I don't doubt George's intelligence. I doubt his genuineness with regard to being a fence-sitter politically.

Hmm, sitting on trillions of dollars? Unusual behavior for capitalist pigs. Maybe they don't think they can make a profit? Why would that be? Increased regulations? Higher medical insurance costs and requirements because of Obamacare? Overall economic uncertainty because of QE2

rickyp wrote:Steve

Hmm, sitting on trillions of dollars? Unusual behavior for capitalist pigs. Maybe they don't think they can make a profit? Why would that be? Increased regulations? Higher medical insurance costs and requirements because of Obamacare? Overall economic uncertainty because of QE2

?

Unusual? Not really Steve. There are often periods where people with money sit and abide their time to invest... I'm sure most of it this time is uncertainty.

Right, when the GOVERNMENT causes uncertainty, can it really be upset when people stick their money under a mattress? If they knew they what the playing field was going to look like, what their costs would be, what the environmental regulations were going to be, etc., they would invest appropriately. Rich people didn't get rich by burying their money in the backyard. In this case, they are protecting it from uncertainty.

The point is that if they had paid a higher tax, they'd probably still be sitting on the sidelines but your deficit would be lower. By quite a bit.

No, if you raised taxes, they would be sheltering even more money. I wish Obama/Pelosi/Reid would have had the guts to follow your advice. The economy would be much worse and the GOP would have won control of the Senate. Because the Socialists failed to act more fully on their own beliefs, they were able to maintain a modicum of respectability. While I am happy for those who did not lose their jobs because they did not raise taxes, politically it would have been advantageous to have seen the "glorious" results of raising taxes in a recession.

I note that the Poll you reference didn't ask "Do you think people with incomes over $250K pay a fair tax?" That's the only tax increase Obama is really talking about is't it?

Which will hit a lot of small businesses right between the eyes. Beyond that, it's a cynical political ploy (red meat to the base) because a tax increase won't pass anyway. Remember this: four months ago, Obama was BRAGGING about continuing those tax breaks.

The point is that Obama has hit a strategic sweet spot.
In the end, there will have to be 4 things for the budget to made sane. (That is small surpluses in good times..)
1) the economy must grow.
2) Expenditures in many things have to be decreased, including defense, corporate subsidies etc.
3) There will have to be changes in Medicare that allows Medicare to start using its weight to negotiate lower medical costs. Perhaps a move away from fee for service as a standard.
4) Entitlements will have to be changed. Perhaps an older retirement age, means tests, deindexing ....

Obama has "hit" nothing. He put out a nine page memo. His skeleton proposal can't be scored--there is no "there" there. It's a vapor, not a plan.

He did not and will not substantively address 3 and 4. He will not do anything on 2, other than raise taxes and cut defense. His approach will negatively affect 1. In other words, his vaporware-ish approach is not only not a "sweet spot," it is a fraud and a disaster in the making.

Although Obama caved in December, he caved before the last 4 months have "educated" the public or prepared them enough to accept the harsh medicine.

As usual, you know nothing about American politics. What the last four months have shown is that the public is tired of Obama's policies. While they like him personally, what's his rating on the economy? On the budget?

Now that EVERYONE is saying much the same thing. (Ryan and Obama aren't that different in saying why the cuts are essential...)

Rubbish. I'll tell you what. I will send you $100 if you can do a side-by-side comparison of the numbers. Here's a hint: I would make it a million dollars, but I don't have that. Obama gave few numbers--really just some vague "savings" and "cuts" and a "total." His own office calls it a "framework." Why? Because no one knows what's in it--because he drew it up on a napkin before strolling in to attack the Republicans after inviting them to sit in the front row.

The man is a coward and an empty suit. Instead of putting Ryan in the front row so he could lambast him without response, he should challenge him to a debate. Who knows more? If it's your man Obama, he should shellack that poor rube Ryan, right?

He is the most spineless President in the history of our Republic. I bet Jimmy Carter could stare him down.

. . . he can push the republicans into a corner defending the lower taxes and their attacks on medicare. (how it will and has bern framed...)

Because the Coward-in-Chief has taken the bold step of lying and demagoguing. He won't have an adult conversation about issues because all he cares about is getting re-elected. If the country has to face bankruptcy somewhere down the road, so be it.

Obama has simply been pragmatic up till now, and now that people are prepared to follow he'll lead...
Which bodes well for his re-election campaign. That and the clown show of potential opponents under way. (Your man Trump is a real piece of work.)

But President Obama unveiled a much different tax-reform vision in his much-anticipated debt speech on Wednesday. He would raise tax rates on upper-income earners and small businesses. He also would eliminate deductions and credits, or so called "tax expenditures." The president referred to these tax-expenditure reductions as "spending cuts." In his context, they most certainly are not. They are more tax hikes.

Basically, the president is giving successful earners and small-business filers a double tax hike. That's what it really is.

Of course, the president's formula of estimating higher revenues to lower the deficit is completely wrong. The reality is that higher tax rates will slow the economy, inhibit new start-up companies, penalize investors, and may very well lose revenues and increase the deficit.

In the latter part of his speech the president did mention some kind of middle-class and corporate tax reform. But he gave no specifics.

He also touted $750 billion in discretionary spending cuts, but again without any details. Most of that amount probably comes from the recent continuing resolution to avoid a budget shutdown. Since Obama is extrapolating out twelve years, who knows how this is scored.

