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Audacity of Truth
What Barack Obama means when he talks about “change” and “bipartisanship”
Ever notice that during every presidential election cycle, at least one candidate is promising a "change" in Washington, DC? This year’s agent of "change" is Senator Barack Obama. The speech he made when he announced his candidacy back in February 2007 was titled "Change We Can Believe In." It’s been the centerpiece of his candidacy. He wants to end the gridlock in Washington, DC, reach across partisan lines, all in order to "get things done." When the average person hears that, they may think, "Wow, he really wants to extend a hand to the other side of the aisle and work together to come up with solutions both sides can be happy with."
But tell me something: Assuming for purposes of discussion that Barack Obama wins the nomination and then the presidency, what gridlock is he going to be presented with after he takes the oath of office? A Republican Congress? Nope. At best, we’ll keep the numbers we have in the House and Senate. The liberal lion of the Senate Ted Kennedy - and many other solidly liberal politicians and public figures – have endorsed his candidacy. His socialized healthcare agenda, his plan to withdraw troops from Iraq, amongst other ideas under his liberal agenda, will meet with very little opposition – and even at that it will be an opposition that will not be in any position to demand any substantial compromises. The only Republicans an Obama administration would have to reach out to would be a few moderate Republicans in the Senate whose votes they would need to ensure a bill comes up for a vote in the Senate.
So what "change" is Barack Obama talking about? Nothing that involves working across the aisle outside of getting few votes he’d need to pass his agenda. He’s praised Reagan for his ability to get things done in Washington, DC, but Reagan got things done as a Republican president working with a Democratic Congress, something that was unquestionably much tougher to do than what an Obama administration would have to face with a Democrat Congress hungry to implement their (and his) liberal ideas.
Let’s also not forget that whenever you hear a politician talking about "reaching across the aisle" in a "gesture of bipartisanship," what they’re talking about is conceding the bare minimum to the opposition in order to get their agenda accomplished. Rembember Pelosi and Reid’s promises of "change" and "bipartisanship" leading up to and and immediately after the 2006 election? We know how that turned out.
And a show of hands how many of you believe that many of Obama’s supporters who tout his eloquent manner of speaking and how he promises "unity" in DC actually want him to reach across the aisle in the "spirit of bipartisanship" in the manner the average voter would assume he meant? The left already flip out as it is when the Dems don’t deliver to the letter everything they want in a bill or resolution – there’s no way in hell this "pro-change" gang is actually in favor of the "unity" Obama is promising. The "change" they want is a change from conservative/moderate ideas to solid liberal ideas that borderline on the Socialistic.
Remember all this the next time someone starts preaching the benefits of the"change how things work in DC" candidate, whether it be Barack Obama or whoever - ask ‘em what they mean by it, and ask them if they understand what the candidate means by it, too.
Related: Obama’s eloquence and spirit has even impressed some Republicans, according to the Washington Post. Ericka Anderson at Redstate understands why, but also explains why, for all his impressive talk, Obama isn’t cut out to be the Commander in Chief.
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Obama just got the endorsement of MoveOn.org. That should tell you all you need to know about how “bipartisan” and “unifying” his administration would be.
So far, the only change I see from Obama is he isn’t demonizing his opponents. Otherwise, he’s a doctrinaire socialist Dem. How he’s going to “reach across” the aisle to get cooperation from people who do not buy into his ideological principles is beyond me.
And so gridlock, for me, is a desireable outcome. Even aside from hamstringing the leftists’ agenda, in general terms I prefer the federal government to be too self absorbed to “help” me.
Conservative Darling, Mitt Romney talks of being an agent of change on a daily basis, and how Washington is broken.
What does he “mean by it.” Or should we ask him, “What does he mean by it this week?”
McCain claims to be the “change candidate” too, but he says Romney is a liberal, and Romney says McCain is the liberal.
You could get dizzy. Hillary says she’s all about having the experience to know how to change Washington — trying to be all things to everyone.
Look. Every presidential election, especially after someone else’s 8 year run, is about change. All of them, every time. Campaigns are about the future, not the past, and progress. The candidate who can sell that the best wins, period. Obama simply has the best delivery.
You nailed it Steve.
I actually wish the government would do less and squabble more. Every solution they impose (though well meaning) RESULT in more problems as the outcome.
It is simplest to explain it this way to a liberal. You give a man a fish he eats for a day. You teach a man to fish and he eats for a lifetime. Unfortunately…… EVERY DARN thing Congress does takes from the man who has learned and applies himself and gives to the man who doesn’t want to or makes bad decisions. More government creates more and more dependency. More and more dependency destroys this nation and makes it weaker.
