Official Thread -Obama's "Plan": Thoughts?

[GigantorX]

DISCLAIMER : Real ideas and constructive thoughts only! Lets keep it CT free and stupid free!

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Goldman's Take On Obama's Latest Budgetary "Promises"
Submitted by Tyler Durden on 04/13/2011 15:14 -0400

Congressional Budget Office Goldman Sachs Gross Domestic Product Medicare President Obama White House

BOTTOM LINE:  The president has released a budget proposal that goes beyond his budget proposal for fiscal year (FY) 2012.  The most important new items are a “debt trigger” that would result in across-the-board cuts in spending and tax credits/deductions if debt/GDP goals are not reached, additional reduction in defense and non-defense discretionary spending and an endorsement of additional entitlement reductions. In most cases, the proposal outlines savings only at a high level.    

Key points:

Process changes:  A new “debt trigger proposal”. The president proposes to reduce the deficit by a cumulative $4 trillion over twelve years (through 2023), though it is not entirely clear what baseline this savings number is relative to. The president also proposes to establish a debt trigger that would enforce across the board cuts in spending and “tax expenditures” if by 2014 “the projected ratio of debt-to-GDP is not stabilized and declining toward the end of the decade.”  For example, the current CBO baseline assumes an increase in the debt to GDP ratio from 2018 to 2020 of 75.3 to 76.2, so if this policy were to apply today (rather than 2014 as proposed), it would imply additional fiscal tightening as we understand the proposal.  

Discretionary spending:  More discretionary cuts reflect recent congressional debate. President Obama’s new proposal would reduce non-defense discretionary spending by an additional $200 billion over ten years compared with the freeze proposed in his FY2012 budget, released in February.  To some extent this probably reflects the fact that any freeze over future years would start at a lower level, and thus presumably generates additional cumulative savings. The president indicates that additional savings would also be found in defense discretionary spending; the White House fact sheet identifies $400bn in savings over twelve years (through 2023) beyond the savings from ramping down overseas military operations. Some of this reduction appears to be new, but it isn't clear how much it overlaps with existing proposals to reduce defense spending.

Taxes: Few specifics.  The president endorses the concepts behind the fiscal commission’s proposal, namely to reform the tax code and reduce tax expenditures. Note that the fiscal commission recommendations included multiple reform scenarios. He also indicates that increased revenue should make up only one quarter of total budgetary savings (including interest savings), in line with the fiscal commission’s approach.  Note that the president's budget in February already assumed expiration of upper-income tax cuts after 2012 as well as a limitation on itemized deduction by higher-income taxpayers; we assume the discussion of those issues in his speech relates to those proposals, as there were

Mandatory spending: Less deficit reduction than the House proposal.  President Obama proposes $340bn in savings from additional health reforms over the next ten years. This does not appear to involve the fiscal commission’s recommendations. Instead, it assumes savings from setting an even lower spending growth goal of GDP + 0.5% for the Independent Payment Advisory Board (IPAB) set up under last year’s health reform law, as well as $100bn in Medicaid savings and $200bn in Medicare savings.  This is a much lower aggregate defcit reduction amount from this segment of the budget than included in the House Republican budget resolution, which proposes $1.1 trillion in savings compared with the President’s FY2012 budget. The President proposes $360bn in savings through 2023 (i.e. over twelve years) in "other mandatory" spending, compared with the House proposal to reduce spending by $1.8 trillion through 2021 (i.e. over ten years).

Social Security: No near term changes.  Like congressional proposals, the president does not propose any near term savings from the Social Security program, though he endorses long-term reform.

The process from here:  A major debate over revenue vs. spending levels, with discretionary spending caps still the most likely near-term action.  It appears very unlikely that the House of Representatives will be willing to consider a meaningful increase in tax revenues, and although both parties have proposed mandatory spending reduction, the House budget proposal would generate much greater savings in this area. This takes the debate back to discretionary spending, where cuts are likely to be approved this week as part of the FY2011 process, and where it appears likely additional cuts or caps, as well as budget process reforms, will be proposed as part of the upcoming debt limit debate as well as the FY2012 budget process that is now getting underway.

From Goldman Sachs
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360 billion dollars in "cuts" over 12 years?

Medicare/Medicaid "savings"?

So, spending will continue, there will still be a deficit, and.....I'm not impressed?

