The cost of doing nothing about exploding entitlements
The cost of doing nothing about exploding federal entitlements? A Republican-sponsored $3.1 trillion with a “T” budget and bogus claims of balance by 2012. Earmark reform and pork-barrel spending cuts are all well and good. But they’re a drop in the bucket:
President Bush unveiled a $3.1 trillion budget on Monday that supports sizable increases in military spending to fight the war on terrorism and protects his signature tax cuts.
The spending proposal, which shows the government spending $3 trillion in a 12-month period for the first time in history, squeezes most of government outside of national security, and also seeks $196 billion in savings over the next five years in the government’s giant health care programs – Medicare for the elderly and Medicaid for the poor.
Even with those savings, Bush projects that the deficits, which had been declining, will soar to near-record levels, hitting $410 billion this year and $407 billion in 2009. The all-time high deficit in dollar terms was $413 billion in 2004….
…Even some Republicans faulted Bush’s budget sleight of hand.
“They’ve obviously played an inordinate number of games to try to make it look better,” Sen. Judd Gregg, the top Republican on the Budget Committee, said in an interview with The Associated Press. “Let’s face it. This budget is done with the understanding that nobody’s going to be taking a long, hard look at it,” said Gregg, R-N.H.
Bush’s spending blueprint sets the stage for what will probably be epic battles in the president’s last year in office, as both parties seek to gain advantages with voters heading into the November elections. The 6 percent overall increase in spending for 2009 reflects a continued surge in spending on the government’s huge benefit programs for the elderly – Social Security and Medicare, even with the projected five-year savings of $196 billion over five years. Those savings are achieved by freezing payments to hospitals and other health care providers. A much-smaller effort by Bush in this area last year went nowhere in Congress.
***
FWIW, here’s House Republican Whip Roy Blunt’s statement on the budget.
“The president this morning gave Congress a clear sense of the priorities he intends to pursue on behalf of the American people this year, and I’m glad to see that securing our borders, strengthening our Armed Forces, and promoting broad-based, pro-growth tax relief sit atop his list.
“It’s an agenda that stands in stark contrast to the one advanced by congressional Democrats this past year – a platform that, as its centerpiece, sought to impose the largest tax hike in the nation’s history on hard-working American families. More than $250 billion in new taxes later, it appears Democrats in at least one critical area accomplished exactly what they set out to do.
“As the nation’s first-ever $3 trillion budget, it goes without saying there are many places where I believe we can and should spend much less. As the process moves forward, Republicans look forward to playing a prominent role in that important debate.
“The president’s budget request represents the start of a long, and at times, treacherous process that governs the way government spends taxpayer money. It’s now up to Democrats to demonstrate their commitment to spending that money in a manner that’s worthy of the hard-work and thrift it took everyday Americans to generate it in the first place. A good start would be crafting a sensible budget plan of their own, something they failed to produce last year.”
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Bush is spending more money…there’s a big surprise. Not.
So when I get my “economy stimulus check” I should just sign the back and send it to the IRS since they are going to raise my taxes to pay for all this crap.
I hear that there is going to be one heckava battle over this budget, being an election year. I wonder if this budget will be settled before the election… I doubt it. Now is the time for less government advocates to come out and act strong. Once it hits the Capitol, it is no longer a Bush budget, it is a Congressional budget.
At least you’re getting a check. I should just send your rebate directly to you and cut out the middle man.
It’s not the war. Or the defense budget. Or the earmarks. If nothing is done about entitlements the rest doesn’t matter.
I just don’t think it will be done as long as people expect government to take care of their problems, needs and wants.
Control the borders, enforce immigration laws, restore some respect to the laws of this country…then we can talk about the budget.
Ding! Ding! Ding! We have a winner!
This, my friends, is exactly the problem. As long as the gov’t robs Peter to pay Paul they can always count of the support of Paul. The Dems have known this for years and this is the reason they’ve sought to expand entitlement spending. Once the Republicans gained control of Congress in ‘94 they quickly backtracked from Newt’s “Contract With America” to play the same game.
I hate to say this because he’s such a kook but Ron Paul’s domestic policies are looking better all the time.
On February 4th, 2008 at 12:32 pm, jungatheart said:
So when I get my “economy stimulus check” I should just sign the back and send it to the IRS since they are going to raise my taxes to pay for all this crap.
At least you’re getting a check. I should just send your rebate directly to you and cut out the middle man.
