[i]Aided by surging tax receipts, President Bush may make good on his pledge to cut the deficit in half in 2006 ? three years early.
Tax revenues are running $176 billion, or 12.9%, over last year, the Treasury Department said Monday. The Congressional Budget Office said receipts have risen faster over the first eight months of fiscal '06 than in any other such period over the past 25 years ? except for last year’s 15.5% jump.
The 2006 deficit through May was $227 billion, down from $273 billion at this time last year. Spending is up $130 billion, or 7.9%.
The CBO forecast in May that the 2006 deficit could fall as low as $300 billion. Michael Englund, chief economist of Action Economics, has long expected a deficit of about $270 billion this year. Now he thinks there’s a chance the “remarkable strength in receipts” will push the deficit even lower.[/i]
The way that stock markets, esp in Japan and China, are behaving, we’re in for a recession at the very least, IMO. With this inverted yield curve, it looks ominous. That’ll spell the end of any decreasing deficits.
[quote]Headhunter wrote:
The way that stock markets, esp in Japan and China, are behaving, we’re in for a recession at the very least, IMO. With this inverted yield curve, it looks ominous. That’ll spell the end of any decreasing deficits.
HH[/quote]
I’m making a note of the fact that I have to agree with HH on this one. I hate to do it, and it might not ever happen again, but I just don’t understand how anyone can look at the big picture and still agree with the WH that everything smells like roses.
My parents and overly-liberal friends are convinced that the deficit will be our downfall as a superpower or something. Yeah right. I try to tell them that the U.S. has been in situations like this before and has always managed to pay it off and they accuse me of “blind patriotism” and “narrow minded”.
[quote]semper_fi wrote:
My parents and overly-liberal friends are convinced that the deficit will be our downfall as a superpower or something. Yeah right. I try to tell them that the U.S. has been in situations like this before and has always managed to pay it off and they accuse me of “blind patriotism” and “narrow minded”. [/quote]
LOL. Unless you have some better reasoning to support your viewpoint, they might be right!
I thought we were in a recession, and that this was the worst economy ever. Actually wasn?t it a depression?
A recession is a very technical thing, and it usually lasts for such a short time that when they have figured out we are in a recession, it’s over.
Bush gets the taxes right, but the spending wrong. Increases in spending should be held at a rate lower then the increase in taxes.
If anything spending should only increase at half the rate of the increase in revenue of the previous year. If this year does end up with a 12.9% increase in revenue, then spending can go up a maximum of 6.5%. If revenue drops one year, the budget stays at the same level the next.
When there was a 3% cap, the deficit dropped dramatically.
[quote]BostonBarrister wrote:
The main danger in the future is Social Security and Medicare. The other stuff is just noise.[/quote]
Absolutely. Sccial Security will have to be abolished if anyone under 45 wishes to live a quality life. Either that, or start killing old farts that depended on Social Security as a retirement vehicle.
[quote]rainjack wrote:
BostonBarrister wrote:
The main danger in the future is Social Security and Medicare. The other stuff is just noise.
Absolutely. Sccial Security will have to be abolished if anyone under 45 wishes to live a quality life. Either that, or start killing old farts that depended on Social Security as a retirement vehicle. [/quote]
We need to push the retirement age back. People live too long to retire in their early 60s. It is insanity to think otherwise.
We need to do it ASAP because this glut of baby boomers will bankrupt my generation.
Too many people will be drawing money and too few will be paying in.
Unfortunately neither political party wants to to what is neceaasry to fix the mess right away.
Bush proposed something that while it would have helped avoid the problem with my generation would not have addressed the problems the baby boomer generation is causing.
The Democrats want to avoid the whole thing like the plaugue.
Absolutely. Sccial Security will have to be abolished if anyone under 45 wishes to live a quality life. Either that, or start killing old farts that depended on Social Security as a retirement vehicle. [/quote]
I hope this is a joke, though it is one solution.
Does anybody care to calculate what the financial status of somebody who would have been allowed to keep the F’ing 16+% of their paycheck for investment into a 401K type plan would have at age 65 that the government has been stealing for social security their entire life? That’s right, you heard it here, that “employer 1/2” is bullshit it’s your money that the employer no longer had to give to you. I’m absolutely certain I could have made myself financially independent at retirement if I had access to my own money. At 45 I’m starting to get too old to say I never need Social Security as a supplemental income even if I could get my own hands on that 16% now.
