patrick.net

So, what’s the plan here?

We're just going to borrow from the wealthy what we do not tax from them. Wahey.

The Republican plan is to make the rich richer and the poor poorer, as it always is.

Nobody in a position to do anything is willing to touch mandatory spending or defense.

Folks like to pretend that it is just the Republicans who are unwilling to touch defense or defense-related items.

Who is the biggest opponent to DoD's wish to shut down Joint Forces Command (JFCOM)? Senator Jim Webb (D, VA). Who was one of the biggest opponents to an early Obama budget proposal that included decommissioning of the Coast Guard's "Maritime Safety & Security Team" in NY? Senator Chuck Schumer (D, NY). The list goes on and on.

The DoD itself proposed shutting JFCOM. The commandant of the Coast Guard stated that other agencies already do the role of the Coast Guard MSSTs (and many believe their creation was a knee-jerk reaction from 9/11 anyway).

The political problem with defense spending is that, unlike a social distribution or "entitlement" program, the cutting of defense spending translates into the cutting of actual jobs of people who go to work every day and bring money into a community. Democrats and liberals like to rail on the right about defense spending, but the Democrats are no different, when the actual cuts proposed impact their own state or district.

Don't like defense/homeland security spending? Keep tabs on the actual defense budget and write to your representative or senator (regardless of his/her party) and tell them that you SUPPORT the cutting of a particular defense or homeland security project even though you know it will affect your state or your district.

justme says

The Republican plan is to make the rich richer and the poor poorer, as it always is.

And the Democrat plan is what?

Paralithodes says

Right, got it! The Democrats have great intentions and great plans, the Republicans plan ” is to make the rich richer and the poor poorer, as it always is.” It is as simple as that. That’s why anything the Republican’s “try” or “propose” should always be dismissed as not trying, as “talking points,” or should be re-defined in hyperbolic terms regardless of underlying validity…. I understand now, thanks!

Instead of being a sarcastic ahole, why not present some Republican plans that don't make the rich richer and the poor poorer. That would make for a more effective argument.

justme says

The Republican plan is to make the rich richer and the poor poorer, as it always is.

blah blah blah. GOP = Rich Dems = poor folk Is that why one of Obama's biggest contributors was Goldman Sachs?

Paralithodes says

blind-ideologically driven blather that are no more productive to any conversation than me being a sarcastic ahole

Bush Sr calling the current conservative low-tax approach "Voodoo economics" was not blather, it was the truth.

Bush knuckled under to the Dems and did not veto the Dem tax-rise of 1990 and institution of pay-go rules and 10 years later the deficit was gone.

http://www.nytimes.com/1990/06/27/us/bush-now-concedes-a-need-for-tax-revenue-increases-to-reduce-deficit-in-budget.html

Curiously, that same year Bush Sr had earlier pulled back from taking Baghdad.

"And once we'd done that and we'd gotten rid of Saddam Hussein and his government, then we'd have had to put another government in its place. What kind of government? Should it be a Sunni government or Shi'i government or a Kurdish government or Ba'athist regime? Or maybe we want to bring in some of the Islamic fundamentalists? How long would we have had to stay in Baghdad to keep that government in place? What would happen to the government once U.S. forces withdrew? How many casualties should the United States accept in that effort to try to create clarity and stability in a situation that is inherently unstable? I think it is vitally important for a President to know when to use military force. I think it is also very important for him to know when not to commit U.S. military force. And it's my view that the President got it right both times, that it would have been a mistake for us to get bogged down in the quagmire inside Iraq" -- Cheney, 1991

Jr, however, was not his own man and went with both the neocon and supply-side nonsense, reversing both of his father's policy directions.

Cutting taxes just results in higher rents and property values, more skim for the skimmers on this economy.

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2010/08/01/david-stockman-republicans-economy_n_666541.html

The result of the Bush tax cuts was the national debt tripling and rather impressive financial implosion that we're still immersed in.

Troy says

Bush Sr calling the current conservative low-tax approach “Voodoo economics” was not blather, it was the truth.

Troy says

Jr, however, was not his own man and went with both the neocon and Laffer nonsense.

"Laffer nonsense?" If you want to argue that pinning a specific tax rate, like 29% or 32% or whatever is "nonsense," I'm right there with you. If you want to argue that the concept in general (which Laffer does not credit himself with developing and attributes it to others before him, including Keynes) is nonsense, then I would be sincerely curious why you think so.

Did the cutting of income tax rates result in the collection of more revenue, from income tax receipts? (Not more or less revenue in general, or factoring in other taxes, but specifically the relationship between income tax rates and income tax receipts). Again, this is a sincere question. I've only heard people on both sides talk about it and haven't researched it myself (I am not against a progressive tax system).

