If government spending and the American Economy continue on its current path, all the talks, negotiations, and agreements will be meaningless. Both political parties are corrupt, ineffective, a joke, and appear completely incapable of dealing with basic money management. The collapse of the US economy and the dollar will erase the current status quo and shake the foundation of American Government at every level. Printing more money or giving congress a new credit card with a higher limit is the wrong answer; though this is exactly what "will" happen. Many of the rich will bale out for other countries and the rest of us will suffer long and hard for the terrible decisions about to be made.
Step 1: The POTUS proposes a budget to congress, completed sometime in Feb 2010 (the POTUS has done his J O B - this is all the POTUS is responsible for, the rest is the responsibility of the HOR and the Senate)
Step 2: The House and Senate Budget Committees begin consideration of President's budget proposals
Step 3: The House and Senate each consider those budget resolutions and are expected to pass them, possibly with amendments - It is their J O B
Step 4: Appropriations committees, starting with allocations in the budget resolution, put together appropriations bills - It is their J O B
Step 5: Once appropriations committees pass their bills, they are considered by the House and Senate - Because it is their J O B
Step 6: Once a conference bill has passed both chambers of Congress, it is sent to the President, who may sign the bill or veto. If he signs, the bill becomes law. Otherwise, Congress must pass another bill to avoid a shutdown of at least part of the federal government.
The system tested and true. It is a system in place for a reason. Yet, our own elected adult members of congress refuse to use it properly. Instead, they continue to get stuck on stupid. This is not the United States of Democrats and Republicans. It is the United States of America!
This congress has failed to do their J O B; instead of working like adults, they play the finger pointing game at one another because it is never their fault, it is always someone else's. I do not think I can handle, the blame game anymore. You were not elected to just identify problems. But, "we have to make some hard choices", great then make them, don't just stop at the first road blcok!
I think it is wonderful you have identified the problem and there are tough choices to be made, now make a bleeping choice for once and do your J O B. Did you honestly think being an elected government official was going to be easy? Of course not.
Now do your J O B and stop kicking the can down the road for someone else to make them! Sounds like if Congress continues to do that, they owe the American people their money back they were paid plus money for time wasted for NOT DOING YOUR J O B.
Case in Point: Continuing resolution after resolution, 7 times over, has been passed (Congress is playing kick the can)
It is sad that the POTUS has to babysit congress to make sure both sides play nicely and has to make sure CONGRESS does their J O B.
If I missed something please let me know. Try, for once, no BS posts about more blaming a political party, we have enough of our elected officials doing that! Again, it is sad our POTUS has to play referee to grown adults in Congress.
I am so tired of reading and hearing everyone identify the "hard choices" and not make them, instead each side continues to blame the other and nothing gets done. Congress, just do your J O B you were elected and are being paid to do with tax payers money, that is all I want as an American.
Point of order - the long term balancing of the budget and starting to pay down the debt has been examined in exhaustive detail, and all non-extremists agree that a real solution has the following four necessary conditions:
1. Increased revenues compared to now (by at least $250B per year).
2. Restructuring Social Security to account for longer life spans and people that have sufficiently provided for their own retirement.
3. Cap medical cost growth at the rate of inflation and restructure Medicare/Medicaid to decrease the costs of benefit delivery.
4. Reduce Defense spending by ending the current two wars and reducing or eliminating expenses that are no longer effective (do we really need 50,000 soldiers in Germany?).
Virtually all would also add a 5th, reduce waste and eliminate marginal discretionary programs, but that is a lot more controversial in the details.
To achieve a structurally balanced budget, we have to do all 4 (or 5) or we just can't get there from here without potentially catastrophic changes. Examples of catastrophic changes would be total privatization of Social Security or Medicare, implementation of a single-payer medical system, massive tax increases (marginal tax rates up to 85+% of income, just like they were from 1942 to 1962) or downsizing the military to pure US defense only. Such changes would have major cuts in spending, but the economy itself, and the private companies and employees that participate in these areas, would be massively disrupted and might cause a crash that would shrink the GDP and offset the value of the reduced spending.
