Why US Congress Does Not Pass a Budget

[LouisXIV]

This has NOTHING to do with Republicans or Democrats.

This is MADNESS and needs to be gotten under control- even though many will have to suffer to do so. No-nonsense, non-political information everybody must understand about the state of our Nation.

Take a few minutes to see this presentation.

Why Congress does not (can't) pass a budget. 5 min video.
www.youtube-nocookie.com/embed/EW5IdwltaAc?rel=0

[Deleted]

I have an idea. Why not start by taxing all personal weapons something like 3000%? That would bring in quite a bit of revenue and probably lower the crime rate when people gave up what they could not afford.

[LouisXIV]

Sounds like a plan, at least the automatic weapons.

[bixaorellana]

Sorry, Louis , but I will not be mailing that link to my contacts. It's completely specious in its comparisons of the US to Greece, & downright tasteless in its use of the Twin Towers photos. Nowhere in the video is the problem of the obstructive and yes, partisan Congress acknowledged.

I'm trying to write this without becoming apoplectic over the blindness of the working class and middle class voters who are willing to throw the US under the wheels of the Romney/wealthy bus. It is the Romney ticket that wants to take away the already inadequate nets available to those who have in fact worked & paid taxes their whole lives, not to mention casting all those unable to work as layabouts. Getting the very rich to pay their fair share would certainly increase the amount the federal government takes in, putting the lie to "a budget that can't be balanced".

Further reading as a rebuttal to the video:
www.reuters.com/article/2012/07/19/us-usa-taxes-wealthy-idUSBRE86I1NT20120719
topics.nytimes.com/top/reference/timestopics/subjects/f/federal_budget_us/index.html

[LouisXIV]

Getting the very rich to even pay 100% tax would not put a dent in our debt situation. Then what will you do the next year when all these people leave the country because they can't make a living. We need to stop spending money we don't have.

[fumobici]

Aug 15, 2012 1:38:54 GMT LouisXIV said:

Getting the very rich to even pay 100% tax would not put a dent in our debt situation. Then what will you do the next year when all these people leave the country because they can't make a living. We need to stop spending money we don't have.

Celebrate! Seriously. It isn't the suppliers who drive the economy but the demand side- the customers, the ordinary people who work- us. If the ultra-wealthy move away and renounce their nationality, then there are a thousand budding hard working entrepreneurs waiting in the wings to replace each of them with new and innovative ideas. You could send every billionaire to Somalia or whatever hellhole where there is no government to constrain them or tax them and someone else would step in to fill the supply vacuum created by their absence. Someone who would be happy to live on 5 million a year instead of 50. Or 500.

Large wealth disparities corrupt politics, corrupt the law, corrupt educational opportunities, create dynasties that run on not merit but inherited wealth, harden class boundaries that allow the country to be run at the behest not of the most able, but those born to wealth, stifle competition and offend the moral sensibilities of any caring person who can see the injustice of having children going hungry and living in squalor while across town others dine in opulent splendor.

I have no problem with having wealthy people. American is a rich country and there is room for wealthy folk, but first we must make absolutely sure nobody is being denied an opportunity to succeed because of circumstances that are no fault of their own. In the 1950s there was a 90% top tax rate on income and the rich did just fine, industry bloomed and the economy did as well. The notion that the only thing holding back the wealth holders from creating jobs is that the already historically low tax rates are too high is pure obvious hogwash propagated by people whose rapacious lust for money knows no limits, for whom nothing is ever enough. And the credulous masses believe the bald faced lies they spend billions spewing forth through the media they own and control to protect their privileged positions while millions struggle just to feed and house themselves and their families.

Screw the super rich. They are ruining our country with their insatiable greed and shocking lack of any shred of morals or compassion. They are by and large self centered, vain and even evil. The sooner they leave the better.

Austerity through slashing public spending is just another scam. They lower taxes to nearly unprecedented levels while feeding a war machine/security state trillions of taxpayer dollars without budgeting for it to purposefully create these deficits, then use those artificially created deficits to steal from the poor and middle class. You don't need to be a genius to see through it all. It's really not the least bit clever or subtle.

[Deleted]

Our new government in France is going to put a 75% tax on the rich. It doesn't bring in a fortune, but it is symbolically important to the rest of the population. A number of the rich say they totally understand the tax and don't mind paying it --they have enough money! -- and others say they will leave. But they always come back.

[LouisXIV]

This video is about a financial problem in this country, not a political debate. There is enought blame to go around the the rich, the poor, the government, large business, everyone is at fault and no one seems to even knowledge there is a problem. Yes, the government has created the problem, but the people have allowed them to spend money we don't have.