Troy says

The result was the national debt tripling and rather impressive financial implosion that we’re still immersed in.

The Fed and its bubble-blowing behaviors over the last years had nothing to do with it?

Paralithodes says

The Fed and its bubble-blowing behaviors over the last years had nothing to do with it?

Not really because interest rates were not the primary driver of why home prices became detached from underlying values.

The abandonment of 10% or 20% down payments (piggy-back loans), 103% loans, interest-only (IO) loans, negative amortization (neg-am) loans, stated income / stated asset (SISA) loans, no-job no-income (NINJA) was what caused the housing bubble.

Once actual loan underwriting was abandoned and outfits like WaMu and Countrywide were making negative-am loans to anyone with a pulse starting in 2004 the rocket shot was set up.

By 2005 I actually had a decent understanding of what was going on -- the banks weren't keeping these loans on their books but selling them to investors in CDOs.

The 30 year mortgage rate never got below 5.5%:

http://research.stlouisfed.org/fred2/graph/?chart_type=line&s[1][id]=MORTG&s[1][range]=10yrs

but many people were taking out 2% pick-a-pay (ie suicide) loans so the effective interest rate was a lot lower.

What was also feeding the bubble was home equity loans either funding home purchases or consumption. This created a trillion-dollar bubble of economic activity that would disappear when the music of rising home prices stopped in 2007.

thunderlips11 says

It’s ironic that pols want to cut the Coast Guard, which is actually responsible for America’s defense (in addition to supplying rescue at sea and maritime law enforcement), at the expense of other branches, which are geared for expeditionary warfare abroad.

Your response is exactly part of the problem we have with cutting anything in the government.

First, proposed cuts (which probably won't happen) are not at the expense of the other branches, perhaps other than providing more to other DHS branches like CBP or ICE.

Proposed cuts to the Coast Guard included decommissioning of several Maritime Safety and Security Teams (MSST). Just because the Coast Guard does a lot of great things, and does a lot of things well, does not mean that it needs more funding in general, or that certain parts of it should not be cut. The MSST's certainly have their share of advocates, but there are many people who believe that they were formed as a knee-jerk reaction to 9/11 and are a waste of taxpayer money.

This is why looking at the "little things" makes a difference. When it comes down to it, any cuts to DoD or any other government agency boils down to selections of projects or functions at small levels. A $100 Billion cut to DoD would likely result in the cutting of hundreds of small, individual projects from six-figures through $10s or $100's of millions.

Someone invariably makes the case that an organization's funding shouldn't be cut because of their good performance in specific areas, even if the cuts would not impact those areas.

And also invariably, the representative of a district or state is against the cut to a DoD program in their area, regardless of what DoD needs to do. Webb and Schummer are two examples of Democrats who recently opposed cuts to wasteful DoD or CG programs, because they impacted their areas. Any claims that the Republicans are the ones primarily for defense spending are simply ideological politics. The Democrats posture a lot about defense spending, but when push comes to shove, protect whatever is spent in their districts.

I just think Boehner looks like a fake and does not look trustworthy. He's got a bad poker face.

thunderlips11 says

I’m taking about major structural changes, getting rid of the hundreds of C-141s since we won’t be deploying 100k men overseas.

141's were retired several years ago - "hundreds" is barely accurate - there were less than 300 ever produced. Your dated information doesn't make you very credible but I do agree there is a lot of military might in our arsenal that is useless or overkill in the world today. They need to go on the chopping block.

Europe needs to "buck up" and defend themselves. If we had someone else paying our bills, we might be able to afford low retirement ages and month long vacations too. How long have we been in Korea? Japan should fend for themselves as well. The Japanese pay $2B or so a year to have us there which is probably a helluva lot less than what we spend keeping the 30k+ troops and gear in place.

EightBall says

Europe needs to “buck up” and defend themselves

From what? Space Aliens? Us?

thunderlips11 says

We cut the military by less than 1/3 after the cold war

Well, more like froze it actually. Military as-percent-of-GDP is such hoo-haw.

Cutting it back to our needs instead of our fantasies is an interesting challenge.

The Nayy needs sea control, subsurface presence and offshore strike threat, and the Marines make a pretty good package for overseas interventions, so the USN needs the ships to support that mission.

The active Army basically needs to go away. Move it all into NG/Reserve. Mothball divisions into brigades and eliminate duplicate skills and missions.

USAF can pretty much keep on what it's doing. Mahan and all that.

I'm sensing a $350B/yr outlay here, indeed about half.

