Hey, I'm all about cutting.
I advocate a 20% cut, across the board, across all programs, no loopholes/exceptions. Period.
Hey, I'm all about cutting.
I advocate a 20% cut, across the board, across all programs, no loopholes/exceptions. Period.
z31maniac wrote: Hey, I'm all about cutting. I advocate a 20% cut, across the board, across all programs, no loopholes/exceptions. Period.
This is the correct answer. If they cant figure out where to cut the budget, cut it all.
John Brown wrote: Loopholes. The Federal Goverment assists each state with funding that is used for various programs including, eventually, the educational system. It may be an endowment or grant for a university or pork on another bill... Trust me, you pay for it ;)
I know I do.. The point is i that it is not legal for the federal government to engage in that practice.
tuna55 wrote: Let's play this game: What programs do you think COULD NOT be cut by at least 10% RIGHT FRIGGIN NOW. My answer: None. If I was in charge for a day, I would slash and burn. My Dad put it this way "I'd put every employee of every local, state and federal government on a list. Fire every other one and eliminate their position, that's a good start for the first day"
I would actually start at the top. Inform the politicians that they and every state employee all will be paid the US median family income, their retirement will be based on the Social Security program and their health care system is being switched to Medi-Care. If a single politician chooses to change a portion of any of the pay or coverage programs it will be applied to all people on the program. If the politician does not show up for a vote with good cause he will not be paid. If the politician does not participate in progress* he does not get paid.
Other King Mofo edicts:
*participate in progress and it's likeness are a trademark of Ricky Bobby, Inc
^Oh that's a HUGE one for me as well.
The other thing, if you're on unemployment, the gov't should be getting something for that money. It doesn't take 40 hours a week to look for a job.
What's wrong with expecting someone on unemployment to have to say, work 15-20 hours a week picking up trash, scrubbing graffiti, doing jury duty, serving food at a soup kitchen.
Let's figure out something we can use prisoners for, we spend an awful lot of money making sure these people get 3 squares a day and such.............let's get something back for our investment.
z31maniac wrote: ^Oh that's a HUGE one for me as well. The other thing, if you're on unemployment, the gov't should be getting something for that money. It doesn't take 40 hours a week to look for a job. What's wrong with expecting someone on unemployment to have to say, work 15-20 hours a week picking up trash, scrubbing graffiti, doing jury duty, serving food at a soup kitchen. Let's figure out something we can use prisoners for, we spend an awful lot of money making sure these people get 3 squares a day and such.............let's get something back for our investment.
Amen to that.
z31maniac wrote: ^Oh that's a HUGE one for me as well. The other thing, if you're on unemployment, the gov't should be getting something for that money. It doesn't take 40 hours a week to look for a job. What's wrong with expecting someone on unemployment to have to say, work 15-20 hours a week picking up trash, scrubbing graffiti, doing jury duty, serving food at a soup kitchen. Let's figure out something we can use prisoners for, we spend an awful lot of money making sure these people get 3 squares a day and such.............let's get something back for our investment.
YEAH! And firemen! Sitting around the firehouse when there ain't a fire going on. Do something you lazy slobs! Clean a street. Wash a squad car. Trim my bushes.
Talk about grinding my gears!
..and what's up with teachers getting summers off!
..don't even get me started on Army guys not blowing stuff up! Training and talking and guarding stuff. They're job is to make sure things go BOOM every once in awhile.
^That was the best troll post you could come up with?
You get to sit at the kiddie table this year. 
z31maniac wrote: Hey, I'm all about cutting. I advocate a 20% cut, across the board, across all programs, no loopholes/exceptions. Period.
Blind cutting is just as stupid as blind spending.
They're two sides of the same coin.
tuna55 wrote: Let's play this game: What programs do you think COULD NOT be cut by at least 10% RIGHT FRIGGIN NOW. My answer: None. If I was in charge for a day, I would slash and burn. My Dad put it this way "I'd put every employee of every local, state and federal government on a list. Fire every other one and eliminate their position, that's a good start for the first day"
Ok you fire all those employees and watch the economy tank. All those people then start drawing unemployment (unless you wouldn't give them unemployment and let them all starve). Yes I agree there are things that could be cut (defense is probably one area that could be cut some) but this whole slash and burn is going to hurt this country more then help it.
