Sequestration 2013

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It is really disgusting how both parties cannot agree on a compromise that is good for the American people. They are both acting like babies in a candy store which candy is better mine or yours.Remember politicians you work for us not we work for you.
 
Surprise surprise, they came up with an agreement at the very last minute to keep kicking the can down the road just like they did the past several times this has come up. Oh, wait, there are some tax increases on the "1%" and some defense spending cuts. What's funny is that there is new spending in this bill with adding funding for a third year of unemployment payments. It would be ironically funny if the unemployment payments actually end up costing more than the token amount of taxes the IRS will get from the symbolic tax hike on a small handful of people.

We have firmly entered the "bread and circuses" phase the Romans warned us about. Anybody willing to do any significant addressing of spending will be voted out of office ASAP because the populace likes its free handouts. Either there must be a change in the government where it can no longer dole out the entitlement money or the populace must change so that they no longer want the entitlements. I am putting my money on the former because human nature is that we are lazy and will almost never turn down free stuff. I don't think in a million years that the government will ever voluntarily put any real restraint on spending (witness what just happened with the "fiscal cliff" deal) but they WILL eventually run out of money to give away.

The reason that the two parties cannot "get along" is because getting along is bad for elections. You have to strike a stark difference between yourself and your opponent else voters may say "well, they're pretty similar, so we'll just keep the incumbent/incumbent's party in office." Also the ideology is fairly opposed between the two parties. The Democrats are statists and in their ideology more government is the answer to all problems. The Republicans on financial interests are nominally laissez-faire which means that government is usually the cause of the problem, not the solution. Trying to reconcile those differences doesn't really work. The last time we had this kind of an unreconcilable disagreement there was a civil war which forced one side to capitulate. I don't think we'll end up with a civil war, I think we'll run out of borrowing ability which will force the Democrats to abandon/severely curtail their "more government" policies.
 
This problem is not ging to go away ... it will become a regular cliffhanger for the US people and ssoner or later the Republicans will cause a crash ...

I say raise taxes immendiately and pay down some of the debt ...

Join the Greeks ...
 
Taxes are being raised, and so far, only military cuts.
This reminds me of Clinton's balancing budget, where 95% of the cuts came thru the military, and the Dem's like Polosi and Feinstein screamed not to, so they instead cut more else wheres, and not in California.
Just why were they so concerned?
Business, monies coming in, tax bases, all become diminished.
As mostly a conservative base in the military, an easy out for the Dems as well.

Now, we do need more taxes and more cuts, but the low hanging fruit is gone, and theyll actually have to work this time around, and maybe even risk their precious, their reelection capability, as they may have to go after programs and education, mostly liberal
 
That are politicians for you greedy and power hungry.Both sides not only one.
 
Once Congress makes a budget, the issue can be addressed. The american people are clueless when a budget doesn't exist.

We know we're overspending. 2% of the people in the US make over $400,000 a year. 0.6% of people make over $1 million.

Somehow, raising taxes on those people is going to solve the issue? I think not.

I'm truly amazed that so much effort has been expended over raising $600 billion over 10 years, as opposed to simply cutting back on spending. They fought tooth and nail to to get $60 billion extra a year... hell, cut $120 bill a year in spending and we have a better solution.
 


Thank you gerrymandering. Only about 60 House districts are competitive now, so the natural outcome is for less working together in order to stave off primary challenges (which naturally lend to more radical candidates to begin with). So you get this. And the US Government was NOT designed to work with European style political parties.

At this point, its clear that the time has come to ammend the Constitution to dissolve the House. It no longer serves any useful purpose. Increase the length of a Senate term to 8 years, and give each state 4 senators, one to be elected every two years.

I'm truly amazed that so much effort has been expended over raising $600 billion over 10 years, as opposed to simply cutting back on spending. They fought tooth and nail to to get $60 billion extra a year... hell, cut $120 bill a year in spending and we have a better solution.
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And what effect does that spending have on the economy? And how much does the economic loss effect incoming tax revenue?

Guess what? $400 Billion or so of the deficit is simply lost revenue due to the economy. That hole will eventually plug itself. Another $200 Billion or so is related to Iraq/Afghanistan.

If you raise taxes, you cut to some degree economic growth, cutting off future revenue streams.
If you cut spending, you cut to some degree economic growth, cutting off future revenue streams.

See the problem? Hence why taxing the wealthy makes the most sense, since it has the least negative economic impact, and thus raises the most revenue at the least amount of economic loss.

And for the record, I was for letting the BTC's expire in their entirety. Combined with the recovering economy, that would give us a balanced budget again without needing to cut a single program.
 


You are bat poop crazy!

First, the House is there to represent the People. The Senate is there to Represent the States. By your logic, the cities are the only important places in a State since you think only the Senate matters. Whereas the House represents people all across the counties in every state. If you look at Ohio for example, the Cities are Democrat bastions and everything else is Republican - rural farmers, businesses, etc.