No one will "fix" the deficit. Obama announced that the current budget deficit will be "cut" in half by 2013. That's half of its current $1.4 TRILLION per annum! Our nut jobs from both parties have spent us into a hole we will never get out of. The only thing left now is a delayed action that will put off the inevitable collapse that every thinking person knows is coming. In the mean time, all the entitlement beneficiaries, both small and large, continue to pressure the politicians not to cut their slice of the pie. What a sickening situation.

thunderlips11 says

Instead of readjusting our military to make it realistic to the current situation, and to realize the fact that we can’t maintain Cold War-level readiness indefinitely, we hear about little tiny cuts to the Coast Guard, which has an actual everyday use.

These tiny cuts across all of the armed forces, Coast Guard included, would add up to billions of dollars per year. My point was that just because the Coast Guard in general has an "actual everyday purpose," does not mean that its budget is untouchable. If Chuckie Schummer didn't object to it, the Coast Guard could decommission a 100+ person unit with numerous multi-million dollar boats. One "tiny" unit cut would save the taxpayer 10's of millions of dollars per year.

And we do hear about the bigger, structural proposed cuts as well, such as JFCOM, which would displace ~ 5000 active duty, reserve, and civilian workers. Jim Webb is certainly not happy with DoD over this proposal.

I bet we could probably shave $50-100 billion off of the defense and homeland security budget just by trimming the shear quantity of tiny pieces of fat around the edges.

But unfortunately, just as the large structural issues would be fought by the politicians for reasons that have nothing to do with what is actually needed for national defense, so are many of the small, tiny ones. Practically speaking, the Democrats are no different than the Republicans in this regard. Republicans may be against cutting defense spending in general, but generally speaking, Democrats are for cutting total defense spending only if the cuts are not in their districts.

Paralithodes says

Troy says

Bush Sr calling the current conservative low-tax approach “Voodoo economics” was not blather, it was the truth.

Troy says

Jr, however, was not his own man and went with both the neocon and Laffer nonsense.

“Laffer nonsense?” If you want to argue that pinning a specific tax rate, like 29% or 32% or whatever is “nonsense,” I’m right there with you. If you want to argue that the concept in general (which Laffer does not credit himself with developing and attributes it to others before him, including Keynes) is nonsense, then I would be sincerely curious why you think so.
Did the cutting of income tax rates result in the collection of more revenue, from income tax receipts? (Not more or less revenue in general, or factoring in other taxes, but specifically the relationship between income tax rates and income tax receipts). Again, this is a sincere question. I’ve only heard people on both sides talk about it and haven’t researched it myself (I am not against a progressive tax system).

Laffer has to be the most misquoted man on the planet. His contention was there was an optimal tax rate where the tax collection was at it's peak. Too high and people found ways around it. Too low and the money just doesn't come in. Laffer was talking about the era of 90% nominal (actual paid was much, much lower due to very generous decuctions) top tax rate, not 33%.

There have been many studies on results of tax rate changes, especially on capital gains cuts. What happens with capital gains is there is a big jump in tax revenue as everyone who was holding off to see if the cut happens unloads like mad for a year or so. The revenues jump through the roof, then slide back. You just end up with whatever taxes come in at the new rate, there is not magic increase in tax revenues over the longer term. There was a really big study done about this by the GAO but I can't find the link any more. Here is a short article from Time.
http://curiouscapitalist.blogs.time.com/2008/01/28/do_capital_gains_tax_cuts_incr/
or about bush tax cuts.
austrianenginomics.com/DoTaxCutsIncreaseGovernmentRevenueRevA.pdf

bob2356 says

Laffer has to be the most misquoted man on the planet.

I think Keynes & Laffer are tied. Keynes said you needed to "stimulate" during depressions to smooth things out, BUT it had to be funded by saving up some acorns during the summer to dole out during the winter. Most "Keynesians" never worry too much when it's boom time, about applying the taxes, savings, and regulations needed to build up a "bust fund". So we have the worst of both worlds. We put the laissez-faire so-called "Laffer" fanatics in charge during the booms. They maximize efficiency and want nothing saved. Then when the bust comes OOH NOO we forgot to save some acorns we're HUNGRY, and in come the Keynesian half.

Vicente says

So we have the worst of both worlds. We put the laissez-faire so-called “Laffer” fanatics in charge during the booms. They maximize efficiency and want nothing saved. Then when the bust comes OOH NOO we forgot to save some acorns we’re HUNGRY, and in come the Keynesian half.

That is the most succinct summary of the last 40 years of American history I've ever seen.

Troy says

From what? Space Aliens? Us?

Exactly. They don't need us there - if they want defense, they should do it themselves.