ClassicRockr
Well-known Member
Actually, when I ask her what person she would want for President, she said "Romney". All I could say is "whatever!"
State of the Union
- Thread starter QuickSilver
- Start date
Jackie22
Well-known Member
- Location
- Northeast Texas
I thought the SOTU speech was great, he continues to reaffirm my belief in his intelligence and his ability to lead.
QuickSilver
SF VIP
- Location
- Midwest
She mustn't need her Social Security and Medicare... Nice to be so wealthy..
ClassicRockr
Well-known Member
SIL isn't wealthy by no imagination, but she does alright w/school retirement package. She doesn't get SS, bc she never had it taken out and she doesn't get Medicare either. Her Teacher retirement package has all the insurance she wants/needs.
QuickSilver
SF VIP
- Location
- Midwest
That's fine! Has she looked into what the GOP wants to do to public union pensions and healthcare packages? Snip.. snip..
Well it is far too easy for public unions to demand what the taxpayers must put in for their extra extravagant benefits. So sniping does become needed to get those benefits back into what the people can afford. That really needs to happen to many government packages as well.
If in business they offer the best they can, or go out of business, as they can not charge more than the customers are willing to pay.
AZ Jim
R.I.P. With Us In Spirit Only
- Location
- SURPRISE, ARIZONA
We know that Bob, but he is and will prevent anymore attempts by Republicans from gutting or outright destroying it, which they have made concerted efforts to do now many times going back to the LBJ Presidency.
Josiah
Senior Member
- Location
- 50 miles east of Cincinnati, OH
Republican tax cuts combined with Bush's war in Iraq have contributed greatly to raise the deficits. The Republicans refuse to learn from extensive experience that supply-side economics (cutting taxes especially for the very rich) increases the deficit. Oh yes and the financial crisis of 2007–08 didn't improve things either. Why Bob do you blame President Obama for the national debt?
This is totally not true and I will post evidence that it is not true. Also would like to know which charts Obama uses as he said our debts were down 2/3 in his speech last night. Under Bush the debt was kept within the 7 trillion range until his last two years when the two Liberal took over Congress. Then Pelosi and Reid just could not stop spending for unnecessary and unfunded things, just like Obama has continued to do. Now we are at $18 trillion dollars of debt and still climbing.
http://www.usdebtclock.org/
http://www.advisorperspectives.com/...-to-gdp.html?federal-debt-to-gdp-politics.gif
rporter610
Dr. Rin Porter
- Location
- Minnesota
Friends,
I sure don't like to wake up and read all this sniping about President Obama. As Jackie22, Quicksilver, Josiah9 and others have written, the President deserves respect because of his office, as well as the calm, nondramatic way that he handles crises. I have studied presidential speeches for 35 years, and my assessment of last night's SOTU address was that it was well-organized, clear, and well-documented with examples.
Many people seem to have forgotten that President Reagan's deregulation of banking, legislation approved by Congress, greed, corruption by many banks and investment brokerages, and overreaching by people buying homes they could not afford, all led to the giant Great Recession we have just come out of. And they have forgotten how President Obama's stimulus package and the Federal Reserve's policy of "quantitative easing" (printing more money) avoided inflation and saved the auto industry. I disagree with the loans made to the investment banking houses, but those loans have been repaid.
I, along with many of you, lost 1/3 of my retirement funds after 9/11 led to a stock market crash, and then again the housing crisis led to another stock market crash, where I lost almost all that I had gained back after 9/11. But today, the stock market is twice as high as it was in 2008, and some have been able to build up their funds again.
In the SOTU, President Obama reminded us of the values that most people hold dear: fairness, equality of opportunity, caring for veterans, education. These values have been promoted by most presidents beginning with FDR. Mr. Obama restated his belief that military force is not the first response that should be used when there is conflict among nations. He emphasized that without a strong middle class, our country is not going to be able to maintain its status as a world power. To have a strong middle class, there must be opportunity to succeed.
It doesn't matter what label is put on these beliefs and policies, whether Republican, Democratic, Independent, Libertarian, Conservative, Liberal, or Progressive. What matters, I think, is that Americans work toward achieving the shared values of fairness, equality of opportunity, etc.
I sure don't like to wake up and read all this sniping about President Obama. As Jackie22, Quicksilver, Josiah9 and others have written, the President deserves respect because of his office, as well as the calm, nondramatic way that he handles crises. I have studied presidential speeches for 35 years, and my assessment of last night's SOTU address was that it was well-organized, clear, and well-documented with examples.
