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Getbig Main Boards => Politics and Political Issues Board => Topic started by: Soul Crusher on February 10, 2012, 02:53:58 PM
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http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424052970203646004577215211361083508.html#articleTabs%3Dcomments
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2012 Federal Budget: Obama Proposes $1.33 Trillion In Deficits – Games The Administration Play
The White House has released their proposal for the Federal Budget for 2012. Before we discuss the 2012 budget, harken back to President Obama saying in 2009 that he will CUT the deficit in half by the end of his first term. His first term ends in January 2013, so he has less than a year to accomplish his promise.
According to The Federal Reserve, these are the recent budget deficits. Obama needs to reduce the 2009 budget deficit by 50% to -$700,000 million by the end of 2012.
And here is a chart of the history of the budget deficit so you can see how utterly out of control Federal government spending has been since 2008.
The projected deficit for 2012 is forecast to be $1.33 trillion, 2.6% higher than the $1.296 trillion deficit in 2011 and 16% higher than the $1.15 trillion projection released by the Congressional Budget Office (CBO) last week. This is a far cry from Obama’s promise of cutting the deficit by $700 billion. In fact, it is almost twice what he promised in the wrong direction. He is INCREASING the deficit.
The budget includes more than $350 billion in short-term measures for job growth; a six-year, $476 billion proposal for roads and other surface-transportation projects; and more than $360 billion in savings in health programs such as Medicare and Medicaid. Bear in mind that some of those savings are simply that Obamacare will cause private healthcare insurance premiums to skyrocket – see here).
The request also includes $850 million for Mr. Obama’s “Race to the Top” competition for education.
There are billions of dollars for loan guarantees, safety nets, education and infrastructure spending (bridges and bad roads need to be repaired).
Now for the bad part. The budget proposal repeats a call for $1.5 trillion in new revenue, mostly from ending Bush-era tax cuts for families earning more than $250,000 a year. So, if there are no new taxes, the budget deficit would be $1.33 trillion. With the tax increases, the budget deficit will be $575 billion in 2018.
What is stunning about this budget proposal is that the Obama Administration gets to “cutting the deficit in half” in 2018 rather than 2012.
And by the end of 2013, our debt to GDP ratio will be 110%. Our Federal debt since 2008 has been on an unsustainable trajectory and the deficit increase by President Obama’s is driving another nail in our fiscal coffin.
Well, we are beating Socialist France at the massive entitlement, spending and debt derby.
The most stunning revelation of the budget is the continuation of the massive spending binge without tackling the horrific entitlement problems looming on the horizon. Instead, the budget is loaded with the same green energy boondoggles, more funding to failed education systems, and infrastructure spending (roads and bridges). One a micro level, the budget is filled with appalling expenditures like a $1 billion dollar increase for tabulation of the Census, $325 million for Agriculture research, and other mind boggling expenditures.
Of course, the housing and mortgage fiasco receives some ink. However, the budget has a very optimistic forecast for the continued losses to the mortgage giants in conservatorship, Fannie Mae and Freddie. It forecasts that further losses to taxpayers will actually decline to $73 billion from the current loss to taxpayers of $131 billion. Only this Administration would brag about government sponsored enterprises losing “only $73 billion.”
But my biggest concern is the lack of discussion of the myriad of government mortgage refinance programs like HAMP, HARP, the Attorney General settlement (coordinated with the Administration) and the proposed FHA refi plan outlined in the President’s State of the Union address. These programs are likely to generate massive costs to taxpayers since mortgage refinancings are paid by mortgage-backed security (MBS) investors like The Fed, Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac, yet they receive little attention from The Administration.
Despite the pledges of reducing the deficit, the Administration is relying on their tired “tax the rich!” mantra to reduce the deficits, despite the fact that just less than 50% of taxpayers pay little or no Federal income taxes.
Given the Administration’s track record with Solyndra, the Chevy Volt and other fiscal debacles, I can easily see the massive increase in infrastructure spending going to the same green growth boondoggles that have plagued the Administration. Here is a sampling of the Administration’s green, big city redevelopment proposals:
“Improves public housing and revitalizes surrounding neighborhoods by providing $250 million to continue HUD’s transformative investments in high-poverty neighborhoods where distressed HUD-assisted public and privately owned housing is located.”
“Invests in sustainable, innovative communities by providing $150 million to create incentives for more communities to develop comprehensive housing and transportation plans that result in sustainable development, reduced greenhouse gas emissions, and increased transit-accessible housing.”
“Provides more than $2.5 billion to continue progress toward the Administration’s goal to end chronic homelessness and homelessness among veterans and families, implementing an innovative, multi-agency strategic plan.”
And so on. Hey, how about lowering taxes, reducing EPA iron hand tactics and various regulations hand-cuffing the economy and job growth? We know that would work, but it would take away from Big Government’s “Iron Hand” policies. After all, their economists know what is best for us. (NOT!)
We have spent trillions in the last two decades on helping home ownership and government-directed inner-city investments. Yet we still see little progress on this front.
In summary, this budget harkens back to the classic ’60s rock/country song by Joe South, Freddie Weller and others called “Games People Play.” Except that a new version should be recorded called “Games The Administration Play.” It would fit this budget proposal perfectly: its all games, not a serious effort to govern, balance the budget, reign in entitlement spending or reduce the deficit.
“Oh the games people The Administration play now
Every night and every day now
Never meaning what they say now
Never saying what they mean
And they wile away the hours
In their ivory towers (Cass Sunsteen, Austan Goolsbee, Larry Summers, Christina Romer, Elizabeth Warren, etc.)
Till they’re we’re covered up with flowers (cradle to grave entitlements)
In the back of a black limousine.
Chorus
La-da da da da da da da
La-da da da da da de
Talking ’bout you and me
And the games people The Administration play
Oh we make one another cry
Break a heart then we say goodbye
Cross our hearts and we hope to die
That the other was to blame (Congress and specifically House Republicans)
Neither one will give in
So we gaze at our eight by ten
Thinking ’bout the things that might have been
It’s a dirty rotten shame
Repeat Chorus
People walking up to you
Singing glory hallelulia
And they’re tryin to sock it to you (Obamacare, Dodd-Frank, EPA mandates, tax the “rich”, ignoring The Constitution)
In the name of the Lord (Jesus would want to raise taxes on the rich and give to the Romans – funny, I missed that part of The Bible!)
They’re gonna teach you how to meditate (or community organize)
Read your horoscope, cheat your faith (requiring Catholic organizations to fund contraceptives against their will)
And further more to hell with hate
Come on and get on board
Repeat Chorus
Look around tell me what you see
What’s happening to you and me
God grant me the serenity
To remember who I am (an individual, not part of a Utopian collective)
Cause you’ve given up your sanity (not to mention personal freedom)
For your pride and your vanity
Turns you sad on humanity
And you don’t give a da da da da da “
Hey, Joe South actually understood The Obama Administration back in the 1960s!
Here is Freddie Weller’s (former guitarist for Paul Revere and the Raiders) version of “Games People Play.” The real Paul Revere would likely approve of the update version.
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Racist Post Reported.
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Obama gambles on costly initiatives in new budget
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Initiatives include a multi-billion dollar commitment to build up community colleges. | AP Photo
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By DAVID ROGERS | 2/11/12 7:41 PM EST
From community colleges at home to the “Arab Spring” in the Mideast, President Barack Obama’s new budget shows a willingness to gamble on costly new initiatives, even after the sobering debt accords last summer.
The final details won’t be released until Monday, but Obama is expected to call for a major multibillion dollar commitment to build up community colleges as partners with industry in training a new generation of skilled manufacturing and technical workers. The three-year cost is pegged as high as $8 billion, and both the Education and Labor departments are slated to be part of the ambitious initiative.
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At the same time, the president’s foreign aid request includes an entirely new $770 million account in 2013, described as the Middle East and North Africa Incentive Fund with the purpose of advancing democratic and economic reforms in the region after the turmoil of the past year.
The two initiatives come on top of the budget’s plan for an almost 50 percent, six-year increase in transportation spending, $231 billion of which would be financed not by gas taxes but war savings attributed to Obama pulling U.S. troops out of Iraq and Afghanistan.
Conservatives are sure to challenge this assumption and have long argued that any such savings should go to reduce future deficit — not pay for new spending. Already Saturday, Republicans on the Senate Budget Committee had issued a critique, saying “the nation has long awaited the day that war costs would drop to reduce the deficit — not to provide a new source of funds for congressional big spenders.”
In the case of Obama’s community college initiative, it also will be funded outside the discretionary spending caps agreed to last summer and appears to build on the experience of a smaller $2 billion Labor Department program enacted in 2010 — almost as a footnote to health care reform.
The first $500 million in grants were just awarded last September, and Obama will speak Monday morning on his budget plans at Northern Virginia Community College which is part of a statewide consortium that shared in the first grants.
More broadly, the president’s worker training initiative dovetails with a larger manufacturing emphasis in his entire budget.
The National Institute of Standards and Technology, for example, is promised $860 million in 2013, a 13 percent increase with an emphasis on advanced manufacturing research. The same theme echoes in the National Science Foundation’s $7.373 million budget request, an increase of nearly 5 percent.
In his State of the Union address last month, Obama spoke of committing to training 2 million Americans with skills that will lead to jobs.
“You need to give more community colleges the resources they need to become community career centers,” he told Congress then. “Places that teach people skills that businesses are looking for right now, from data management to high-tech manufacturing.”
The increased federal support coincides with independent efforts by the industry-backed Manufacturing Institute, which has worked with the administration in some cases, Labor in some cases and has developed its own 16-week “Right Skills Now” training model accompanied with a national manufacturing certificate recognized by employers looking for workers.
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Obama vows to cut huge deficit in half (2/22/2009. Blast to the past and another Obama lie)
Politico ^ | 2/22/2009 | By MIKE ALLEN
Posted on February 12, 2012 10:30:01 AM EST by tobyhill
President Obama will announce Monday that he plans to cut the nation’s projected annual deficit in half by the end of his first term, a senior administration official said Saturday.
The plan will make explicit what Obama officials have been suggesting for months: Contrary to his campaign promise, Obama will allow the Bush tax cuts on the wealthiest Americans expire as scheduled at the end of 2010 instead of seeking their repeal sooner. Officials determined that seeking to raise the taxes earlier during a recession was a bad idea, advisers said.
Obama, who will speak Monday to a Fiscal Responsibility Summit at the White House, also will outline steps he is taking to eliminate what his staff calls “accounting gimmicks” used by previous administrations.
“This budget actually is going to assume that there will be a hurricane, tornado, earthquake, flood or manmade disaster in the United States in fiscal year 2010, and each year going forward 10 years,” the official said. “The Bush budget never assumed that.”
(Excerpt) Read more at politico.com ...
Lol!!!! FAIL.
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Obama vows to cut huge deficit in half (2/22/2009. Blast to the past and another Obama lie)
Politico ^ | 2/22/2009 | By MIKE ALLEN
Posted on February 12, 2012 10:30:01 AM EST by tobyhill
President Obama will announce Monday that he plans to cut the nation’s projected annual deficit in half by the end of his first term, a senior administration official said Saturday.
The plan will make explicit what Obama officials have been suggesting for months: Contrary to his campaign promise, Obama will allow the Bush tax cuts on the wealthiest Americans expire as scheduled at the end of 2010 instead of seeking their repeal sooner. Officials determined that seeking to raise the taxes earlier during a recession was a bad idea, advisers said.
Obama, who will speak Monday to a Fiscal Responsibility Summit at the White House, also will outline steps he is taking to eliminate what his staff calls “accounting gimmicks” used by previous administrations.
“This budget actually is going to assume that there will be a hurricane, tornado, earthquake, flood or manmade disaster in the United States in fiscal year 2010, and each year going forward 10 years,” the official said. “The Bush budget never assumed that.”
(Excerpt) Read more at politico.com ...
Lol!!!! FAIL.
Lol @ damage control -
1 trillion dollard deficit? Dont worry about it, Ill just tell the people that I promise to cut it in half, theyll buy it, I wont have to do shit.
Typical slick talking Obama, lots of words but will have NO follow through, ill put money right now that itll never happen.
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We can debate partisan positions and pick at the details but the main reason for us to vote this president out is because he and his administration will continue to expand the influence of government in most aspects of our live, put more things in control of an inefficient government and continue massive spending and debts indefinitely. This is the open philosophy of big government liberals. I'm a bigger picture guy and that is what I fear, particularly if given another 4 years and not having to run for re-election and appease independents.
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The moron communist leftists are still in a love affair w Obama.
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We can debate partisan positions and pick at the details but the main reason for us to vote this president out is because he and his administration will continue to expand the influence of government in most aspects of our live, put more things in control of an inefficient government and continue massive spending and debts indefinitely. This is the open philosophy of big government liberals. I'm a bigger picture guy and that is what I fear, particularly if given another 4 years and not having to run for re-election and appease independents.