$200 billion from Iraq/Afghanistan? You do know that the War in Iraq is over and that Afghanistan has been drawing down. That number should have been decreasing as those operations are far smaller than a few years ago under Bush. Sure, you can fudge the numbers and say what you want. Reality is the spending has remained high and the peak of the wars are long gone.

The economic loss goes up and down. I already posted the numbers and you ignore them. When revenue was at its peak, spending still outpaced it. We're spending $1 trillion a year more than the tax revenue and revenue increased last year. If spending were steady, as revenue increased the deficit would decrease. Solid logic, except spending continues to increase! Look. at. the. numbers. They do not lie.

If you cut US Gov't spending, consumer confidence increases and people will spend more money. As long as government spending is on the rise, people will not spend and consumer confidence will be low. We all know we can't spend our way out of it. If we keep spending money, eventually everyone is going to have taxes raised on them and people want to keep their money. In fact, people are more afraid of having their taxes raised than having their gov't bennies cut.

Taxing the wealthy doesn't solve the problem. It only gives the the government more money to spend and prolongs the issue of too much spending.

It cracks me up that under Bush the Liberal Left was blasting him for spending like crazy. Now that's we're spending *5* times MORE a YEAR, the Liberal Left is perfectly ok with it.

Spending is the issue. Sorry, we need to suck it up and cut entitlements and military. Politicians are affected by those cuts and don't want either to happen. Hell, end all Social Security Disability for anyone under the age of 50 and that alone would put SS in the black.
 
And just to prove how ill thought out your argument about getting rid of the house is:

Population of Ohio, a key swing state: 11.5 Million people.
Population of major cities in Ohio: 1.77 million people.

Get rid of the House and you remove the voice of over 9 million people. You let the cities decide how the State is going to be run.

4.5 million people voted in Ohio. Most were in the cities because of the location and higher densities.

The House repesents all the people of the State. The Senate only represents the government of the State.

I can't believe you would argue against a key component of what made this country a beacon of light for democracy. How foolish.
 


The little peons are now happy as the "rich" are getting taxed more. Problem is still there, but the rich have higher taxes. Costs $1 for a soft taco at Taco Bell now.. used to be $0.69 a couple years ago.
 
Sounds like a serious case of, whats mine is mine, whats yours is questionable.
All done for supposed good reasoning, and supposed to make sense as well.

Long term, what harm will be caused by not cutting right away, suffering such cuts vs not?
I am only hearing one immediate side, not the other.
 


Not really. The House/Senate setup was the first compromise about Slavery, and was always an inefficient setup. Especially now that we have hyper-partisan politics, and the very real posibility of gridlock due to split government.

I could care less what the House is "supposed" to represent; I want a government that works. And with Congressional districts now gerrymandered to the point where the most liberal/conservative candidate always wins, the House no longer is a viable governing body, and should be dissolved. Either that, or poliics continue to get worse, and the country breaks up.

$200 billion from Iraq/Afghanistan? You do know that the War in Iraq is over and that Afghanistan has been drawing down. That number should have been decreasing as those operations are far smaller than a few years ago under Bush. Sure, you can fudge the numbers and say what you want. Reality is the spending has remained high and the peak of the wars are long gone.
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Remember I work in defense.

The equipment, you know, tanks, planes, guns, are all past their service lifetimes. That requires a LOT of money to repair/replace. So while not directly war related, its worth noting that all three branches have more money allocated to either acquire new equipment, or repair (as best as possible) the old equipment. Then theres the extra defense spending that didn't exist before the wars that is still being allocated to one program or another, and so on and so forth. The country remains on a wartime footing, regardless of the drawdown.

The economic loss goes up and down. I already posted the numbers and you ignore them. When revenue was at its peak, spending still outpaced it. We're spending $1 trillion a year more than the tax revenue and revenue increased last year. If spending were steady, as revenue increased the deficit would decrease. Solid logic, except spending continues to increase! Look. at. the. numbers. They do not lie.
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And this is why you are wrong: The ONLY thing that matters is revenue/expenses as a share of GDP. I don't care about the dollar amount of the deficit, because it is a meaningless number without considering how much wealth the country has in total. Simple example: You owe $200k. Bill Gates owes $20,000,000. Who has a worse financial situation?

Gates has ONE HUNDRED TIMES the debt you do, but because he has about 50 billion or so in the bank, he's in a MUCH better financial position.

What the GOP likes to do is show revenue and expenses since the year 2000 on a graph, which shows a flatlined revenue stream and rising expenses. Therefore, spending MUST be the problem, right? Of course, this graph ignores the growth in GDP, and thus the question of why revenue isn't going up natrually as GDP rises. Factor in the share of the debt as a part of GDP, and share of expenses as a part of GDP, and you get the exact OPPOSITE graph, with expenses flat and revenue dropping. Thats your BTC's in a nutshell:

GDP|Revenue|Expenses|Revenue/GDP|Expenses/GDP
2000 09.71|2.03|1.78|20.91|18.33
2001 10.06|1.99|1.86|19.78|18.49
2002 10.38|1.85|2.01|17.82|19.36
2003 10.80|1.78|2.16|16.48|20.00
2004 11.50|1.88|2.29|16.35|19.91
2005 12.24|2.15|2.47|17.57|20.18
2006 13.02|2.41|2.66|18.51|20.43
2007 13.67|2.57|2.73|18.80|19.97
2008 14.31|2.52|2.93|17.61|20.48
2009 14.10|2.10|3.11|14.89|22.06
2010 14.51|2.16|3.09|14.89|21.30

(Edit: Good as its getting; should be easy enough to copy/paste into excel. All figures are in Trillions of Dollars, unadjusted for inflation).