Many people seem to have forgotten that President Reagan's deregulation of banking, legislation approved by Congress, greed, corruption by many banks and investment brokerages, and overreaching by people buying homes they could not afford, all led to the giant Great Recession we have just come out of. And they have forgotten how President Obama's stimulus package and the Federal Reserve's policy of "quantitative easing" (printing more money) avoided inflation and saved the auto industry. I disagree with the loans made to the investment banking houses, but those loans have been repaid.
I, along with many of you, lost 1/3 of my retirement funds after 9/11 led to a stock market crash, and then again the housing crisis led to another stock market crash, where I lost almost all that I had gained back after 9/11. But today, the stock market is twice as high as it was in 2008, and some have been able to build up their funds again.
In the SOTU, President Obama reminded us of the values that most people hold dear: fairness, equality of opportunity, caring for veterans, education. These values have been promoted by most presidents beginning with FDR. Mr. Obama restated his belief that military force is not the first response that should be used when there is conflict among nations. He emphasized that without a strong middle class, our country is not going to be able to maintain its status as a world power. To have a strong middle class, there must be opportunity to succeed.
It doesn't matter what label is put on these beliefs and policies, whether Republican, Democratic, Independent, Libertarian, Conservative, Liberal, or Progressive. What matters, I think, is that Americans work toward achieving the shared values of fairness, equality of opportunity, etc.
Some thoughts on the national debt:
National Debt Graph by President
Oct 24, 2014. When did the National Debt go crazy? Why? Who’s to blame? Where is the debt headed? Compared to the US economy, the national debt is smaller than it was after World War II. But, take a look at what could have happened if three presidents had balanced their budgets.
The National Debt: Voodoo from Wall Street
Oct 24, 2014. What if Reagan and the Bushes had balanced their budgets? How much lower would the debt be now? We’ll get to that shortly, but first, how did we get into this mess? This may just be the weirdest political tale you’ve every heard.
World War II cost a bundle, and the country started out in the Great Depression. It was flat broke. But Uncle Sam was popular and the country patriotic, and people were happy to lend him money. Compared to the size of the economy back then, the debt soon outstripped even today’s debt, and we won the war.
After the war, they started paying off the debt, and the economy (and its GDP) grew. And for 35 years the debt kept getting smaller compared to the GDP. When it was the smallest (as compared to GDP) than it had been in 50 years, Reagan was elected (1980) and vowed to shrink it even more drastically.
But he had an odd theory: Cut taxes and the government would collect so much more money that he could spend more and still pay down the debt. Even before he was elected, George H. W. Bush called this “Voodoo economics,” and so it was.
The result, of course, was that the debt stopped decreasing and shot through the roof, as seen in the graph above. By 1987, even Ron Paul (who loved the tax-cut part) blurted out: “How is it that the party of balanced budgets, with control of the White House and Senate, accumulated red ink greater than all previous administrations put together?” And so it had.
Starting with a debt of $1 trillion, in eight years Reagan raised it to $2.8 trillion. Even relative to the bigger economy, this was as bad as it had been 28 years earlier. (And no, the House did not do it to him. The budgets Congress passed were almost identical to what he asked for and on average a tiny bit more balanced.)
Why did he do it?
So how the heck did this happen to the guy that rode to office on complaints of an out-of-control debt that was as big as a stack of $1000 bills 67 miles high? How did he come to add another 128 miles to that stack?
Reagan took some economics in college, and he really did want to reduce the debt. But he got snookered by some Wall Street “economists” (mostly political journalists) who told him he could have his cake and eat it too. They came up with the brand-new theory, mentioned above, that said the government can collect more money by reducing taxes. Wouldn’t that be nice! That’s the supply-side economics that George H. W. Bush called Voodoo.It was first tested by Reagan.
Bush I tried and failed to undo the Voodoo, and Bush II reinstated it after Clinton. Altogether there were 20 Voodoo budgets. And every single time the debt not only went up, it went up faster than the economy grew — usually much faster. Before the Voodoo, 26 of the previous 35 budgets resulted in the debt shrinking relative to GDP. Reagan’s first budget was the turning point.
Of course some supply-siders noticed this too, and when Treasury Sect. Paul O’Neil complained that cutting taxes would increase the deficit, V.P. Cheney just replied “You know, Paul, Reagan proved that deficits don’t matter.” In fact, many seemed to like the deficits and complain about them only when Democrats were in power. They saw them as helping to “strangle the government.”
So how big is this supply-side / Republican debt?