This x100000
But it seems people are far to interested in playing the he said/she said party politics game, doing whatever the hell their party dictates because "my party will fix things their party will just fuck it up more".
Fail fucking people everywhere.
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The US spends approximately $10 Billion a DAY. If you actually confiscated all of the wealth of the top US billionaires, you can run the government for just less than 2 weeks. Even a 100% tax increase across the board will not even come close to closing the deficit. Raising taxes on the rich is nothing more than "placating the proletariat" and will not solve any budget problems.
The US needs to seriously re-evaluate what our role is overseas in terms of foreign aid and military adventures. Federal employees as a whole are all GROSSLY overpaid. Big bureaucracies, lawyers, contracts, and paperwork only serve to ramp up costs and expenditures of even the most simple of infrastructure improvements. Safety nets for the poor as a whole should also be looked at to bring in something more practical and cost efficient. Over 50% of Americans receive some sort of sustinence pay from the government and that is completely unnecessary. Illegal immigration is not helping either, with hospitals and local municipalities having to shoulder crushing costs from fence jumpers.
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We can debate partisan positions and pick at the details but the main reason for us to vote this president out is because he and his administration will continue to expand the influence of government in most aspects of our live, put more things in control of an inefficient government and continue massive spending and debts indefinitely. This is the open philosophy of big government liberals. I'm a bigger picture guy and that is what I fear, particularly if given another 4 years and not having to run for re-election and appease independents.
Doesn't your point apply equally to the Republican presidential candidates, with one exception?
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The US spends approximately $10 Billion a DAY. If you actually confiscated all of the wealth of the top US billionaires, you can run the government for just less than 2 weeks. Even a 100% tax increase across the board will not even come close to closing the deficit. Raising taxes on the rich is nothing more than "placating the proletariat" and will not solve any budget problems.
The US needs to seriously re-evaluate what our role is overseas in terms of foreign aid and military adventures. Federal employees as a whole are all GROSSLY overpaid. Big bureaucracies, lawyers, contracts, and paperwork only serve to ramp up costs and expenditures of even the most simple of infrastructure improvements. Safety nets for the poor as a whole should also be looked at to bring in something more practical and cost efficient. Over 50% of Americans receive some sort of sustinence pay from the government and that is completely unnecessary. Illegal immigration is not helping either, with hospitals and local municipalities having to shoulder crushing costs from fence jumpers.
Again - x100000
The answer isnt taking more from the citizens to pay for the government -
Its to scale back and fix the rediculous government presence and to cut back on expensive, outrageous programs and to cut back on the amount of money we feed to other countries when we dont have the money ourselves.
I dont understand why its so obvious but people just cant seem to grasp it - we dont have the money to spend all over the place. The people dont have the money to continue funding the government.
What do you do when you dont have the money to continue living a lifestyle? You cut back places where you dont need to spend money.
But the government just doesnt seem to want to do that, they want to continue spending money they dont have on worthless shit.
They dont even offer cutting programs, their answers are always taxes.
"How do we take more from people to pay for shit we dont need?"
Why the fuck cant they say -
"What things do we NOT need so that we can bring our spending down so that were living inside our means?"
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"What things do we NOT need so that we can bring our spending down so that were living inside our means?"
Unfortunately, for every spending cut there is some lobbying group or even actual voters who will protest very loudly and influence the outcome to a different result. Cuts can cost a politician an election as powerful lobbying groups will toss money towards an opponent during an election cycle. I think politicians should look beyond being elected again and do what we voted for them to do.......not necessarily to impose the will of a majority, but to make smart decisions when it comes to being fiscally responsible.
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Unfortunately, for every spending cut there is some lobbying group or even actual voters who will protest very loudly and influence the outcome to a different result. Cuts can cost a politician an election as powerful lobbying groups will toss money towards an opponent during an election cycle. I think politicians should look beyond being elected again and do what we voted for them to do.......not necessarily to impose the will of a majority, but to make smart decisions when it comes to being fiscally responsible.
And therein lies the problem - small groups that can write policy by throwing money at politicians.
The fact.that groups can basically buy taxpayer money by effectively bribing politicians is fucked. Just plain fucked.
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There's more to it than campaign finance.
Look at the auto bailouts. Obama has an approval rating of over 50% in Michigan, despite the fact that the auto bailouts simply worsened the situation in Michigan. People are too dumb to realize, all they see is Obama favoring bailouts of their employer or their neighbor's employer and then they see Republicans opposing that, so they like Obama.
Or look at the steel tariffs Bush imposed. He knew that was a dumb economic policy, but he did it in order to gain favorability in a key swing state, Pennsylvania.
Or look at the sugar and ethanol tariffs. Another stupid economic policy that exists because it gains votes in swing states like Iowa.
Or look at FDR's strategy. His make-work projects were terrible economic policy, but they made the unemployed dependent upon government. He essentially bought votes using taxpayer money.
The core of the problem is unlimited government power.
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There's more to it than campaign finance.
Look at the auto bailouts. Obama has an approval rating of over 50% in Michigan, despite the fact that the auto bailouts simply worsened the situation in Michigan. People are too dumb to realize, all they see is Obama favoring bailouts of their employer or their neighbor's employer and then they see Republicans opposing that, so they like Obama.
Or look at the steel tariffs Bush imposed. He knew that was a dumb economic policy, but he did it in order to gain favorability in a key swing state, Pennsylvania.
Or look at the sugar and ethanol tariffs. Another stupid economic policy that exists because it gains votes in swing states like Iowa.
Or look at FDR's strategy. His make-work projects were terrible economic policy, but they made the unemployed dependent upon government. He essentially bought votes using taxpayer money.
The core of the problem is unlimited government power.
Nothing will change as long as politicians gain power through learning how to manipulate people, and I have no better.ideas
I kind of liked the whole starship troopers idea, where you have to serve in the military in order to gain the right to be called a citizen and have the right to vote. And you aren't allowed to run for office unless you've served your country. I'm sure that would open up a whole other can of worms though. But it would sure cut back on the whole "voting because the gov promises.me free shit" idea.
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Dem lawmaker: Obama budget is a 'nervous breakdown on paper'
The Hill ^
Dem lawmaker: Obama budget is a 'nervous breakdown on paper'
By Meghashyam Mali - 02/13/12 08:18 AM ET
Congressional Black Caucus Chairman Emanuel Cleaver (D-Mo.) expressed concern President Obama's budget would go too far to rein in government spending in the midst of an economic recovery, calling the forthcoming proposal a 'nervous breakdown on paper.'
"This budget is a nervous breakdown on paper," said Cleaver during an interview on CNN's Starting Point Monday morning. "We're still in a recession, we're still struggling. Unemployment is still too high," he said.
The Missouri lawmaker said he understood the need for Congress to rein in spending. "We do have a serious ailment as a nation and certainly as Congress," he said. "We suffer from 'spendicitis.'" But Cleaver said the president was not "the one who spread this disease" and had inherited those problems when he came to office.
While he praised Obama for attempting to tackle challenging fiscal issues, Cleaver feared GOP pressure "for the federal government to turn the spigot off completely" could push the nation "deeper" into economic turmoil.
The Obama administration will unveil their budget Monday morning. White House Chief of Staff Jack Lew on Sunday said the proposal would strike a balance between short-term stimulus and long-term deficit reduction goals. Lew, Obama's former budget director, said the budget would "build an economy that will last in the future."
But Republican leaders have already hammered early details of the proposal for tax revenue increases and for what they see as insufficient cuts to federal spending.
House Budget Committee Chairman Paul Ryan (R-Wis.) accused the White House on Sunday of "failing ... to articulate how their upcoming budget would lift the crushing burden of debt and tackle our nation’s most pressing challenges."
"It's not going to be a pretty budget," said Cleaver who has been a past critic of President Obama’s efforts to reach agreements with congressional Republicans on spending fights.
Last August, Cleaver called the deal to raise the debt-ceiling a "sugar-coated Satan sandwich."
This time, he predicted though that the president's proposals would not get far. He foresaw "some differences over in the Senate," but added that the proposal would likely be "dead on arrival" in the Republican-controlled House.
LOL - can we offer these fools a one way ticket somewhere the hell else?
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^ That Democratic lawmaker is a fool. When will people realize that economic prosperity doesn't come from how much money the government spends?
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Debt Has Climbed $4.47T Since Obama Released First Budget—Calling for ‘A New Era
Cybercast News Service ^ | 2/13/12 | Terry Jeffrey
The federal debt has increased by $4.47 trillion since President Barack Obama released his first federal budget on Feb. 26, 2009. That budget was entitled, “A New Era of Responsibility.” On Feb. 26, 2009, as Obama released his budget for fiscal 2010, the national debt stood at $10.88 trillion (10,881,159,722,022.36). At the close of business on Feb. 9, 2012, the national debt stood at $15.36 trillion ($15,355,838,921,022.16). That represents an increase in the debt of $4.47 trillion ($4,474,679,198,999.80).
(Excerpt) Read more at cnsnews.com ...
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http://nationaljournal.com/2013-budget/housing-president-s-budget-would-increase-taxpayer-losses-on-tarp-20120213
I thought TARP was paid for?
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^ That Democratic lawmaker is a fool. When will people realize that economic prosperity doesn't come from how much money the government spends?
Right?!
How in the fuck does the government spending a bunch of money (Money they dont have and cant get to boot) on shit that doesnt do ANYTHING for people fix the economy?
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Obama hikes subsidy to wealthy electric car buyers
The Daily Caller ^ | February 13,2012 | Neil Munro
The White House intends to boost government subsidies for wealthy buyers of the Chevy Volt and other new-technology vehicles — to $10,000 per buyer.
That mammoth subsidy would cost taxpayers $100 million each year if it is approved by Congress, presuming only 10,000 new-technology autos are sold each year.
But the administration wants to get 1 million new-tech autos on the road by 2015. The subsidy cost of that goal could reach $10 billion.
The planned giveaway will likely prompt populist protests from GOP legislators, but it will likely also will be welcomed by auto-industry workers in the critical swing state of Michigan.
That welcome is critical for President Barack Obama, who is touting his support for blue-collar manufacturing programs to help offset his low public approval ratings.
The new subsidy level represents a 33 percent jump from the current $7,500 government payout for each Volt buyer, even though the Volt’s buyers are already among the wealthiest Americans. It will be offered to buyers of any new-technology autos, including battery-powered autos and cars powered by natural gas, said a White House official.
The extra money for wealthy buyers will be borrowed funds, eventually paid off by future taxpayers in all income brackets.
(Excerpt) Read more at dailycaller.com ...
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:)
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So, they officially announced the Obama budget today and it is officially horrible. Kicks the can down the road completely on the national deficit and any entitlement or real tax reforms. More spending, more government, higher taxes and much higher total national deficit in the next 10 yrs. The spending reductions are against proposed increases and less deficit spending but more total deficit dollars. Brilliant.
A real leader would have proposed tax reform...lowering rates, closing loopholes for millionaires & big corps and would have started tackling the real drivers of our unstained deficits...social security, medicare & medicaid. He just wants to be re-elected. We need a Reagan.
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OBAMA: Let's Save Money By Making Coins With Cheaper Metals
Joe Weisenthal | 6 hours ago | 1,313 | 26
As a means of saving money, this is one of Obama's proposed cuts in his budget.
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SAVINGS: INCREASED FLEXIBILITY FOR THE U.S. MINT IN COINAGE
Department of the Treasury
The Budget proposes to provide the Mint with greater flexibility in the material composition of coins to reduce its losses on some coins and the production costs associated with volatile metal prices. Additionally, the Budget increases the Mint's flexibility to match customer demand and supply by eliminating the provision requiring the Mint to produce Native American dollar coins in an amount equal to 20 percent of all dollar coins produced.
Justification
The Mint's primary cost driver is the price of metal, a factor over which it has no control. Daily spot prices of copper and zinc, the Mint's two main metallic materials, have fluctuated in excess of 400 percent, and the price of nickel by 500 percent over the past 10 years.1 This contributes to volatile and negative margins on both the penny and nickel: recently, the penny has cost approximately 2.4 cents, and the nickel approximately 11.2 cents to produce.2
Through its gains on the costs of producing other coins, the Mint annually returns hundreds of millions of dollars to the Treasury General Fund (GF) and is funded by the Mint Public Enterprise Fund. The gains from the dime, quarter, and dollar coin are used to offset the losses from the penny and the nickel, with the excess funds being transferred to GF. However, on December 13, 2011, citing inventories of 1.4 billion surplus dollar coins in Federal Reserve vaults, enough to meet current levels of circulating demand for more than a decade, the Secretary of the Treasury suspended production of the Presidential dollar coin as part of the Vice President's Campaign to Cut Waste. The suspended production of the Presidential dollar coin will reduce the amount of revenue available for the Mint to offset production costs of the penny and the nickel. Greater flexibility in the composition of coinage materials could enable the Mint to utilize less expensive metals in the minting process and substantially reduce its production costs. Using alternative coinage materials could save the Mint millions annually after a potential initial period of development and capital adjustments. Savings estimates will be available after the Mint concludes ongoing research on the most cost-effective materials.