It used to be 40 years ago that this nation spent 50% of it’s federal budget on defense per year. Now the big 3 entitlements has risen to over 50% of the budget and defense has shrunk over the years to 19% of the federal budget and liberals are still not happy.
FOREMOST this country needs to be able to protect itself. That is prescribed in the constitution.
It is fully understandable to have a safety net for those who are elderly or not able-bodied to provide for themselves or family.
I do not understand making families who make sacrifices and save for their kids college being penalized while families who make poor decisions get rewarded. It isn’t right.
Obama’s voting record is to the left of Hillary’s.
Neither Obama nor Hillary would lead this country in the right direction. They won’t destroy the greatest nation on earth. They will simply create more problems. More problems for the press to distort and drivel as crisis’s that the government must solve.
And why?
Because the press are not scientists, economists, doctors, business people, etc. They are actually functionally illiterate people who survive mostly on the fact that the people who read their work or listen to their garbage on TV don’t know any better….
Geez Baklava, where do I start? How about where we agree. The press is lazy and does a horrible job informing voters.
I don’t want this to become an economics lesson, but the impossibly high national debt, $9 Trillion — with a “T” — was raised primarily under the Reagan and Bush(43) administrations. Half of our yearly spending goes to Military and servicing the debt. Much of that debt is from previous unpaid military expenditures and “off-book” military spending like the Iraq and Afghan wars. This includes benefits for retired military personnel as well.
I’m not saying that this is wasted money or anything like that, so don’t put words in my mouth. You just should use realistic facts when talking about how “little” the military spending really costs. You MUST include the debt.
The debt really is it’s own entitlement since it’s handled under non-discretionary spending in the budget. And it’s growing at a greater rate than Social Security or Medicare. In fact, since SS and Medicare both are currently running at a surplus, they are used to reduce the debt from the rest of the budget.
If you got rid of SS and Medicare today, Government spending would actually go up since we would have to borrow more, and pay more interest, to meet all the other obligations.
Quit being fooled by these snake-oil salesmen who demonize all taxes and all social programs. They’ve been lying to you.
Mark Adams writes, “but the impossibly high national debt, $9 Trillion — with a “T” — was raised primarily under the Reagan and Bush(43) administrations.”
You are messing with the wrong guy. Look my friend over the last 50 years and you will see the amount of revenues into the government has been between 19% and 20% of GDP. Now graph out the spending as a percentage of GDP. You see up until 1974 that spending looked to stay with revenues. After 1974 spending has generally been about 22% – 23% of GDP. You can’t sustain HIGHER spending and SPENDING is the issue. If spending is the issue there are two things you can blame:1) Presidents didn’t veto enough spending bills – this can’t be the answer because Reagan tried and shutdown the government with his veto’s
2) Congress and specifically the House of Representatives where all spending bills have to originate SPENT TOO MUCH.
Mark writes, “Much of that debt is from previous unpaid military expenditures and “off-book” military spending like the Iraq and Afghan wars. This includes benefits for retired military personnel as well.”
Please state for us all what the spending is for these things and what percentage of the budget that represents… You’ll see where I’m going once you put that on paper. It’s actually small. It makes the 19% grow to um…. 20% ugh…
One thing you seem to do is argue debt and deficit getting things confused. Yes debt has accumulated. Spending is the problem. It isn’t military spending that is the problem.
Mark wrote, “In fact, since SS and Medicare both are currently running at a surplus,”
True. But it doesn’t negate the fact that these things are larger and larger expenditures PER year and are a larger and larger percentage of the budget as compared to everything else. And at the point where there are less contributors than before and more takers we have a serious problem. We need a huge change in attitude about these programs. Bush was trying to take 6% of contributions and make them part of personal investments that became your own that you could pass down to your kids. Democrats demonized that idea as a bad idea but actually that is the diretion we should head and it should be greater than 6%.
Mark wrote, “Quit being fooled by these snake-oil salesmen who demonize all taxes and all social programs.”
Not being fooled by anyone. I can recite numbers to you backward and forward… Per year spending.. as a percentage of the budget spending.. etc.
I can tie in revenues into the argument to show you that spending is the problem and I know in relation to all the other spending how things look. Hope you understand what all I said.
There’s only one meaning for “bipartisan” as it’s used by a liberal: the conservatives roll over and toe the liberal line. B. Hussein’s use of the word is no different than that of any other liberal.
