No one else "misread" anything. You posted a highly misleading link. If that's not what you meant, then that's your bad, not anyone else's. But considering your tone of calling this "Obama's America" as though this "scandal" is some horrible breach of protocol on the part of the FBI, it does not strike me as likely that that is what you intended. Hence, sweet backpedal, dude.
The economy and population are far larger than they were in 1993. Do you mean spending as a percentage of GDP?
So is the debt. I meant exactly what I said, cut the spending back to where it was. You want your tax increases, that is the price.
Most Liberals would love to cut the spending back to where it was in 1993. That would involve roughly halving the military/state security budget that has exploded since 9/11.
The tax increase is an increase in the RATE of taxation. Back to what it was for only a small segment of the taxpayers, and what it was before the Bush tax cuts. The rate of spending should also be in terms of ratio or percentage of overall GDP.
Medical care today is about 18% of GDP and growing faster than the GDP in general. You also have a larger percentage of the public going on government medical payments through Medicare and Medicaid through a combination of demographics and the new health care laws that kick in. Seems to me we have to raise taxes and probably start taxing SS and health benefits like Medicare and Employer sponsored Health care as income. The rate of spending is going to go up unless we have a very rapid acceleration in growth, don't see how we get around not raising taxes in a meaningful way. I would much prefer that SS and Medicare continue to be a defined benefit that's taxable rather than means tested which I think the Republicans are looking to do. Means testing will erode the support for these programs while considering benefits as income will tax a big portion of these benefits to those who have paid in but have substantial private income.
Do not confuse reality with your right wing wet dreams. Every Republican elected since 1980 has pretended to be in favor of cutting the bloated federal budget. None of them ever did. Especially Saint Ronald. The Veteran's Administration is a cabinet level bureaucracy thanks to him. One that provides what is universally held to be completely horrible service to its constituents. Way to support our troops!
The rate of spending in 2000 was 18% of GDP (roughly $1.8 M of $9.8M GDP). The rate of spending in 2011 was 24% of GDP (roughly $3.6 M of $15.0M GDP). Cutting the spending to 2000 levels would require a haircut of $894 billion to a level of $2.7 T from $3.6 T. We also ran up the debt from 94% of GDP to 102% of GDP. To bring the debt down to 94% of GDP would reduce spending by and additional $1.2 T from $2.7 T to 1.5T (if you prefer to spread the pain over 5 years you would only reduce spending from $2.7 T to $2.4 T). While I still think the federal government has no business spending $2.5 trillion per year, it would be enough of a step in the right direction to justify your tax hikes.
What liberal has cut spending? When did this happen? Unless you can provide some examples you have no business throwing stones.
Military spending went from 3.7% of GDP in 2000 to 5.5% in 2010. That's a 50% run-up in military spending in a decade. Taxation went from 20.6% of GDP in 2000 to 15.1% of GDP today. The roots of the long-term systemic deficit jump of the last decade are basically a product of those two factors. Social Security and Medicare have not actually effected the deficit to date. Both are still working on positive accruals. They will dramatically effect the deficit from 2024 onwards depending on how well we fund them from taxation that is already separate from general revenues derived from income tax, capital gains tax and the estate tax. The surge in debt the last 4 years was due to the financial crisis of 2008 and the fallout from that crisis. The long-term systemic problem came out of the taxation policies and war-fighting policies of the Bush administration.
Nice try. You claimed that you didn't believe that most liberals would want to cut spending. No one claimed that spending has been cut. The claim was that they wanted to cut it... which puts them in the same boat as all of those fiscal conservatives. Funny thing is, most of the "fiscal conservatives" out there balked at the cuts to military spending outlined in the sequestration. That government spending "created jobs," they said. The truth is, most fiscal conservatives aren't being truthful when they say they want to cut federal spending. What they really mean is that they want to cut federal spending on things that they don't find to be important. Which is probably the same thing that most liberals would say. They just have differing opinions about what is important. Additionally, the scare tactics about debt as a % of GDP are shoddy math at best, and disingenuous politicking at worst. It is completely expected that the ratio would increase during a recession. As Br4dw4y5ux mentioned, the fallout from the financial crisis plays a large role in why that ratio is higher. The recession was responsible for several trillion dollars in lost value in the US economy. It's not that spending is "out of control" under some runaway socialist Kenyan who is doing things oh so differently than Real Americans would. It's that the economy as a whole was producing less. This is not complicated economics. But some people want to over-over-oversimplify economics, with any economic point being secondary to making a political point first. I have very little respect for those people.
Both Bradway and you are ignoring the real long term debt problem. Military spending went up as a percentage of GDP during the decade because we were attacked and went to war. That would have happened regardless of the recession. That's expected and should be temporary expenditure, just like relief to Hurricane Sandy victims is temporary and shouldn't be a structural long term budget issue. The long term budget problems we face are directly related to Health Care expenditures. Health care regardless of recession has been on a steady rise as a percentage of GDP for years and will go over 20% of GDP in a few years. That combined with our demographics which puts an enormous portion of this burden on the government is the real long term structural problem with our debt. That doesn't mean military spending doesn't have to come done it does and will as we wind down the wars and hopefully stay out of other conflicts. That doesn't mean Republicans aren't full of shit on spending they are. However Medicare has to be dealt with as part of a long term health care plan for this country that deals with rising costs. The Democrats in Congress have dug in their collective heals on this one. I do think the President has tried to deal with the long term structural issue in some respects however he was mostly undermined by his own party in the health care legislation. Say what you want about Republican ideas to deal with health care costs. They are mostly awful but they at least put some ideas on the table. Politically viable, good ideas, no, but they have put something on the table, meager as it is. The reality is there are very few fiscally responsible members of Congress on either side of the aisle for one simple reason. Power in this country comes from spending not cutting money and that won't change unless the electorate changes dramatically and they won't until we experience the kind of hard inflation that happened when Jimmy Carter was President.
Typically pointed headed ivory tower eastern establishment over educated elitist blame America first commie bullshit.
Again, even in a "big city region" like New York, the median household income was about $49,000 last year. If you're making over $400,000 -- over 8 times as much as the median -- then you are rich by the very definition of the word. You may only be able to buy a Honda, but that's a helluva lot better than the vast majority of people are doing. As for the class warfare thing, if you know families that are "getting ripped apart" because jealous poor people are complaining about their juicy pensions, then I'm going to go out on a limb and say that they weren't gonna stick together very long in the first place.