Lots of populist "Soak dem' rich folk's wit' der' fancy TV's and microwave ovens!"

Great, have fun with that tax "revenue" being eaten up totally by increased interest payments (which now stand at 200billion p/year) and new spending.

[Soul Crusher]

All it is is sustenance for the idiot obama base.  Only the most idiotic and moronic people buy into his scams any more.   Why I have no idea.   

These are the same dolts, morons, dupes, sycophantic idiots, lemmings, hacks, suck ups, court jesters, punks, fags, bitches, pussies, cum socks, dildos, cult memebers, and ignorant sheep who will follow and believe anything coming from this lying sack of shit they voted for.   

All he needs to do is start another war, pay off another wall street gangster like Mack and his wife, pay off anoher "green" gangster, and all these illusory savigs are gone.   

Additionally, this madoff in chief will never graps the fact tathis class warfare bs sends bsuiness people into hiding and he will never get the tax revenue he thinks to fund his communist desires.       

[Soul Crusher]

Another thing - why did bama toss Simpson Bowles into the trash when they reported their recommendations?   

[Soul Crusher]

Obama's Deceit
American Thinker ^ | April 13, 2011 | Frank Gutting



Okay, I have had it with this President's blatant dishonesty. His speech today was appallingly deceitful and misleading. This President, has spent more money and added more debt than any other President in history. This is not political rhetoric, this is simply fact! Barack Obama's budget deficit in March of 2011 was larger than the deficit for all of 2007!

According to Obama's 2012 Budget Proposal, under Historical Tables, the budget deficit under George Bush first peaked in 2004 at $412 billion dollars. Between 2005 and 2007 the budget deficit declined by $252 billion to reach its low, under Bush, at $160 billion. If the tax cuts and wars, both occurring in 2001 and 2003, caused our current financial situation, how did the deficit fall between 2004 to 2007? Because Tax Cuts increase revenue to the government by allowing people and business to invest more of their own money. As people invest they conduct taxable transactions which bring in revenue to the government.

So where did Obama come up with the claim that he inherited a trillion dollar deficit? In 2008, the deficit under Bush climbed to a new high of $458 billion. The reason for the climb was the fiscal stimulus and emergency spending as a result of the financial crises. However, this number is somewhat misleading. The fiscal year for 2008 ended in October of that year, pushing much of the onetime emergency spending on the 2009 budget. When you add that spending onto the budget baseline, you come up with a deficit for 2009 of $1.4 trillion. While Obama is correct that he is not solely responsible for the 2009 budget, he is lying by not informing the American people most of the deficit was "one time emergency spending." He, Barack H. Obama, chose to put that spending in the baseline budget for the next decade. Thus, we have $1 trillion dollar deficits for as far as the eye can see.

The President claimed that we didn't "pay for" the tax cuts. Excuse me Mr. President, when someone takes a pay cut, do they have to "pay for it?" A tax cut means the government simply takes less of YOUR money, what is there to pay for? This, seemingly innocuous, difference comes from the President's view that government has a right to your money. To Obama, it is not your income, but governments', and government not taking all of your money is an act of compassion. Obama believes that by leaving more of your money in your pocket, it is the equivalent of government sending you a check! If government sends you a check, that means government must "pay for" the tax cut. Unbelievable!

(Here is a link to his budget proposal: select table 1.1 http://www.whitehouse.gov/omb/budget/Historicals)

[Soul Crusher]

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Paul Ryan on Obama's Speech: 'Excessively Partisan, Dramatically Inaccurate, and Hopelessly Inadequate'
Daniel Halper
April 13, 2011 4:16 PM


House Budget chairman Paul Ryan just released the following statement in response to President Obama's speech on deficit reduction:

 “When the President reached out to ask us to attend his speech, we were expecting an olive branch. Instead, his speech was excessively partisan, dramatically inaccurate, and hopelessly inadequate to address our fiscal crisis. What we heard today was not fiscal leadership from our commander-in-chief; we heard a political broadside from our campaigner-in-chief.

“Last year, in the absence of a serious budget, the President created a Fiscal Commission. He then ignored its recommendations and omitted any of its major proposals from his budget, and now he wants to delegate leadership to yet another commission to solve a problem he refuses to confront.

“We need leadership, not a doubling down on the politics of the past.  By failing to seriously confront the most predictable economic crisis in our history, this President’s policies are committing our children to a diminished future. We are looking for bipartisan solutions, not partisan rhetoric. When the President is ready to get serious about confronting this challenge, we'll be here.”

