WSJ "Obama speech most dishonest in decades"Follow

Finally, short, sweet, and to the point. See? That wasn't so hard - you didn't need a strawman to tell us how you really feel.

Yeah, roughly three hundred years.

I don't doubt that he's said he's going to do these things Joph. My problem is that history shows us that when it comes down to actually sitting at a table and cutting spending, the Dems fail to do it. Call it a "false promise" rather than a lie, but I still have no faith that his party will actually do what they're saying. It's not like we didn't just go through a whole round of them promising that their spending would be deficit neutral. Clearly, that is not the case. Why should we believe them this time?

I'd love for it to be true, but I'm not going to be Charlie Brown to their Lucy anymore, and I don't think the country wants to be either. But let's look at what he's promising.



That would be great. Still not even close to the amounts they've increased that spending by in recent years, but if they can actually reach that goal, it'll make a minor dent in spending. And that's something, I suppose.



We've already cut security spending. Heck. It's about the only thing we have cut. Mostly because the GOP is serious about cuts and the Dems are willing to cut this area. So far, the Dems have been unwilling to reciprocate by allowing even semi-equivalent cuts in things that they actually care about (which is pretty much the other 75% of the budget). We can't just keep cutting the military.



Yeah. This is vapor-savings and I think we all know it. I'd be shocked if there was ever a time when government promised to do things in a "more efficient" way so as to cut costs and actually managed to do it. I'm not holding out much hope for this at all. At the risk of being a broken record, weren't these the same promises made when they passed that big health care reform bill? How many times do they promise and not deliver before we just ignore their promises?




Interesting math there. So the expiring of the Bush tax rates on the wealthiest people will result in 320B in revenue, but the full effect of his tax changes would result in 1T. So where's the other 680B dollars going to come from? Remember when he promised no tax increases on anyone who made less than 200k a year? I'm thinking he's not going to make all that money just by taxing rich people and corporations more. And if he tries, he'll find that they take their money elsewhere and he wont get it anyway. I'd show you how much relative revenue comes from income taxes versus corporate and other sources, but I suspect you already know this.

The only way he's getting close to that number is to raise taxes on everyone.

I'll also point out that while tax cuts didn't cause this problem, tax increases are the single largest part of the Obama solution. So much for fair compromise, huh?



Yeah. More vapor-savings.

Here's an idea: Why not just eliminate all the new spending increases over the last 3 years? That, combined with the knowledge that their taxes wont go up will spur businesses and generate the economic recovery which will allow us to get back on track. But that would require Democrats to acknowledge that "trickle down" economics is a real factor and does have an effect on our economic reality, and they can't do that for purely political and ideological reasons.




Most of the spending cuts are vapor though. The only thing solid in there is defense cuts. And yeah, I accept that this is just a framework, but as I said earlier, the Dems are great at tossing out frameworks which sound great in theory but never seem to pan out when put into practice. I just don't believe that they will be able to actually make any significant cuts to any area of the economy other than defense related stuff. Maybe some subsidies here and there, but not to medicare, and not to social security, and not to income assistance, and not to education.


They were unwilling to cut spending to NPR. Arguably a completely unnecessary expenditure. What makes anyone think they're going to cut funding to welfare, or for environmental causes, or alternative energy, or any of the hundreds of other things that they fund for their supporters? It's just not going to happen, but without some real sacrifices by the Left, we're not going to fix this economy.

You mean this little table Gbaji that perfectly illustrates my point. As revenue Decrease (as a % of GDP) The deficit and Debt increased. Culminating in a total of 21% increase to Debt over Bush's 8 year Term. Obama has had 1 year of a 9% increase to Debt. Which is smaller than the year Bush left on. (the 2009 Budget which was a 13.2% increase to debt.)

Obama has decreased spending, and decreased the annual deficit. Yet until he is able to increase Revenue the debt will never drop back to normal levels. He can cut a further 6% to return to early bush era spending levels, but if revenue does not increase that is still a 3-4% rise in Debt a year.

In order to increase Revenue the Government must raise taxes, and must Invest money into the economy to promote Job Creation. The US government must reign in spending, and attract foreign investment again to reach the same ends. All of these things have to happen to heal the Debt Crisis. You can't just cut spending and call it a day, and you can jut cut spending and start 2 wars, and build the country on a phantom bubble.