Sounds like your check went to someone who DID NOT PAY FEDERAL TAXES.
This is Jorge Boosh’s budget. It is not a Republican/conservative budget.
We will be living down — and paying for — Bush’s foolishness for decades.
Public Servant:
Servant: One who is subservient or serves another in one capacity or another:
If they are indeed servants of the public and they are blatantly stealing our money can’t we just fire them? Do we have to hire more if NONE truly serve us?
How about line item vetoes, a complete end to pork-barreling and allowing them to serve us for the same minimum wage many of We The People work for?
We can work on getting lobbying dollars and campaign contributions completely out of the picture next!
Okay, I am awake now. Never mind!
Trillion bucks of our money? No problem.
Billion bucks to get elected to a job that pays how much?
Nothing to see here. No need to have any concerns about big government or bloated bureaucracies.
My bad.
I would just be happy if they stopped reaching in my back pocket and taking the little money I have instead of “giving back” what I will have to pay triple for in years to come.
I’m beginning to believe that when it comes to gov’t. spending,our political leadrers aren’t so corrupt as just plan stupid.I wonder if any of our politicians(except Romney)have ever seen,much less had to balance a checkbook.All they seem to do is give away money taken from the productive members of society and give it to the con-artists and deadbeats.Now our current crop of presidential hoefuls are clearly stating that they will do the same(including Romney).I learned very young the lesson that “you can’t eat your cake and have it,too.”Or in this case,you can,t save the same money you are spending.Cutting cost means spending less,not more.
To add to WarTips dream list….
Term limits for Congress. And NO lobbying when your terms are up.
I seldom here about cuts from grants and more than a few are ridiclous beyond reason. Cut these and it would be more beneficial. imho of course.
Well can’t we just print more
I know, right?!! 3.1 TRILLION dollars all wrapped up on a nice tablet computer.
Amazing to think that Washington DC NEEDS that much money to ‘protect us’. That 3.1 Trillion dollars is OUR money.
McCain might be persuaded against amnesty when the issues of extra medicare and social security spending is brought to life if we instantly allow citizenship. I don’t know.
But at least McCain has come out against pork barrel spending with his ‘drunken sailor’ comment and his ‘I’ll make authors of earmarks famous’ comments.
The thing that strikes me as the MOST odd is watching people like Tammy Bruce on Fox News telling me who is and is not conservative. Self proclaimed feminist, former head of the NOW, pro-abortion, and she’s saying that McCain is not ‘conservative’. She also said that ruDe was conservative. Tammy seems like a nice enough and well meaning person, bit I’m not looking for her definition of conservative to define the ‘conservative’ party.
I wonder if she thought Jesse Helms was conservative. I wonder if she ever agreed with Jesse Helms a day in her life. Now she’s telling me who a ‘conservative’ is. I’ll give her a hint, it isn’t ruDe.
Fred Thompson warned of exploding entitlements.
Just thought I’d throw that out there.
But the government is doing something, that something is taking the positive Social Security revenues and replacing them with notes not to worry. This protects the rich from tax increases and creates food for fear mongering. The best of all worlds for the Compassionate Conservative Party. The Social Security reserves have enough promissory notes and revenues to support itself for the next fifty years. So what’s the problem, those promissory notes must soon be converted to revenue/money and where is the government go to get the money to retire these notes. Bush, thanks for the usual promise them anything then deceive as necessary.
How about stopping pouring our treasure into the Iraq sand hole. Once again the Muslim cult proves to be contrary to democracy and we keep showering these people with money. What a waste. I guess this folly might be labeled a government entitlement.
The can cut the budget deficiet by 146 BILLION and not send out this stimulas check.
The next thiung is to stop MURTHA and his pork funds. The biggest porker in there. (NO NOT PHYSICALLY. THAT WOULD BE KENNEDY) This tax and spend will only get worse over the next four years. There is no true fiscally conservative candidate running.
I’m sure glad he waited until his last year, with a demoncrat controlled house and senate…
What an insanely disappointing 8 years these have been.
Okay, with a $3.1 trillion budget I would like a STINGER missile for every household. That’ll keep the terrorists away. God Bless the 2nd amendment.
http://www.fas.org/man/dod-101/sys/land/stinger.htm
My grandpa always told me:
“you never get something for nothing”
I guess he was wrong.
I wish we had a governmental “reset” button.
