Budget 2011 - Obama asks for record deficit

Entitlements, entitlenments, entitlements, mandatory spending, and people need to take on personal responsibility!

Exactly.

Where in all those charts does it tell us where and how Republicans are going to make deep cuts? We have to be careful how we cut spending and where we cut it....sure a family could say lets just not buy groceries, that will cut our spending.....but they will all die. Same with the government, we have to pick carefully where and how we cut spending so the country doesn't die.....I am reminded of an old saying, "the operation was a success, but the patient died".

Every dollar we cut from government is a dollar that is returned to the private economy- and in the private economy - it is spent much more wisely, efficiently.

No harm can come to our economy by cutting government dollars - in fact the opposite is true. Every dollar cut from government helps us all now - and into the future.

Here is a fantastic interactive site that shows all the spending and you can pick the years and you can click on the time series chart next to the numbers to see where is was and where it is going.

Just useful info.

http://www.usgovernmentspending.com/bud ... hp#usgs302

BearMtnHIB wrote:

Entitlements, entitlenments, entitlements, mandatory spending, and people need to take on personal responsibility!

Exactly.

Oh please....where is the substance in that post......where is the HOW do you cut entitlements.......where are the specifics.....really.....we could post here all day in generalities....cut this, cut that.....but until you actually say how to do it......and you deal with the consequences of your proposal it is just so much blowing smoke.

Oh please....where is the substance in that post......where is the HOW do you cut entitlements.......where are the specifics.....really.....we could post here all day in generalities....cut this, cut that.....but until you actually say how to do it......and you deal with the consequences of your proposal it is just so much blowing smoke.

Your the only one blowing smoke here - and it smells like skunk. These programs need to be un-funded. How about we do 25% per year.

If that sounds too complicated for you, I guess we should just keep running up the credit card bill to the tune of trillions of dollars per year and hope nothing bad ever happens.

Quit smokin that skunk weed and you might be able to think clearly again!

BearMtnHIB wrote:

Oh please....where is the substance in that post......where is the HOW do you cut entitlements.......where are the specifics.....really.....we could post here all day in generalities....cut this, cut that.....but until you actually say how to do it......and you deal with the consequences of your proposal it is just so much blowing smoke.

Your the only one blowing smoke here - and it smells like skunk. These programs need to be un-funded. How about we do 25% per year.

If that sounds too complicated for you, I guess we should just keep running up the credit card bill to the tune of trillions of dollars per year and hope nothing bad ever happens.

Quit smokin that skunk weed and you might be able to think clearly again!

ya know, we were doin pretty good here without insults till you showed up, so much for that. Gloves are off.

How do you "unfund" them? Are you willing to have millions of seniors without any income....yes BearMtnHIB, millions of seniors survive BECAUSE they have SS. Are you willing to take away medical care for millions of seniors.....why yes BearMtnHIB, without medicare they would never be able to afford medical care or their own medical insurance. So how do you defund them without dire consequences for seniors....talk about death squads, you are a one person annihilation squad for seniors, I guess they are right up there with liberals targeted for death. As a liberal senior, you would probably kill me tomorrow and not think twice.

Like I pointed out earlier, leave it up to the conservatives to cut funding for the poor, the seniors, the middle class....but never, ever touch those sacred cows, the wealthy and the corporations.

The question that needs to be answered first is a simple one archer.

Are these United States to be governed mostly by the federal government or the state governments?

If one answers that question with the second choice, then the answer to your question is an easy one. Don't simply cut them, eliminate them entirely at the federal level and return that sovereign authority to where it was originally invested and from which it was usurped- the sovereign governments of the individual states. The people of Germany are not responsible for providing for the people in France. Likewise Colorado is not responsible for providing for the people of any other sovereign state be it a neighboring one that is also a member in the union of states or one that lies across an ocean. That is properly the role of the government of their state just as it is the responsibility of the government of Germany, or of France, to provide for the people that live within their sovereign lands. That is federalism boiled down to its bare bones archer. Colorado is a sovereign state. It has agreed to transfer some, not all, of its sovereignty to the federal government. Colorado is more than a district within the United States, it is a sovereign state, one of the 50 that have asked to be accepted, and was accepted, into the union of states - the United States of America.

