Forget it, Jake. It's Chinatown.Follow

Remember back in January when the President said he was forming a bipartisan debt panel by executive order to try and rein in the country's financial situation? The first fruits of that were revealed today with a plan that would supposedly reduce the debt by $4 trillion over the next ten years, reduce the deficit to 2.2% of GDP in five years, retain Social Security's solvency and comes with a host of spending cuts and tax changes. Highlights include:

- Increase the retirement age to 68 by 2050 and to 69 by 2075
- Reductions in some Social Security benefits and some taxation for high income seniors
- Raise payroll taxes to prop up Social Security
- Lower the federal tax rates, both corporate and personal income but...
- ...eliminate mortgage interest credits for mortgages over $500,000
- ...eliminate the Child Tax Credit
- ...cap tax deductible employer health care expenses
- ...change other parts of the tax code and close various loopholes
- ...raise gasoline taxes by fifteen cents per gallon
- Eliminate approximately $100 billion in defense spending including...
- ...freeze noncombat military pay for three years
- ...freeze Defense Department salaries for three years
- ...eliminate 33% of overseas bases
- ...enroll children on bases in public schools rather than on-base schooling
- Eliminate $100 billion in other domestic spending including...
- ...eliminate Congressional earmarks
- ...cut White House budget by 15%
- ...cut 250,000 contractors
- ...cut federal work force by 10%
- ...eliminate funding for the Corporation for Public Broadcasting
- ...eliminate commercial space flight budget
- Cap annual cost increases for Medicare/Medicaid
- Enact malpractice suit tort reform
- Lower Medicare payments to physicians

You can guess how well this is going over in Washington. Several people on both sides of the aisle have already said "Hell, no" to the suggestions. The seven Republicans on the panel said they would not support any plan that raises taxes. Democrats have said they will not support any plan that cuts benefits to Medicare/Medicaid or Social Security. Numerous articles about the suggestions use the phrase "third rail" when describing the cuts to not only social services but also defense.

Now the equivocation is "Well, this is just a starting point and has some interesting suggestions". Does anyone think there's actually going to be useful compromise here or anyone willing to take a serious blow to their herds of sacred cattle? I've long said that hearing either party talk about fiscal balance was a joke until someone was willing to plainly say how they'd handle defense and the major entitlements. I can't imagine that that'll change now.

Late edit: "Reign in"? Sheesh.

Edited, Nov 11th 2010 8:08am by Jophiel

That's a funny list, for sure. It's like the Dems wrote their list down, then the GOP wrote theirs down, and then they just kinda combined them into one big list. Brilliant! Also, doomed to failure.



It's theater. While I suppose it's possible that something reasonable might just come out of this eventually (I wont hold my breath though), if this is the list of what they've got so far, it seems pretty obvious that both sides are just writing down stuff they know the other side will object to so that neither side has to give anything up. The only thing "bi-partisan" that will come out of this appears to be the rejection of the list.


IMO, if the goal is to reduce spending the wrong approach is to start with the stuff nobody agrees on and to which many people have strong and long standing attachments for one reason or another (social security, defense spending, space exploration, etc). It would seem more prudent and practical to start out by looking at things which we aren't yet attached to, and which would get us benefits right now. Something like canceling the new spending done over the last couple years would be a great start. If we're serious about this that is. We get an immediate savings, no one is yet attached to the programs that money is allocated for, and while it wont be a complete fix, it gets us in the right direction (or at least stops us from going in the wrong direction).


Dunno. It just seems like insisting on a "solve the really hard stuff first or do nothing" approach is one you'd adopt if you really don't want anything to get fixed at all.

Yeah, I was a bit skeptical of what I heard, but was only in the car for about ten minutes so I didn't hear all of the piece. I guess I really have nothing to add here.


About par for me, then.

I read about it this afternoon. IMO, doesn't go far enough - bang the SS age up to 69 by 2050 and 71 by 2075, if not higher. People live longer - they should expect to work longer. I don't see Social Security being solvent without drastic measures. Honestly, these would be GREAT positions for a reasonable compromise, but I HIGHLY doubt that'll happen. No one wants to give up the freebies their voters get, be it military spending that benefits contractors, SS that benefits elders, or benefits that help working families.

Agree with the "doomed to failure" choice. I almost wish we had someone to take control and force it through. No one likes hard decisions that take away things from you, but honestly it's necessary if we don't want to ***** over future generations.

One thing you can't say is that the administration has no plan to reduce our debt. However, giving such a "radical" plan is almost akin to saying "Haha, we'll never pass this." I'm sure the House Majority leader will have an equally unlikely, if less detailed, plan in the upcoming weeks.

Pragmatist that I am, depending on how deep the tax cuts go and how much the payroll tax increased, I could get behind enacting that list as written.

Good grief.

Everything should be done by robots by then anyway.

Yeah, looking at that list, I don't think it'd do anything close to what's being claimed even if it did all go through.

Really, the ideal situation is:

* Bankrupt all entitlement programs as quickly as possible without funneling the money to other things.
* Reduce tax rates to between 0.4% and 3%.
* Drop all government services to nothing until we get caught back up on all our outstanding debt.
* The President, Vice-President, and all members of Congress no longer get paid.

This will ensure the complete destruction of the deficit within an extremely short timespan.

Hmm, how about we start tarifing the **** out of anything China buys, and tax the crap out of any corporation that moves their workforce overseas but still operates in the U.S. to evade U.S. labor costs.

A large gas tax is a mistake. Regardless of the actual yearly cost, the percieved impact will be huge. Washington State currently has the highest gas tax in the nation, and we've cranked it up so high that we actually saw a huge drop in the number of trips taken this year overall, much larger drop than the rest of the nation statistically speaking, and starting immidiatly from when the latest gas tax went into effect. We've also seen a huge increase in electric vechicle purchases, and biodesial, which is exempt from the tax. Thats good, except that those same vehicles still put wear and tear on the roads, but are now no longer funding them. I'd favor a flat yearly vehicle tax, eliminate gas tax entirely, adjust it based on purpose and type of vehicle, also on weight of vehicle as heavier units do more damage to roads over time. That will however never happen. Also, a high speed north south west coast rail corridor for freight would get a huge number of trucks off the road every year and dramatically improve the lifespan of interstate 5 between repaving.

The space program is important. I'd have to see more details on what they actually want to cut there, but if its their much touted "let the civilians build the next shuttle" program, that coupled with constellation cancellation and cessation of the shuttle program essentially means we cede all presence in space for the forseeable future. I know we won't get a permanent colony established in my lifetime unless I upload myself to the machine collective, but we need to start thinking about ways to do so. Orbital power satilites are relitivly cheap and efficient with no atmosphere to get in the way of the sunlight. Microwave transmission to a power collector in space is easy and safe. What we cna't do yet is build a space tether of some sort to make that feasable and allow us easy access to orbit. We should dramatically increase the space budget to make that occur, because we are close on several fronts, and that would essentially solve our energy issues for the forseeable future. Well that, and the National ignition lab funding needs to be increased.

Public broadcasting corportation, what I think they should do is make it a tax incentive for the other broadcast companies to fund it, or at least offer production / technical space. Not sure how feasable that would be long term, but it might be worthwhile to look into.

The military base shutdown is a major mistake. We don't know where we will need a presence next, and a 1/3rd cut is likely to significantly impair our ability to apply force as needed. Once we cut those bases, we never get them back. Especially with the cuts already in place for the ford class aircraft carrier program we are going to have a carrier gap due to refit schedules as is right now. that coupled with a base shortage in the wrong area could be a problem.

Why is "Invade Canukistan and take all their stuffs!" not on the list? That's a viable option too!

The others, I either don't have an opinion on, or am not informed enough to even attempt an opinion on.


Edited, Nov 11th 2010 12:12am by trickybeck

That's a really, really good way to provoke a full-on actual war, with China saying, in effect, "Fine. We want paid back. In full. Tomorrow. If you don't, we're going to take what we're owed."

The best-case scenario that I see from this is a bunch of yelling and gnashing of teeth, followed by maybe one or two of these proposals passing. At least then everybody can say that they "care about the deficit" come November 2012.

"Eliminate waste & fraud" is what government officials say when they want to look like they're doing something without doing anything. Things like redundant staff would be included in the domestic spending cuts anyway.

What, exactly, is irresponsible about trying to shave off spending in bloated areas and adjustnig the tax code to balance the budget?