Does anyone know how to do a Ctrl+Alt+Del on the federal government and reboot what appears to be a seized up mentality in DC?
Here’s the famous Bush disconnect. Entitlements need to be controlled, so Bush takes on the one — Social Security — that is in the best shape of the three. Maybe he would have got somewhere trying to control the really out of control ones: Medicare and Medicaid. Instead he got a whoopin that made certain nothing changed.
Overseas, Bush wants to attack Al Qaeda and Bin Laden. Intelligence says they are operating in western Pakistan along the border with Afganistan. So Bush naturally invades Iraq, where — at that time — there was (almost?) no Al Qaeda and definitely no Bin Laden.
And does anyone notice Bush trying to balance the budget? Make a painful choice? Supply some Leadership? Clinton was far better — welfare reform & balanced budgets.
here’s a bone-go back to your bridge and leave the adults to discuss these important issues that you don’t have the intelligence to do. :p
GSP
Nice smack down GSP.
The problem with the government’s out of control spending is the fact that so many people here expect the govt to take care of them financially. We’ve been spoiled – we think we are poor if we don’t have that big screen TV in our house and whine and complain when health care costs soar. It’s about priorities and where the American people spend. And the American people spend at about the same rate as the govt. Hardly no one saves money anymore! We expect to own homes and go out to dinner nightly and have a nice car. Americans should hunker down and pull in their cash and save some of it and stop all this wasteful spending. The government has to do the same. We need to get our priorities straight and spend where it is needed and stop all this wastefullness.
Don’t feed the above troll. He/she/it is just trying to hijack the thread again
Is there any truth to the rumors I’ve heard about the stimulus checks going out to illegal aliens? I’m not eligible to get a check, but I sure as hell know that I will be helping to pay for all of this! If I’m paying taxes to have that money go to non-Americans …. I really can’t much more of this!
Might I suggest: Alt+F4
Until we address how we tax ourselves, we will never get control over Congress and its out spending income.
Fair Tax, Flat Tax, eliminate the IRS, lets do something.
We need to stand up on real issues, economy, security, immigration, spending, in ways that change what politicians do.
I am afraid the electorate is clueless and just allow things to spiral out of control. We will soon reach a tipping point on some of these issues and when we do there will be no turning back. The damage will be done and America will be a sespool of progressive garbage. So long productivity, rewarding hard work, inovation, freedom and much else.
Buy your burkas now.
30-
GSP
1. Getting rid of 100 Billion in earmarks amounts to 1/300th of the 3 TRILLION dollar budget.
2. The government shouldn’t be sending any money to anyone other than as payment for goods or services. Retirement, medical, and basic needs are a personal, not public, responsibility.
and to Azygos – jenmom has it right.
Azygos was refering to lgm
Entitlements, retirements, benefits, call them what you will. All differant, all having differant rules attached to them. If you are a former fed employee receiving a disability retirement, you can work, but if you go back to work for the feds you must give it all up even if the new fed job pays less than you were making before. BUT….if you go to work anywhere but a fed job…..private enterprise, state or local govt., you do not lose a dime of the fed retirement until you surpass 80% of your former fed hourly rate. Strange but true. What this does is keep anyone from ever going back to work for the feds. Becuase if they do not, they can keep the retirement AND what they are making at their new job.
HEADS UP:
Nancy P and her partners on both sides of the aisle are going after your IRAs and 401Ks.
Be Watchful
After Kennedy/McCain Shamnesty, McCain’s buddy and, “Hispanic Outreach Director,” Juan, “no borders”, Hernandez and all the other open borders amnesty supporters associated with McCain, you believe McCain “might” be persuaded to be against amnesty? Did you pay any attention to the amnesty fight that went on in May/June of ‘07?
One would have to have a gullibility factor off the charts high to believe that McCain is going to secure the borders or EVER be against amnesty.
Our country
Like the credit card commercial says, “I want it all and I want it now.” Even
people in this country that come from families that have almost always been
on welfare, think that they have a right to everything that people that work for
a living have. Never mind that we are paying for ours and theirs at the same
time.
Not defending Bush, but, you do realize it was Republican/Conservatives in Congress that participated in putting together and sending this budget to Bush, don’t you?
If you hit CTRL-ALT-DEL to reset the government, SKYNET’S gonna come online, man!
Much of the problem arises from redefining voodoo economics as conservatism.
Is a conservative someone who wants to cut spending, or someone who wants to cut taxes? I have always been suspicious that the latter are just cheap.