So while we need intelligent factual debate about priorities and while there is real room for disagreement on how to mix the pieces together, anyone, conservative or liberal, Republican or Democrat, that claims we can fix our long term budget issues without doing some of ALL of these is simply mistaken.
Good post... I disagree about downsizing our military to pure playing defense only but agree cutting excess spending is needed in Nat'l Defense... but good post.
The "downsizing to national defense only" is just an example of a catastrophic change. The consensus is that defense needs to be reduced, after you take out the wars a "baseline" reduction of something like 15%. Of course there are strong arguments for more - and less. But scaling back to pure national defense only would be a baseline cut of something like 75%, and the impact on the companies and people in both the private and public sectors that would be "ruined" is too large to safely attempt.
It may be that in the future we will need to make some catastrophic changes - the most likely place is Medicare/Medicaid because it may not be possible to cap medical cost growth at inflation without making a catastrophic change. But we don't need to take that risk to balance the budget and pay down the debt for the immediate future and so we should do everything else first :-)
Agree, everything should be audited, for lack of better words.
Then everyone needs to operate on whatevr budget that is passed... in other words make it work with "this" amount of money, if some programs gets cut in a particular department then so be it;let that department make the cuts and do a little policing on their own.
I am also a fan to make a constitutional Amendment making it illegal to use Social Security money for anything other than Social Security. Robbing Peter to pay Paul never works. This money should never be used for other programs.
These types of long term negotiations are key to the long standing ecomonics of america. Hopefully BOTH sides (as I can see both sides perspectives) can come to some sort of an agreement. The larger the better. Hopefully they will surprise us all and come to an agreement on something large.
The liberals will praise Oblamer for cutting trillions in debt a few years from now. They will forget that he had to go kicking and screaming like a baby. I am surprised he did not pull a Wisconsin liberal DemoRAT move and leave the country because he did not get his way. Well, come to think of it, that would probably be the best thing for America.
The posting of advertisements, profanity, or personal attacks is prohibited. By using this Web site you agree to accept our Terms of Service. Click here to read the Rules of Engagement.
Reply to Comment The posting of advertisements, profanity, or personal attacks is prohibited. By using this Web site you agree to accept our Terms of Service. Click here to read the Rules of Engagement.
Step 1: The POTUS proposes a budget to congress, completed sometime in Feb 2010 (the POTUS has done his J O B - this is all the POTUS is responsible for, the rest is the responsibility of the HOR and the Senate)
Step 2: The House and Senate Budget Committees begin consideration of President's budget proposals
Step 3: The House and Senate each consider those budget resolutions and are expected to pass them, possibly with amendments - It is their J O B
Step 4: Appropriations committees, starting with allocations in the budget resolution, put together appropriations bills - It is their J O B
Step 5: Once appropriations committees pass their bills, they are considered by the House and Senate - Because it is their J O B
Step 6: Once a conference bill has passed both chambers of Congress, it is sent to the President, who may sign the bill or veto. If he signs, the bill becomes law. Otherwise, Congress must pass another bill to avoid a shutdown of at least part of the federal government.
The system tested and true. It is a system in place for a reason. Yet, our own elected adult members of congress refuse to use it properly. Instead, they continue to get stuck on stupid. This is not the United States of Democrats and Republicans. It is the United States of America!
This congress has failed to do their J O B; instead of working like adults, they play the finger pointing game at one another because it is never their fault, it is always someone else's. I do not think I can handle, the blame game anymore. You were not elected to just identify problems. But, "we have to make some hard choices", great then make them, don't just stop at the first road blcok!
I think it is wonderful you have identified the problem and there are tough choices to be made, now make a bleeping choice for once and do your J O B. Did you honestly think being an elected government official was going to be easy? Of course not.
Now do your J O B and stop kicking the can down the road for someone else to make them! Sounds like if Congress continues to do that, they owe the American people their money back they were paid plus money for time wasted for NOT DOING YOUR J O B.
Case in Point: Continuing resolution after resolution, 7 times over, has been passed (Congress is playing kick the can)
It is sad that the POTUS has to babysit congress to make sure both sides play nicely and has to make sure CONGRESS does their J O B.
If I missed something please let me know. Try, for once, no BS posts about more blaming a political party, we have enough of our elected officials doing that! Again, it is sad our POTUS has to play referee to grown adults in Congress.
I am so tired of reading and hearing everyone identify the "hard choices" and not make them, instead each side continues to blame the other and nothing gets done. Congress, just do your J O B you were elected and are being paid to do with tax payers money, that is all I want as an American.
1. Increased revenues compared to now (by at least $250B per year).
2. Restructuring Social Security to account for longer life spans and people that have sufficiently provided for their own retirement.
3. Cap medical cost growth at the rate of inflation and restructure Medicare/Medicaid to decrease the costs of benefit delivery.
4. Reduce Defense spending by ending the current two wars and reducing or eliminating expenses that are no longer effective (do we really need 50,000 soldiers in Germany?).
Virtually all would also add a 5th, reduce waste and eliminate marginal discretionary programs, but that is a lot more controversial in the details.
To achieve a structurally balanced budget, we have to do all 4 (or 5) or we just can't get there from here without potentially catastrophic changes. Examples of catastrophic changes would be total privatization of Social Security or Medicare, implementation of a single-payer medical system, massive tax increases (marginal tax rates up to 85+% of income, just like they were from 1942 to 1962) or downsizing the military to pure US defense only. Such changes would have major cuts in spending, but the economy itself, and the private companies and employees that participate in these areas, would be massively disrupted and might cause a crash that would shrink the GDP and offset the value of the reduced spending.
So while we need intelligent factual debate about priorities and while there is real room for disagreement on how to mix the pieces together, anyone, conservative or liberal, Republican or Democrat, that claims we can fix our long term budget issues without doing some of ALL of these is simply mistaken.
Good post... I disagree about downsizing our military to pure playing defense only but agree cutting excess spending is needed in Nat'l Defense... but good post.
The "downsizing to national defense only" is just an example of a catastrophic change. The consensus is that defense needs to be reduced, after you take out the wars a "baseline" reduction of something like 15%. Of course there are strong arguments for more - and less. But scaling back to pure national defense only would be a baseline cut of something like 75%, and the impact on the companies and people in both the private and public sectors that would be "ruined" is too large to safely attempt.
It may be that in the future we will need to make some catastrophic changes - the most likely place is Medicare/Medicaid because it may not be possible to cap medical cost growth at inflation without making a catastrophic change. But we don't need to take that risk to balance the budget and pay down the debt for the immediate future and so we should do everything else first :-)
Then everyone needs to operate on whatevr budget that is passed... in other words make it work with "this" amount of money, if some programs gets cut in a particular department then so be it;let that department make the cuts and do a little policing on their own.
I am also a fan to make a constitutional Amendment making it illegal to use Social Security money for anything other than Social Security. Robbing Peter to pay Paul never works. This money should never be used for other programs.
Why do we (taxpayers) need to pay this person 78,000 a year?
Kevin Lewis (230) it must be nice. I am sure you get a lot of government benefits as well.
http://www.whitehouse.gov/briefing-room/disclosures/annual-records/2011
The Director of Hispanic Media made the following:
2009: 65,000
http://www.whitehouse.gov/briefing-room/disclosures/annual-records/2009
2010: 78,000
http://www.whitehouse.gov/briefing-room/disclosures/annual-records/2010
2011: 78,000
http://www.whitehouse.gov/briefing-room/disclosures/annual-records/2011
A 13,000 raise over the last two years when most Americans were taking pay cuts or could not find work. Too much deadbeats in our government.
Good night.
I have a great life, because I work for it.