$3.8 Trillion Budget Proposal

[textfestival]

Source: In $3.8 Trillion Budget, Obama Pivots to Trim Future Deficits - NYTimes.com

So, I'll just open this up by asking, any thoughts? My reaction, which is only valid to the extent of my understanding of the economic meltdown, is to shudder at the prospect of skyrocketing entitlements. Add to that all these newly proposed tax breaks for small business and families, and it looks to me like you've got a real mess in the making. Since Medicare, Medicaid, and SS, as well as defense spending, are excluded from the domestic spending freeze, the money scraped up over 10 years will be pretty meager by comparison. The $90 billion raked in from the bailout recovery plan won't even account for all taxpayers have given in blank checks to the fat feline scum purring with bonuses. All told, the sustainability of this budget proposal and Obama's ability to sell it are vital to a second term that hangs in the balance.

On another note, this is my question.
Why can't Obama curb bonus payments on WS. He's the President. They should have passed comprehensive legislation on derivative trading and predatory lending last year, but this critical window of opportunity has come and gone. Talk about gridlock. There's gridlock when Democrats have supermajority. Now that window is out the window too. Sounds more like Obama-lock to me. Will we see anything in the way of policy any time soon, instead of these fiscal tourniquets?

[lukas8u]

Because money has become so embedded in the system- because corporations have so much power. That's why nothing is getting done.

[soothsayer]

Why can't Obama curb bonus payments on WS. He's the President.

he's the president they installed!

besides, most of wall street is in his cabinet!

[rmnunez]

Obama's new budget includes $600 million to fight immigration, that's $200 million more than last year. I expect it will lose him some support among Hispanics. In Los Angeles they are accusing him of promoting 'Bushian' anti-immigration policies for political gain. Since when have Democrats been anti-immigration?

[ncb1397]

Since Medicare, Medicaid, and SS, as well as defense spending, are excluded from the domestic spending freeze

That article says that they are cutting defense acquisitions. The reason you don't "freeze" defense spending is you never know what is going to happen somewhere in the globe. Right after you freeze the budget, you might be required to unfreeze it. The whole idea of the discipline of a freeze just doesn't work.

[rmnunez]

The variability in defense needs explains the inability to 'freeze' military spending, how is this inability explained for the entitlements?

[grandpa]

Quote by: rmnunez The variability in defense needs explains the inability to 'freeze' military spending, how is this inability explained for the entitlements?

We've had more positives from social spending over the years. That's the first thing that came to my mind. Of course, were this nountry not held hostage by banks, corporations and other special, legal interests, it's doubtful there would be any demand for so-called "entitlements." On top of that, where do you get the idea that military spending isn't "entitlement" spending?

entitlement
1 a : the state or condition of being entitled : right b : a right to benefits specified especially by law or contract
2 : a government program providing benefits to members of a specified group; also : funds supporting or distributed by such a program
3 : belief that one is deserving of or entitled to certain privileges
Entitlement - Definition and More from the Free Merriam-Webster Dictionary

That describes the military budget perfectly.

Grandpa h.

[rmnunez]

We've had more positives from social spending over the years.

You think the US is winning the "war on poverty"? Last I heard there were more people collecting unemployment for longer than ever before in US history. I'm sure this can be blamed on the economy and suppose the same goes for growing public assistance recipients and disbursements.

"The welfare state" was a complete failure, it bred dependance and resulted in multigenerational households which had developed specialized skills in seeking, obtaining, maintaining and enhancing their public assistance receipts. Public asssitance recipients who do this for a living, know complicated exceptions to policy in administrative procedure, but couldn't fill out a job application form for some basic position.

Obama is committed to improving public assistance in completely different ways. Rather than trying to encourage people to leave the welfare rolls and become more productive contributors to society, his administration has repeatedly increased the amounts doled out and simplied conditions for eligibility.

[soothsayer]

You think the US is winning the "war on poverty"? Last I heard there were more people collecting unemployment for longer than ever before in US history. I'm sure this can be blamed on the economy and suppose the same goes for growing public assistance recipients and disbursements. "The welfare state" was a complete failure, it bred dependance and resulted in multigenerational households which had developed specialized skills in seeking, obtaining, maintaining and enhancing their public assistance receipts. Public asssitance recipients who do this for a living, know complicated exceptions to policy in administrative procedure, but couldn't fill out a job application form for some basic position. Obama is committed to improving public assistance in completely different ways. Rather than trying to encourage people to leave the welfare rolls and become more productive contributors to society, his administration has repeatedly increased the amounts doled out and simplied conditions for eligibility.

Don't tell any of this to Isbskins1.

[Derach]

Quote by: grandpa We've had more positives from social spending over the years. That's the first thing that came to my mind.