It is morally wrong to tax people at an equivalent rate of over 50% for their entire lives, largely for the purpose of giving that money to other people, and then tell them they’re on their own when they’re old.
Somebody’s got to fix this problem and stop playing politics with it.
Absolutely. Sccial Security will have to be abolished if anyone under 45 wishes to live a quality life. Either that, or start killing old farts that depended on Social Security as a retirement vehicle.
I hope this is a joke, though it is one solution.
Does anybody care to calculate what the financial status of somebody who would have been allowed to keep the F’ing 16+% of their paycheck for investment into a 401K type plan would have at age 65 that the government has been stealing for social security their entire life? That’s right, you heard it here, that “employer 1/2” is bullshit it’s your money that the employer no longer had to give to you. I’m absolutely certain I could have made myself financially independent at retirement if I had access to my own money. At 45 I’m starting to get too old to say I never need Social Security as a supplemental income even if I could get my own hands on that 16% now.
It is morally wrong to tax people at an equivalent rate of over 50% for their entire lives, largely for the purpose of giving that money to other people, and then tell them they’re on their own when they’re old.
Somebody’s got to fix this problem and stop playing politics with it.[/quote]
The Heritage Foundation did a study which showed that if a person had been allowed to do as you suggest, they’d now be getting $3000/month in dividends, have a portfolio worth > 1 million, and could leave that to their heirs. I don’t remember all the details though.
Social Security was invented to create a dependent class of voters. Wealthy, independent voters might not take orders so readily.
Eventually, of course, irrationality is destroyed and SS will be like those funny little programs from long ago, like the CCC, WPA and so forth.
Under Bush’s Budget, Deficit Would Decline, Then Mount Again
Feb. 6 (Bloomberg) – Under President George W. Bush’s new budget, the federal deficit would decline gradually until 2010 and then start rising again, as the full impact of his requested permanent tax cuts and other proposals is felt.
THE PRESIDENT’S 2007 BUDGET: A PRELIMINARY ANALYSIS
Is the Budget Honest and Transparent?
The budget conceals or omits information essential to assessing its impacts on deficits and on programs and services that affect millions of Americans.
The budget omits the costs of funding U.S. operations in Iraq and Afghanistan after 2007.
The budget also omits the cost of extending relief from the Alternative Minimum Tax after 2006. CBO estimates show that extending AMT relief will reduce revenues by $914 billion over the next ten years if the Administration’s tax cuts are made permanent. (Making the tax cuts permanent greatly increases the cost of AMT relief.)
The omission of such information makes various Administration claims, such as the claim that the deficit will be cut in half over five years, rather hollow. (Even if deficits do decline in 2009 to half what the Administration projected the 2004 deficit would be in February 2004, using inflated deficit projections at that time, this would not represent a significant accomplishment. Deficits will rise sharply again soon after 2009, in part as a result of the Administration’s own policies.)
Even more serious, the budget fails to contain figures for revenues, expenditures, and deficits for years after 2011. This omission prevents policymakers and the public from seeing how high the deficits would be in those years under Administration budget policies - and how substantially the deficits in those years would be increased by those policies. Adding to this problem, the Administration also took the step of eliminating the standard budget summary table that shows the effects of the budget’s proposed policies on the deficit over the next five years.
Conclusion
Unfortunately, this budget fails the tests of fiscal responsibility, fairness and balance, and transparency. The nation and its policymakers can do better. http://www.cbpp.org/2-6-06bud.htm
[quote]rainjack wrote:
Abolish the AMT, and Social Security.
Better yet - pass a constitutional amendment for the line item veto.
Pork on the right. Pork on the left. The deficit is a result not of the war on terror, but the oozing, lazy puss that call themselves congress. [/quote]
Absolutely.
I should be entrusted with my own retirement. SS is a joke, and one of the shittiest govt. programs IMO.
[quote]Zap Branigan wrote:
We need to push the retirement age back. People live too long to retire in their early 60s. It is insanity to think otherwise.[/quote]