Both parties need to adopt some realistic solutions. Bickering at one because they want to increase revenue, and bickering at the other because they want to decrease spending is stupid. At the moment Obama's plan of action supports both methods. While keeping investment in emerging job markets to promote job creation which furthers growth revenue, and deficit reduction.

It is the exact same sh*t that Clinton had to go through in the first term he had after Bush Sr. It is republican economics, built on the faulty premise of trickle down economics. Fat Cats don't give a sh*t about investing in America, the give a sh*t about investing in Money. Which right now, is leaving America in boat loads.

Edited, Apr 14th 2011 6:24pm by rdmcandie

Now that Joph said he's quitting posting, maybe I can catch up.

What I get from the OP is that there are so many pundits and journalists in the USA who can't follow an intelligent and reasonable speech that when they are collectively whooshed the only thing that occurs to them is a sense of being lied to. Since they found it obfuscating and obscure and all.

You know, I'm really starting to get bored with this. It's always the same argument, and I never hear any of the philosophy behind anyone's views. But I'll still argue anyway because it's not like there's any intelligent discussion anywhere these days anyway.



Everyone does, the problem is that you don't know the difference between fair taxation and excessive taxation. To you, all taxes are bad. Meanwhile, if there was no tax, there would be absolutely no money(I hate this word used as though it's a thing and not a form a measurement, but I have no other word.) for the government to do anything.



Well, I'm not a liberal, so I'll accept your invitation not to respond. Good thing too, I'd just rant about your government being stupid and deficit spending for 10 years to pay for a war anyway.



It's a shame. If more people would be willing to compromise and openly discuss the issues in a professional atmosphere, maybe your politicians might be able to do some good for the country. There is nothing wrong with being bi-partisan, in fact, it sounds like a really good idea considering that a 2 party, 4 year term, system can't work if both parties refuse to compromise. Nothing gets done. It's as though your society would rather not move forward if the alternative is to try to agree on something. It's kind of sick.




It sort of is. It's not crashing. It's slowly being worked on, which, by any standard definition of the word "recovery" is indeed, the economy begining to RECOVER.


Another thing, it's like you have no ideas how anything works at all. Yes, big surprise, there are no instant results of anything that's been done. What kind of idiot would think there'd be huge significant instant results? Things take time. It took until the second world war to start really fixing things after the Depression, why would anyone think that it would go any faster today with a less logical economic system?




You're acting as though you and your buddies don't fabricate information. That's funny.



The biggest mistake I can see here is the idea that a couple of wars paid for the wrong way are less to blame than social programs. Are you really just that dumb? Do you even read anything that's not shoved down your throat by any media? Do yourselves a favour: open some books.

Well, I'm out of patience. If you guys ever want to have a discussion about issues, or even philosophy or something without it degenerating into the whole, "OMG! You're a liberal, you're wrong" and "OMG! You're a republican, you're inherently an idiot!" and "OMG! I'm defined by my political leanings and I don't see any need to look closely at anything and instead I'll just stick to the party line because I fear the idea of ever knowing enough to know that both sides have perfectly good ideas and really bad ones." arguments, let me know.

Federal funding for Planned Parenthood = 363 million dollars
Federal funding for NPR = 16 million dollars
Pretending 379 million dollars is the crux of solving the deficit problem of 1,348,000 million dollars = Priceless.

There are some things money can't buy, for everything else, there's the tears of impotent rage. Drink up, GOP, they're all yours anyway.

I did. Notwithstanding the fact that it's a contrived hypothetical, those numbers only consider taxable income which is a function of salary only. They do not take capital gains or dividends into consideration which are also taxed at a lesser rate as a result of the Bush Tax Cuts.

You mean the table I produced? This should be good!



Ok. Quick math lesson: Deficit = Spending - Revenue

Deficit (and its effect on debt) will increase identically whether revenue drops *or* spending increases. A dollar of extra spending has the exact same effect as a dollar less revenue. That's because it's a simple subtraction problem. You seem to think there is magic involved or something. Revenue is not the only determinant of deficit and it's amazing that you would make that statement.