If the answer to the question is the first choice, then you don't cut the spending, the all powerful central government is then the only entity that gets to decide how much of the wealth of those that it governs it needs to fulfill its role as the primary entity responsible for the people who reside within it. If you feel that you are just as responsible for ensuring the education of a child in the state of Florida as you are for a child in the state of Colorado, then you don't subscribe to the idea that the United States are made up of 50 sovereign states that have elected to join into a compact with other sovereign states. And if you truly don't believe that the United States is a compact between 50 sovereign states, then there isn't much I can do other than to suggest you spend a little more time looking into the history of how we came to be the United States of America.

And so it is that I believe that the social entitlement programs should not have their funding scaled back, they should be entirely eliminated from the federal budget. Colorado has a Public Employee Retirement Association (PERA) for its public employees, it could organize a private employee retirement association just as easily should it desire to have such a program for the residents of the state who are retired and have contributed to that fund. If all the states want such a program, they can institute it themselves and the federal government can regulate how the money is transferred from one state to another when someone wished to leave their present state and take up citizenship in another state during their working years or what would happen to the money someone had already invested into the fund if they moved to a state that didn't have a similar program. If the individual states want to enact some form of public assistance to act as a safety net, they can do that as well. Massachusetts has already started their own mandatory health insurance/care program for that state, others who wished to do the same could obviously do so if they felt it would better serve the citizens and other residents of that state.

I believe in federalism archer. I believe that in most areas of governance the states are intended to be supreme to, rather than subject to, the federal government. I believe that the progressive agenda intent on reversing those roles such that the federal government is supreme in all areas harms, rather than promotes, the general welfare of the union and of the states that make up that union. I do not believe that the intent of the Constitution was to reduce the individual state governments to insignificance and establish one central government empowered with unilateral authority to do as it pleased, to tax as it pleased and to rule as it pleased over the individual states that had joined the union.

I believe that the federal government's reach into the lives of the citizens of the states was intended to be minimal, not all encompassing, and that its taxing authority was thus also intended to be minimal, instead of all encompassing. Diverging from that ideal is what has brought us to the point where $3.7 Trillion dollars, of which $1.65 Trillion needs to be borrowed, is being contemplated for the federal budget for a single year. It is only in returning to that original idea that the federal government was very limited in scope and power that we have a hope of ever emerging from the ruinous debt that it has incurred to date. Unless we return to that understanding, which led Grover Cleveland to veto legislation intended to buy seeds for Texas farmers with the explanation that he could find no authority in the Constitution for such an expenditure, the federal government will continue in its current course of consolidating all governing power and authority and the sovereign states will continue along their current path of becoming nothing more than the provinces of that all powerful central government.

We have to get back on the natural republican tack that Jefferson steered us to. It isn't that our fellow citizens don't need some help from time to time, or assistance in their old age, it is the understanding that the form of government we chose for ourselves is ill equipped to provide that assistance when it originates from the central rather than the state government. Colorado can take care of those who are here and need the assistance of their fellow citizens. We are much better equipped to handle that problem here than the federal government is. We know what our problems are, and they are not necessarily the same problems that the folks in Florida, or New York, or California have. And even if they are, we might find a better way to address the problem if we are free to find the solution that works best for us rather than having the federal government decree that they have a one size fits all solution that we must abide by. That is the essence of federalism. The states retain most of their sovereignty, not simply a small portion of it. Even FDR said this when he was a governor prior to his election to the presidency where his 12 year reign had him acting more like Mubarek than Jefferson. The preservation of that idea is why Washington walked away after 8 years as president. He could have easily been president for the rest of his life like FDR was if he had wanted to wield that power as FDR did. But Washington understood what FDR failed to. If he had given into that temptation, the love that the people had for him would have undone the very Constitution that he had helped preside over creating and created in its place one powerful central government with a penchant for having one ruler elected for the remainder of their natural life. The people would have gladly had Washington rule over them as King George had, such was their love for him. None would have opposed him and sought to have themselves elected in his place. But Washington knew that one powerful central government, regardless of the character of the person at its head, would doom this fledgling nation to a short existence and for this reason he walked away and said he would not serve another term, even if the people chose to elect him. He had lived his entire life under a central government with absolute authority. He risked his life, his fortune and his sacred honor to make sure that no one else in this land would ever have to live under another one. And here we stand on the precipice of throwing that sacrifice away and allowing it to happen anyway.