93EXCivic wrote:tuna55 wrote: Let's play this game: What programs do you think COULD NOT be cut by at least 10% RIGHT FRIGGIN NOW. My answer: None. If I was in charge for a day, I would slash and burn. My Dad put it this way "I'd put every employee of every local, state and federal government on a list. Fire every other one and eliminate their position, that's a good start for the first day"Ok you fire all those employees and watch the economy tank. All those people then start drawing unemployment (unless you wouldn't give them unemployment and let them all starve). Yes I agree there are things that could be cut (defense is probably one area that could be cut some) but this whole slash and burn is going to hurt this country more then help it.
Shh... you're pissing on the tea party parade.
z31maniac wrote: ^That was the best troll post you could come up with? You get to sit at the kiddie table this year.
I "Liked" it ;)
keethrax wrote:z31maniac wrote: Hey, I'm all about cutting. I advocate a 20% cut, across the board, across all programs, no loopholes/exceptions. Period.Blind cutting is just as stupid as blind spending. They're two sides of the same coin.
Suggestions then?
I'm saying since no one is willing to make any real budget cuts, then everybody gets one.
Offering up $33 billion when we are $1.6 TRILLION short goes beyond absurd, and personally, I think it borders on criminal negligence. And that's for both sides. It's not even about Socialism, Obamacare, whatever..........it's simply that we are creating a debt that we can never pay back.
What are you guys offering up or suggesting? All I ever read is why they CAN'T cut this, my 20% reduction for everyone one doesn't even get us HALFWAY to breaking even. We need to cut 46% to be flush, how else can we possibly do it other than to just cut?
Hell, I'm saying we need to cut defense spending knowing that any real cuts will most likely mean I'm out of a job.
Anyone else care to be that bold? That's how much I believe that we need a drastic reversal to our spending habits as a country.
In reply to z31maniac:
Maybe as well as doing cuts in areas, we could also raise taxes here and there. I know it sucks to pay taxes but there comes a point when cutting isn't enough. I mean we could maybe try to get some corporations to pay taxes as well.
z31maniac wrote: ^That was the best troll post you could come up with? You get to sit at the kiddie table this year.
I'm not very smert. 
z31maniac wrote: I'm saying since no one is willing to make any real budget cuts, then everybody gets one. Offering up $33 billion when we are $1.6 TRILLION short goes beyond absurd, and personally, I think it borders on criminal negligence. And that's for both sides. It's not even about Socialism, Obamacare, whatever..........it's simply that we are creating a debt that we can never pay back. What are you guys offering up or suggesting? All I ever read is why they CAN'T cut this, my 20% reduction for everyone one doesn't even get us HALFWAY to breaking even. We need to cut 46% to be flush, how else can we possibly do it other than to just cut?
Agreed. 20% now. Let that settle. Then with the warning that another 20% is coming in a few years.
Debt to built long-term projects (roads, or some big building for example), is one thing... borrowing like mad just to operate is effing insane. There are many worthwhile programs to spend money on, but if we can't afford it, we can't afford them. Period.
Go bankrupt, stick it to the Chinese and start fresh?
z31maniac wrote:keethrax wrote:Suggestions then?z31maniac wrote: Hey, I'm all about cutting. I advocate a 20% cut, across the board, across all programs, no loopholes/exceptions. Period.Blind cutting is just as stupid as blind spending. They're two sides of the same coin.
It's not the endpoint, it's the route that's stupid.
1st off: More needs to be cut than either side is proposing, so let's get that out of the way right off the top.
2nd: cuttingly blindly is stupid. If you take a bloated system and blindly cut it, you get the worst of both worlds. You'll cut expenses by X and productivity by a lot more than X.
3rd: Some tax increases are likely going to be necessary no matter how much it scares teabagger idiots. We've fought and are fighting in multiple locations, and wars are expensive, You can't just cut and cut and cut to pay for them, and long term you can't just not pay for them either.
4th: massive cuts (or massive tax hikes if you wanted to be really stupid and go whole hog the other way to get your budget in order) all at once are not good even if they get you to the target # you want. The economic damage tanks your income even farther and it just gets worse form there. But see #s 1 and 2.
The budget needs to end up close to balanced. It doesn't actually need to be completely balanced, but why not is probably a bit in depth for the current thread. It can even be demonstrated that a small imbalance is good (that word small is important though).
93EXCivic wrote: In reply to z31maniac: Maybe as well as doing cuts in areas, we could also raise taxes here and there. I know it sucks to pay taxes but there comes a point when cutting isn't enough. I mean we could maybe try to get some corporations to pay taxes as well.
Get them to be responsible with what they already take and then maybe we can talk about raising taxes.