I get it Baklava, and please don’t talk down to me as if I don’t understand the difference between accumulated debt and the yearly budget shortfalls called the deficit. I understand the difference as well as their relationship. Since I believe you do as well, I cannot understand why you would only use the misleading 19% figure for military expenses. It leaves out veteran’s benefits, and no doubt huge chunk of the State Department’s budget earmarked for Blackwater et al.
Forget about Blackwater, but just take half of the interest on the debt we’re paying and add that to ON-budget military expenditures. You must agree that one of the principle contributors to that debt we’re paying interest on is accumulated budget shortfalls due to military expenses. Things like Katrina add to the off-budget stuff directly added to the national debt, but certainly we can agree that half the debt is military related.
Take that half of the interest payments ($121 Billion of ’07’s $243 Billion interest payments) plus Vets ($72 Billion) and we are at 25% of the budget as military. Now look at the fact that Iran and Afghanistan are OFF-budget, 100% payable this year as service on the debt and you can see where only calling debt service attributable to military spending as roughly half of that line item is low, way low. The REAL military cost to the government is closer to 30%. Not 19%.
And since you understand the growth in spending as a percentage both of the yearly budget (it’s contribution towards the national debt) and it’s portion of GDP are rising and at a 50 year high in adjusted dollars (buying power), you will also agree that from a growth perspective, the spending on servicing the debt (which as you know is just paying the interest and covering overhead expenditures as well as payouts to those cashing out) is growing at a faster rate than the social safety net entitlements. It’s on track to surpass them in the near to mid term (20 to 45 years) at current rate of increasing expenditures. It rose at a rate of 13.4%/yr in the last budget.
Debt service is the fastest growing part of the budget — and it’s non-discretionary. On-budget Military only rose 9%, Vets 5.8%. The two programs that pay for themselves and help pay down the rest, Social Security and Medicare rose at 7% and 12.4% respectively. Medicaid and unemployment/welfare only rose 2.9% and 2% last year — the only budget items that grew at a slower rate than these programs were education (1.3%) and energy (0.0%). And these are the programs conservatives are still riled about.
Having our kids fight our wars, and expecting them to pay for it later, plus interest, is going to destroy us all — besides the fact that it’s morally bankrupt. You can’t grow yourself out of this problem as long as you ignore the problem exists. You’ve got to get the Pentagon to live within it’s means. Trust me, our security won’t suffer, only the bank accounts of stockholders in Raetheon and McDonald-Douglas.
Your 19% figure is correct and misleading at the same time. Add in Vets and the portion of the debt that is serviced under the current budget that was originally attributable to the military but was passed on to succeeding generations and you damn well know that saying the current military budget is small in comparison to the rest of the budget is smoke and mirrors. It’s fully a quarter to a third of all spending. And we spend more on military — on-budget — than all the other nations of the world combined. I thinks there’s some room for cuts there.
Oh, and the figures I used for debt service are just what was included in the budget. Typically, they were trying to mask how bad things really are. Actual pay-outs on interest cost $430 Billion, $186 Billion more than they alloted for it. Guess how they pay for that shortfall? Deficit spending of course. So we’re actually borrowing more money to pay the interest on the money we already borrowed, paying even more interest on it. If you or I tried to do that, they’d throw us in jail.
Every dime spent on the current two wars are Off-Budget, “emergency” and “supplemental” appropriations. That means that every dime ends up costing 11 cents in the long run and is the biggest portion of the yearly deficit attributable to servicing the debt.
Truman, Ike, Kennedy, Johnson, Nixon, and Carter wiped out most of the World War II debt. And at absolutely confiscatory rates of some 90% on incomes over $1 Million/yr until Kennedy’s tax cut. Since Reagan came to power, we’ve been demonizing each other over a fluctuation of 12.5 percent difference in the marginal tax rate on the highest wage earners. That is less than a third of what it was under Ike. That’s it really. We’ve been beating each other on whether folks making over $200-K/Yr will pay 38.5% or 26% — or less if you guys get your way.
Astounding, and intellectually dishonest if you ask me when I hear folks call the Democrats irresponsible tax and spenders — especially when the line item on the yearly budget that has consistently increased at the fastest rate is service on the debt — which is simply hiding the hand outs to the industrial/military complex Ike warned us about — a line item that went up most dramatically under two GOP administrations, Reagan and Bush (43).
You cannot dispute that the largest contributor to towards the debt is the gaping black hole at the Pentagon. The waste on Star Wars alone boggles the mind. Cost overruns, fraud, and cost-plus no-bid contracting are just par for the course there.