Reagan was a lifelong Democrat who believed in feeding at the public trough, until one day he woke up and realized he was rich and paying for his early ideals, at which point he invented a new way of feeding at the public trough that would benefit him and his Hollywood buddies–borrowing from the Chinese to pay for tax breaks for the rich. A corollary to you don’t have to pay taxes is you don’t have to limit spending.
At least that is one possible interpretation of voodoo economics.
I fail to see how Social Security and Medicare are “entitlements.” I give up a significant portion of my weekly pay for these programs, both of which are supposed to help support me in my latter years. Since I’ll get nothing (I’m only 28) I consider this a form of highway robbery.
Just because the government blew this money and now needs to provide it to those that paid into it for their entire careers doesn’t mean that anyone is undeserving…rather, it just shows how entirely irresponsible Congress has been in the past.
Seriously, some one give me a good reason why I should continue to pay Social Security (other than the fact that it is automatically deducted from my earnings)….we all know I’ll never see a dime of it EVER.
Both…the problem is it’s easier to cut taxes….something that maybe half the voters actually want, than it is to cut spending, something almost no voters want if it in any way effects them.
In theory, cutting taxes should force spending cuts, but through the magic of deficent spending, we get where we are today, $9,400,000,000,000 in stated debt, with abour $48,000,000,000,000 in “unfunded mandates”, promises made that there is no money to keep.
There is no solution, except that eventually the system will collapse, with great pain to moost of us…and we will reset, pick up the pieces, and start over.
One of the huge Medicare cost are the 20 million Mexicans in our country. Not true, liar, racist, xenophobe! But wait. By court order they use the same resources at no cost that are used for Medicare. So what is the hospital to do but bill Medicare at a higher rate than if there were not any illegals.
Next huge Medicare cost is fraud. Pick your own number but start at 33 billion annually. Want to get rich with your own Medical Center. Start out advertising powered wheel chairs on T.V. for free if not covered by Medicare. Needy Medicare beneficiary notifies you they want the chair, you send them the chair, and you now have all the information you need to bill Uncle Sam for this beneficiary on a reoccurring basis. What might they now have: a heart condition, or diabetes, or one of a thousand ambulatory diseases, what ever, but now they are a patient of your Medical Center.
So what’s the first step. Reduce the benefits to those who paid into the program, or deport illegals using our Medicare resources, or getting after fraud, or more Bush fear mongering.
Methinks BOB has it right: so many people want to keep getting their pork that no federal politician alive is going to seriously cut spending.
Even Clinton the First didn’t cut social spending. He lowered the deficit by significantly reducing military spending. After all, the Soviet Union was gone, so history stopped and we haven’t had any enemies since, right? And there isn’t even the slightest hint at anyone building their militaries up that might not like us, right? Troll-la-la…..
Our current system may very well just have to collapse before we get to hit the reset.
When an illegal gets into the hospital he/she usually spends 3 weeks as opposed to
the 3 days spent by a citizen with insurance. In El Paso, they even drive across the
border and dump their ill in front of the hospital knowing that the person cannot
(by law) be turned away. I know that El Paso could not be the only city this is
happening in.
Surprise surprise Bob, this is exactly why McCain voted against the tax cuts. You have the same position as the liberal McCain then.
Also, with regard to McCain and amnesty. . . wouldn’t you rather him not be a voting member of congress on this bill? Bush would have signed it too – so the president is not as important as Congress on this issue.
If we secure the border first, then we can go from there. We can come up with a truly temporary worker program (no opportunity for citizenship) to deal with the people that are here now AFTER we build the fence and have the governors certify it.
Let’s let him build the fence and secure the border first. Then we can bridge the gap about the people already here in context of entitlement spending. Likely create a temporary worker program where they never get citizenship but get deported if they are caught without having signed up for the temporary worker program.
My point is that lets let him secure the border first – that’s what he said he understands now. That would be a GREAT first step, then lets go from there.
Tax cuts…with the system we have now there are two choices, deficent spending and no tax cuts..or deficent spending and tax cuts…more money to government equals more spending. The money can be gotten from tax cuts, which is what happened, but not from tax increases, which historically have resulted in reduced revenue. Tax cuts or no tax cuts, spending will exceed income. I’ll take the tax cuts any day given these choices.
