Mother of pearl; could you imagine being some 80 yo retiree, needing oxygen and and multiple meds, and taking your crappy little federal voucher to Humana or Cigna or somebody to beg for an insurance policy? That plan does not work. You may as well kick gramma out on an ice flow into the ocean.
No, its comprised of a lot of things. The problem isn't spending. The problem is less revenue then spending. We make decisions about the things we want as a nation and then we fund them. We were in balance with all of those priorities just 11 years ago. We drastically reduced the revenue and spent more. That is the problem. It is a combination of things but we shouldn't simply scream SPENDING! and ignore the fact that we spend for things that we want. So, if your plan is to cut things that people really want, then shouldn't we cut things that people want to cut. People love Medicare. A lot of people love many of the small discretionary things the republicans want to cut. A majority of people would like to see cuts in defense spending, which makes up 20% of the entire budget. Just a fraction under the spending on medicare. So, naturally, if spending is the problem . . . stupid . . . and we spend for things we want and people WANT to cut the military and people WANT to keep their medicare, then isn't Ryan just a spineless little pawn of big money interests that want something different then what the American people want? I'm sorry but any proposed budget that does not include a single dollar cut from defense is not a serious proposal.
For someone who called me an idiot and stupid in the same post, you completely missed the point of my post. Actually, you missed the entire subject of what I was posting about.
The 28th Amendment - Congress shall make no law raising taxes on the filthy rich. And this is what Banana Republics look like
The poll found 51 percent of Americans support reducing defense spending, and only 28 percent want to cut Medicare and Medicaid health programs for the elderly and poor. A mere 18 percent back cuts in the Social Security retirement program. http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/41993528/ns/politics-more_politics/
Well done. I love it "let seniors pick the health care tailored to their particular needs". What the F-- does that mean vfish? Oh yeah, it means if you're lucky enough to be an unusually healthy 65 year old, your government voucher might just cover a decent percentage of your health insurance, but if you're not doing so great, your ********ed. Honeslty, only a person who has been fortunate enough to be coddled in a secure work environment can possibly talk about the chimera of health insurance "choice".
I would prefer a variation on B). That is, let all the baby boomers die quickly so we can finally get our government back from their filthy leeching hands.
Cut spending in the middle of the war(s)? How about Ryan understands what is going on right now and cuts medicare and medicaid, leaving military spending where it is (because we are in the middle of the war) knowing that when the war ends we are in a position to either put the money spent on the military towards the deficit/debt or reallocate the money to medicare and medicaid.
From Krugman's blog - He ain't kidding. Mark Kirk won a Senate seat in Illinois while claiming that he brought $500 billion in Medicare benefits to needy seniors that his Democratic opponent would have taken away. That was rich.
You see, this is how steve-o's brain works. I suggest that a massive spending cut bill should include the military because the defense budget equals 1/5 of our total government spending and our military dwarfs every other military on the planet by several factors and he says, "The entire federal budget is comprised of solely military spending? That is neat." But then, when I suggest that it is one major component of our budget and our debt, he argues in essence that all of that budget is targeted at two wars and that any decrease is an attack on our troops in the field!
I would vote for this candidate. http://wzus1.ask.com/r?t=p&d=us&s=a&c=a&l=dir&o=0&ld=5829&sv=0a5c4073&ip=8cd4a250&id=0E7126F3B890BDAA4B852E5731A647C3&q=chart+of+US+military+spending&p=1&qs=19&ac=107&g=28c0FytXo%BXr8&wz_cu=0&en=te&io=0&ep=&eo=&b=a010&bc=&br=&tp=d&ec=1&pt=The%20bipartisan%20consensus%20on%20U.S.%20military%20spending%20-%20Glenn%20Greenwald%20-&ex=tsrc%3Dtxtx&url=&u=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.salon.com%2Fopinion%2Fgreenwald%2F2008%2F01%2F02%2Fmilitary_spending%2Findex.html Isn't the plan that we will take over the world soon, I mean that is the reason we spend more in military than the rest of the word all together. Any charts on how the department of defense spends the monye, I mean Afghanistan and Iraq (now Libya) are a small part of total military spending correct?
Yes and no. There are the direct costs which Bush kept off budget throughout his presidency so that it didn't add to the deficit when analyzing the budget and the defense budget was still huge and one of the top three drivers of our budget and our debt. But it's not fair to stop there. Troop levels and other aspects of the stuff that was ON budget back then are directly related to fighting wars. So, there are direct costs of fighting wars and indirect costs in the overall budget that should not be disturbed in times of war. But there are still billions not directly related at all to the wars. Here is the deal. We would have to make the decision that we no longer want to be the top cop. That we don't want to exclusively be responsible for defending shipping lanes. That we don't want to try to control the internal policies of countries in the middle east and central and south America. That in a global economy where all of the dynamics are changing, we want to be a part of shared responsibility and not the prime benefactor to the world. Our role in Libya is instructive here. We did our bit at the beginning and hopefully, we are content in working with our partners and SPENDING equally with our partners as we move forward, including the aftermath after the government falls. As opposed to a policy of being responsible for all of the costs as we were in Iraq. If we make this massive policy shift, we can draw back on our deployments around the world and substantially cut our baseline costs. We can't afford this anymore. We are essentially providing the military blanket of security that allows all other free countries to operate freely (recognizing that there are some countries like England and France that certainly carry a substantial military burden with us, but the percentage to GDP is no where close to what we do). So, countries like Sweden, Canada, Japan, Germany, Ireland and on and on and on and on, get the benefit of the protection we provide with very little military costs on their own books. Now of course, we have gotten incredible benefits from filling this role, so I'm not simply whining here. I'm saying we can't afford to do it anymore and that the world has changed so much that we are putting ourselves at increased risk for filling this role. You remember the old argument from the right that "they hate us for our freedoms" when referring to terrorists? Well, if that is the case, why are Canadian and Swedish embassies not targets for attacks? They hate us for the control we exert worldwide. Why is this our burden? We can make ourselves safer and drastically reduce our spending and debt by re-assessing the wisdom of our current military policies.
Oh, by the way, Vfish, this is not a bipartisan proposal, as you have claimed. http://tpmdc.talkingpointsmemo.com/...-dem-budget-guru-over-medicare.php?ref=dcblt#
In the comments on Kobrazilla's TPM article, they're calling it "Republicare" - I like it a little better, as it tars the whole party with this disaster.
Wow. Just wow. http://krugman.blogs.nytimes.com/2011/04/06/memory-hole-alert/ Heritage disappeared the 2.8% unemployment figure that is among the leading reasons Ryan's plan is moronic. I wonder what the deficit would look like if we reinstated the tax rates we had under Reagan (brackets adjusted for inflation)? It would be alot lower, that's for sure.