downhill since then.

“My administration has a job to do as well, and that job is to get this economy back on its feet — that’s my job. And it’s a job I gladly accept. I love these folks who helped get us in this mess and then suddenly say, ‘Well this is Obama’s economy’ — that’s fine — GIVE IT TO ME. My job is to solve problems, not to stand on the sidelines and carp and gripe. So . . . so I welcome the job. I want the responsibility.” — President Obama, July 14, 2009

"We own the economy. We own the beginning of the turnaround and we want to make sure that we continue that pace of recovery, not go back to the policies of the past under the Bush administration that put us in the ditch in the first place."
Debbie Wasserman Schultz


... and we're turning Japaneesa, turning Japaneesa...