No way Jose’ do I believe Mr. Shamnesty after his co-authoring of the Kennedy/McCain amnesty bill, recent statements that he still supports it, and use of open borders zealots such as Juan Hernandez in his campaign. The truth is not in him in general, and on this issue he makes Hillary Clinton look like Mother Teresa.
I might not be a genius, but seeing through your man McCain is very, very easy.
bit_boy said (#45):
This is not exactly true. Illegals work (no welfare) and pay taxes. They are net contributors to our society.
SHoward said ($46):
Wrong again. Welfare reform reduced spending on welfare dramatically. You probably heard about this in the Giuliani commercials when he bragged about how much he cut NYC welfare rolls.
I’ve got news for you. Illegals do get welfare. What color is
the sun in your world? When they apply with their TIN, their made up SSNs, or
other fake documents, the workers are not allowed to ask if they are legal or
illegal. Also, their anchor children are eligible if they have no other way of
accessing the funds.
That has got to be the MOTHER of all trolls.
You don’t pay taxes when you work off the books and get paid under the table.
Who’s sucking up propaganda put out by the libs here? There are no 20
million illegals contributing to our society. Most are parasites on our society.
These are the Congressman and Senators that came up with welfare reform act, that Clinton signed into law. Look at what party their from. So who cut spending on welfare? Hmmmmmmmmmmmm
H.R.3734
Sponsor: Rep. John Kasich [R-OH](no cosponsors)
Cosponsors [as of 2007-04-12]
Cosponsorship information sometimes is out of date. Why?
Bill Text: Summaries (CRS)
The text of this legislation is not yet available on GovTrack. It may not have been made available by the Government Printing Office yet.
Status: Introduced Jun 27, 1996
Scheduled for Debate Jun 27, 1996
Amendments (3 proposed) [details]
Passed House [details] Jul 18, 1996
Passed Senate Jul 23, 1996
Differences Resolved Jul 31, 1996
Signed by President Aug 22, 1996
This bill became law.
Last Action: Aug 22, 1996: Became Public Law No: 104-193.
Show All Related Votes
Other Titles: — Budget Reconciliation bill
– Welfare Reform bill
– Child Care and Development Block Grant Amendments of 1996
– Federal Responsibility and Work Opportunity Reconciliation Act of 1996
This bill supersedes S. 1956 (Status: Dead).
H.RES.482 Title: Providing for further consideration of the bill (H.R. 3734) to provide for reconciliation pursuant to section 201(a)(1) of the concurrent resolution on the budget for fiscal year 1997.
Sponsor: Rep Goss, Porter J. [R-FL-14] (introduced 7/17/1996) Cosponsors (None)
Related Bills: H.R.3734
Latest Major Action: 7/18/1996 Passed/agreed to in House. Status: On agreeing to the resolution Agreed to by the Yeas and Nays: 358 – 54 (Roll no. 327).
House Reports: 104-686
H.RES.495
Title: Waiving points of order against the conference report to accompany the bill (H.R. 3734) to provide for reconciliation pursuant to section 201(a)(1) of the concurrent resolution on the budget for fiscal year 1997.
Sponsor: Rep Solomon, Gerald B. H. [R-NY-22] (introduced 7/31/1996) Cosponsors (None)
Related Bills: H.R.3734
Latest Major Action: 7/31/1996 Passed/agreed to in House. Status: On agreeing to the resolution Agreed to by the Yeas and Nays: 281 – 137 (Roll no. 382).
House Reports: 104-729
S.1956
Title: An original bill to provide for reconciliation pursuant to section 202(a) of the concurrent resolution on the budget for fiscal year 1997.
Sponsor: Sen Domenici, Pete V. [R-NM] (introduced 7/16/1996) Cosponsors (None)
Related Bills: H.R.3734
Latest Major Action: 7/23/1996 Senate floor actions. Status: Returned to the Calendar. Calendar No. 494.
Oh and let me assure you that the Co Sponsor’s of the Bill were all Repbulicans, I looked at this Bill before it was passed into law in 1996.
Wow, Thanks Blind_Mule. I knew lgm wasn’t likely correct, now you’ve saved me the trouble of looking up the facts, while enabling me to enjoy the sweet flavor of smackdown. I owe ya one, buddy.
Like I and many others have said before, all Clinton the First did was hang on for the ride.
Troll-la-la…
You know, I still never got a response from lgm requesting him to supply evidence that tax cuts do not increase gov’t revenue. (It was on another thread last week.)
Troll-la-la….