Medicare and Soc.Sec. revenue and expenditures do indeed fluctuate as a function of population and age differential, it’s fine (surplus) for now, looks to be approaching a break even point in the near to mid term, and is projected to even out over the century. We don’t hide it off-budget, and it brings in enough to cover the other entitlements. The Pentagon is just a gaping hole. Remember how we all laughed when Wolfowitz said the Iraq War would pay for itself? The cost of paying just the interest on the debt doesn’t fluctuate. It goes in one direction: up and it comes mostly from the DOD.
The “fix” for Soc.Sec. is not some ponzi scheme based on weeding out the suckers who will enrich Wall Street brokers, and cull the excess accumulated cash flow the current surplus represents by bursting the eventual bubble the scheme will create — give it about 25 years of privatization of Soc.Sec. and that’s where you end up — some folks are going to lose their shirts and either starve or demand the government bail them out.
But since this is just ordinary folks and not some financial institution or energy or automobile company who’s demise would hurt the economy (read, Wall Street and K-Street), as long as they don’t come out marching down Pennsylvania Avenue with a justifiable lust for blood, they’ll get screwed. That’s what your privatization of Social Security will get you. That’s why it IS the third rail. The promise our government made in creating the Social Safety net, that trust, is what keeps Hoovervilles and Bonus Marches from returning — hopefully. (And yes, I consider the GI-Bill part of the Social Safety net.)
You want to risk blood on the streets in 40-50 years, mess with Social Security.
The Social Security “fix” is means testing disbursements and lifting the cap on the upper echelon of wage earners. Nothing truly drastic (except for those who consider any increase on anyone’s taxes against their religion).
Social Security is NOT in crisis, and even with a 15% cut in benefits with no attempt at fixing the revenue stream, it can continue indefinitely. All we’re seeing now is the bump from the kids of the people (the legacy) who got paid when the system started and nobody had paid in yet. You want to examine a real “crisis,” Medicare/Medicaid is in crisis Right. Now. Health savings accounts do nothing to solve this problem, and no proposal from the current regime attempts to fix it. Other than scrapping the thing, care to offer any suggestions. I’m all ears.
Pushed your button. I’ll address where you are wrong later…. keep coming back.
Notice that veterans benefits is INCLUDED in the budget .
Notice the amount of spending in each category as a percentage of the entire amount.
We are up to a 3 TRILLION dollar budget. 40 years ago 50% of the budget was spent on defense. Now it is 19% or 20%.
The deficit problem you keep referring to won’t be fixed even if you cut defense 25% from 20% of the budget to 15% of the budget. Why? Because the rapidly growing entitlement expenditures as well as every other utopian spending idea.
Things are referred to as cuts by the lying liberals and media when in reality each year spending in EACH category goes up in nominal dollars.
Study the charts. FOLLOW the links. Don’t be negligent. To do so is a failure on your part not mine.
It’s fine to have different ideas for solutions. It’s not ok to get black and white facts wrong, be presented a correction and then continue misinforming people.
For Baklava and Mark Adams: The effects of the military-industrial complex on our nation:
Vets are indeed included in the budget, as a separate line item from your 19% military expenditure. I thought I was clear.
Bull. Explain the surplus under the obviously dystopian Clinton administration.
Did I mention Social Security and Medicare pay for themselves and a lot more?
What the heck is your definition of “rapidly” increasing? Education up by 1.3%, unempoyment/welfare up 2%, Medicaid for the poor up 2.9%. What’s “rapidly increasing is Defense at 9% growth ON-Budget — not including the wars! Add in the war cost an DOD is up 100% INCREASED expenditures per year. The wars double DOD’s share of spending.
Besides, just because something that helps isn’t the complete cure is no reason to reject it. Don’t let the perfect be the enemy of the good.
Let’s just take the wars. CBO is projecting a total cost of $1 Trillion (BTW, we were lied to about that from the start). Add to that cost another %705 Billion in interest on what it takes to borrow to pay for it. Your mileage may vary, but I don’t think it’s worth it — at least not the way we’re doing it. I might feel differently if we were concentrating on Afghanistan instead of Iraq.
CBO says the total combined cost of both wars will be $2.4 Trillion (with a “T”) before all is said and done — and that’s if we get out in ten years. It’s outrageous from a fiscal standpoint and morally reprehensible just as a human being to watch the administration demand this money like a petulant child and veto expansion of health care for kids — twice. Our country has lost it’s very soul.