Note how expenses are slowly rising over time, yet revenue is dropping as a part of GDP year over year every year? And note the ~$300 Billion dropoff in 2009; thats pure deficit right there.

So you can NOW see the full effects of the tax cuts: Even through you have more economic growth, less of that money is getting taxed overall. While spending is going up, its going up very slowly year over year as a part of GDP (even dropping some years). Look at the data with GDP factored in, and you see Revenue, not Expenses, is the problem. The nation has more money, but a lower percentage of it is getting collected.

This data PROVES that tax cuts do NOT pay for themselves; the rise in GDP did not result in offsetting the tax cuts (otherwise you'd get a flat Revenue/GDP line, rather then a decrease). Revenue IS the problem, spending is not.
 


I used the official budget reports NON-inflation adjusted numbers. Overall trend is still the same when inflation is factored in; I can post those if you want. Should have noted on the first post though.
 


I'm simply pointing out that the House no longer is representative of the people. Guess what? Americans prefer a Democratic house; they voted more for Democrats then Republicans in House races. Too bad the official results don't match that outcome, because the districts have been dissected to favor the incumbent in almost all races.

Seriously, how many people are now represented by a different party not because their person lost a race, but because their congressional district changed in 2010? How is THAT Representative?

Make no mistake: The House/Senate setup was all about Slavery, and ensuring the North couldn't end it. The house has served its purpose, now its just an impediment to good government.

By dissolving the house, increasing the size of the Senate, and increasing terms to 8 years (for simplicities sake), you accomplish several things:

1: Smaller government
2: More efficient government (only two bodies, the President and Senate, have to deal)
3: Make it harder for any radical group to gain power (winning a state is MUCH harder then winning a carefully drawn up district)
4: More representive of the people (No gerrymandered districts; one Senator up every two years ensures an unpopular party gets booted out)

I wouldn't even be opposed to switching to a parliamentary democracy, with the President elected by the Senate. Would solve all those annoying "I can't legislate because I have a hostile Congress" problems. Never really makes sense to have a President and a hostile Congress. If you wouldn't elect a CEO without the backing of the executive board in business, why the heck should we do the same exact thing for running our government?

I care, first and foremost, about efficiency. And our government, by design, is inefficient.

EDIT

And yes, I know I'm "out there" on this issue. But I've basically lost faith in functioning government, and am more or less convinced if the country does moderate NOW, we will see the country break up within the next two decades.
 
He's foolish in his understanding of the US Government. Most likely someone either very clueless or from outside the US.

The point of having a house and a senate is to force compromise. If there was just the senate, a simple majority would be easy to get. I would argue you get rid of the senate before the house. The Senate represents the States, the House represents the people. The people out in rural areas tend to be business owners (aka Farmers) and should have fair representation against the people in cities with higher populations.

It is clear he is clueless on how our government was designed to function.

The sheer fact that things have become super partisan was the exact reason the house and senate exist. To force compromise.
 
Understand, what riser just pointed out is the its always been.
Cities in general are more liberal, not so out state.
People in Cali, as liberal as they are, for example, know San Francisans are usually over the top, even for the average lib Californian.
Tho the districts may be larger, the populations arent, and these peoples need representation.

Addressing the larger government issue, leaving this behind, besides forcing compromise, eliminating the house would then degranulate government.
Creating a more statist POV couldnt come easier by doing so, and is what our founding fathers sought to avoid
 
I'm "surprised" none of you responded to gamer's chart relating to the expenses and revenues in regard to GDP.

I understand his point about the re-districting dilema that is gripping states around the country. It would be better to have more rules in place for the process so it cannot be highjacked by whichever party has a majority in the state government. The fact that more people voted democrat in the house and yet there is a majority of republicans clearly demonstrates a lack of equal representation. It's a sad day when the United States counts some peoples votes and ignores others due to the structuring of the voting systems.

I do not agree that dissolving the house would fix the issue though, the process would be to easy to control with a majority. Although, in all fairness, if the number of seats were decided by a total popular vote then democrats would have a majority in both the senate and the house.
 
I would like to see population breakdown of all the districts.
I tend to believe those in the cities tend to be slightly over populated per district requirement, and is why this the way it is.
Adding an extra street in such crowded conditions can do this, time and again in cities, and gerrymandering can be to blame, but because granulation as is done currently isnt exact, dont throw the baby out with the bathwater
 
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