The 2013 Budget would bring the costs of coins more in-line with their face values and create a more sustainable, cost-effective 21st Century use of materials in the minting process. The Budget enables the Department of the Treasury to explore, analyze, and approve new, less-expensive metals for all circulating coins based on factors that will result in the highest quality of coin production at the most cost-effective price. Such factors may include physical, chemical, metallurgical, and technical characteristics; material, fabrication, minting, and distribution costs; materials availability and sources of raw materials; durability; effects on sorting, handling, packaging and vending machines; and resistance to counterfeiting. The added flexibility the Budget proposes will improve the minting process and enable the Mint to mitigate the high, volatile costs of commodity metals.
Additionally, the Budget would remove the current law requirement that twenty percent of all dollar coins produced be of the Native American design. Numismatic quality dollar coins would remain available for purchase, but eliminating the twenty percent requirement would increase the Mint's flexibility to match the supply to consumer demand.
Citations
1 http://www.infomine.com/investment/metalprices/
2 http://news.coinupdate.com/cost-to-make-penny-and-nickel-rises-1139/
Read more: http://www.businessinsider.com/obama-lets-save-money-by-making-coins-with-cheaper-metals-2012-2#ixzz1mIv4DMwb
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:D
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Feb 13, 9:52 PM EST
Obama's budget: Government still getting bigger
By ANDREW TAYLOR
Associated Press
AP Photo/J. Scott Applewhite
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President Obama says his budget strikes the right balance between boosting the economy and attacking the deficit.
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WASHINGTON (AP) -- Taking a pass on reining in government growth, President Barack Obama unveiled a record $3.8 trillion election-year budget plan Monday, calling for stimulus-style spending on roads and schools and tax hikes on the wealthy to help pay the costs. The ideas landed with a thud on Capitol Hill.
Though the Pentagon and a number of Cabinet agencies would get squeezed, Obama would leave the spiraling growth of health care programs for the elderly and the poor largely unchecked. The plan claims $4 trillion in deficit savings over the coming decade, but most of it would be through tax increases Republicans oppose, lower war costs already in motion and budget cuts enacted last year in a debt pact with GOP lawmakers.
Many of the ideas in the White House plan for the 2013 budget year will be thrashed out during this year's election campaigns as the Republicans try to oust Obama from the White House and add Senate control to their command of the House.
"We can't just cut our way into growth," Obama said at a campaign-style rally at a community college in the vote-rich Northern Virginia suburbs. "We can cut back on the things that we don't need, but we also have to make sure that everyone is paying their fair share for the things that we do need."
Republicans were unimpressed. While the measure contains some savings to Medicare and Medicaid, generally by reducing payments to health providers, both programs would double in size over the coming decade.
"It seems like the president has decided again to campaign instead of govern and that he's just going to duck this country's fiscal problems," said House Budget Committee Chairman Paul Ryan, R-Wis.
By the administration's reckoning, the deficit would drop to $901 billion next year - still requiring the government to borrow 24 cents of every dollar it spends - and would settle in the $600 billion-plus range by 2015.The deficit for the current budget year, which ends Sept. 30, would hit $1.3 trillion, a near record and the fourth straight year of trillion-plus red ink.
Obama's budget blueprint reprises a long roster of prior proposals: raising taxes on couples making more than $250,000 a year; eliminating numerous tax breaks for oil and gas companies, and approving a series of smaller tax and fee proposals. Similar proposals failed even when the Democrats controlled Congress.
The Pentagon would cut purchases of Navy ships and F-35 Joint Strike Fighters - and trim 100,000 troops from its rolls over coming years - while NASA would scrap two missions to Mars.
But there are spending increases, too: The Obama plan seeks $476 billion for transportation projects including roads, bridges and a much-criticized high-speed rail initiative. Grants for better performing schools would get a big increase under Obama's "Race to the Top" initiative, and there would be an $8 billion fund to train community college students for high-growth industries.
Republicans accused the president of yet again failing to do anything meaningful to reduce deficits that could threaten the country with a European-style debt crisis unless they are wrestled under control.
As a political document, the Obama plan blends a handful of jobs-boosting initiatives with poll-tested tax hikes on the rich, including higher taxes on dividends and income earned by hedge fund managers. That would allow Obama to draw a contrast with GOP front-runner Mitt Romney, whose personal fortune and relatively low tax rate would be an issue in the general election campaign.
Another contrast with Republicans will come on Medicare, the enormously popular health care program for the elderly. Obama leaves the program mostly alone, while Republicans are on record in favor of gradually replacing the current system in which the government pays doctor and hospital bills with a voucher-like plan that would have government subsidize purchases of health insurance.
Nor does Obama tackle Social Security's fiscal imbalance. Payroll taxes paid into the program fall well short of what's needed to cover benefits; the shortfall is made up by tapping into a $2.7 trillion trust fund that's built up since the last overhaul of the program in the early 1980s.
Said Romney: "We can save Social Security and Medicare with a few commonsense reforms, and - unlike President Obama - I'm not afraid to put them on the table."
The president's tax proposals and most of his new jobs initiatives are likely to arrive as dead letters on Capitol Hill, where the immediate focus is on Obama's proposal to renew a 2 percentage point cut in Social Security payroll taxes and jobless benefits for the long-term unemployed. House GOP leaders did an abrupt about-face on Monday and declared that they are willing to add to the deficit the $100 billion cost of renewing the payroll tax cut.
While Obama and Congress appear headed for deadlock over big-picture questions such as Medicare cuts and tax hikes, there's still the work of filling in the details of last summer's budget and debt pact, which set tight caps on annual appropriations bills funding the day-to-day operations of government.
Those caps are putting most agencies in a pinch, though the Department of Veterans Affairs would win a 4.5 percent increase, the Energy Department would get a 3.5 percent hike, while Treasury gets a 4.2 percent boost reflecting increases for the IRS.
The Pentagon, which had grown used to budget increases well in excess of inflation until recently, would absorb its first outright budget cut since the post-Cold War "peace dividend" of the early 1990s, including cuts to major weapons systems, fewer combat ships and the reduction in troops.
The budget for medical research at the National Institutes for Health would be frozen after years of reliable increases and the Environmental Protection Agency would bear a 4 percent cut after coming under assault by Republicans for two consecutive budget cycles. Special education grants to schools would be essentially frozen.
On taxes, Obama proposes allowing the Bush-era tax cuts to expire at the end of this year for families making $250,000 or more per year.
Obama, as he has in the past, also proposed limiting tax deductions taken by the wealthy and would also put in place a rule named for billionaire Warren Buffett that would seek to make sure that households making more than $1 million annually pay at least 30 percent of their income in taxes.
Obama would also impose a new $61 billion tax over 10 years on big banks aimed at recovering the costs of the financial bailout and providing money to help homeowners facing foreclosure. The proposal also would raise $41 billion over 10 years by eliminating tax breaks for oil, gas and coal companies.
The plan contains a host of other proposals whose budget impact would be modest but would be felt by almost everyone, among them an end to Saturday mail delivery. There's also a plan to raise $593 million by eliminating deductions for golf course conservation easement and a plan that would raise the one-way security fee on airline tickets to $7.50, up from fees that are now as low as $2.50 for a nonstop flight.
To spur job creation in the short term, Obama is proposing a $50 billion "upfront" investment for transportation, $30 billion to modernize at least 35,000 schools and $30 billion to help states hire teachers and police, rescue and fire department workers. Republicans in Congress, opposed to further stimulus spending, have blocked these proposals in the past.
The Obama budget seeks $360 billion in savings in Medicare and Medicaid mainly through reduced payments to health care providers, avoiding tougher measures advocated by House Republicans and the deficit commissions, which supporters said were critical to the cause of restraining health care costs.
The projections in Obama's budget show that he is doing little to restrain the surge in these programs that is expected with the retirement of baby boomers. Obama's budget projects that Medicare spending will double over the coming decade from $478 billion this year to almost $1 trillion in 2022.
Medicaid, the government health care program for the poor and disabled, would more than double from $255 billion this year to $589 billion by 2022.
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Associated Press Economics Writer Martin Crutsinger contributed to this report.
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Obama: Not Raising Taxes is a Form of Government Spending
By Fred Lucas
February 13, 2012
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President Obama speaks about his 2013 budget proposals and the "Community College to Career Fund" at Northern Virginia Community College in Annandale, Va. on Monday, Feb. 13, 2012 (AP Photo/Susan Walsh)
(CNSNews.com) – Announcing his budget plans for fiscal year 2013 in an address at Northern Virginia Community College in Annandale, Va., President Barack Obama characterized the current income tax rates--signed into law by President Bush a decade ago--as a form of government spending.
Essentially, the president said that the federal government "spends" when it does not raise taxes.
“Right now, we’re scheduled to spend more than $1 trillion more on what was intended to be a temporary tax cut for the wealthiest two percent of Americans,” Obama said. “We’ve already spent about that much. Now we’re expected to spend another $1 trillion. Keep in mind, a quarter of all millionaires pay lower tax rates than millions of middle class households. You’ve heard me say it: Warren Buffett pays a lower tax rate than his secretary.”
Despite the bankruptcies of three green energy companies that received heavy doses of federal tax dollars, Obama also pledged Monday to “double down on clean energy.”
The budget proposal faces an uncertain future on Capitol Hill. Democrats, who control the Senate, have said it is not necessary to vote on a budget for next year. Republicans, who control the House, have criticized the Obama budget, saying it contains too many tax hikes and not enough spending cuts.
Obama said his tax and spending plan would save $4 trillion by 2022. However, the budget proposal for the fiscal year beginning Oct. 1, projects a $1.33 trillion deficit, marking a fourth consecutive year of trillion-dollar deficits. The president’s plan projects that the deficit would drop to $901 billion in 2013, and to $575 billion by 2018.
Obama told the college audience that trimming the deficit was important, but stressed that “investments” was important as well. He focused the bulk of the speech on an $8 billion program to establish a partnership with community colleges and businesses.
“An economy built to last demands that we keep doing everything we can to help students learn the skills that businesses are looking for,” Obama said. “It means we have to keep strengthening American manufacturing.”
If approved, the “Community College to Career Fund” would be co-administered by the Department of Labor and the Department of Education. The fund is designed to establish an alliance between community colleges and businesses to train workers and entrepreneurs for industries offering the most opportunities.
Obama’s budget proposal would raise an estimated $41 billion over 10 years by eliminating tax breaks for oil, gas and coal companies. He pledged to put more money instead into energy sources which critics note have a more mixed record.
“It means we’ve got to keep on investing in American energy. We’ve got to double down on the clean energy that is creating jobs. But, it also means we’ve got to renew the American values of fair play and shared responsibility.”
Elsewhere in the speech, Obama reiterated the point: “We need to reduce our dependence on foreign oil by ending the subsidies for oil companies, and doubling down on clean energy that generates jobs and strengthens our security.”
In the past year, three firms that received federal loans or grants filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy after getting grants or loans from the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act, also known as the Stimulus.
In January, Indiana-based Ener1, which makes batteries for electric vehicles, announced it had filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy protection. The company had been awarded a $118.5 million from the Energy Department.
The Obama administration has been under fire for a $535 million stimulus-funded loan it made to California-based solar panel company Solyndra, which filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy protection last fall before being raided by the FBI. Also late last fall, the Massachusetts-based Beacon Power, a green energy storage plant that received $43 million in stimulus funds, filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy protection.
‘Buffett Rule’
The president’s budget also calls for ending the Bush tax-cuts for households earning more than $250,000 per year and individuals earning $200,000 annually.
“The budget that we are releasing today is a reflection of shared responsibility,” Obama said. “It says that if we’re serious about investing in our future, investing in community colleges, investing in new energy technology, investing in basic research, we’ll, we’ve got to pay for it. That means we’ve got to make some choices.”
The budget includes $1.5 trillion in new tax hikes. Obama’s budget would seek to implement what he calls the “Buffett Rule,” to make sure households making more than $1 million annually pay at least 30 percent of their income in taxes.
“Right now, we’re scheduled to spend more than $1 trillion more on what was intended to be a temporary tax cut for the wealthiest two percent of Americans,” he said. “We’ve already spent about that much. Now we’re expected to spend another $1 trillion. Keep in mind, a quarter of all millionaires pay lower tax rates than millions of middle class households. You’ve heard me say it: Warren Buffett pays a lower tax rate than his secretary.”
