FWIW, of the $820 billion gross in federal healthcare expenditures, about $324 billion is identified as healthcare vendors for welfare recipients.

So if you add that $324 billion in healtchare benefits to the $450 billion cash benefits for welfare, it is in excess of the $750 billion Frank mentioned for federal welfare. That's over $6,500 per taxpayer for 2012.

Examining the numbers on your link, they project some pretty serious cuts in a few select areas and very modest growth in other areas to hold the debt to $21.3 Trillion by 2017.

For example, they project unemployment benefits to fall by over $50 billion and defense to be cut by $100+ billion annually.

Basically, we will only keep the debt to the projected $21.3 Trillion by 2017 if the economy heats up, there are no more wars and many of our expenses go down.

Their projection that we will cut the deficit by more than 50% from $1.3xx Trillion to $600 some billion seems laughable given recent history and the election results.

As ugly as those budget projections are, the reality may be far worse.

 

What I meant was that all I listed are considered entitlements, which takes close to 2/3rds of the budget. And as I stated, I think they are being VERY optimistic with their numbers. I think the real ones will be far worse.

 

Totally agree, looking at their numbers more closely.

For example, they forecast the federal revenues to increase from like $2.4 Trillion in 2012 to $3.9 Trillion by 2017.

We would need a booming economy to even sniff $3 Trillion, let alone $3.9 Trillion in revenue.

Even if we only spend what they project (doubtful), we will fall far far short on the revenue side, IMO.

 

I think they are expecting a whole bunch of tax increase, some of which are already coming with Obamacare. That plus a tax on the "rich" and eliminating more deductions. Things like mortgage interest. They also expect the deficit to be less than $1 trillion for 2013, when the first month of the budget year is already $120 billion over budget.

 

The dems have spoken, no entitlement reform. Good compromise there. Just raise taxes.

http://apnews.myway.com/article/20121117/DA2K1NL81.html

 

What budget? We don't have a budget. We do have authorized spending amounts (which for all intents and purposes appear to be spend whatever you want), but nothing else. The Dem's approach seems to be cut defense and increase taxes to balance the budget. An article I had read about sequestration puts half of the cuts on the DoD and the rest of the cuts on everything else. There isn't enough meat in the DoD and tax increases to balance the budget. That coupled with the fact that raising taxes always results in a slowing of the economy means we would be better off doing nothing than what this administration proposes. Entitlement reform has to happen, but I think the only reforms that will occur is expansion.

 

Here we go Geithner's answer to the debt limit.Get rid of it. Let go to infinity.

http://cnsnews.com/news/article/trea...limit-infinity

And Krugman's answer to the debt. Tax at the old 91% rate.


http://www.nytimes.com/2012/11/19/op...ml?ref=opinion

Brilliant.

And something else I just found. The Homeland Security sites tells new immigrants just where to find government benefits, aka welfare.


http://dailycaller.com/2012/11/18/ho...ome-materials/

 

I can see why Geitner and the politicians don't want a debt limit. It's politically inconvenient to have to keep raising it, especially when the raises keep getting larger and more frequent.

No debt ceiling would be like letting someone on the verge of bankruptcy have no limits on their credit cards, even though they can't make their existing minimum payments. They will go on a spending binge before the collapse.

As to the old 91% tax rate in the 1950's, lots has changed since then.

The thing that bothers me is that many Americans would not have an ethical issue with taking 91% of someone's income for federal taxes.

It is clear the nation has an appetite to tax the rich a lot more than they currently pay, and taxes are going up. It is equally clear the government will not significantly cut spending or reform social security and medicare.

So get ready for more credit rating cuts and inflation.

This is not going to end well, folks. The Fed, Treasury and politicians have tools to delay the collapse, and they are using them. But collapse it will, unless the economy miraculously recovers somehow.

 

Another thing about that supposed 91% tax rate is there were many, many deductions that served to lower the rates. If I recall correctly, Reagan lowered the rates for everyone and got rid of most of the tax breaks. The end result was a lower tax rate with fewer deduction so the same effective tax rate was in effect. Krugman also misses the fact that we are no longer competing against ourselves.

I also find it humorous that many are saying we need to hurt those nasty rich by raising the tax rate on investments. Yo, moron where do you think your retirement fund is getting it's money. That's right dividends and capital gains. All you are doing is raising tax rates on yourself and making it much more difficult for you to retire.

 

Most Americans are fine with that, as long as it hurts rich people.

 

The rates had been lowered far earlier than Reagan, although he continued. In the 40s and 50s, the rate was high due to the depression and the wars (WWII and Korea). The high rate during the depression was for "make work" projects to get people to work. It was not really successful as far as getting the masses back to work. What did that was WWII, even prior to the US getting involved. Our industry was arming the allies. After WWII and Korea, there was the task of converting from a war time industry to a peace time industry. Unfortunately another thing that kept down unemployment was the loss of life during the wars. Many were not there to go back to peace time employment.

As far as the 91% rate, I can see those making the money leaving the country, as that 91% does not even include states with income tax, nor social security of medicare. By the time you got down adding up all the taxes, you would have to finish paying them out of your savings or other holding as you would be over 100% (It is not the highest in the country, but MD's would be at least 7.5%). State tax, something else that was not around in the 50s.

History of income tax rates. http://www.ntu.org/tax-basics/histor...ividual-1.html

 

Good link, kingfish51.

In fairness to those who want higher income taxes, the 91% rate was only on the $ earned past the first $400,000.

 

True, but if you have to pay the other taxes, and a lower rate on the first $400,000, you still will not have anything left. How long do you think all those liberal actors will stay in this country if after being payed $20 million for a move, the have $100,000 left?

 

Obama's proposal for the fiscal cliff. $1.6 trillion in tax increases, no cuts, and let them continue without congressional approval when the debt limit is reached.
About what was expected from the dems.

http://www.weeklystandard.com/blogs/...an_664210.html

http://www.reuters.com/article/2012/...8AT02C20121130

 

What is really discouraging is the fact that that 1.6 trillion in tax increases is over a 10 year period. In essence it will take 10 years to save enough money to pay for one years expenses. It still isn't going to do anything. We need some serious cutting and it doesn't have to be drastic.

I've purposed two such cuts before, but will say them again. Look at the federal housing programs. They are spread over many different agencies. Just a quick list, FHA, HUD (both in HUD), rural development, VA, Indian lands. It would be very easy to consolidate these programs into one agency, there might not be much savings in the workforce, but there would be savings in cutting management and mission overlap. Also have senior managers look at the expenses of their juniors. In my agency our area director decided we needed to change our schedule. So it has been rumored that we are spending an extra 500k to implement this schedule. His selling points are, we are expecting increase traffic flow in both areas we monitor, we need to expand hours to handle the flow, we need to cut overtime. The problem is since 2009 we have actually seen a decrease in traffic flow and none of the private sector companies we talk with are expecting it to increase anytime soon. We have cut back hours because of the decrease traffic flow. The one point that is accurate is we have seen a decrease in O/T expenditures, but we saved 2 man hours O/T per week and spent 16 man hours per week to do it. As for the rest of the O/T it was cut by not giving prompt service and could have been accomplished with the old schedule. 500k isn't much, but I'm sure there are other offices that have the same issue and that money adds up very quickly.