My answer is not entirely fair, because I calculate it by the Republican method, but it seems fair to hold them to their own standards. And it makes the calculation transparent and understandable. You be the judge.
So just what is the Republican approach? There should always be a balanced budget — they even want to put that into the constitution. As Ron Paul said, they are the party of balanced budgets.
So we will ask, “What if Reagan and the Bushes had balanced their own budgets?” And what if Clinton and Obama had taxed the same and spent the same as they actually did?The answer is that the National Debt would now be lower by $13.5 trillion!
So that’s the Republican National Debt — according to their own standard of balanced budgets.It’s quite easy to check these calculations (see this spreadsheet). They go like this:
When Reagan took office the debt was $1 trillion. When he left it was $2.86 trillion. So $1.86 trillion for him.
Then Bush-I added $1.55 trillion. Total so far: $3.4 trillion.
Then Clinton took over. Now the national debt is like a mortgage, and so the bigger it is, the more interest must be paid on it. Without the extra Reagan-Bush $3.4 trillion, there would have been a few hundred billion less in interest on the debt every year under Clinton. That interest adds another $2.3 trillion to the Reagan-Bush debt.
Then Bush II increased it by $6.1 trillion to $11.8 trillion. And interest on that has been increasing the debt under Obama. The total Reagan-Bushes debt is now $13.5 trillion.
Why this matters
Supply-side economics is outrageously dishonest. The supply-siders didn’t even mind conning their own man Reagan. The tax-cut “theory” only actually applied to the rich. So the plan was to cut tax rates for the rich in half, which they did.
To get this through they had to cut taxes for the middle class some too, but they counted on inflation pushing the middle class back into higher tax brackets. But cutting the top bracket had a permanent effect because there is no higher bracket to get pushed into.So not only was cutting taxes to raise money crazy, it was just a deception to cut taxes for the richest and then use the deficits to force cuts in services for the middle class and the poor.
The Republicans have almost all gone over to the supply side now, and many, like Reagan, have been brainwashed into believing it. G.W. Bush claimed he would “retire nearly $1 trillion in debt over the next four years. This will be the largest debt reduction ever achieved by any nation at any time.” I think he actually believed that.
When the Voodoo started, that’s exactly when the debt went out of control. And 20 out of 20 budgets can’t be an accident. Especially when you consider that Clinton was handed a Voodoo budget headed in the wrong direction, stopped that, turned it around and ended up with the debt reduced from 66% to 58% of GDP.
But I need your help on this. Can you email this to a friend? (It’s set up for you here.) Or could you share this with one of the sharing buttons? (Note the 37,000 facebook likes, below. —Thanks, those have helped!)
There are a lot of lies in circulation. Blaming the Democrats for the debt is just one of them.
SOURCE: http://zfacts.com/p/318.html
National Debt Graph by President
Oct 24, 2014. When did the National Debt go crazy? Why? Who’s to blame? Where is the debt headed? Compared to the US economy, the national debt is smaller than it was after World War II. But, take a look at what could have happened if three presidents had balanced their budgets.
The National Debt: Voodoo from Wall Street
Oct 24, 2014. What if Reagan and the Bushes had balanced their budgets? How much lower would the debt be now? We’ll get to that shortly, but first, how did we get into this mess? This may just be the weirdest political tale you’ve every heard.
World War II cost a bundle, and the country started out in the Great Depression. It was flat broke. But Uncle Sam was popular and the country patriotic, and people were happy to lend him money. Compared to the size of the economy back then, the debt soon outstripped even today’s debt, and we won the war.
|
|
| The data for actual Debt-as-%-of-GDP for 1940-2006 comes from George W. Bush’s OMB Historical Table 7.1 for FY 2008 — download. (spreadsheet) (Why graph Debt / GDP ?) |
After the war, they started paying off the debt, and the economy (and its GDP) grew. And for 35 years the debt kept getting smaller compared to the GDP. When it was the smallest (as compared to GDP) than it had been in 50 years, Reagan was elected (1980) and vowed to shrink it even more drastically.
But he had an odd theory: Cut taxes and the government would collect so much more money that he could spend more and still pay down the debt. Even before he was elected, George H. W. Bush called this “Voodoo economics,” and so it was.
The result, of course, was that the debt stopped decreasing and shot through the roof, as seen in the graph above. By 1987, even Ron Paul (who loved the tax-cut part) blurted out: “How is it that the party of balanced budgets, with control of the White House and Senate, accumulated red ink greater than all previous administrations put together?” And so it had.