archer wrote: How do you "unfund" them? Are you willing to have millions of seniors without any income....yes BearMtnHIB, millions of seniors survive BECAUSE they have SS. Are you willing to take away medical care for millions of seniors.....why yes BearMtnHIB, without medicare they would never be able to afford medical care or their own medical insurance. So how do you defund them without dire consequences for seniors....talk about death squads, you are a one person annihilation squad for seniors, I guess they are right up there with liberals targeted for death. As a liberal senior, you would probably kill me tomorrow and not think twice.

Like I pointed out earlier, leave it up to the conservatives to cut funding for the poor, the seniors, the middle class....but never, ever touch those sacred cows, the wealthy and the corporations.

I have a mother who receives Social Security archer, and I understand it is the responsibility of myself and my siblings to ensure that she has a roof over her head, enough to eat and clothes to wear for the remainder of her life. If that means I sacrifice some of what I earn, I sacrifice some of what I earn. If it means she comes to live with me or I move to the house that she lives in until she dies, then that is what I do. She sacrificed for me when I was young, it is now my obligation to sacrifice for her when she is old. That is how we eliminate most of the Social Security program, by shouldering our individual responsibilities to our family members, just as was done in the days before FDR started the Ponzi scheme. If you don't have children who can, or will, take care of you when you get old then you rely on your neighbors and the charity of your community. When it snowed, we went over to grandma's to shovel the snow after shoveling at our own house. If it wasn't my family, it was the family of one of her other children. When grandma needed something painted, her children bought the paint and did the painting. When she needed a new roof that wasn't covered by insurance, her children and their children helped buy the supplies and provided the labor to put the roof on the house. One of us mowed her lawn every weekend. Someone else took her shopping, or to bingo during the week. When she wasn't feeling well she had meals cooked and brought to her not only by her family, but by her neighbors and those with whom she attended church.

There are very few, if any, people here who would not give their neighbor food out of their own cupboards, or help them keep their house warm if they knew their neighbor was in need of their help. We don't know whether our neighbor needs us anymore because the government takes care of that obligation for us in exchange for collecting taxes from us. We have decided to allow ourselves to be taxed so that we can shelter ourselves from that knowledge, that responsibility, and let the government handle it instead of taking care of it ourselves as we ought to have been doing all along. I understand that when nearly everyone lost everything when the market crashed in '29 why we wanted to try and stop that from ever happening again, I truly do, but we went about it in the wrong way and its time we recognized that mistake and took the necessary action to correct it. You are not my responsibility archer, but I will help you if you need my help and I am asked to provide it. When we found out that IMHS was in dire financial straits a few years back, did we not find it within ourselves as a community to help them and supply what was needed? When Grover Cleveland vetoed that bill to buy seeds for those Texas farmers, the rest of the people around the nation sent them more money for seeds than the Congress had asked the federal government to provide. How much money for seeds do you think they would have sent if Cleveland hadn't vetoed that bill? That is who we are, it is what we do - it had always been that way up until the government started doing if for us and collecting taxes from us to relieve us of that burden. How many meals were handed out during the depression years? How many families always made sure that anyone who came to their door shared in the next meal with their family even if it meant they went to bed a little hungry that night? Who went looking for lost children in the neighborhood before the police departments started organized search parties to do that work and how many neighbors still miss work to help someone down the block look for their lost child even now that there are specialized organizations that are called upon when it needs to be done?

You have too much faith in government and too little in your fellow man archer.

Lets see...the average couple receives 2000 in SS and saves about 1500 in health insurance costs...that's 3500/senior couple. If you and your spouse have living parents that's 7 grand you need to replace their SS and Medicare bear .....I'm impressed you have that kind of extra income....many don't.

great spin archer :Loco: