Re-inventing the languageFollow

There's a difference between making things sound better (like using the phrase "raising taxes" in a negative and distanced way like I pointed out earlier), and making things sound like they are the exact opposite of what they actually are.

The point of cutting government spending is to reduce the total cost of government. The point of doing that is to reduce the total amount of taxes which must be paid by the people to cover for that cost. The ultimate objective is to reduce that total amount of taxes (the economic footprint of the government).

Spending cuts are a means to achieve the goal of lower total taxes. A "spending cut" which is actually an increase in taxes runs completely counter to that objective. Using such a label deliberately to get the people to accept the opposite of what they want makes said language a lie. The clear intent is to deceive. He wants people to accept tax increases by relabeling them "spending cuts".

You do get this, right?

And Joph? We all know he's been talking about allowing those cuts to expire. But he lost that battle, didn't he? And what he's proposing now goes several steps beyond even that.

I feel what it really comes down to are the goals.

-Republicans want tax cuts. Best way to do that? Cut spending on social programs to make cuts for certain portions of the population more palatable.
-Democrats want social programs. Best way to do that? Raise taxes on a certain portion of the population using rhetoric to make it more palatable.
-The American population at large wants a balanced budget. Best, likely only, way to do that? Reduce spending (especially on the big three sacred cows: social security, defense, and Medicare/Medicaid) AND raise taxes.

And no party is offering that

Absolutely correct.




Here's my problem with that (the raising taxes part at least). You have to look at this with a broader perspective. If the Democrats can massively raise spending over a two year period of time, put us massively in debt as a result, and then the "compromise" is to cut spending *and* raise taxes, why wouldn't they just do this over and over?


The net effect over that period of time is not parity, but an increase in both taxes and spending. Tax rates did not change over the last decade or so. We're in a deficit crisis because spending increased massively. The conservatives should not have to sacrifice our position because the liberals pushed theirs so hard that they broke the economy. They should have to give up an amount of spending equal to what they increased.

That's "fair", right?

For 2011. It was a one year extension. He's saying he won't extend it again.

How far beyond that it goes (if any) really can't be said until there's some hard details.



Edited, Apr 13th 2011 5:51pm by Jophiel

Because only Dems do this, never the GOP! Hahhahahaahahahaahhaaa

it's not about blaming parties. it's about where the deficit came from. I'm going to show you some historical budget numbers to illustrate what I'm talking about:

 
Year    Revenue         Spending        Deficit         Debt% 
1980	19.0		21.7		-2.7		26.1 
1981	19.6		22.2		-2.4		25.8 
1982	19.2		23.1		-3.7		28.7 
1983	17.5		23.5		-6.0		33.1 
1984	17.3		22.2		-4.8		34.0 
1985	17.7		22.8		-5.3		36.4 
1986	17.5		22.5		-5.4		39.5 
1987	18.4		21.6		-3.6		40.6 
1988	18.2		21.3		-3.8		41.0 
1989	18.4		21.2		-3.8		40.6			 
1990	18.0		21.9		-4.8		42.1 
1991	17.8		22.3		-5.4		45.3 
1992	17.5		22.1		-5.5		48.1 
1993	17.5		21.4		-4.6		49.3 
1994	18.0		21.0		-3.7		49.2 
1995	18.4		20.6		-3.1		49.1 
1996	18.8		20.2		-2.3		48.4 
1997	19.2		19.5		-1.3		45.9 
1998	19.9		19.1		-0.3		43.0 
1999	19.8		18.5		0.0		39.4 
2000	20.6		18.2		0.9	        34.7 
2001	19.5		18.2		-0.3		32.5 
2002	17.6		19.1		-3.0		33.6 
2003	16.2		19.7		-4.9		35.6 
2004	16.1		19.6		-4.9		36.8 
2005	17.3		19.9		-4.0		36.9 
2006	18.2		20.1		-3.3		36.5 
2007	18.5		19.6		-2.5		36.2 
2008	17.5		20.7		-4.5		40.3 
2009	14.9		25.0		-11.0		53.5 
2010	14.9		23.8		-9.4		62.1 

These numbers are in %GDP values, so as to get a general sense of their relative size over a 30 year period of time. From this, we can see that revenue right now is abnormally low. That's because of the economic downturn. Businesses are not spending money on expansion. They're not creating jobs, and those people out of work are not paying taxes. The relevant point is that during most of Bush's term, total revenu was in the 16-18% range, and spending was around 19%. This resulted in deficits each year, but when you look at the debt percentage (that's debt held by public as a percentage of GDP), that value stays pretty steady in the mid 30% range.

What we see in 2008 is the predicted effects of a major economic slowdown. Revenue drops. Spending increases slightly (in this case because of a combination of negative GDP growth and the TARP spending). Debt percentage slightly increases as well.

What we see in 2009 and 1020 once Obama is in office and the Dems completely in control is that revenue drops more. we can debate why, but remember that there were no changes to the tax rates during this time period, so those are purely economic effects which should correct themselves without any need for tax changes. But look what else happens. Spending spikes massively. The government spent 25% of the entire US economy in 2009. That's unprecedented spending. And that's not because of GDP shrinkage. That's all "new spending". And look at the debt. We haven't had debt levels like this since WW2. In 2010, revenue still stays low. Spending drops a bit (but still way way way too high), and debt continues to skyrocket up to 62%!


The question before us is: What do we change to correct this? As I stated above, we did not change our tax code during 2008, or 2009, or 2010. Thus, the revenue figure isn't because of any change other than external. If we recover the economy, that revenue will return without any change needed. Raising the tax rates is the wrong answer. We didn't lower them to cause that drop. But we absolutely did increase spending. Now some of that was one time spending (stimulus stuff), which is why 2009 is higher than 2010. But a good portion of it is increases to ongoing programs that the Dems have tossed in during their drunken orgy of spending once they got full control of the government.

We can sit here and debate what was increased, but the numbers don't lie. We increased spending. And that spending isn't going down. That is a real "change" which our government made. And it's that change that is hurting us right now. Take away the spending increases and the deficits, while high, are manageable. Same with the debt percentage. With that spending left in place, our debt will continue to spiral out of control. You have to understand that since the debt is calculated as a percentage of GDP, and GDP tends to grow over time, there's an amount of dollar debt you can incur each year that doesn't add at all to the debt percentage. But if you go past that point, the debt will grow. And the more past it you go, the faster it grows. That's why one debt level is fine, but doubling it is a disaster. Tripling or quadrupling it is a mile past a disaster.


Note that our deficits were shrinking at the end of Bush's term. Barring the economic collapse, things were going in the right direction. What that means is that the tax and budget system in place at that time were working just fine. What we should be doing is only what needs to be done to weather the economic downturn while attempting to return to the tax and spending levels we had in 2007.

And at the risk of being obvious, we haven't changed the tax rates. We've only changed the spending levels. That's why us conservatives keep talking about cutting spending and *not* raising taxes. It's the spending that is killing us, not the tax rates.


I could go on and show you the adjusted dollar amounts, but this is long enough already. Suffice it to say that they show similar things, just in a different way. You can see even more clearly how the dollar amounts of spending equate into dollars of deficit and how those launch us into massive debt. And in case you're curious, it's that debt% that the markets look at when determining the risk of our debt. That's how they determine if a country is too much in debt or if the debt level is safe. We're well into the danger zone right now. Which in turn means that we can't get the same terms on our debt, meaning that a dollar borrowed costs us more, which puts us more in debt down the line paying it off, and we spiral out of control.


We need to cut spending. Not raise taxes. And this is why.

There's something that I don't understand, because I don't much about politics. I'm currently looking at Bill O'Reilly (Very Conservative) and Sen. Kucinich (Dem) gave different different numbers accrediting Pres. Clinton as setting up the country with success with less than $2 trillion (?) in debt and that Pres. Bush increased it by a trillion and now Pres Obama has done the same.. So what am I missing?

Edited, Apr 14th 2011 3:07am by Almalieque

Yeah, that's the explanation I always get when I ask. I'm kind of hoping someone without an over inflated paycheck that has nothing to lose from useless base closures could explain it.

Correct me If I am wrong but is Fiscal year 2009 (IE that glaring eyesore in that table) Bush's final fiscal year as far as budgets go? Hence that was really his recommended expenditures and not Obama's, and according to this table, under Obama's Fiscal Budget years spending has actually decreased.

Greenland is an excellent staging point to hit Iceland. Oh, and to help try and claim northern waters that you have very little right to.

Edited, Apr 13th 2011 10:30pm by Uglysasquatch

He said that last year too! We'll see how that goes. I'm not for a moment suggesting he doesn't want to raise those taxes, just that this isn't something the American people agree with him on. I guess my point being that when people understand that the issue is increased taxes, they oppose it. Which is presumably why the language change is being used here.



That's some "interesting" measuring of the deficits though. Some nice vague phrasing too! I'm assuming they just calculated the total dollar amount of the deficit that year and did some math. But that's not really a fair way of calculating it though, since it's the deltas that really matter. X amount of spending is ok, X+Y puts you over the top. It's somewhat ludicrous to simply calculate the percentage Y is of the total (X+Y) and conclude that Y only contributed a tiny amount to the problem.


I'm also still unsure where the hell they got their numbers, or what kind of magical math they used. Here's the numbers as I see them:

 
Year    Revenue         Spending        Deficit         Debt         Debt% 
2006	2,406.9		2,655.1		-434.5		4,829.0      36.5 
2007	2,568.0		2,728.7		-342.2		5,035.1      36.2 
2008	2,524.0		2,982.5		-641.8		5,803.1      40.3 
2009	2,105.0		3,517.7		-1,549.7	7,544.7	     53.3 
2010	2,161.7		3,455.8		-1,371.1	9,017.8      62.1 

I'm including 2006 and 2007 numbers to help establish a baseline, and including the deb% figure because it gives us a better idea of the actual relative "size" of the resulting debt.


From this we can see that the deficit in 2007 was "sustainable" since the debt ratio was actually decreasing. Thus, we can say that 434B over budget doesn't hurt us economically in the long run (as long as GDP growth remains relatively constant, and it's not like we're talking abnormally high GDP growth rates during this time period, so that's a reasonable assumption). This is our baseline for calculating where we went wrong. Let me again remind you that there were no tax changes during this time period. All revenue losses are due to economic downturn and not tax changes.

From that baseline we can see that in 2008 (the first year the downturn hit us), revenue only dropped slightly ($44B). Spending increased by $254B. This is reflected by a deficit increase of almost exactly $300B. Notice that by increasing from 342B to 641B we went from a Debt% that was decreasing to a debt% that increased by 4%. This illustrates what I'm talking about. Each dollar of deficit is not equal. We can presumably assume that most of the spending increases were due TARP costs incurred that year. We could certainly place this at Bush's feet. And we could even argue that the delta was 100% Bush's fault, since 100% of the increased deficit which resulted in an increasing debt% was the result of his actions (we'll ignore the contributions of the congress for the moment since it really doesn't matter in this case). Technically, it's more like 87/13, since about 13% of that drop was from the economy losing ground from our baseline.

Here's where it gets sticky though. In 2009, revenues dropped $419B. That's not good. However, spending went up $535B. Our deficit went up an additional $908B. We're well into danger territory, but where did the danger come from? Well, from our baseline, which we've established is sustainable, revenues dropped a total of $463B. And during that entire time, deficit increased by $1207B. Which means that economic losses account for 38% of the deficit delta (pretty close to the NYT numbers!). But what about the rest? We can simplify the math and just look at spending deltas each year and conclude that the spending increase of $535B is 44% of the deficit delta since 2007. That amount is 100% the "fault" of Obama and the Democrats since the GOP had no hand in (and in fact strongly opposed) the spending increases that year.

In case you're wondering, since I calculated the delta between 2009 and 2007, but included both years total revenue losses as "economic effects", and only the 2009 spending increases as "Obama's spending", the remaining 18% left over is the percentage of that total deficit delta which can be attributed to spending increases prior to Obama taking office. But let's check that math, just in case: 254/1207=.21. Hmmm... I'm off a bit, but I've been rounding numbers off as well, so that's close enough.

The point being that the numbers clearly show that by 2009, the largest single contributing factor to the deficit increase since the start of the "economic crisis" was from spending increases in 2009. The next largest was the revenue losses from the economic crisis itself, and the smallest factor was increases generated by the Bush administration.


Um... Obviously, your numbers will be different if you calculate the whole deficit number instead and attribute that starting 342B to Bush. Doing that gets you: Revenue loss 30%, Obama spending 34%, and Bush spending 38%. Still not exactly the NYT numbers either, but I'm sure they dug a bit deeper and managed to even more obfuscate the bigger picture in their calculations.


I just think that when figuring out why things were working before and aren't working now, we should look at what has changed. When we examine those deltas, it's very clear that there are two effects at work: decreased revenue from the downturn and increased spending. The decreased revenue isn't the result of a tax code change though, so we don't need to change anything (or at least we shouldn't). The increased spending is quite clearly the result of a political agenda which has sought to take advantage of the economic crisis to push its own social agenda and spend as much as possible while they had the power to do so. They did this in 2009 and 2010 and now the bill is coming due. But instead of being responsible and reversing the unwise spending, they're insisting that we "compromise" by raising taxes and cutting spending.


IMO, that's not a compromise. It wasn't a combination of tax cuts and spending increases that got us here, so it's unfair to argue that we need a combination of tax increases and spending cuts to get us out. Doubly so when one side is attempting to make some of those "spending cuts" in the form of actual tax increases. I honestly suspect that this is one of the reasons for the language being used. The Dems want to be able to point to those tax increases and call them spending cuts so that they can claim that they cut spending as well as increased taxes. Kinda like how they argued that they were "offering" 30B in cuts in the latest budget debate, when in fact that 30B was cuts that had already been agreed to and were mostly defense cuts the GOP had given up as their part of a "compromise" on the budget. So we're supposed to share in the cuts, the GOP offers up some cuts in the military and defense budgets, then the Dems claim those cuts as their own when arguing that they shouldn't have to give up spending on their precious social programs.


How many times do we have to watch this sort of underhanded game before the people take notice and realize that the Dems will do anything they can to avoid having to ever cut any real spending? It's pretty disgusting really. Made all the more worse by just how predictable the behavior is.

None of those things caused the current debt crisis. I'm focusing on the changes in spending and showing you why those things aren't the problem, but all the new stuff the Dems have pushed on us in the last couple years are. Maybe we should focus on those things and worry about the other stuff later?



By that argument everything we spend money on is a "huge chunk" of this deficit. And it's an irrelevant argument anyway. It's like looking at your credit card debt and noticing that over the last two years, you've gone from always paying off your balance every month to falling deep in debt but refusing to look at what changed during that time. That kinda foolish, isn't it?



Lol! That's funny.