Starting with a debt of $1 trillion, in eight years Reagan raised it to $2.8 trillion. Even relative to the bigger economy, this was as bad as it had been 28 years earlier. (And no, the House did not do it to him. The budgets Congress passed were almost identical to what he asked for and on average a tiny bit more balanced.)
Why did he do it?
So how the heck did this happen to the guy that rode to office on complaints of an out-of-control debt that was as big as a stack of $1000 bills 67 miles high? How did he come to add another 128 miles to that stack?
Reagan took some economics in college, and he really did want to reduce the debt. But he got snookered by some Wall Street “economists” (mostly political journalists) who told him he could have his cake and eat it too. They came up with the brand-new theory, mentioned above, that said the government can collect more money by reducing taxes. Wouldn’t that be nice! That’s the supply-side economics that George H. W. Bush called Voodoo.It was first tested by Reagan.
Bush I tried and failed to undo the Voodoo, and Bush II reinstated it after Clinton. Altogether there were 20 Voodoo budgets. And every single time the debt not only went up, it went up faster than the economy grew — usually much faster. Before the Voodoo, 26 of the previous 35 budgets resulted in the debt shrinking relative to GDP. Reagan’s first budget was the turning point.
Of course some supply-siders noticed this too, and when Treasury Sect. Paul O’Neil complained that cutting taxes would increase the deficit, V.P. Cheney just replied “You know, Paul, Reagan proved that deficits don’t matter.” In fact, many seemed to like the deficits and complain about them only when Democrats were in power. They saw them as helping to “strangle the government.”
So how big is this supply-side / Republican debt?
My answer is not entirely fair, because I calculate it by the Republican method, but it seems fair to hold them to their own standards. And it makes the calculation transparent and understandable. You be the judge.
So just what is the Republican approach? There should always be a balanced budget — they even want to put that into the constitution. As Ron Paul said, they are the party of balanced budgets.
So we will ask, “What if Reagan and the Bushes had balanced their own budgets?” And what if Clinton and Obama had taxed the same and spent the same as they actually did?The answer is that the National Debt would now be lower by $13.5 trillion!
So that’s the Republican National Debt — according to their own standard of balanced budgets.It’s quite easy to check these calculations (see this spreadsheet). They go like this:
When Reagan took office the debt was $1 trillion. When he left it was $2.86 trillion. So $1.86 trillion for him.
Then Bush-I added $1.55 trillion. Total so far: $3.4 trillion.
Then Clinton took over. Now the national debt is like a mortgage, and so the bigger it is, the more interest must be paid on it. Without the extra Reagan-Bush $3.4 trillion, there would have been a few hundred billion less in interest on the debt every year under Clinton. That interest adds another $2.3 trillion to the Reagan-Bush debt.
Then Bush II increased it by $6.1 trillion to $11.8 trillion. And interest on that has been increasing the debt under Obama. The total Reagan-Bushes debt is now $13.5 trillion.
Why this matters
Supply-side economics is outrageously dishonest. The supply-siders didn’t even mind conning their own man Reagan. The tax-cut “theory” only actually applied to the rich. So the plan was to cut tax rates for the rich in half, which they did.
To get this through they had to cut taxes for the middle class some too, but they counted on inflation pushing the middle class back into higher tax brackets. But cutting the top bracket had a permanent effect because there is no higher bracket to get pushed into.So not only was cutting taxes to raise money crazy, it was just a deception to cut taxes for the richest and then use the deficits to force cuts in services for the middle class and the poor.
The Republicans have almost all gone over to the supply side now, and many, like Reagan, have been brainwashed into believing it. G.W. Bush claimed he would “retire nearly $1 trillion in debt over the next four years. This will be the largest debt reduction ever achieved by any nation at any time.” I think he actually believed that.
When the Voodoo started, that’s exactly when the debt went out of control. And 20 out of 20 budgets can’t be an accident. Especially when you consider that Clinton was handed a Voodoo budget headed in the wrong direction, stopped that, turned it around and ended up with the debt reduced from 66% to 58% of GDP.
But I need your help on this. Can you email this to a friend? (It’s set up for you here.) Or could you share this with one of the sharing buttons? (Note the 37,000 facebook likes, below. —Thanks, those have helped!)
There are a lot of lies in circulation. Blaming the Democrats for the debt is just one of them.
SOURCE: http://zfacts.com/p/318.html
rporter610
Dr. Rin Porter
- Location
- Minnesota
Seabreeze,
Thank you for an interesting explanation of the current national debt.
Thank you for an interesting explanation of the current national debt.