Obama has referred in the past to “spending in the tax code” – equating raising taxes with cutting spending. In this case, the $1 trillion the president was referring to was not actual government expenditures, but rather an estimate of what the government would have raised in revenue had the tax cuts not been in place.
Obama also proposes to levy a new $61 billion tax over 10 years on big banks aimed at recovering the costs of the financial bailout and providing money to help homeowners facing foreclosure on their homes.
He wants another $476 billion in increased spending on transportation to including inner-city rail services; $30 billion to modernize at least 35,000 schools and $30 billion to help states hire teachers and fire, police and rescue personnel.
The Peter G. Peterson Foundation, a non-partisan group focused on raising awareness about the country’s fiscal problems, said the budget proposal does not go far enough in address the real problems of entitlement spending and tax reform that are driving up the national debt.
“Unfortunately, these measures are not sufficient to put America on a sustainable long-term fiscal path,” the vice chairman Michael A. Peterson said in a statement.
“Even under optimistic assumptions, the president's own numbers show debt rising rapidly after 2022 and reaching levels that would put the economy at risk. The true test of any fiscal plan is whether or not it stabilizes the federal debt as a percentage of the economy,” he said.
WTF!!!!! How dumb is this asshole?
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The Usurper is completely out of control.
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FACT CHECK: (Liar) Obama enlists some familiar phantoms to make the numbers add up in his new budget
chicago tribune ^ | 2/14/2012 | CALVIN WOODWARD/ap
Posted on February 14, 2012 6:58:00 AM EST by tobyhill
When a president introduces a budget, there are always phantoms flitting around the room. President Barack Obama's spending plan sets loose a number of them.
It counts on phantom savings from the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan. It's underpinned by tax increases Republicans won't let happen and program cuts fellow Democrats in Congress are all but certain to block.
And it assumes rates of growth that the economy will have to become strikingly undead to achieve.
A look at three budget ghosts, sometimes known as gimmicks:
Claims about $850 billion in savings from ending the wars and steers some $230 billion of that to highways.
REALITY: There is no direct peace dividend from ending the wars because the government borrowed to pay for them. The government would have to keep borrowing that amount of money to have it to spend on something else.
Counting the end of wars as a dividend is like a student coming out of college loaded with debt and aching to buy things, says Maya MacGuineas, president of the Committee for a Responsible Federal Budget. "When you finish college, you don't suddenly have thousands of dollars a year to spend elsewhere — in fact, you have to find a way to pay back your loans."
MacGuineas says, "Drawing down spending on wars that were already set to wind down and that were deficit-financed in the first place should not be considered savings."
(Excerpt) Read more at chicagotribune.com ...
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Sperling, who held the same position under the less-athletic Bill Clinton, said his basketball-loving boss’s policies are “as complementary as good hitting, good pitching and good fielding is for a baseball team — or, to seasonally adjust, good shooting, good rebounding and good playmaking.”
By the end of the session with reporters, Sperling was just running up the score. “So I think this president has very much stepped up to the plate,” he concluded.
All the sports talk amounted to a head fake, or perhaps a quarterback sneak, because the real game the White House was playing was dodgeball: evading anything resembling a serious budget proposal.
The White House’s budget for fiscal 2013 begins with a broken promise, adds some phony policy assumptions, throws in a few rosy forecasts and omits all kinds of painful decisions. Even then, the proposal would add $1 trillion more to the national debt than Obama contemplated a few months ago — and it is a non-starter on Capitol Hill, where even Senate Democrats have no plans to take it up. It is, in other words, exactly what it was supposed to be: a campaign document.
The opposition picked up Sperling’s metaphor and ran with it. “He has punted again,” said Paul Ryan (R-Wis.), the House Budget Committee chairman.
Actually, it was more of a kickoff, and Ryan opted to receive: He’ll introduce his own budget in the coming weeks, and it is likely to have large tax cuts for the wealthy and deep cuts to entitlement programs — giving Obama exactly the foil he wants for the fall campaign.
But as a budget writer, Obama whiffed. The Committee for a Responsible Federal Budget, although offering a few kind words for the president’s proposal, said the plan “would barely stabilize the debt — and at too high a level.”
The budget calls for hundreds of billions of dollars in new spending. It shows deficits exceeding $600 billion in every year but one over the next decade, while the debt grows to $18.7 trillion.
As such, the rollout couldn’t have been more purely political if it had included a balloon drop. After Obama gave his budget speech, Jeffrey Zients, the acting budget director, appeared with colleagues at the Eisenhower Executive Office Building to vouch for the plan.
“As a business person,” he said, “I believe the president’s budget makes the right investments. . . . This is good for business.”
Wearing a fine suit, purple tie and spread-collar shirt for the performance, the multimillionaire management consultant pointed out that the budget is much more responsible than an imaginary “baseline” budget, in which all tax cuts are extended permanently.
Zients introduced a colleague, Domestic Policy Council Director Cecilia Munoz, announcing that she “is going to double-click on the pillar of education.” Munoz followed up by explaining that “with the education piece, there are three or four buckets.”
But the reporters did not wish to hear about pillars and buckets. Reuters’s Caren Bohan asked about Obama’s promise, upon entering the White House, to cut the deficit in half by the end of his term. Zients and Sperling looked at each other and hesitated. “When the president came into office, we knew things weren’t in good shape, but we didn’t realize how bad they actually were,” Zients finally answered.
The Washington Post’s Lori Montgomery asked why the projected debt had swelled by $1 trillion since September. Zients spoke about “differences in economic assumptions.”
But that didn’t hold up, because the Economist’s Greg Ip pointed out that the White House is using an optimistic 3 percent forecast for economic growth this year, higher than the Federal Reserve and private-sector forecasts.
Alan Krueger, chairman of the Council of Economic Advisers, said the lofty projection was made “under the presumption that the president’s proposals will become law” — a presumption that does not seem at all safe.
CBS’s Nora O’Donnell asked why the White House decided to “take a pass on entitlements” in the budget.
“I don’t think we take a pass,” Zients replied.
Technically, he’s correct. It was more of a fumble.
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Krauthammer: Obama's Budget Proposal A Budget For Greece, "Scandalous"
Krauthammer says Obama "just wants to get past election day" on the budget "as he does everything on."
"They're not going to win the general election unless they make spending and debt the issue that it really is and that Americans are worried about," Charles Krautahmmer said on "Special Report" tonight.
"They are accepting the President's premise that somehow all of us have become Occupy Wall Street and everybody thinks if you redistribute income it would solve our economic problems. The cynicism -- I'm rarely accused of being not cynical enough, so let me be even more cynical. The President knows that we are heading over a cliff and he just wants to get past election day as he does everything on. Keystone, on debt ceiling limits, on everything. But this is a budget worthy of Greece. And for the President of the United States to offer it, knowing how dire our situation is, is truly scandalous," he said.
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Obama’s Tax Insanity
FrontPage Magazine ^ | February 14, 2012 | Rick Moran
President Obama unveiled his budget for Fiscal Year 2013 on Monday and threw down the gauntlet to Republicans, daring them to oppose his idea of “fairness” in an election year — ideas that, as he will frame the debate, will no doubt be popular with many Americans. Indeed, as CNN’s Alan Silverleib points out in his analysis, “It’s all about election year 2012, not fiscal year 2013.”
It is an extraordinary document. Not because it has a ghost of a chance of becoming law, but because it reveals themes and issues the president plans to run on in the fall, while exposing the rancid nature of Obama’s redistributionist ideas: taking, taking – and then taking some more — from those who produce and create the nation’s wealth and jobs all in the name of a cynically dishonest notion of “fairness.”
It is also extraordinary because in a year that the administration projects the government will run a deficit of $901 billion dollars (a rosy scenario considering Obama has yet to come anywhere close to achieving his deficit goals), the president is proposing hundreds of billions of dollars in new spending. In essence, Mr. Obama is not taxing producers in an effort to slow the runaway spending and deficits his policies have caused. He is going to use those new found revenues in a bid to buy votes by divvying up the extra cash among favored constituencies.
Obama said his budget would “renew the American values of fair play and shared responsibility.” But how does he square that with the “values” of the president and his party where cronyism, political favoritism, and corruption dominate the landscape? How does the president get away with talking about “fair play” and “playing by the same rules” when his party continuously demonstrates a predilection for favoring groups based not on merit, but on the color of their skin, their ethnicity, their sexual preference, their gender, and their affiliation – or not – with a union? It is this kind of hypocrisy that permeates this budget document and makes the president’s calls for “fairness” ring hollow.
His spending “cuts” included in the budget do not touch entitlements, forcing the nation’s defense to take the brunt of the cutbacks. The defense budget will fall 4%. In practical terms, it means slashing eight Army combat brigades, six Marine Corps battalions and 11 fighter squadrons, and will start to pull two Army brigades out of Europe.
Meanwhile, the Department of Energy becomes a huge winner, increasing its budget a whopping 41% — mostly to fund Obama’s green energy fiascoes. The Department of Justice makes out a big loser, with its budget falling 15%. But it is where the cuts will be made that will rile Republicans. The president proposes to massively cut a program that reimburses states and cities for jailing illegal immigrants for committing crimes. Funding would fall from $240 million to just $70 million.
The Hispanic vote is vital to his re-election and allowing illegal aliens who have committed crimes out on bail or to simply disappear will no doubt sit well with liberal Latino groups who have been agitating against enforcing any of the nation’s immigration laws.
For some reason, the president is proposing a big increase for the Commerce Department. This useless federal bureaucracy will get a $10 billion gift “to help build an interoperable public safety broadband network.” Critics point out that the government has already spent $13 billion on radio equipment since 2001 and that a public auction of frequencies — ostensibly to recover the costs of the program — won’t realize nearly enough to pay for it.
Agency after agency, department after department, will see new spending. For the Department of Transportation, a pork-laden, five-year $476 billion highway bill and a $50 billion “infusion” for roads, bridges and other transportation infrastructure. Did we mention the $47 billion for high speed rail? Such trivialities are an asterisk in this budget.
Foreign aid gets a boost, including $800 million for the “Arab Spring.” The president wants to create a “Middle East and North Africa Incentive Fund” — explained in the budget document as a fund that “will provide incentives for long-term economic, political, and trade reforms to countries in transition — and to countries prepared to make reforms proactively.” Analysts are unsure if this is “new money” or simply collecting cash from other programs and placing it in a fund with a new name.
No comment yet from the Muslim Brotherhood whether Shariah finance rules will allow them to participate in the “incentives for reform” in economic, political, and trade matters.
Meanwhile, Medicare and Medicaid spending continues its unsustainable pace, rising 9% in FY2013. The administration is claiming $360 billion in savings as a result of paying doctors and hospitals less for Medicare services — the old “doc fix” that is added to HHS budgets every year and is shot down every year by Congress and the AMA.
One might expect the “green” energy initiatives, the defense cuts, and the massive increase in transportation spending where Obama’s union allies will get a windfall. But it is how the president wants to raise taxes that the class warfare theme of his campaign for re-election and, what can only be described as his hatred for the successful, the entrepreneur, the savvy investor, and the small business person, becomes apparent.
Larry Kudlow sums up a few of the tax increases in Obama’s budget:
The capital-gains tax goes from 15 percent to 24 percent (including Obamacare). The dividends tax goes from 15 percent to nearly 40 percent, and that’s not including the double tax on corporate profits embodied in dividends and capital gains. The Bush tax cuts for top earners are repealed. There’s the 30 percent Buffett-rule minimum tax on millionaires. The carried-interest tax for private equity, hedge funds, and other investment partnerships goes from 15 to 39.6 percent. The estate tax jumps to 45 percent. Oil and gas companies get hit. And there’s probably more stuff in there I haven’t read yet. (Jimmy P. lays it out nicely.) Paul Ryan’s press release calls it $1.9 trillion tax hike, with $47 trillion in government spending over the next decade and the fourth straight year of trillion-dollar deficits.
Oil and gas companies will lose subsidies, which is the same thing as a tax increase and will make energy more expensive. And if you are going to die and want to pass on your estate or small business relatively intact, it would be better to go sooner rather than later. After an estate is taxed every year for purposes of income (and taxed when the money is first earned), Obama doesn’t believe that is enough. Before it is passed on to your children or spouse, it must be taxed again with nearly half of your life’s work going to the government.
Thus is “fairness” served in Obama’s eyes.
Perhaps the most egregious bit of deceitful and fraudulent budgeting is in the “savings” Obama is claiming from ending the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan. The administration puts that figure at a nonsensical $850 billion. Even his allies are embarrassed to defend this bit of tripe. It’s as if they pulled the number out of thin air, believing no one would notice. Since it is a fairy tale number, there is little doubt Obama’s deficit projections are also in the realm of fantasy.