Did we really “need” to build the USS Reagan or GHW Bush? Couldn’t one of them waited until the Mission was Accomplished in Iraq? Did we “need” to deploy an anti-missile system in Alaska that doesn’t work? Do we “need” to be building those “enduring” bases in Iraq?
If this government took care of it’s own responsibly — not hand outs, just some of the compassion we were promised — the Defense Department can play all the games it wants to as far as I’m concerned. But these people are screwing us with our own money.
I’ll vote Obama when he revels himself to be the last son of Krypton.
Ka’el! Ka’el! Ka’el!
Mark asked, “Explain the surplus under the obviously dystopian Clinton administration.
Simple math. Revenues came in large numbers during the pre y2K bubble economy. Revenues dropped afterwards. This happened for every state budget as well. Had nothing to do with each governor or the president. Revenues flow in as a percentage of the economy because of taxes.
Mark uses distortion tactics by saying, “CBO is projecting a total cost of $1 Trillion”
First, some of the war costs are on budget and some are off. I try to stick to the conversation about the budget because it makes it less confusing for ya. The obvious effect of you lumping in 7 years of war costs is that you FAILED to say what that cost was PER year. Per year it is a small percent compared to a 3 trillion dollar budget. My point is lost on you. We used to spend 50% of the budget on defense 40 years ago. Do you Mark recognize that?
Mark is now a KNOWS LIAR with this quote, “and veto expansion of health care for kids — twice.”
What the president pushed for was an expansion to SCHIP. What he vetoed was an expansion that would cover families at 400% above poverty level. Words mean things. Black and white numbers are real. You need to accept reality before you write I think. Because lying doesn’t persuade – it does the opposite.
Mark asked, “Did we really “need” to build the USS Reagan or GHW Bush? ”
Yes. We need to remain free and therefore make investments in the defense of this nation.
Military Keynesianism – an excerpt from a recent article by Chalmers Johnson. Read it all at
LINK
Tom, It’s because we keep the world free to prosper.
Go back to the treaties we signed after WW2 and you see why many countries have no defense and we provide it.
Going to an era of no security and no defense is not the answer no matter how much utopia someone wishes for.
Don’t do me any favors. It’s the flim-flam of the off-budget shenanigans which is now simply accepted as business as usual that is creating the problem — and used primarily to obscure and confuse — not the other way around.
You figured it out, I thought I was clear in my distinction and fairly laid out the facts. I’ll type slower next time. The total cost was a projection to 2017, hence my saying it was a valid estimate if we got out in ten years, not the seven we’re already budgeted for. As for cost per year, that looks like a simple division problem, but I was a Political Science major. I let other people Do The Math.
Your point is irrelevant to me, not lost. Do you understand my point? Or do you simply want to ignore the simple fact that we are on an unsustainable course that is correctable if ideology and dreams of a world wide commercial empire (Krauthammer’s words, not mine) are scaled back some?
And that was during a period where the marginal tax rate was 50% to 90% on the top 10%. And I agree that as a percentage of spending DOD has made room at the top for the social programs since then. DOD has hardly suffered, however, mainly due to the nature of how revenue for Soc.Sec and Medicare is raised.
It’s a zero sum game since you can eliminate these programs that pay for themselves and not effect DOD ability to one Dollar. Actually, as you know, since DOD borrows from the Social program surpluses, DOD would be causing even more debt because it couldn’t suck at the teat of FICA anymore.
Baby, meet bathwater. When they eliminate (privatize for those of you who only watch FOX News) Social Security, what are the plans for making up the shortfall in revenue created by the elimination of the surpluses they create?
Name calling is hardly persuadable either. What we have here is a difference in characterization, incompatible perceptions. 1) He veto’d the bills. 2) They would have expanded children’s health care. These are indisputable truths and that is what I said. The rest of what you said about the bill and me is sophistry and demagoguery. The fact that I didn’t include the president’s talking points is hardly a reason to accuse me of mendacity.
“Spin” is not something worth shutting down avenues of communication by resorting to a rhetorical pissing match. In that spirit, I accept your apology.
that’s a cop-out. You avoided the real question and got all patriotic on me. I was asking about the means to get to the goal of protecting this country. Your answer ignores the question of means and merely restates the agreed upon goal. Moreover, your goal is understated. I didn’t ask if we needed a military at all. Watch for specifics here. We “need” an perpetually modernizable carrier-based navy to project power and secure the the free flow of goods and people required to keep the global economy running. My question had more to do with the idea of whether we had enough for the time being.