QuickSilver
SF VIP
- Location
- Midwest
Thank you Seabreeze.. an EXCELLENT find... and these paragraphs pretty well sum up what the GOP is doing to the American Middle class..
People need to read your post CAREFULLY.. and then decide whether they want to continue to vote for Republicans.. Seriously people.. think about your own best interests.
Ever wonder why Republicans spend like drunken sailors when they are in power.. Look at Bush II... 2 unfunded wars... Tax cuts for the wealthy.... Medicare part D on the credit card.. Because when the debt is high, they can then justify cutting programs the poor and Middle class depend on. They have hated any social program ever implemented and have worked tirelessly to eliminate them.... OR privatize them so the wealthy can have a cut of the action. THEN they turn around and blame the Democratic President in power for the problem. They get away with this over and over... People need to wake up!
People need to read your post CAREFULLY.. and then decide whether they want to continue to vote for Republicans.. Seriously people.. think about your own best interests.
Ever wonder why Republicans spend like drunken sailors when they are in power.. Look at Bush II... 2 unfunded wars... Tax cuts for the wealthy.... Medicare part D on the credit card.. Because when the debt is high, they can then justify cutting programs the poor and Middle class depend on. They have hated any social program ever implemented and have worked tirelessly to eliminate them.... OR privatize them so the wealthy can have a cut of the action. THEN they turn around and blame the Democratic President in power for the problem. They get away with this over and over... People need to wake up!
QuickSilver
SF VIP
- Location
- Midwest
care to explain? Are you saying the Rich should not be taxed?
Tax the rich if they can........................ but......................
most of the politicians are rich, go figure.
AZ Jim
R.I.P. With Us In Spirit Only
- Location
- SURPRISE, ARIZONA
Translation please.
Josiah
Senior Member
- Location
- 50 miles east of Cincinnati, OH
BobF, if you want to blame President Obama for the deficit, what you have to do is come up with a list the new (in last 7 years) spending bills which the Democrats proposed and which he signed into law. I don't think you're going to come up with much of a list. The vast majority of government spending stems from legislation that was past prior to Obama taking office or are older spending bills which had to be recently renewed like the military budget. Remember the congress has really not been very productive in producing new legislation during Obama's administration.
What a bunch of crap has just been published above. Compared to what I have posted it is pure junk. Pick some sort of comparison and adjust everything. So go back to the charts I posted, two different sources, and they do agree with each other. Our debt is no joke at all and it must be repayed soon or the US will enter into the same sort of bankruptcies some of our European friends have now entered. For some to play that our national debts are just things to play with means we have big problems.
Go back to the chart I published just above this latest joke chart. Follow the bottom line color bars and see just who was in charge at the times the debts ran up fastest and who was in charge when the increasing debts rising was stopped. The red bars were for the Democrats and the blue bars were for the Republicans. That information is enough to call the claims to be confused or false.
How about some of the fairness etc. that Obama has said is very important. Trash mouth postings will gain little from those that do believe in fairness.
Go back to the chart I published just above this latest joke chart. Follow the bottom line color bars and see just who was in charge at the times the debts ran up fastest and who was in charge when the increasing debts rising was stopped. The red bars were for the Democrats and the blue bars were for the Republicans. That information is enough to call the claims to be confused or false.
How about some of the fairness etc. that Obama has said is very important. Trash mouth postings will gain little from those that do believe in fairness.
As I said before, Obama has put most of his stuff in the hands of his special groups and they do not get any congressional look sees or approvals or budget adjustments. They just happen because Obama has allowed them to happen. In time all this has to be corrected. The Republicans wrote items to be considered but Reid just stacked them up on his desk and no actions were taken.
And go back to my charts and look at the Democrat congress in charge as the debts go up.
Taxing the rich sounds great.
The tax laws cover the rich peoples butts.
Hello middle class.
Denise1952
Well-known Member
I am trying to learn about politics, and the views of both sides, all sides, whatever. But I won't keep reading threads filled with "hate mail". I love and respect the folks on this forum (and many are on this thread) that can post their business/information/opinions, without ripping, who they deem to be wrong, to shreds.
ClassicRockr
Well-known Member
Man are things getting HEATED up around here! Think I will just stick to my Classic Rock music and leave the politics to you folks.
Let's see, what drum solo do I want to listen to next.......Chicago's "I'm A Man" or Iron Butterfly's "In-A-Gadda-Da-Vida"?
Let's see, what drum solo do I want to listen to next.......Chicago's "I'm A Man" or Iron Butterfly's "In-A-Gadda-Da-Vida"?