Writing at the AEI blog, James Pethokoukis surveys the wreckage:
All in all, Obama has proposed some $1.6 trillion in new taxes over ten years, taking tax revenue as a share of GDP to 20.1 percent in 2022 vs. a historical average of 18 percent. And despite all those new taxes, Obama’s plan would still add $6.7 trillion in new debt and make no progress in lowering the nation’s total debt levels as a share of output. The debt-to-GDP ratio is predicted to be 74.2 percent this year and 76.5 percent in 2022.
At the same time, federal spending would never fall below 22 percent of GDP. Indeed, Obama — if he serves two terms — would be the first U.S. president in history to spend 22.0 percent or more of GDP for eight straight years (and then beyond). And keep in mind that these debt and spending numbers claim about $850 billion in savings from unwinding the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, spending about a quarter of those phony “savings” on highway funding.
Pethokoukis also points out the cynically dishonest projections for economic growth upon which much of the budget is based: 3.4% growth in 2015, 4.1% in 2016, 4.1% inn 2017, and 3.9% in 2018. Pethokoukis notes that the “U.S. economy has only seen a run like that three times in the past four decades. And the Obama Boom is supposed to happen amid rising tax rates, interest rates, and debt? Good luck, Mr. President.”
No, James. Good luck to us. We’re going to need it if we’re going to survive this assault on capitalism from a president who has presided over the worst economy in nearly 80 years.
Freedom Center pamphlets now available on Kindle: Click here.
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Article printed from FrontPage Magazine: http://frontpagemag.com
URL to article: http://frontpagemag.com/2012/02/14/obamas-budget-tax-insanity/
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We've said it before, all tax revenue that will be "Gained" from a tax increase will go towards more spending.
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:)
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4 trillion in cuts over 10 years.
how have repubs responded?
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4 trillion in cuts over 10 years.
how have repubs responded?
Please, you don't buy into that propaganda, do you? ::)
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Please, you don't buy into that propaganda, do you? ::)
Of course he does.
By the way - Obama knows this sham is going nowhere as well as the fact that he can't shackle spending of future presidents or congresses 10 years out. Its all a tailor made like made for obamabots like 240.
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Obama’s Tax Insanity
FrontPage Magazine ^ | February 14, 2012 | Rick Moran
President Obama unveiled his budget for Fiscal Year 2013 on Monday and threw down the gauntlet to Republicans, daring them to oppose his idea of “fairness” in an election year — ideas that, as he will frame the debate, will no doubt be popular with many Americans. Indeed, as CNN’s Alan Silverleib points out in his analysis, “It’s all about election year 2012, not fiscal year 2013.”
It is an extraordinary document. Not because it has a ghost of a chance of becoming law, but because it reveals themes and issues the president plans to run on in the fall, while exposing the rancid nature of Obama’s redistributionist ideas: taking, taking – and then taking some more — from those who produce and create the nation’s wealth and jobs all in the name of a cynically dishonest notion of “fairness.”
It is also extraordinary because in a year that the administration projects the government will run a deficit of $901 billion dollars (a rosy scenario considering Obama has yet to come anywhere close to achieving his deficit goals), the president is proposing hundreds of billions of dollars in new spending. In essence, Mr. Obama is not taxing producers in an effort to slow the runaway spending and deficits his policies have caused. He is going to use those new found revenues in a bid to buy votes by divvying up the extra cash among favored constituencies.
Obama said his budget would “renew the American values of fair play and shared responsibility.” But how does he square that with the “values” of the president and his party where cronyism, political favoritism, and corruption dominate the landscape? How does the president get away with talking about “fair play” and “playing by the same rules” when his party continuously demonstrates a predilection for favoring groups based not on merit, but on the color of their skin, their ethnicity, their sexual preference, their gender, and their affiliation – or not – with a union? It is this kind of hypocrisy that permeates this budget document and makes the president’s calls for “fairness” ring hollow.
His spending “cuts” included in the budget do not touch entitlements, forcing the nation’s defense to take the brunt of the cutbacks. The defense budget will fall 4%. In practical terms, it means slashing eight Army combat brigades, six Marine Corps battalions and 11 fighter squadrons, and will start to pull two Army brigades out of Europe.
Meanwhile, the Department of Energy becomes a huge winner, increasing its budget a whopping 41% — mostly to fund Obama’s green energy fiascoes. The Department of Justice makes out a big loser, with its budget falling 15%. But it is where the cuts will be made that will rile Republicans. The president proposes to massively cut a program that reimburses states and cities for jailing illegal immigrants for committing crimes. Funding would fall from $240 million to just $70 million.
The Hispanic vote is vital to his re-election and allowing illegal aliens who have committed crimes out on bail or to simply disappear will no doubt sit well with liberal Latino groups who have been agitating against enforcing any of the nation’s immigration laws.
For some reason, the president is proposing a big increase for the Commerce Department. This useless federal bureaucracy will get a $10 billion gift “to help build an interoperable public safety broadband network.” Critics point out that the government has already spent $13 billion on radio equipment since 2001 and that a public auction of frequencies — ostensibly to recover the costs of the program — won’t realize nearly enough to pay for it.
Agency after agency, department after department, will see new spending. For the Department of Transportation, a pork-laden, five-year $476 billion highway bill and a $50 billion “infusion” for roads, bridges and other transportation infrastructure. Did we mention the $47 billion for high speed rail? Such trivialities are an asterisk in this budget.
Foreign aid gets a boost, including $800 million for the “Arab Spring.” The president wants to create a “Middle East and North Africa Incentive Fund” — explained in the budget document as a fund that “will provide incentives for long-term economic, political, and trade reforms to countries in transition — and to countries prepared to make reforms proactively.” Analysts are unsure if this is “new money” or simply collecting cash from other programs and placing it in a fund with a new name.
No comment yet from the Muslim Brotherhood whether Shariah finance rules will allow them to participate in the “incentives for reform” in economic, political, and trade matters.
Meanwhile, Medicare and Medicaid spending continues its unsustainable pace, rising 9% in FY2013. The administration is claiming $360 billion in savings as a result of paying doctors and hospitals less for Medicare services — the old “doc fix” that is added to HHS budgets every year and is shot down every year by Congress and the AMA.
One might expect the “green” energy initiatives, the defense cuts, and the massive increase in transportation spending where Obama’s union allies will get a windfall. But it is how the president wants to raise taxes that the class warfare theme of his campaign for re-election and, what can only be described as his hatred for the successful, the entrepreneur, the savvy investor, and the small business person, becomes apparent.
Larry Kudlow sums up a few of the tax increases in Obama’s budget:
The capital-gains tax goes from 15 percent to 24 percent (including Obamacare). The dividends tax goes from 15 percent to nearly 40 percent, and that’s not including the double tax on corporate profits embodied in dividends and capital gains. The Bush tax cuts for top earners are repealed. There’s the 30 percent Buffett-rule minimum tax on millionaires. The carried-interest tax for private equity, hedge funds, and other investment partnerships goes from 15 to 39.6 percent. The estate tax jumps to 45 percent. Oil and gas companies get hit. And there’s probably more stuff in there I haven’t read yet. (Jimmy P. lays it out nicely.) Paul Ryan’s press release calls it $1.9 trillion tax hike, with $47 trillion in government spending over the next decade and the fourth straight year of trillion-dollar deficits.
Oil and gas companies will lose subsidies, which is the same thing as a tax increase and will make energy more expensive. And if you are going to die and want to pass on your estate or small business relatively intact, it would be better to go sooner rather than later. After an estate is taxed every year for purposes of income (and taxed when the money is first earned), Obama doesn’t believe that is enough. Before it is passed on to your children or spouse, it must be taxed again with nearly half of your life’s work going to the government.
Thus is “fairness” served in Obama’s eyes.
Perhaps the most egregious bit of deceitful and fraudulent budgeting is in the “savings” Obama is claiming from ending the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan. The administration puts that figure at a nonsensical $850 billion. Even his allies are embarrassed to defend this bit of tripe. It’s as if they pulled the number out of thin air, believing no one would notice. Since it is a fairy tale number, there is little doubt Obama’s deficit projections are also in the realm of fantasy.
Writing at the AEI blog, James Pethokoukis surveys the wreckage:
All in all, Obama has proposed some $1.6 trillion in new taxes over ten years, taking tax revenue as a share of GDP to 20.1 percent in 2022 vs. a historical average of 18 percent. And despite all those new taxes, Obama’s plan would still add $6.7 trillion in new debt and make no progress in lowering the nation’s total debt levels as a share of output. The debt-to-GDP ratio is predicted to be 74.2 percent this year and 76.5 percent in 2022.
At the same time, federal spending would never fall below 22 percent of GDP. Indeed, Obama — if he serves two terms — would be the first U.S. president in history to spend 22.0 percent or more of GDP for eight straight years (and then beyond). And keep in mind that these debt and spending numbers claim about $850 billion in savings from unwinding the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, spending about a quarter of those phony “savings” on highway funding.
Pethokoukis also points out the cynically dishonest projections for economic growth upon which much of the budget is based: 3.4% growth in 2015, 4.1% in 2016, 4.1% inn 2017, and 3.9% in 2018. Pethokoukis notes that the “U.S. economy has only seen a run like that three times in the past four decades. And the Obama Boom is supposed to happen amid rising tax rates, interest rates, and debt? Good luck, Mr. President.”
No, James. Good luck to us. We’re going to need it if we’re going to survive this assault on capitalism from a president who has presided over the worst economy in nearly 80 years.
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Article printed from FrontPage Magazine: http://frontpagemag.com
URL to article: http://frontpagemag.com/2012/02/14/obamas-budget-tax-insanity/
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This cannot be real.
Its simply horrendous. Taxing more not to cover our already huge debt, but to increase spending IN ALL THE WRONG PLACES!?
Hes basically going to take more from people and cut jobs in the military in order to fund his terrible ideological crusades?
How in the holy fuck is this guy President?
This should be a huge asterik in the American history books for this guy - He should be the role model for what happens when people vote based on emotions (hate for Bush and the republicans), without properly vetting a candidate, and because
he was black.
In short - this man represents all the WRONG reasons people vote. And this is what we wound up with.
A man willing to take from those that deserve/earn and give to those who dont deserve just because he says so.
Oh, and take more from the citizens to give to his buddies piece of shit programs that do nothing but hurt people or go bankrupt.
Because fairness now days doesnt mean fairness to those who work hard and deserve what they get - it means everyone gets the same regardless of how hard they work or how they are as a human being.
Disgusting.
/typical rant.
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4 trillion in cuts over 10 years.
how have repubs responded?
ITS NOT 4 TRILLION IN CUTS!!1
Its 4 trillion cut of the proposed INCREASES, if I am reading it correctly.
Which means its not actually cutting anything at all. Were still at a net increase in spending. Just not as big as they want it to be. ::)
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I really don't know why anyone is surprised by Obama's fiscal immorality. The asshole never held a job in his life, never worked, was handed everything on a platter, never ran so much as a lemonade stand, surrounded himself with communists and socialists his entire life, etc.
I warned everyone in 2008 and it fell on deaf ears.
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ITS NOT 4 TRILLION IN CUTS!!1
Its 4 trillion cut of the proposed INCREASES, if I am reading it correctly.
Which means its not actually cutting anything at all. Were still at a net increase in spending. Just not as big as they want it to be. ::)
Actually, it was SUPPOSED to be a $10 trillion increase in the national debt... now it's a $6 trillion increase. So in DC that counts as a "cut."
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ITS NOT 4 TRILLION IN CUTS!!1
Its 4 trillion cut of the proposed INCREASES, if I am reading it correctly.
Which means its not actually cutting anything at all. Were still at a net increase in spending. Just not as big as they want it to be. ::)
You're reading it completely right, Shockwave.
These aren't cuts, the "Debt Ceiling Battle" cuts aren't cuts. The budget is, by law enacted in the 1970's, increased every single year. Hence, these "cuts" aren't cuts at all, they are simply a slowdown in future spending increases.
-The budget still grows enormously.
-The debt load still grows enormously
-The deficit will still be historically huge
-Govt. still grows
-The budget still grows.
I've posted the CBO projections on this very board that shows this. If anyone falls for this nonsense whether it be from Left or Right you deserve to be smacked around. This is all a shell game.
The first step towards fixing this is freezing current spending levels and budget size and then cutting from there.
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You're reading it completely right, Shockwave.
These aren't cuts, the "Debt Ceiling Battle" cuts aren't cuts. The budget is, by law enacted in the 1970's, increased every single year. Hence, these "cuts" aren't cuts at all, they are simply a slowdown in future spending increases.
-The budget still grows enormously.
-The debt load still grows enormously
-The deficit will still be historically huge
-Govt. still grows
-The budget still grows.
I've posted the CBO projections on this very board that shows this. If anyone falls for this nonsense whether it be from Left or Right you deserve to be smacked around. This is all a shell game.