As for Missile Defense Shields. I just don’t get why we would deploy something that doesn’t work and still needs more R&D before it got field tested (if that’s what we’re doing) as a full fledged system deployment. Okay, it’s a personal pet peeve, (and against my interest since I own some raetheon stock). but the thing is a make-work boondogle.
Anyway, my real question was was a matter of degrees and timing, the marginal utility of bringing the last two carriers on line, not whether we should have such a fleet at all. I do know those Post WWII treaties you speak of, intimately. I can assure you that for someone not employed by the State Department, I’ve read and studied them far more than the average person both as an organizer of several Model UN Conferences back when I was a young buck and the international law classes I enjoyed back then.
I find it confusing that someone who would defend the President on one issue would bring up the framework those treaties created which Bush has unilaterally abrogated with such callousness. Come on. This is the guy who put Bolton at the UN when the Senate was out of town.
Mark wrote, “The fact that I didn’t include the president’s talking points”
The proposal had clear increases. You can call the increases talking points or continue lying.
Mark is so confused with BDS that he actually thought I was defending the president. My words concerned the facts on the pieces of paper.
Your words get all wrapped up in distortions about someone’s intentions which you would never possibly know…….
nor could you know, yet you presume to make a diagnosis as to my mental state (BDS) because I stated 2 indisputable facts. SCHIP was an expansion of health care for children. It was vetoed, twice.
How you can conclude this statement makes me a liar says more about you than me, I’m afraid.
His proposal was an expansion of health care for children. The bill sent before the president was irresponsible.
Your original statement was:
Again. His proposal was an expansion.
After seven years of signing statements, I’m sure he thinks he gets to write the laws as well as sign/veto and execute them. That’s just not the way it works. He vetoed an expansion.
Whether his expansion was more responsible than the expansion that was enacted by Congress — the body charged with writing such documents — really doesn’t change the facts and is simply a matter of opinion colored by ideology — but hardly grounds to call me a liar.
Again, I accept your apology.
He vetoed a irresponsible expansion. The current funding levels are an increase over each previous year.
Sorry you lost.
Because you lied.
Whatever makes you happy.
Welp. You can’t deny the black and whiteness of increases every year.
Mark would have you believe we could spend so much on the military because the high tax rates brought in more revenue. Wrong. Actually, Mark is making Bak’s point. The higher marginal rates had the effect of reducing revenue – witness the windfall for the government after the JFK, Reagan, and Bush tax cuts. So the military was getting 50% of a smaller pie, not a larger one. So after the tax cuts, where did all that extra money go? To the war machine? Well, no. Entitlements of one sort or another. Interestingly, Mark never refers to those programs as “black holes”…that’s a term he reserves for the Pentagon.
So Mark’s economic vision is one of very high taxation, massive and continually growing entitlements, and a military that subsists, relatively speaking, on spitballs (to use Zell Miller’s apt phrase), all the while ignoring the islamofascist threat (because, in Mark’s disdainful words, wanting to invest in America’s security is “going all patriotic on me”). That’s a good game plan if your goal is to ruin an economy. Not so much, if you want to grow and prosper.
So what color is the sky on your planet, Mark?
The nice thing about military spending is how much you get for your dollar compared with social programs aimed at subsistence level people.
You pay the troops, they pay taxes back, in addition to providing both national security and assistance in natural disasters.
You pay the Eeeevil military industrial complex, you not only get a product (Humvees, tanks, aircraft) you get money back from both corporate taxes, and from taxes on the workers.
And in addition you get technological advances that spin off to the civilian sector.
So, for every dollar spent, you get a fair amount in taxes back. But, let’s instead spend it as a handout to people who won’t work, for example, and see how little we get back in taxes compared to military spending. The poor don’t pay taxes.
GWR and Sev, you are so right. Revenues were always about 19% – 20% of GDP no matter what the punitive or non-punitive tax rates were. The higher tax rates only served to retard the economy for a number of years until they were lowered from 70% to 28% in 1982. Then the revenues shot up from 550 Billion per year to 990 Billion per year by 1989 because the economy surged and all income classes prospered.
Sev wrote, “The nice thing about military spending is how much you get for your dollar compared with social programs aimed at subsistence level people.”
This is an incredibly important point. Investments in our security and in merchandise that projects power is very useful in that there are people learning and producing and the research and development increases our superiority. The government awarding contracts to the more productive companies who have more ingenuity is a system that far exceeds Russia’s where people were just paid to work and produce military hardware.
Sadly, no.