Update: Ryan's office highlights "key facts" from Obama's speech:

·         Counts unspecified savings over 12 years, not the 10-year window by which serious budget proposals are evaluated.

·         Postpones all savings until 2013 – after his reelection campaign.

·         Runs away from the Fiscal Commission’s recommendations on Social Security – puts forward no specific ideas or even a process to force action.

·         Calls for the appointment of another commission, after mostly omitting from his Fiscal Year 2012 Budget any of proposals submitted by the commission he appointed last year.

·         Non-specific framework fails to meet his Fiscal Commission's own deficit-reduction goals.

Taxes:

·         Proposes to raise taxes on the American people by more than $1 trillion, devastating our fragile economy and stifling job creation.

·         Endorsed the Fiscal Commission’s ideas on taxes, which specifically called for lower tax rates and a broader base, but then called for higher tax rates. Which is it?

·         Government health and retirement programs are growing at more than twice the speed of the economy. At the current rate of spending, revenue would have to rise “by more than 50 percent” just to keep debt at its current level, according to the Government Accountability Office. That means tax increases across-the-board, now and in the future. 

Medicare:

•Instead of proposing structural reforms that would actually reduce health care costs, the President proposed across-the-board cuts to current seniors’ care.
·         Strictly limits the amount of health care seniors can receive within the existing structure of unsustainable government health care programs.

·         Gives more power to unelected bureaucrats in Washington to determine what treatments seniors should or shouldn’t get, against a backdrop of costs that continue to rise.

·         Conceded that the relentlessly rising cost of health care is the primary reason why the nation is threatened by debt, and implicitly conceded that his health care law failed to solve the problem.

·         Eviscerates the only competitive element anywhere in health-care entitlement programs – the competition amongst Part D prescription-drug plans – which allowed the drug benefit to come in 41 percent under budget.

Medicaid:

•Acknowledges that the open-ended financing of Medicaid is a crippling financial burden to both states and the federal government, but explicitly rejected the only solution to this problem, which is to give states the freedom they need to design systems that work for the unique needs of their own populations.
Defense:

•Proposes more cuts on top of $78 billion in cuts included in his own defense budget, which he proposed just two months ago – all at a time when he continues to task the military with new missions.
·         Secretary Gates has said that the military needs 2 percent – 3 percent real growth just to keep executing the missions that DOD has already been assigned.

·         Secretary Gates described deficit reduction plans that let budget targets drive defense policy as “math, not strategy.”


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Source URL: http://www.weeklystandard.com/blogs/paul-ryan-obamas-speech-excessively-partisan-dramatically-inaccurate-and-hopelessly-inadequate_557374.html

[garebear]

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Paul Ryan on Obama's Speech: 'Excessively Partisan, Dramatically Inaccurate, and Hopelessly Inadequate'
Daniel Halper
April 13, 2011 4:16 PM


House Budget chairman Paul Ryan just released the following statement in response to President Obama's speech on deficit reduction:

 “When the President reached out to ask us to attend his speech, we were expecting an olive branch. Instead, his speech was excessively partisan, dramatically inaccurate, and hopelessly inadequate to address our fiscal crisis. What we heard today was not fiscal leadership from our commander-in-chief; we heard a political broadside from our campaigner-in-chief.

“Last year, in the absence of a serious budget, the President created a Fiscal Commission. He then ignored its recommendations and omitted any of its major proposals from his budget, and now he wants to delegate leadership to yet another commission to solve a problem he refuses to confront.

“We need leadership, not a doubling down on the politics of the past.  By failing to seriously confront the most predictable economic crisis in our history, this President’s policies are committing our children to a diminished future. We are looking for bipartisan solutions, not partisan rhetoric. When the President is ready to get serious about confronting this challenge, we'll be here.”

Update: Ryan's office highlights "key facts" from Obama's speech:

·         Counts unspecified savings over 12 years, not the 10-year window by which serious budget proposals are evaluated.

·         Postpones all savings until 2013 – after his reelection campaign.

·         Runs away from the Fiscal Commission’s recommendations on Social Security – puts forward no specific ideas or even a process to force action.

·         Calls for the appointment of another commission, after mostly omitting from his Fiscal Year 2012 Budget any of proposals submitted by the commission he appointed last year.