The first step towards fixing this is freezing current spending levels and budget size and then cutting from there.
I agree with this, but theyll never allow it to happen - theyve already showed theyre willing to take as much from the citizens as they can. Look at that article about the budge.
Cutting huge number of jobs in the military (which is only going to increase unemployement at home once those people are forced out) and taxing citizens more without so much as cutting a single dollar from their bastard programs.
Theyll never freeze anything - theyll never cut anything. Theyre increasing taxes, and for what? Not to "fix" things, but to spend MORE!!! More on shit that isnt/doesnt do a damn thing for the citizens of this country.
Increasing government spending, size, and reach through increasing taxes and cutting military jobs does NOT FIX the debt or economy! Theyre just pissing on us and laughing! Jesus Christ the corruption in our government is disgusting. Just disgusting.
All I see is in Obamas proposed "budget" is government growing in size by taking peoples hard earned money, and making people more and more dependant on them as a result.
How long until they just take every dollar we earn and turn around and dish out a "fair" allowance to everyone? Isnt that Obamas definition of "fairness"?
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:)
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The Cost of Obama
Feb 14, 2012 •
By JEFFREY H. ANDERSON
http://www.weeklystandard.com/blogs/painful-cost-obama_629745.html
President Obama’s fourth budget has now been released, which allows for a relatively full accounting of deficit spending during his four years in office. The picture isn’t pretty, but it is revealing.
According to the White House’s own figures (see table S-1 here for 2011 to 2013, and table S-1 here for 2010), the actual or projected deficit tallies for the four years in which Obama has submitted budgets are as follows: $1.293 trillion in 2010, $1.300 trillion in 2011, $1.327 trillion in 2012, and $901 billion in 2013. In addition, Obama is responsible for the estimated $200 billion (the Congressional Budget Office’s figure) that his economic “stimulus” added to the deficit in 2009. Moreover, he shouldn’t get credit for the $149 billion in TARP (Troubled Asset Relief Program) repayments made in 2010 and 2011 to cover most of the $154 billion in bank loans that remained unpaid at the end of the 2009 fiscal year — loans that count against President Bush’s 2009 deficit tally.
Adding all of this up, deficit spending during Obama’s four years in the White House (based on his own figures) will be an estimated $5.170 trillion — or $5,170,000,000,000.00.
To help put that colossal sum of money into perspective, if you take our deficit spending under Obama and divide it evenly among the roughly 300 million American citizens, that works out to just over $17,000 per person — or about $70,000 for a family of four.
The previous record for most deficit spending during a presidency was set by President George W. Bush (see table 1.3 in the White House’s Historic Tables). During Bush’s 8-year administration, total deficit spending was $3.402 trillion. That’s a truly extraordinary and reckless sum. It’s also $1.768 trillion less than deficit spending in just four years under Obama. Per year, deficits under Bush averaged $425 billion. Per year, deficits under Obama (according to his own numbers) will average $1.293 trillion — or more than three times as much.
Because the gross domestic product (GDP) nearly always grows from year to year, the most favorable way to view Obama’s deficit spending is as a percentage of GDP. Surely he can’t look as bad in that light, right?
Well, prior to Obama, our annual deficit spending had only exceeded 6.0 percent of GDP during the Civil War, World War I, and World War II. Except during those huge conflicts, our deficits had never exceeded 6.0 percent of GDP in any year — not during the Great Depression, not at the height of the Cold War defense buildup, not ever. But that’s no longer the case. During Obama’s four years in the White House (and, again, using his own numbers), annual deficit spending will average 8.4 percent of GDP.
That’s nearly double the average annual level of deficit spending under any other post-War president. As the following chart shows, this has truly been a historic presidency — more profligate than any other by far:
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Yes, it's cuts against proposed increases in spending. Honestly, this is washington bullshit spin. Its still increasing the deficit every year. They needed to pass a balanced budget amendment, entitlement reform and massive spending reductions across the board and should have included closing tax loopholes and grants for big corporations as something to give way on.
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Yes, it's cuts against proposed increases in spending. Honestly, this is washington bullshit spin. Its still increasing the deficit every year. They needed to pass a balanced budget amendment, entitlement reform and massive spending reductions across the board and should have included closing tax loopholes and grants for big corporations as something to give way on.
Never happen. Theyd have to change their way of doing things, and thats just not how the government rolls bro. The government now is paid for by the people, for the politicians. Its not by the people for the people anymore.
Were just dollars signs now methinks. Dollar signs and votes.
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Yes, it's cuts against proposed increases in spending. Honestly, this is washington bullshit spin. Its still increasing the deficit every year. They needed to pass a balanced budget amendment, entitlement reform and massive spending reductions across the board and should have included closing tax loopholes and grants for big corporations as something to give way on.
Why pass a balanced budget amendment which requires a 2/3 vote when you can pass a balanced budget which requires a 50% + 1 vote?
Hint: It's all a charade.
That said, the balanced budget amendment that was being pushed by the Congressional Republicans was pretty good. It had limits on spending and taxes in addition to a balanced budget requirement.
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Ron Paul: Americans should be 'outraged' with Obama budget
By Justin Sink - 02/14/12 04:28 PM ET
The Hill
Ron Paul said Tuesday that Americans should be "outraged" over President Obama's 2013 budget proposal and echoed fellow Republicans in arguing that the plan fell short of the president's promises to reduce deficit spending.
"For the fourth year in a row our federal budget deficit will exceed $1 trillion, and President Obama is offering us a budget plan that will continue digging us deeper into this debt hole," said Pau in a statement. "This budget contains a massive tax increase, and President Obama’s policies of more debt and taxes will make the jobs crisis facing the nation much worse than the employment crisis we are facing."
Paul went on to lambast Obama — and his Republican opponents — for failing to take "the debt seriously."
“The debt should be priority number one, for everybody. It is for me. But it doesn’t seem to be for the people in charge," Paul said.
The president's plan has earned widespread criticism from Republicans, who have charged that the budget does little to address entitlement reform. But the White House insisted Monday that they addressed spending cuts in a serious way.
“I don’t think we take a pass,” Acting Budget Director Jeff Zients told reporters Monday.
Still, the plan drew a chorus of criticism from Republicans on Capitol Hill - including Rep. Jeb Hensarling, who served as co-chairman of the Joint Select Committee on Deficit Reduction, which failed in its mandate to find $1.6 trillion in cuts.
"I'm bitterly disappointed in two respects. No. 1, the president told us that at the end of his first term he would cut the deficit in half," Hensarling said on CNN. "Second of all, there's a debt crisis and the president's budget doesn't deal with it."
Rep. Paul said his economic plan — which calls for more than $1 trillion in cuts within the first year of a hypothetical Ron Paul presidency — was necessary to fix the country's budget woes.
“There are some like the President who believe we can simply tax ourselves out of this predicament, I totally disagree. Washington does not have a revenue problem, it has a spending problem. So, it doesn’t matter how much we raise taxes, if we do not cure our disease of overspending we will not end the vicious cycle of borrowing and printing well beyond our means," Paul said.
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Obama plan will end dozens of business tax breaks: Geithner
Yahoo ^ | 2/14/12 | Kim Dixon and Rachelle Younglai - Reuters
WASHINGTON (Reuters) - The Obama administration's corporate tax reform plan will end "dozens and dozens" of tax breaks, U.S. Treasury Secretary Timothy Geithner said on Tuesday as he defended the White House's election-year call for higher taxes on the wealthy.
Within days, the administration is set to unveil a blueprint for revamping the corporate tax system aimed at leveling the playing field for all companies, which pay wildly differing levels of taxes, while lowering the top corporate tax rate.
Companies are clamoring for a cut in the top 35 percent corporate tax rate but disagree about how to how eliminate special tax preferences that benefit selected industries.
Geithner spoke before the Senate Finance Committee a day after President Barack Obama unveiled a $3.8 trillion budget-and-tax proposal that called for aggressive government spending to boost the economy and higher taxes on the rich.
"We think they can handle it. We think they can afford it," Geithner said.
The budget proposal is seen as a campaign document, with few elements expected to win approval this year in a divided U.S. Congress as elections approach in November.
Republicans criticized Obama's budget, saying it chooses winners and losers and moves away from tax reform.
...
Geithner said it was a "fair question."
He said the Obama plan would "wipe out a very substantial, dozens and dozens of special tax preferences," in the corporate code, but keep a "very limited" number targeting incentives for "creating and building stuff in the United States."
Senators from both parties said Obama needs to use the bully pulpit to push major changes to the tax code.
The last time major rewrite of the U.S. tax code came in 1986 under the leadership of Republican President Ronald Reagan.
(Excerpt) Read more at news.yahoo.com ...
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Proposed Obama budget includes surge in tax hikes (Obama plans tax hikes for EVERYONE)
Fox News ^ | 2/14/2012 | fox news
Posted on February 14, 2012 10:53:56 PM EST by tobyhill
President Obama's proposed 2013 budget contains a decade-long surge of tax hikes that, if approved, would affect everything from income to investment to inheritance.
The budget blueprint contains roughly $2 trillion in new taxes and fees. When other tax cuts and credits are counted, the net impact from the proposals is still about $1.5 trillion.
Though Republicans already are mounting a vigorous campaign against the proposal, many of the tax provisions still could become law unless Congress takes action to stop them.
,,,,
But the budget also imposes various fees, such as a hike in the airline "security fee," as well as a $61 billion-over-10-years fee on financial institutions. The fee is called the "financial crisis responsibility fee," and is aimed at making sure taxpayers are compensated for the 2008 industry bailout.
(Excerpt) Read more at foxnews.com ...
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(Tax-cheat Timmy) Geithner: Tax hikes must be part of budget (will correct 'fiscal problems')
The Hill ^ | 2/14/12 | Peter Schroeder
Posted on February 15, 2012 4:42:03 AM EST by Libloather
Geithner: Tax hikes must be part of budget
By Peter Schroeder - 02/14/12 01:18 PM ET
Treasury Secretary Timothy Geithner told skeptical Republican senators Tuesday that it is simply not possible to correct the nation’s fiscal problems without raising taxes.
Geithner defended President Obama’s 2013 budget proposal before the Senate Finance Committee and said the plan is the only option he sees for helping the economy and addressing the deficit without hurting the middle class.
"I do not see how you get there if you are unable ... to contemplate and to embrace modest increases in revenue through tax reform," Geithner said. "I just don’t think it’s possible."
Geithner found himself playing defense before Republicans on the panel, especially regarding the president's plan to increase taxes on the nation's highest earners.
"It is clear that [Obama's] plan would only make our fiscal problems worse and harm our economy by imposing around $1.9 trillion of stifling tax hikes," said Sen. Orrin Hatch (R-Utah), the ranking member of the panel.
"This budget is a plan for a permanently larger, European-style government. It does not set our country down a sustainable fiscal path. It does nothing to change the President’s unwavering devotion to tax-and-spend policies and failed stimulus schemes that have and will continue to generate historic deficits and levels of debt," Hatch said.
Geithner argued the deficit can’t be tamed without tax hikes and said that cost should fall on wealthy households.
"We do not believe there is a feasible way or a fair way to restore fiscal sustainability without asking a very small fraction of the most fortunate Americans to bear a modestly higher burden for the privilege of being Americans," Geithner said.
The president's budget proposal included a number of tax increases targeting the wealthy, including higher taxes on investment dividends and capital gains. The president also called for Congress to enact the "Buffett Rule," ensuring millionaires pay at least 30 percent of their income in taxes, although it was not officially included in the budget proposal.
Geithner also sought to rebut claims that Obama's budget would harm the economy. GOP lawmakers blasted the president's proposal Monday, arguing it would lead to economic ruin and a debt crisis on par with that in Greece.
Obama's top economic official acknowledged that the economy still is shaking off the recession, but said the nation is on solid footing and would be in even better shape if lawmakers adopted the White House budget.
"If those were embraced by Congress tomorrow ... there would be substantially more confidence around the world," he said. "I don't believe there is a credible argument to make that uncertainty about our fiscal deficits ... is having a material adverse effect on the American economy."
Geithner also had to fend off questions from multiple lawmakers in both parties about why the White House does not plan to offer a comprehensive tax reform proposal. He said the White House planned to offer a "framework" for corporate tax reform in the coming weeks, but no new efforts on overhauling the individual tax code.
When asked why the White House was not interested in even offering a plan this year, Geithner said the failed attempt by Obama and House Speaker John Boehner (R-Ohio) to strike a broad deal this summer proved the two sides were too far apart on the issue right now.
"We took a run at trying to negotiate a framework like that with the Republican leadership in the House over the course of the summer," he said. "We found no basis for agreement on even the broad framework. ... We're just trying to be realistic."
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Obama’s budget shell game
By MICHAEL GOODWIN
Last Updated: 1:19 AM, February 15, 2012
A British politician once noted, “A lie can be halfway round the world before the truth has got its boots on.” He could have been talking about President Obama’s latest whopper.