That's not how you calculate debt deltas btw. And even if it was, you're basically admitting that Obama generated 9% in one year, while Bush generated 21% in 8 years. So... Bush's average debt increase was 2.6% per year, while Obama's was 9% per year. So you just proved to me that Obama is increasing the debt at 3.5 times the rate as Bush!

Was that what you meant to say? I mean, you're wrong anyway, but even when you're wrong you're making my point for me, so that's just kinda sad... :(



I already addressed this. These are historical budget data, not projected budget data. This is not how much the previous year's government wanted to spend, but what we actually spent. So all those emergency spending bills passed in 2009 by the Obama administration and the Democrat controlled congress are included in that 2009 spending level. You do understand that the projected budget deficit for 2009 back when Bush was finalizing that budget with Congress (and let me remind you that the Dems were in control of congress in 2008, so it's unfair to call the whole thing "Bush's budget") was about $450B.

How do you suppose we went from a projected budget deficit of $450B to an actual budget deficit of 1.5 Trillion dollars? Sure. Revenue dropped $400B, but that only accounts for less than half of the difference in projected deficit. Spending increases accounted for the remainder.

Try doing some actual math sometime. It might help.



No, it doesn't. I've explained this about 10 times across two different threads now. We did not lower taxes to cause that revenue to drop. So why do you assume we must raise taxes to make it increase? Please tell me that you understand that the reason revenue has dropped is because of the slower economy? Not as many people are employed. People aren't buying as much stuff. Businesses aren't investing as much. That's why revenue is down. We don't need to raise taxes. We need to recover the economy.

And while this is clearly my own economic ideology, I believe that the best way to do that is to stop constantly talking about raising taxes. You do get that when you tell big business and the rich that you're going to raise their taxes "any day now", they're not going to sink money into the economy as much as they might otherwise? Why would I invest in some new venture in the US if I suspect that my return on that investment will be hampered by higher tax rates? I'm going to wait and see what happens and invest in gold or something in the meantime.


Some of us argue that it's the talk about raising taxes (and the spending which makes those tax increases more likely in the first place) that has kept the economy from recovering in the first place. Had we not spent all that money on "recovery" and then said we'd pay for it by raising taxes on those greedy rich people, it's entirely possible we'd be recovered by now. At least that's the economic theory that I subscribe to. You're free to disagree, but at least try to have a reason for why you think your position is better. So far, I'm just seeing you spout rhetoric.



Which isn't going to happen if you're taxing the money that would be spent doing this. Sheesh!



Lol! And yet, I have repeatedly shown how neither the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, nor the Bush tax cuts had anything at all to do with our current economic situation. Zip. Zero. Nada. It's a bogus talking point the left uses to deflect the discussion away from the real problem.



Except that the Dems keep saying this, then refuse to give any of their spending up. They'll push for tax increases. They'll promise spending cuts "after we raise taxes to deal with the immediate crisis". But when the time comes, they wont cut any of their precious programs. And they certainly wont allow them to be changed in any way which might actually make them more cost effective in the long run. Nope. Can't allow the other side to "win" anything at all.

The left talks about compromise, but they never ever do it. So forgive me for not taking Obama at his word here.



No. It's a dogmatic ideology which cannot acknowledge that trickle down effects do work which requires that Democrats ignore the correct solutions and instead promise BS that wont work. I've been saying for years that the problem with the Dems and economics is that once they find themselves in a negative economic situation, they can't use the best tools for climbing out of it because those tools are identified with the "supply side" economic theories. Since using those would undermine their social agenda, they usually just sit there and spin until eventually conservative economic ideas are adopted and we recover. We saw this in the 70s and we're seeing it again now.



Lol! But if there were money to be made investing in America, wouldn't they invest in America? Shouldn't the correct response be to make investing in domestic things profitable? At the very least, can't you see how by making it unprofitable (by say raising taxes), you're making those fat cats take their money elsewhere? It's like you know what's wrong, but just can't make that final mental connection to see the whole picture.

You can't stop rich people from moving their money. Raising taxes isn't the right idea.

Edited, Apr 14th 2011 6:58pm by gbaji

lulz.

In your own mind, perhaps.