·         Non-specific framework fails to meet his Fiscal Commission's own deficit-reduction goals.

Taxes:

·         Proposes to raise taxes on the American people by more than $1 trillion, devastating our fragile economy and stifling job creation.

·         Endorsed the Fiscal Commission’s ideas on taxes, which specifically called for lower tax rates and a broader base, but then called for higher tax rates. Which is it?

·         Government health and retirement programs are growing at more than twice the speed of the economy. At the current rate of spending, revenue would have to rise “by more than 50 percent” just to keep debt at its current level, according to the Government Accountability Office. That means tax increases across-the-board, now and in the future. 

Medicare:

•Instead of proposing structural reforms that would actually reduce health care costs, the President proposed across-the-board cuts to current seniors’ care.
·         Strictly limits the amount of health care seniors can receive within the existing structure of unsustainable government health care programs.

·         Gives more power to unelected bureaucrats in Washington to determine what treatments seniors should or shouldn’t get, against a backdrop of costs that continue to rise.

·         Conceded that the relentlessly rising cost of health care is the primary reason why the nation is threatened by debt, and implicitly conceded that his health care law failed to solve the problem.

·         Eviscerates the only competitive element anywhere in health-care entitlement programs – the competition amongst Part D prescription-drug plans – which allowed the drug benefit to come in 41 percent under budget.

Medicaid:

•Acknowledges that the open-ended financing of Medicaid is a crippling financial burden to both states and the federal government, but explicitly rejected the only solution to this problem, which is to give states the freedom they need to design systems that work for the unique needs of their own populations.
Defense:

•Proposes more cuts on top of $78 billion in cuts included in his own defense budget, which he proposed just two months ago – all at a time when he continues to task the military with new missions.
·         Secretary Gates has said that the military needs 2 percent – 3 percent real growth just to keep executing the missions that DOD has already been assigned.

·         Secretary Gates described deficit reduction plans that let budget targets drive defense policy as “math, not strategy.”


--------------------------------------------------------------------------------

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Get more from The Weekly Standard: Follow WeeklyStandard.com on RSS and sign-up for our free Newsletter.

Copyright 2010 Weekly Standard LLC.


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Source URL: http://www.weeklystandard.com/blogs/paul-ryan-obamas-speech-excessively-partisan-dramatically-inaccurate-and-hopelessly-inadequate_557374.html

Please post some more articles.

We are hanging on your every word.

[GigantorX]

Please post some more articles.

We are hanging on your every word.

Easy there, champ! Let's keep this thread civil and all CAPSLOCK post free!

[GigantorX]

All these "cuts".....amount too the govt. still spending far too much, there will still be an enormous deficit and the interest payments on the debt will keep growing thus eating up all future revenue growth.

I'm not impressed.

When a politician says "we will cut 1 trillion from defense in 12 years!" That doesn't mean cutting the actual baseline spending.

Example: Lets say the "Dept of X" spends 500 billion per year. So, over 12 years 6 trillion has been spent. Some clown and his asinine smoke and mirrors plan comes along and says "We are going to cut out 750 billion dollars of spending from Dept X over the next 12 years!"

So, out of 6 trillion of outlays over 12 years, Capt. Clown is going to make a huge "sacrifice" and cut 750 Billion out of the total spending over the 12 years.

Now, to expand on that, lets say the the outlays for "Dept X" grow from the projected (politicians love that word) 500 billion to 550, 575, 600 and hover around 600-650 billion for the rest of the 12 years in question.Now you have, say, 6.8-7.5 trillion in total spending over 12 years by "Dept X"....and the paltry misleading sum of 750 billion over the 12 years is even more meaningless.

Now, expand that to the total govt. budget.

-3.5 trillion dollar budget over 12 years = 42 trillion
--Cut 1 trillion over 12 years = 12 trillion

-1.7 Trillion dollar deficit over 12 years = 20.4 trillion in new debt (not counting interest)
--Take the spending cuts from point 1 and subtract those from the 20.4 trillion.....not to good, huh?

-2.2 Trillion in revenue (if the "rich" get taxes raised)

Do we get it now?

[Dr Loomis]

Finally, a politician with a plan ! Maybe one of the '12 hopefuls will say something besides Obama isn't a citizen and if they get elected, "things" will change      

Looking good for BO in '12.