Unlike so many others, this presidential prevarication isn’t limited to a single anecdote or speech. This one runs to more than 2,000 pages and weighs a reported 10 pounds.
It’s Obama’s $3.8 trillion budget and it is to truth what night is to day. To call it a “campaign document,” as Republicans have, doesn’t do it justice. Ditto for calling it a “wish list,” as reporters have.
It is a fraud, a scam, a wooden nickel, pure and unadulterated flimflam.
As such, it neatly captures the moral bankruptcy of Obama’s presidency. Trapped by the failure of his policies and the laws of economics and politics, he inadvertently reveals that he is serious about nothing except re-election.
Acting like a candidate running in a party primary instead of a president with a duty to govern, he glues reams of fictional numbers to the fantasies of a community organizer. Presto — he’s a man with a vision of utopia he can read from a TelePrompTer.
To judge by his claims, he has adopted the credo that the end — four more years — justifies the means. Those means include a willingness to say anything that serves him. Freed from duty and facts, he submits his concoction to Congress as an official document under presidential seal.
The outrage is . . . where? In the fourth year of this national error, deviancy has been defined down so far that a monstrous dereliction of the basic duty to make a budget is met with a shrug of the shoulders. Apparently, we no longer expect any better from him.
This plan will get the same number of votes Obama’s last budget got in the Senate. That one was defeated 97-0. So the stalemate will continue and he will compound the lie by pretending it’s not his fault.
It has now been more than 1,000 days since Democrats, who hold a Senate majority, which is all they need for budget measures, adopted one. And Majority Leader Harry Reid, perhaps to spare the president from another embarrassment, refuses the simple formality of a vote this time.
“We do not need to bring a budget to the floor this year,” he said, declining to offer even backhanded praise for Obama’s presentation. Reid knows he couldn’t muster more than a handful of votes for this hoax.
Conscience won’t allow most Dems to decimate the military, as Obama proposes. Nor will they follow him in refusing to recognize the debt and deficit as mortal threats to the nation.
Even party dead-enders aren’t in the mood to raise taxes on virtually every worker for yet another round of “stimulus.” They know rancid pork when they smell it and most aren’t interested in risking their careers to endorse it. With Athens burning, few want to follow the Greek model of economics.
It is tempting, then, to see a silver lining, to believe that Obama has had his turn and that his vision for America is now so exposed as a delusion that it and he will be swept aside.
But to judge from the polls, that is far too optimistic. Facts don’t always prevail and truth is often slow to get its boots on.
Besides, America is scared, and for all the country’s cynicism about Washington, lies from the Oval Office still can fool nearly half the people. Sometimes, the bigger they are, the harder they are to recognize.
Mayor puts church in lurch
Read more: http://www.nypost.com/p/news/national/obama_budget_shell_game_9qhKQw7k6R76w6AqpeoZRK#ixzz1mSKjQy10
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Obama's Budget: It's My Money, America (No It Isn't)
Townhall.com ^ | February 15, 2012 | Ben Shapiro
On Monday, President Obama released his budget to the world. As per his usual Orwellian arrangement, Obama called this budget his attempt to implement "fiscal responsibility." Obama's attempt at "fiscal responsibility" works about as well as Madonna's attempts at virginity.
Underlying his massive $3.8 trillion proposal, which also calls for tax increases amounting to nearly $2 trillion, is the overwhelming sense that President Obama thinks this is his money to spend. How else to explain his blithe assurances that his budget will ensure that everyone "gets a fair share ... does their fair share ... plays by the same rules"? Did we suddenly elect him third-grade teacher of the United States? Or does a dictator determine what a "fair share" means?
Here's what Obama really means by fair: He gets re-elected, and you get shafted. His budget cuts virtually nothing and increases the budget in a variety of eye-opening ways. Obama's team requests $1 billion for the Social Security Administration, for example, just to "ensure benefits are paid to the right person and in the right amount." Apparently, the SSA has been sending checks to people who aren't disabled -- and now it wants to spend money to stop that practice. The Dewey Decimal System was invented a century ago to stop confusion with regard to books. Now it takes us $1 billion to stop the government from sending checks to the wrong people.
Obama insists that this $1 billion investment will result in $47.9 billion in savings. Somehow, I doubt that math. When my wife goes to Macy's and then calls, telling me how she's saved several hundred dollars, I know to get ready for a big hit on the monthly credit card. The same holds true with government "savings." When they're saving us money, they're really just spending it.
It's not just Obama's money-wasting ideas embedded in this plan. It's blatant class warfare and campaign rhetoric. Take, for instance, his Financial Crisis Responsibility Fee: a 10-year, $61 billion excise from financial firms "to compensate the American people for the extraordinary assistance they provided to Wall Street, as well as to discourage excessive risk-taking."
First, you have to love it when the president of the United States names proposals after whoever he's going to blame. Next time, he should propose the It's Bush's Fault Fee, directed against wealthy people across the country. The very title of the initiative shows Obama's motive: He wants Wall Street to take it on the chin for their bad behavior, ignoring the role of government in pushing and promoting that behavior.
Second, Obama has no constitutional authority for anything like this. In the budget, Obama contends that the Troubled Assets Relief Program provided for measures taking money back from the banks -- but his proposal itself does not even stipulate that those being taxed have to have been recipients of TARP money to begin with.
Finally, the Financial Crisis Responsibility Fee is predicated on the notion that the banks owe everybody a lot of money. They do. But not according to Obama, whose administration has been claiming for years that the TARP money was paid back, and actually turned a profit for the taxpayer (So where's my check?). If they have, why does Obama now claim that he needs the banks to pony up to the table I order at to make taxpayers whole?
Obama packed his budget with such idiosyncratic idiocies. He cut a weather satellite system for the Pentagon but funded one for the Department of Commerce. He says he's going to cut subsidies for the oil and gas companies, but he's raising them for more non-existent green energy production, which will presumably fuel our unicorns. He wants to provide $800 million to our terrorist friends in Egypt, Libya and Tunisia but wants to cut our defense budget.
What makes him think he can do all this? Well, it's his money, stupid. You're just working for him. So work harder. His palms are itchy.
The American people are not nearly as stupid as Obama seems to believe. Just because he says that $3.8 trillion worth of mostly useless spending is vital doesn't mean it is. Just because he says it's fiscally responsible to continue revving up spending doesn't mean it is. And just because he says he respects our money doesn't mean he does.
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Obama Budget Raises Taxes on Small Employers, Savers, Families
ATR ^ | 2012-02-13 | Ryan Ellis
President Obama released his FY 2013 budget [Monday] morning. By his own numbers, his budget raises net taxes over the next decade by $1.56 trillion (Table S-9, page 225). As a percentage of the economy, tax revenues would rise all the way to 20.1% of GDP in 2022, far higher than the historical tax revenue average of 18.3% of GDP (Table S-1, page 205).
Here are some of the tax lowlights:
All 20 of the new or higher taxes in Obamacare are assumed to take place. That means that there will be a 3.8 percentage point surtax on investment income. It means that there will be excise taxes imposed on those unwilling to comply with the individual or employer mandates. That means that health insurance plans will face new taxes that will be passed along as premiums. The list goes on and on.
The tax rate at which the majority of small employer profits face taxation will rise. Under the Obama budget, the top marginal income tax rate (at which a majority of small employer profits will face taxation) will rise from 35% today to 39.6% in 2013.
The capital gains rate will rise from 15% today to 23.8% next year. That's because the Obama budget assumes the pre-2001 capital gains rate of 20% for investors earning more than $250,000 per year. On top of this, the Obamcare surtax on investment will raise this rate to 23.8%. Separately, capital gains earned as "carried interest" will be taxed at ordinary income tax rates.
The dividends rate will raise from 15% today to 43.4% next year. The Obama budget proposes taxing dividends for investors making more than $250,000 per year at ordinary income tax rates, which will rise to a top rate of 39.6% under the budget. In addition, the Obamacare surtax on investors will combine to nearly triple the tax rate on dividends in just one year.
The real tax rate on capital gains and dividends is actually even higher than this. Since taxes on dividends and capital gains are a cascaded double taxation on savings, the rate is actually far higher than this. Before being taxed to investors as capital gains and dividends, the money first faced taxation as corporate profits. The U.S. has the highest corporate income tax rate in the developed world at 35%. When factoring this in, the Obama budget is actually proposing a capital gains tax rate of 50.5% and a dividends rate of 63.2%. That would leave U.S. employers and savers at a severe competitive disadvantage.
The death tax will rise from 35% today to 45% next year. The Obama budget calls for the top rate on estates (the death tax) to rise from 35% today to 45% in 2013. In addition, more and more families will face this tax. The budget calls for cutting the death tax "standard deduction" from $5 million ($10 million for couples) in place today to $3.5 million next year. Thousands more families will have to visit the undertaker and their tax accountant on the same day.
Taxes raised on larger employers by $147 billion, pushing capital and jobs overseas. The budget moves toward a full double-taxation of profits on U.S. companies doing business overseas. Not only would these companies have to pay tax in the country they earned the money in--they would have to pay tax again if they wanted to bring that money back to the U.S. As a result, companies will have no incentive to bring back money to America to invest in plant and equipment, create jobs, fund pensions, or pay shareholders.
Taxes raised on families who consume energy by at least $100 billion over the decade. A whole series of tax increases on oil and gas companies, coal, and other producers of oil are proposed in this budget. Companies don't pay taxes--people do. These higher taxes will be passed along to families in the form of higher energy bills, skinnier 401(k) balances, and lower wages.
Read more: http://www.atr.org/obama-budget-raises-taxes-small-employers-a6727#ixzz1mTfGck7e
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IT NEVER ENDS WITH THIS COMMUNIST ASSHOLE!
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Obama Pushes Global Minimum Tax in Milwaukee
Daniel Halper
February 15, 2012 2:21 PM
Earlier this week, White House economic adviser Gene Sperling announced his support for changes in the tax structure. “[W]e need a global minimum tax so that people have the assurance that nobody is escaping doing their fair share as part of a race to the bottom or having our tax code actually subsidized and facilitate people moving their funds to tax havens,” Sperling said at an official White House meeting. He even indicated that President Obama “supports” this change.
But the White House pushed back the next day, telling Politico through an unnamed “official” that “[Sperling] was referring to our proposal in the Blueprint for an American Built to Last that removes tax incentives for companies that ship jobs overseas.” The Politico article was titled, “No 'global tax,' W.H. says,” though the article never actually quoted anyone—named or unnamed—denying the substance of Sperling’s proposal (or even that it would in effect be a “global minimum tax”).
Well today, in a speech the president is delivering in Milwaukee, Wisconsin, Obama announced the thrust of what amounts to a “global minimum tax”—even if he avoided using the controversial phrase.
“[N]o American company should be able to avoid paying its fair share of taxes by moving jobs and profits overseas,” Obama said, according to his remarks as prepared for deliver. “From now on, every multinational company should have to pay a basic minimum tax. And every penny should go towards lowering taxes for companies that choose to stay and hire in the United States of America.”
So while President Obama calls it “a basic minimum tax,” his adviser, Sperling, calls it a “global minimum tax.” Either way, it’s the same thing regardless of how the White House wants to message it.
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Obama’s Budget Proves He Should Not Be Reelected
By LIZ PEEK, The Fiscal Times February 14, 2012
http://www.thefiscaltimes.com/Columns/2012/02/14/Obamas-Budget-Proves-He-Should-Not-Be-Reelected.aspx#page1
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President Obama does not deserve to be reelected. By refusing to address the greatest challenge this nation faces – our financial security – Mr. Obama has failed the American people. Despite warnings from the IMF, the credit ratings agencies, China -- our principal foreign creditor -- and the American people, the president continues to offer up budgets and programs that ignore the dire trajectory of Medicare and Social Security spending, putting the future of this nation at risk.
RELATED: Obama’s 2013 Budget Forecasts Increasing Debt
Let’s get specific. This week Mr. Obama set forth a budget calling for yet another trillion-dollar deficit, the fourth in four years. Through certain spending cuts, some gimmickry (counting not spending on two wars as deficit reduction) and $1.5 trillion in tax hikes, the budget gap is projected to shrink to $575 billion in 2018, comfortably beyond the range of the country’s political telescope.
Each of the proposal’s major provisions scratches a partison itch: raising taxes on the wealthy, imposing new fees on banks, eliminating tax cuts on oil companies, spending $476 billion on transportation projects (mollifying construction crews teed off at the Keystone veto), allotting $30 billion for (guaranteed voting blocks) police, teachers and fire department workers, and so on. As the Committee for a Responsible Federal Budget summarizes, the president’s budget stabilizes our debt at 76 percent of GDP – “roughly double historical debt levels.” This is not acceptable.
To be fair, Mr. Obama proposes to save $364 billion over ten years in Medicare and Medicaid, mainly through slicing payments for prescription drugs ($156 billion), taking money from skilled nursing facilities and long-term care hospitals ($63 billion) and changing the way the government compensates doctors and hospitals for bad debts ($36 billion). The budget assumes the fantasy 30 percent cut in pay to healthcare providers contained in earlier projections. If you believe that these proposals will be adopted, please send me a certified check of $1,000 to claim your million-dollar lottery prize.
The budget is as cynical an affair as last year’s offering, which was defeated 97-0 in the Senate – an act of rare bipartisan cooperation. Before we celebrate that moment of sanity, however, we recollect that the Senate has not passed a budget in more than 1,000 days, though they are required by law to do so. The White House blames this dereliction of duty on intransigent Republicans (a charge most recently leveled by Budget Director Lew over the weekend) but in reality all that is needed is a simple Senate majority to pass a budget, which the Democrats have.
All this skirmishing is but B-rated play-acting. Informed citizens should be furious that the real issues clouding our future are not even addressed by our president. The crisis in our country is two-fold: a rising number of people receive ever-increasing assistance from the government. At the same time, fewer Americans are paying taxes. The inevitable outcome is a widening gap between revenues and outlays: the deficit. The recession has accelerated the problem. Here are the facts:
Last year, the first of the 78 million Baby Boomers reached retirement age. Between now and 2050, the number of people over 65 will more than double -- from 40 to 89 million. This huge population will receive increasing funds from Social Security, Medicare and Medicaid, and if nothing is done, it will be crippling. Social Security outlays, according to the annual Trustees report, will advance from 4.2 percent of GDP in 2007 to 6.2 percent in 2035. The program, which ran in the red the past two years for the first time since 1983, will have exhausted its trust assets in 2036. Thereafter, the board projects, tax revenue will only pay for about three quarters of scheduled benefits. In short, Social Security as we know it will not survive the Baby Boom bulge.
Medicare, too, is a menace, gobbling up 3.6 percent of GDP in 2010, 5.5 percent in 2035 and an increasing share thereafter. The trust fund for Medicare dies in 2024. This is the rosy projection. The real numbers for Medicare deficits are likely to be far worse that the agency projects. They assume Obamacare-related productivity that even the Trustees deem “debatable” and that Congress will chop doctor payments, “notwithstanding experience to the contrary.”
While our mandated spending on health and retirement benefits will continue to sprout like weeds (fertilized by Obamacare), the portion of the country paying for this tab will shrink. According to the Heritage Foundation, the portion of the country that pays no income taxes has climbed from 15 percent in 1984 to 49.5 percent in 2009, or from 35 million people to 152 million. While the recession bears some responsibility for this increase, the trend was well underway before the financial crisis hit.
These trends threaten not only our economy but our country. Even now, the president is proposing cuts in our military that paste over his inaction on entitlement programs; some think he may soon gut our future preparedness. President Obama argues that he is delivering what the country needs – more stimulative spending in the near term while laying the groundwork for long-term deficit reduction. He knows better. Our entitlements programs demand structural overhaul; he is afraid to light that fuse.
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President Obama Punts on US Deficit
By Debra Saunders
In February 2009 -- having signed into law his $787 billion stimulus package -- President Barack Obama made a pledge to the nation. "Contrary to the prevailing wisdom in Washington these past few years," the president noted, "we cannot simply spend as we please and defer the consequences to the next budget, the next administration or the next generation." Obama already had noted that he'd "inherited a $1.3 trillion deficit -- the largest in our nation's history." A month into office, Obama announced, "Today I am pledging to cut the deficit we inherited in half by the end of my first term in office."
He meant well, but it isn't going to happen.
This week, the administration presented a $3.8 trillion budget. The 2012 fiscal year will close with a $1.3 trillion deficit; the deficit for 2013 is expected to be $900 billion. And that's assuming Obama can push through $1.5 trillion in tax increases, mostly on the rich, over 10 years -- which no one expects to happen.
There's no appetite to pass the Obama budget in the Democratic-led Senate. White House chief of staff Jack Lew even told CNN: "You can't pass a budget in the Senate of the United States without 60 votes, and you can't get 60 votes without bipartisan support. So unless Republicans are willing to work with Democrats in the Senate, (Majority Leader) Harry Reid is not going to be able to get a budget passed."
It was a telling statement -- because it's not true. As a former budget director, Lew knows that budget bills pass on a majority vote. The Senate passed a 2009 budget resolution with 48 votes.
Last year, the Senate rejected the Obama budget in a resounding 97-0 vote.
Obama's eager enablers will argue that the president can't deal with Republicans. Nonsense. Congress is about to cut a deal to extend the payroll tax holiday, unemployment benefits and the "doc fix" to prevent cuts in Medicare payments through the end of the year. The compromise is expected to add $100 billion to the deficit. When a spending bill adds to the deficit, both parties can and do work together.
But to cut the deficit in a meaningful way, the president has to lead.
Obama does not face easy choices. Democrats believe that cutting federal spending could undermine the recovery. Republicans believe that tax increases would do likewise. Members of both parties fear that the other side has a point.
Neither Republicans nor Democrats are willing to tell the public what sacrifices Americans will have to make in order to pay off the $15 trillion national debt. So another year goes by, with another $1 trillion of debt.
If the president aggressively embraced entitlement reform, there would be a light at the end of the tunnel. But Obama punted.
In 2009, the president predicted what will happen if Washington fails to curb the deficit: "We risk sinking into another crisis down the road as our interest payments rise, our obligations come due, confidence in our economy erodes and our children and our grandchildren are unable to pursue their dreams because they're saddled with our debts."
With the latest Obama budget, I don't see any other end in sight.
dsaunders@sfchronicle.com
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MILLER: Obama’s fast and furious spin(gunwalker)
The Washington Times ^ | 15 February, 2012 | Emily Miller
President Obama is using his budget to advance an anti-gun agenda just before the election. One particularly sneaky provision buried deep within his submission to Congress Monday would, if enacted, allow the mistakes of the “Fast and Furious” gun-walking scandal to be repeated.
In November, the president signed the Justice Department appropriations bill, which included language from Sen. John Cornyn, Texas Republican, prohibiting federal agencies from facilitating the transfer of an operable firearm to an individual known or suspected to be in a drug cartel, unless they monitor the weapon at all times.
Now Mr. Obama is proposing to remove that provision from the 2013 spending bill, thus making it legal to revive gun-walking operations in the future. The White House justification is merely that the prohibition is “not necessary.”
Mr. Cornyn did not buy this explanation. “I understand the president has ‘complete confidence’ in Attorney General [Eric] Holder to not carry out further gun-walking operations like Fast and Furious, but 99 U.S. senators voted otherwise,” he told The Washington Times on Wednesday, referring to the upper chamber’s unanimous vote in October approving the amendment.
Even Democrats wanted to prevent the Justice Department from scheming to have guns sent over the border to Mexican drug cartels after the botched scheme led to the death of a border agent. Liberal Sen. Barbara Mikulski surprised many with her outspoken support for Mr. Cornyn’s amendment. “Fast and Furious was brought to an end but with terrible problems,” said the Maryland Democrat. “Hundreds of Mexican citizens have died, our own law enforcement people have died, and we have to do something about it.”
Rep. Darrell Issa, chairman of the House Committee on Oversight and Government Reform, has been investigating the administration’s role in Fast and Furious.
(Excerpt) Read more at washingtontimes.com ...
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Obama's Budget Bomb: He Proposes Spending Increases, While Disarming America
Townhall.com ^ | February 16, 2012 | Ken Blackwell
Early in his administration, President Obama, pledged to cut the federal deficit in half. But his recent budget proposal, to say Obama has not kept his promise is an understatement.
Determined to keep Americans drowning in debt, Obama proposes to accelerate federal spending $3.8 trillion in 2013 to $5.8 trillion in 2022, a whopping increase of 53 percent. By spending more than $45 trillion in the next 10 years, the most generous accounting would assume $6.7 trillion would be added to the federal deficit, bringing debt-to-GDP ratio who a crushing 76.5 percent.
The slow ending of the Afghanistan war gave the Obama Administration room for an $800 billion Washington-style accounting gimmick, where borrowed money that would not have been used is counted as saved. In terms of actual cuts in defense spending, Obama is shifting the focus from what is known to work in missile defense to developing futuristic missile intercepts which will require years of experimenting at great expense to taxpayers while a vulnerable America waits.
It has become obvious that America faces increasing nuclear threats from hostile regimes like Iran and North Korea. In June, Iran announced it was planning to triple its capacity to produce 20 percent enriched uranium, which can easily be converted to weapons-grade material. This week, Iranian President Ahmadinejad plans a major announcement for Iran’s advancement in its atomic program, a move to show how increased U.N. sanctions have failed to halt Iran’s technical progress.
Our first line of defense against short and intermediate-range airborne attacks is the Standard Missile 3 (SM-3), which can intercept enemy missiles while in flight. Their proven track record is why they are also essential to the NATO effort in Europe to defend against missiles from hostile nations.
Yet, despite the SM-3’s impressive performance history and expanding capabilities that will ultimately protect our homeland from a long-range missile attack, President Obama has all but turned his back on the missile. In his newly released budget, the President cuts funding for the newest evolution of SM-3 (known as IB), which will result in 52 percent fewer missiles while commanders in theater have consistently complained about shortages. The President’s $300 million reduction may also slow production, which could make the new missile delivery date of 2015 very difficult to meet.
The timing couldn’t be worse considering U.S. Defense Secretary Leon Panetta predicted last month that Iran would be capable of launching a nuclear missile at the U.S. as soon as 2014.
But President Obama’s short-sightedness doesn't end there. At the same time the President chopped funding for the first missile that will be able to protect us against an ICBM attack, he chose to pour $224 million into a sophisticated and tedious missile program that is on life support.
The missile, known as IIB, is but a back-of-the napkin concept that will not be ready for deployment until 2020, at the earliest. In a bipartisan move this past December, Congress virtually eliminated the 2012 budget for the program. The message was clear: we have more urgent budget priorities and current threats demand we deploy a missile to protect the continental United States much sooner than 2020.
Apparently, President Obama did not receive that message from Congress. After spending millions on development, Obama has unilaterally decided to shift resources toward more complex future missile variants—a process notorious for being obscenely over budget and off schedule—while rejecting the Congress’ more sensible approach to fiscal responsibility and a more robust national defense.
President Obama’s decisions on missile defense will create a multiple-year window where a country such as Iran could strike before our new SM-3s are in place. By reversing course, not only would taxpayer dollars be used more effectively, America will be properly protected from enemies well into the future.
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It’s math, not politics: Vast debt a killer
By U-T San Diego Editorial Staff
Wednesday, February 15, 2012
The $3.8 trillion 2012-13 federal budget proposed by President Barack Obama instantly became a political football among partisans. Among the pundit class, the conventional wisdom is that the spending plan is more a campaign document to help the president win re-election. Given that Congress hasn’t passed an actual budget in three years, this cynicism is defensible.
But at some point we wish everyone – the political class, the media, taxpayers of all ideologies – would just accept this as a given: As a nation, we can’t continue spending vastly more than we take in. The Obama plan, if enacted, would add $901 billion to the national debt. This is less than in recent years but still enormous on a historical scale – the U.S. spending 31 percent more than it receives in revenue.
A household that for years on end spent 31 percent more than it took in would soon be spending more on interest on debt than on most priorities. As a nation, we are already there. In 2010-11, the federal government spent $454 billion in interest on the national debt – 12 percent of the entire budget. That’s only going to go up, up and away unless deficits are finally, substantively addressed. We wish the immensity of this problem would finally sink in – with everyone.
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An Economy Built to Crash
Geithner admits Obama's budget 'unsustainable' for second year in row
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BY: Andrew Stiles - February 16, 2012 3:30 pm
President Obama described his fiscal year 2013 budget – the most expensive in United States history – as “a blueprint for an economy that is built to last.”
But even his own Treasury Secretary does not agree with that assessment.
For the second year in row, Timothy Geithner admitted before the Senate Budget Committee that President Obama’s budget takes no action to meaningfully reform entitlement programs, putting us on an “unsustainable” fiscal course.
“Even if Congress were to enact this budget,” Geithner said, “we would still be left with–in the outer decades as millions of Americans retire–what are still unsustainable commitments in Medicare and Medicaid.
In fact, Geithner said the same thing about the president’s budget last year.
“With the president’s plan, even if Congress were to enact it, and even if Congress were to hold to it, we would still be left with a very large interest burden and unsustainable obligations over time,” Geithner said in 2011. “That’s why we’re having the debate.”
The Congressional Budget Office projects that federal spending on Medicare and Medicaid will comprise an increasingly large, and inherently unsustainable, share of the economy in the coming decades.