As far as corporations paying taxes, bite me. I'm fixing to write a rather large check to the irresponsible ass holes in DC to pay the balance of the 2010 income taxes for my corporation, not to mention the first quarter 2011 estimated taxes that are also due. Not to mention all the other taxes I will have to pay on the 15. Not to mention all the money shelled out to every little crap town in SC that wants their fair share of my ass to do business with their citizens. Hell I've probably shelled out close to $5K just in business licenses in the last three months which is just another tax. If you think most corporations don't pay taxes you're living in a liberal dream land.
93EXCivic wrote: In reply to z31maniac: Maybe as well as doing cuts in areas, we could also raise taxes here and there. I know it sucks to pay taxes but there comes a point when cutting isn't enough. I mean we could maybe try to get some corporations to pay taxes as well.
The corporate tax rate is what 35%, 2nd highest in the world and we should raise it?
All corporate taxes do are tax you and me. Do you think if taxes are raised that companies will take the hit to their profits and not pass it along to the consumer? Or that they will not use more clever accounting rules to move income overseas so that it isn't taxable? Close that loophole and they'll exploit another..............if only the tax code were simpler........but again that's a different thread. www.fairtax.org 
Toyman01 wrote:93EXCivic wrote: In reply to z31maniac: Maybe as well as doing cuts in areas, we could also raise taxes here and there. I know it sucks to pay taxes but there comes a point when cutting isn't enough. I mean we could maybe try to get some corporations to pay taxes as well.Get them to be responsible with what they already take and then maybe we can talk about raising taxes.
As long as your definition of "Responsible" isn't the budget needs to be 100% balanced by cuts alone, I'm right there with you. Giving more money to these clowns is stupid.
But if they magically came back with a realistic proposal involving staged cuts and tax increases combined (because sudden large cuts and tax increases are stupid) , that's a different thing.
keethrax wrote:Toyman01 wrote:As long as your definition of "Responsible" isn't the budget needs to be 100% balanced by cuts alone, I'm right there with you. Giving more money to these clowns is stupid. But if they magically came back with a realistic proposal involving staged cuts and tax increases combined (because sudden large cuts and tax increases are stupid) , that's a different thing.93EXCivic wrote: In reply to z31maniac: Maybe as well as doing cuts in areas, we could also raise taxes here and there. I know it sucks to pay taxes but there comes a point when cutting isn't enough. I mean we could maybe try to get some corporations to pay taxes as well.Get them to be responsible with what they already take and then maybe we can talk about raising taxes.
You might as well try to milk a unicorn. I have no faith in our elected officials. None. 
Toyman01 wrote: You might as well try to milk a unicorn. I have no faith in our elected officials. None.
Oh, I know it. I'm just saying that the word responsible almost always gets used to mean only one thing. Cuts. And I would argue that a program of pure cuts doesn't belong in the same ZIP code as the word responsible. That doesn't mean the current system does belong in said ZIP though...
In reply to keethrax:
The problem is they are like teenagers. Give them $100 and they spend $150 and put the rest on the deficit. That's just wrong. If you gave them $150 they would spend $225 and keep on crying about the "children". That's BS. Running a deficit every year isn't sustainable. Carrying debit is one thing. Adding trillions to it every year is another. At some point it needs to be balanced. Spending an extra trillion and saying we'll make it up in taxes isn't the way to go. Until the government can show they are serious about doing their job don't expect me to pay extra in taxes.
The feds have been in deficit spending mode for the majority of the last 80 years. Even an economy as big and powerful as ours cant handle that indefinitely. It's coming back around eventually. Until the unwashed masses realize that government can't make everyone equally wealthy only equally poor, I have no hope that we will ever get out of this mess. Bread and circuses for sure.
z31maniac wrote:93EXCivic wrote: In reply to z31maniac: Maybe as well as doing cuts in areas, we could also raise taxes here and there. I know it sucks to pay taxes but there comes a point when cutting isn't enough. I mean we could maybe try to get some corporations to pay taxes as well.The corporate tax rate is what 35%, 2nd highest in the world and we should raise it? All corporate taxes do are tax you and me. Do you think if taxes are raised that companies will take the hit to their profits and not pass it along to the consumer? Or that they will not use more clever accounting rules to move income overseas so that it isn't taxable? Close that loophole and they'll exploit another..............if only the tax code were simpler........but again that's a different thread. www.fairtax.org
I would not suggest raising it, but I would recommend that more corporations pay it. See GE and National Instruments for two very good examples of this.
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