"Austerity through slashing public spending is just another scam." So what should we do, just wait until we are in the same situation as Greece and a few other countries in europe and have to stop the payment to people who have become accustomed to having that money every month?

This problem has been building for decades and our government and many of the people in this country have been just kicking the can down the road in hopes the problem will go away or someone else will solve the proplem.

[fumobici]

What should we do about US debt? First, acknowledge that there is no pressing immediate need to cut public spending in a recessionary environment given that doing so will only worsen that recession. Debt is a long term concern, not a crisis. Second, ask ourselves why we need to spend as much on our military as the next 19 largest nations spend combined. While children go hungry and people die or are brought to financial ruin in multitudes by lack of access to health care. Health care that in almost every other modern nation is universally available, far cheaper than ours and often delivers objectively quantifiably better statistical outcomes. Think about that.

The US debt, if it were indeed a crisis, would see the US dollar devalued relative to other currencies. You would see interest rates ballooning as the private sector competed with the government for scarce money. You would see the costs of imported goods skyrocket. None of this is actually taking place and indeed if the latter would happen it would improve our elephant in the room, our trade deficit, and result in more demand for labor in the US as US based production became more competitive both here and abroad.

Why does nobody want to talk about the truly problematic deficit, the trade deficit? Because a tiny subset of Americans- the same tiny subset that (surprise surprise!) controls the media and the legacy political parties- is getting obscenely wealthy exploiting both as profit takers on the importing and reselling of goods and because the pitting of American workers against Third World competition disempowers and impoverishes the labor force and makes them easier to exploit.

The fear mongering about a "deficit cliff" is just rhetoric designed to abet and accelerate the continuing looting of the entire system of our public commonwealth to make a tiny minority who are already rich even richer.

[Deleted]

Actually, one of the reasons that France is considered to be the country with the best rail infrastructure in the world is because it is the only country that has dared to go into debt up to 70 years to finance such things. Most countries need "immediate returns" or they won't finance something. It's obvious that the U.S. has a major debt, but nobody imagines that it is really in trouble yet, since people still accept the currency that it prints.

I do agree, however, that before long, the rest of the world will decide that the U.S. is no longer the principal economy of the world, and that could indeed create some problems that we cannot even imagine yet.

[LouisXIV]

"has dared to go into debt up to 70 years" K2, does that mean the debt will be repaid in 70 years? The US does not seem to understand the concept of retiring a debt, just keep paying interest forever.

I agree that before long the US will decline. We are becoming weaker and the people rather than being self-reliant are becoming more and more dependant on government. The real value of money is based on faith and when the rest of the world does not have faith in our currency, then the citizens here in the US will also lose faith and the whole thing will come tumbling down.

For some reason Washington seems to operate on the principle of crisis management. They would not think of looking into the future and see that there are going to be problems, example is Social Security, Washington has known for decades that there were problems coming and has refused to take any corrective action. They wait until it is a crisis, and have to take poorly thought out expensive actions that usually never work.



.

[bixaorellana]

Actually, Louis, the video is in fact part of an ongoing misrepresentation of real issues. As Fumobici pointed out, it's fear-mongering and I have no idea why any regular, normal person would buy into it.

As for a country going into debt for 70 years -- that's nothing! Individuals routinely go into debt for a whopping 30 years just to buy a house. By that yardstick, 70 years for a country is tantamount to 15 minutes or less.

And yes, in the long run the US may one day be toppled as the principal economy of the world, but in the short, medium, or long run we're way past due to start living up to our status as a first world country by granting our citizens the same benefits as other first world countries. In this particular forum France is featured a great deal, and it doesn't seem to be a country of people who lack self reliance & who are dependent on government. And this despite their having the best universal health care on the planet! Perhaps they realize that they ARE the government & understand that their taxes are coming back to them in the form of a better life for all citizens.

And the Social Security system is not going to go under. There is no crisis! wfhummel.cnchost.com/socialsecurity.html

[LouisXIV]

"Individuals routinely go into debt for a whopping 30 years just to buy a house." Yes they do and at the end of 30 years they own the house and the payments stop. They are making principal and interest payments every month. The US government just does not understand the concept of paying on the principal.

Approximately 40 cents of every dollar the US government spends is borrowed money, You just can't keep doing that.

[bixaorellana]

Let's take a closer look at the alarm the challenged Mr. Ryan is spreading:

www.factcheck.org/2011/07/fiscal-factcheck/