Why scaring grandma won't work

That's the difference between us my friend. I'm willing to have a discussion/debate and disagree without always being disrespectful to the person with whom I disagree. TM asked a straightforward question and I answered that question in an equally straightforward manner including the reasoned arguments to support my position.

Social Security is not on solid fiscal ground, otherwise the president would not have been credible when he said the checks might not go out if the debt limit wasn't raised. If it was on solid ground, then there would be no reason to scare people into thinking that any other possibility existed. The reason that the program isn't fiscally solid does lie in the foundation upon which the program was constructed. It is true that both the tax rate and the amount of income subject to the tax has doubled in my lifetime and even that has failed to bring fiscal security to the program. That is why the rates and the amount subject to taxation must increase yet again for the latest temporary bandaid.

It is also true that sans all of the intrusive individual welfare domestic policies, enacted by a government attempting to become a national government instead of a federal one over the last 90 years, there would be no deficit emergency that needs solving. We wouldn't have to worry about Moody's or Standard & Poors downgrading our notes of debt if Medicare wasn't taking about half of its obligations out of the general fund and we weren't spending nearly every single dollar of revenue realized from taxes to fund all of those individual welfare programs.

In the last 30 years the value of domestic production has increased over 520% from roughly $2.8 Trillion a year to something approaching $14.5 Trillion a year. The budget of the government in DC is 36% more for this year than the entire national production was 30 years ago. The entire budget of the government in DC in 1980 represents less than 40% of this year's amount of deficit spending. Not the entire budget, just the deficit spending. The federal budget in 1980 represents less than 16% of the 2011 federal budget. The dollar value of the economy has grown 520% over those 30 years, but the amount of money spent by the government in DC has grown 644%.

Please allow all of that to sink in for just a little bit before resorting to snide remarks this time around. Perhaps instead of sniping at me, you could try answering the question TM posed from your perspective in an equally coherent, logical and reasoned fashion. You can defend the bottoming of Social Security on a foundation of defined benefits and pay as you go. You can explain why a one size fits all national individual welfare program is more beneficial than the state governments tailoring a similar program to serve the citizens of their own state. You could try explaining why a citizen of Colorado should be just as responsible for the individual welfare of a citizen of New York as the citizens of New York are. You could try to explain why a single national government is more beneficial to the security and general welfare of the states that belong to the union than a system of coordinate governments would be. As a fallback, you might simply try explaining how continuing to accrue debt at the rate of $1+ Trillion a year actually helps secure the blessings of liberty to ourselves and our posterity despite all evidence to the contrary.

PrintSmith wrote: Please allow all of that to sink in for just a little bit before resorting to snide remarks this time around. Perhaps instead of sniping at me, you could try answering the question TM posed from your perspective in an equally coherent, logical and reasoned fashion. .

Good luck with that one PS rofllol rofllol :can't hear

I just thought it would perhaps be worthwhile to show in hard numbers why it is a spending problem that we have, not a revenue one. Some seem to think that is a nice slogan and little more - a talking point drummed up for repetition. Reality, however, is that our current executive himself stood in the well of the Senate and said these very things before getting behind the wheel himself and putting the pedal to the metal with regards to spending with the help of a complicit Congress populated by a large majority in both houses by elected representatives of his own party.

A couple of excerpts from the speech then Senator Obama read into the record in 2006:

The fact that we are here today to debate raising America’s debt limit is a sign of leadership failure. It is a sign that the U.S. Government can’t pay its own bills. It is a sign that we now depend on ongoing financial assistance from foreign countries to finance our Government’s reckless fiscal policies. … Increasing America’s debt weakens us domestically and internationally. Leadership means that “the buck stops here.” Instead, Washington is shifting the burden of bad choices today onto the backs of our children and grandchildren. America has a debt problem and a failure of leadership. Americans deserve better.

And the cost of our debt is one of the fastest growing expenses in the Federal budget. This rising debt is a hidden domestic enemy, robbing our cities and States of critical investments in infrastructure like bridges, ports, and levees; robbing our families and our children of critical investments in education and health care reform; robbing our seniors of the retirement and health security they have counted on.

Every dollar we pay in interest is a dollar that is not going to investment in America’s priorities.

Now, our current executive has tried to distance himself from this reasoned and rational speech on the basis that he was just playing politics when he voted against the increase in the debt limit then President Bush was seeking. The current crop of Republicans have not voted against a debt limit increase, they have instead voted to grant this executive his wish to have it raised enough that he doesn't have to address the issue when he runs for reelection in the fall of 2012 subject to a few conditions. They accept as accurate these words of Obama and are actually seeking to lead the nation on a course that reverses the problem instead of simply continuing to kick the can down the road yet again.

The nation, as Obama so eloquently stated, has a debt problem, not a revenue problem. It has had a debt problem for a number of years now and the only answer DC seems capable of coming up with is to dig the hole deeper still. Problem is there isn't any gold at the bottom of the shaft they are sinking this nation into. In fact at times it seems that what is being dug instead is a more direct route to the Chinese bailout money DC has become addicted to in the pursuit of financing its never ending appetite for spending borrowed money.

I remember back in the days of the Reagan administration how everyone was so worried that the Japanese were spending all their trade deficit money buying up our high rises and golf courses. Why do those same people today think the better alternative is having the Chinese purchase our debt instead of hard assets that are located in this nation instead of in China? The Chinese need somewhere to spend that trade imbalance money after all - there may be a trade deficit, but there isn't a capital deficit. Instead of purchasing assets that might help stabilize commercial realty prices, opening up new stores that need employees and building factories here to serve the small domestic market for their goods as the Japanese did during the Reagan years, the government in DC has given them virtually unlimited access to another, less attractive from our perspective, option - treasury notes to finance the DC government's deficit spending.

Hey P.S. I appreciate your well written posts and numbers and thoughts. All of the drive-by, quick snide remarks get tiresome and add nothing to the discussion. Your posts are your own thoughts and maybe someone will get something out of reading them, even if it doesn't seem apparent.

I have noticed that few posters have a good grasp of the real numbers. Thanks to the media that uses 10 second soundbites, selected percentages like "record profits", and very little hard data. Demagoguery works best to get re-elected.

Joe wrote: All of the drive-by, quick snide remarks get tiresome and add nothing to the discussion. .

Seriously? You don't think that "it gave him another opportunity to use "wannabe national government" in a sentence!"

is brilliant commentary and becomes more insightful and funnier every time you see it?