Not at an affordable cost. Public education is a monumental rip-off to society so far. Medicare/SS are broke. The Post Office is broke. The very entity that collects our taxes to make these social expenditures (the IRS) is a ridiculously over complicated and inefficient monstrosity. It usually costs $10.00 of taxpayer money to get $1.00 worth of social advancment. That ratio is just unsustainable.

I'd like to know what you consider positives from social spending. Unless you consider a huge and growing class chasm a 'positive'.

As for the topic of the thread ... I'd sure like to know where all these republican fiscal hawks were 2,3,4,5,6,7,8 or 9 yrs ago!

[soothsayer]

More Obama Euphoria:

Obama seeks money for nuclear weapons work - Yahoo! News

ALBUQUERQUE, N.M. – President Barack Obama is seeking increased funding for nuclear weapons research and security programs next year, even as his administration promotes nonproliferation and has pledged to reduce the world's stockpile of nuclear arms.

The administration on Monday asked Congress for more than $7 billion for activities related to nuclear weapons in the budget of the National Nuclear Security Administration, an increase of $624 million from the 2010 fiscal year.
"This budget is implementing the president's nuclear vision," said NNSA Administrator Thomas D'Agostino.

[soothsayer]

quote by Derach

I'd like to know what you consider positives from social spending. Unless you consider a huge and growing class chasm a 'positive'.

You are echoing the same points illustrated in these posts:


Altruism

Altruism

As for the topic of the thread ... I'd sure like to know where all these republican fiscal hawks were 2,3,4,5,6,7,8 or 9 yrs ago!

Well, as a constitutionalist, that makes me a "fiscal hawk" and I denounced every president that did not veto every socialistic program legislation.

I called Bush a "socialist" for his expansion of medicare "big pharma" benefits, which very clearly demonstrates the corporatocracy inherent in all socialism.

Somehow the press ignores the fact that if Bush was bad, Obama embodies the floodgates to the treasury having flung open.

Obama names 110 White House visitors - White House- msnbc.com
Oprah, Health Care Lobbyists, Among Recent Visitors to White House - Political Punch

Also (this is more pertinent to the SCOTUS thread) the ideologically left-driven mass media is decrying the SC decision to allow unlimited campaign advertising as "free speech" but overlooks that trade unions have been allocating large portions of their members' union dues for that very purpose for decades and have not been criticized for it. Trade unions are more scandalous of their members' mandatory contributions for their political use, abuse of their pension funds and undisclosed business dealings than are products corporations "greedy" of profits and ceo bonuses.

[Zeebadee]

Quote by: textfestival So, I'll just open this up by asking, any thoughts? My reaction, which is only valid to the extent of my understanding of the economic meltdown, is to shudder at the prospect of skyrocketing entitlements.

I believe that the issue is not restoring the US to a revenue neutral position, paying down the national debt, or overcoming a deficit-riddled annual budget. The real intent of this and subsequent administrations is to prolong as long as possible the inevitable collapse of the dollar. As long as we can find people or countries willing to invest in U.S. Treasuries, the game will go on. When push comes to shove, those countries that have invested so many hundreds of billions realize that we will simply print what we owe them and pay them off, the total collapse will come to pass. All perfectly legal. We owe you 3 trillion dollars?? Just print up 3 trillion dollars and give it to them.

[Yarn]

I already rambled on in length about this general topic in another thread:
Obama wants to freeze discretionary spending for 3 years

The gist of it is that our form of political system and the childish nature of our voters are of such a nature to prevent fixing the budget regardless of which party is in power.

The $90 billion raked in from the bailout recovery plan won't even account for all taxpayers have given in blank checks to the fat feline scum purring with bonuses.

The large private banks have already paid the money bank. One complaint levied against the bank tax is it primarily targets banks that have already paid back all of the money they were given because those are the only banks that can afford to pay this tax. The government has been funneling money that's been paid back into the economy to serve as additional stimulus such that it isn't improving the deficit problem, at least not directly. As of about 2 months ago 300 billion remains unspent (140 billion uncommited) and of the 205 billion loaned to banks 78 billion had been paid back. Presumably the number has rised above 78 billion since then but (205-[90+78]=)$37 billion is required to make up the difference.
- FOXNews.com - Banks Begin Repaying TARP Money, But Much Business Still Unfinished (lord behold, a good article from Fox; how unusual, i'm serious)

We may yet get back all the money we were ever supposed to get back, which is a lot less than the total sum, but a lot of the money was spent otherways, and the Federal Reserve, at least in terms of committments, did by far the bulk of the financial work involved in shoring up the financial system.

soothsayer:

Trade unions are more scandalous of their members' mandatory contributions for their political use, abuse of their pension funds and undisclosed business dealings than are products corporations "greedy" of profits and ceo bonuses.

They are far poorer and hence far less relevant. At anyrate, the supreme court freed both corporations and unions.

[soothsayer]

They are far poorer and hence far less relevant

Most fed govt employees, state social workers, state employees, municipal cops, teachers etc are all unionized.... I'd say they are highly relevant,
and benefit directly from govt budgets. Their influence is probably the major cause for exponentially-increasing profligate deficit spending.


Federal Pay Continues Rapid Ascent | Cato @ Liberty

[Yarn]

soothsayer:

Their influence is probably the major cause for exponentially-increasing profligate deficit spending.

It obviously isn't. Multiplying out the numbers from your CATO article one finds that, if one pretends the number of civilian public employees hasn't risen over the past 10 years, which in turn makes this a conservative estimate, then money spent on compensation for civilian public employees has risen from $145 billion to $228 billion over the past 10 years, which means money spent per annum on such employees has risen $83 billion. The budget in turn has more than doubled from about $1.7 trillion in 2000.
- Gross Domestic Product or Expenditure, 1930–2007 — Infoplease.com

This isn't to say these unions aren't having a negative effect, but the vast majority of the problem lies elsewhere.

Likewise, for the past 30 years, middle class real incomes have overall remained stagnant despite large amounts of economic growth, which in turn benefited mostly the upper class, and in fact the only reason why they didn't decline was that the middle class worked longer and longer hours and borrowed more and more money to offset potential losses. The ability to do this has recently been exhausted and probably accounts for why public jobs are looking especially plump right now. In other words, a failure of the private market is also behind this divergence.

[soothsayer]

Well, I should have specified that their pensions and compensation are the major reason behind state budget deficits. The feds can always tap the treasury, when states go into debt, its readily apparent.

Idont mean to derail the thread, but when you say "real income" i suspect you mean after taxes.
Then, if its true that private middle incomes havent kept pace with the rising proportion of one's productivity usurped by taxes, but the incomes of those in govt have... its because the private sector is subsidizing the public employees through higher taxation!

Also, bear in mind (as I recently read in a local paper) that when a sleepy suburban municipality reports at a budget meeting that its contemplating hiring yet another useless Barney Fife to drive around 24/7 burning fossil fuels harrassing resident motorists vainly trying to economically justify his existence by issuing traffic summonses and shake down the neighborhood 7-11 for stale donuts at a reported annual expenditure of $150,000.00 per year(actual number)
salary,medical and pension costs, one forgets that those costs will burden the town's taxpayer for impertuity for each pimply-faced young cop hired, since they receive most of their salary and benefits forever yet can retire after 20 yrs and must be replaced, exponentially perpetually necessitating rising property taxes

[rmnunez]

Saw an item in the news a couple of days ago showing most union members in the US are government employees. This was a trend that was observed for a long time. Manufacturing has declined so blue collar union membership has as well, but the government has grown so unions have embraced this expanding clerical class of workers and just recently more unionized workers were government employees than worked for private industry.

Allowing unfettered campaign contributions from unions representing government employees is not a good idea. This is very different from allowing big greedy corporations to contribute as they please. Government worker unions and big corporations reasonably can be expected to contribute to campaigns in furtherance of their interests, but the relationship between the unions and their government introduces an unhealthy element to the effort.

In Mexico an overwhelming proportion of unionized workers are government employees and they've traditionally been very engaged in the political process supporting candidates and contributing to campaigns based on deals between their leadership and specific politicians. The end result is awful; there is a completely independent government-subsidized nationwide healthcare system with hospitals and networks of doctors providing much better healthcare just for union members. Government union workers in Mexico have much more generous pension plans (the electrical workers get more money after they retire than when they were working). Unionized government workers are entitled to special subsidies for housing in projects built by the government just for them. The most outrageous benefit to government union members is the hereditability of their positions. They can't be fired or ever subject to a reduction in salary, and their son or daughter has first priority in taking their unionized parent's position (same pay) if the parent dies.

In Mexico the government owns a lot of emblematic industries which are monopolies (the oil company, electric power generation, teaching, airlines, high furnaces, railways, mining...) and when these workers go on strike the impact is tremendous. For about 6 months now the electrical workers union has paralized electrical supply doing no maintenance and collecting no bills from tens of millions of Mexico City residents in a dispute over the ouster of its president.

This could be where the increasing union membership trend will lead the US too.

[soothsayer]

This could be where the increasing union membership trend will lead the US too.

Yes. The Supeme Court knew exactly what it was doing.

A double score for the statists:
The left politicians get to demonize the "evil corporatons" and the mexification of the govt/govt employees union unholy relationship can accelerate.

I'd like to see the statists here try to refute that.

They are either blind to how good their cause is going, or they are craftily continuing their drumbeat of "corporate oppression" in order to further accelerate the demise of freedom.

[grandpa]

Quote by: rmnunez You think the US is winning the "war on poverty"? Last I heard there were more people collecting unemployment for longer than ever before in US history.

I didn't say that. I merely suggested it's better than pumping trillions into the military-industrial-prison complex. Frankly, I think it's a shame that people have to fight for unemployment benefits.

Grandpa h.