But it did enable us to pay off the WWII debt.
Guys, the Laffer Curve is a curve, you eventually reasch the point of diminished returns, unlike the debt, most of which is attributable to deficit spending on the military. That doesn’t graph out to a curve, but is a straight diagonal up and to the right — at a much faster pace than the entitlements.
It will eventually overtake the entitlements.
It is a feature, not a bug of Grover Norquist’s goal of starving the beast.
It will, if unchecked not only make the social programs suffer, but will strangle the Pentagon as well.
Not all military spending is bad, just the dumb and wasteful spending. Back to Barack Obama which started this thread. I’m not against all wars, just dumb ones. That is his best line and although I’m not a supporter of his or Hillary, I agree with the sentiment.
Ah, Mark, the typical liberal, someone who’s generous with other people’s money.
Mark wrote with disdain for security of the nation, “most of which is attributable to deficit spending on the military”
uh that’s our point. No it isn’t. Military spending has diminished over the years Mark from 50% of the budget to 19% Period. You can see a graph. You can see the line go down and down and down over a 40 year period.
It is NOT the problem. What is the spending problem Mark is the 81% of spending that is everything else. Period.
Mark wrote the LIE again, “hat doesn’t graph out to a curve, but is a straight diagonal up and to the right — at a much faster pace than the entitlements.”
uh no. It’s gone from 50% of the budget 40 years ago to 19% of the budget.
Mark shows no command of the facts by writing, “It will eventually overtake the entitlements”
You have it in the reverse. At this point you are being negligent and lazy. You have been informed of your lying.
Wrong again, Mark. The 90% tax rates didn’t help us pay off the debt. Rather, they delayed the payment. Had the JFK tax cuts been done sooner, the fed’s revenue would have increased sooner, and the debt retired faster.
So if paying off the WWII debt – or the debt we have today, for that matter – were important to you, you’d be looking for the optimal point on the Laffer curve, not for the 90% marginal rate area which stifles investment, costs jobs, and reduces federal tax receipts.
But that’s not really what you’re interested in, is it? From what you’ve posted here, your main goal is to pare down the military and watch every nickel they spend – a diligence you utterly refuse to apply to any entitlement programs. Your secondary aim seems to be tossing around the standard leftist “punish the rich” meme. If someone has a dollar more than you, it must be confiscated in the name of some perverted sense of social justice. You really don’t care if those policies cause economic downturns and less money for your precious entitlements in the long run – as long as you feel good about sticking it to the evil rich and the corporations. It may not make any economic sense, but name me a leftist idea that does.
GW, you’re putting words in my mouth and assuming intent on my part, setting me up as a leftist strawman and striking out against the wind. The 90% rate is obviously as stupid as a 10% rate. You actually proved my point. I’m called a liar and leftist, made out to be a fool when my point was that over the last few decades the left and right have been beating on each other over a 12.5% rate change, the Bush rate vs.s the Clinton rate. Well done. You get a cookie for knowing what I care about and what I don’t. Can you guess what I think of your argument?
Baklava: Just so I know how much of a liar I am, how much of that Heritage Foundation graph is attributing debt service and military retirement pay as part of the mandatory spending? I take it you are agreeing that the majority of debt service stems from over and off budget military cost. And is that graph using real dollars or adjusting for inflation as a percentage of GDP (actual buying power). I can’t tell from the graph and I’d like to compare apples to apples if possible. Factoring spending as function of GDP reveals a much flatter chart.
I can link interesting graphs too. From the looks of it, the debt was dropping pretty steadily from Truman on, leveled off when Nixon got in power, skyrocketed during Reagan/Bush, went down again from the Ike-like percentage of GDP it reached under GHW Bush up until Clinton began paying it down again, and Bush (43) pushed it back to Ike levels.
And BTW, read what I wrote again. I was talking about the rate of increase of the debt and military spending vs a much slower rate of increase for the social programs.
Let me try and explain it this way:
Here’s the Rate of increase in ‘07 budget over ‘06 budget:
Military or mostly military:
Debt service rose 13.4% over last year.
On-budget Military rose 9%
Vets 5.8%
Unfunded social programs:
Medicaid 2.9%
unemployment/welfare 2%
education 1.3%
Fully funding Social Programs:
Security 7%
Medicare 12.4%
Now, Medicare is as much a problem with a whole different argument, what to do about health care, but most of it is from rising cost industry wide. Either way, since it and Soc.Sec. are running in the black, they pay down the debt, the biggest item when charting the marginal rise in spending per item.
Oh, and don’t forget the wars which aren’t even budgeted and go straight to the cost of the debt.
I know it’s redundant, especially when you are so fond of repeatedly calling me a liar, but really, are you daft?
And it was by design. The White House itself stated that Bush has increased military spending by a third over his first term. Now if you factor in inflation, the much smaller rates of increase on the social programs (at least the unfunded ones) would be considered a reduction as a percent of GDP.
You realize the more you call me a liar over things I am not lying about only makes you look foolish. Misguided or uninformed would be better things to call me when a plain reading of what I wrote shows not a hint of mendacity on my part.
See Baklava, when you were referring to what I said about Soc.Sec. and Medicare, you were quite mistaken when you said:
They are not. Your blanket statement is not born out by the facts.
Now, not to burst your bubble that you are some kind of guru when it comes to reciting facts and figures better than everyone, you were wrong. I can’t put it any nicer and would hate to think you deliberately lied about this simple fact.
Opinions are one thing. They can change and should adapt in the face of changing facts. Facts don’t change, they don’t lie. If you insist on continuing this childish display, I take it that your offer to return here was to fulfill some foolish desire throw rhetorical stones and not engage in an adult discussion. That’s sad, because you seem to grasp the language well enough, you just don’t have the intellectual honesty to admit when you may have been in error. Too bad.
Got LOL at this thread.
Folks comparing the numbers using GDP when up to a few years ago numbers were based on GNP, as just one example.
Numbers recited that are optimally coerced to reflect one side of an argumenet. “Truth in politics”? Jebus H. Keee-rist.
Being an accountant, I’ve often heard the expression “The numbers don’t lie”. I know from personal exerience that they can be manipulated to “stretch” the truth though.
For example, increase military spending.
Duh.
When it is slashed to 19% due to a non-existant “peace dividend” of course it will be increased once we go to war. Without looking at exact numbern increase of “one-third” will still only make it les than 25% of the entire budget wghich is less than half of what it once was.
I would hope that the increase of spending on the military is rising at a faster rate than socila programs.
*Shrug*
No matter, most is fiscally irresponsible in both the social and military spending as the governemet is terrribly innefficient at ANYTHING the do.
Please, continue your discussion though. I will no longer interfere.
A military strong enough, well equipped enough, and with enough manpower to take whatever natural resources we need is my idea of an effective energy policy.
Military spending needs to be back at 50% of the budget again. Given the nature of the world we live in and the threats we face that might even be too little.
Well golly gee, Mark…you mean you didn’t laud the 90% taxation rate as the reason for paying off the WWII debt? In that case, you’d better find out who’s posting here in your name, because he has no grasp of basic economics and is making you look foolish.
As for whether you fit comfortably into the leftist ensemble, let’s consider:
You find nothing wrong with a Social Security ponzi scheme that even most liberal economists agree is in trouble – well, nothing that can’t be fixed with (what else) a hefty tax increase.
You concede Baklava’s numbers showing the reduction of military spending from 50% of budget to 19% – and conclude that somehow means the military’s share of the pie is increasing. On that, I’ll be charitable and assume were you standing on your head when you looked at the same graphs Baklava used.
And then there’s the blubbering about the vetos of the SCHIP expansion, which was a vote-buying gimmick to expand the program into the middle and even upper-middle class. The ironic thing is that the reason for the veto is that the expansion did NOT target those who should benefit from the plan, but whether a program is actually useful seems to be less important to you than how much it can be spent on it. Military excepted, of course.
Leftist? If it walks like a duck and quacks like a duck…
By the way, when you rail against the evil military industrial complex, you might try to get the company names right. It’s McDonnell Douglas, not McDonald-Douglas. They made aircraft, not hamburgers. And the company hasn’t existed as such for over 10 years since it was acquired by Boeing. You really need to stop using that yellowing copy of the Daily Worker as your reference.
I gave that about a nanosecond of consideration, which is more than it merits, and concluded that I don’t give a rip.
GWR wrote, “You concede Baklava’s numbers showing the reduction of military spending from 50% of budget to 19% – and conclude that somehow means the military’s share of the pie is increasing.”
Thus I gave up.
Pegged it pretty well GWR, just another leftist troll who is generous to a fault, only with other people’s money. Never met a social program, no matter how corrupt or ineffective, that he didn’t like and want increased. Never met a military expenditure he didn’t want to cut, regardless of the deleterious impact on the safety and security of the country.
Nothing new here, just another leftist cut out in the standard cookie cutter mold, identical to every other little budding communist.