On the entitlement front, Obama rejected Paul Ryan's consumer-choice and competition approach to Medicare reform. Instead, he invoked the Obamacare central-planning agency called the Independent Payment Advisory Board, which is supposed to make reductions in Medicare. Medicare itself would exercise more price controls on prescription drugs, rolling back the consumer choice and competition established under George W. Bush.

In total, President Obama is claiming $4 trillion in deficit reduction over twelve years. But we'll never see it. Interest expense savings is supposed to make up $1 trillion of that amount, while the rest will somehow come from a concoction of fewer tax deductions, higher tax rates, and $400 billion in defense-spending cuts.

In effect, the president has moved to the left. He has embraced the Democrats' so called progressive caucus in the House by slashing defense and jacking up taxes, all while offering no serious entitlement reform. (Hat tip to Jimmy Pethokoukis for nailing this earlier in the week.)

My final point is this: President Obama's harsh-rhetoric rejection of the Ryan budget and his new (presidential) campaign to raise taxes on the rich sets up a huge confrontation with House Republicans on the eve of the hugely important debt-limit expiration.

The three Republican congressmen saw it as a rare ray of sunshine in Washington’s stormy budget battle: an invitation from the White House to hear President Obama lay out his ideas for taming the national debt.

They expected a peace offering, a gesture of goodwill aimed at smoothing a path toward compromise. But soon after taking their seats at George Washington University on Wednesday, they found themselves under fire for plotting “a fundamentally different America” from the one most Americans know and love.

“What came to my mind was: Why did he invite us?” Rep. Dave Camp (R-Mich.) said in an interview Thursday. “It’s just a wasted opportunity.”

The situation was all the more perplexing because Obama has to work with these guys: Camp is chairman of the House Ways and Means Committee, responsible for trade, taxes and urgent legislation to raise the legal limit on government borrowing. Rep. Jeb Hensarling (Tex.) chairs the House Republican Conference. And Rep. Paul Ryan (R-Wis.) is House Budget Committee chairman and the author of the spending blueprint Obama lacerated as “deeply pessimistic” during his 44-minute address.

At a time when the parties risk economic catastrophe unless they can come together to raise the debt limit, Obama’s partisan tone made no sense, Republicans across Capitol Hill said Thursday. Even some Obama allies wondered whether the president had made a tactical error.

“Yes,” the tenor of the speech was surprising, said Erskine Bowles, who headed Obama’s fiscal commission and is working with a bipartisan group of six senators to develop a compromise plan to rein in borrowing.

geojanes wrote:Regarding intelligence, I note that El Capitan picked me 6th when I was on his Patriot Games team. Oh, wait a minute . . . that means the other captains had the same opinion . . . Hmmm . . .

Nevertheless, I really do think of myself as a fence-sitter. Sure, I'm left of center in 2011 America, but I'm right of center in 1975 America.

geojanes wrote:Regarding intelligence, I note that El Capitan picked me 6th when I was on his Patriot Games team. Oh, wait a minute . . . that means the other captains had the same opinion . . . Hmmm . . .

Think of me as the Patriots when they got Brady. I saw your mad skills. I was just hoping the others would not until it was too late.

Neal Anderth wrote:Turns out Congressional Progressive Caucus (CPC) is the largest caucus within the Democratic caucus in the United States Congress with 83 declared members. They produced a budget proposal. You might not have heard of it. Probably because they are subservient to Obama, but none the less it is an interesting proposal in that it beats the budget deficit reductions of the Obama and Paul Ryan.

The nation has drifted right over the past couple of generations, don't you think? Now, I'm talking about fundamentally

rickyp wrote:geojanes

The nation has drifted right over the past couple of generations, don't you think? Now, I'm talking about fundamentally

Maybe you don't consider increasing liberal attitudes on social issues a left right thing...but how do things like attitudes towards race, racial intermarriage, acceptance of gays, gay marriage, place of women in society fit in with this generalization? On most of these social issues isn't the US becoming less conservative?

bbauska wrote:It is almost balanced between the left and the right. I would reduce even more, but this could be a good start...

geojanes wrote:More on topic, I think your attitude about my political views, which is similar to your previous comments regarding "RINOs," is part of the reason Obama will be reelected. In the American presidential system, big tent=winner while small tent=loser. Here you and your brethren in the Church of Ronald Reagan are working on excluding me, Colin Powell, Olympia Snowe, Lincoln Chafee, Paul O'Neil, etc..

Fine, nominate Mike Huckabee and let's see where that gets ya. Or one of those "you betcha" women.

The nation has drifted right over the past couple of generations, don't you think? Now, I'm talking about fundamentally, rather than budgetary stuff which is ideologically neutral.

For instance, 40 years ago, we didn't think twice about taking property from people, tearing down their homes and giving them housing funded by your tax dollars. The concept of urban renewal was so optimistic, so liberal, it could never be promoted today.

Gov't won wars, went to the moon, built the interstates, built a Great Society for goodness sake!

There was a lot of faith in govt culturally, which lead to people looking to gov't to help solve problems. Forty years ago, you really could say you were a socialist with a straight-face, because more gov't was not automatically a terrible thing. Not many people did, but a modern relic from that era, Bernie Sanders still says that's what he is. When he goes, he may be the last.

So yeah, you're convincing me Steve: In 2012 Rockefeller Republicans = Regan Democrats of 1980.

I also understand why, because for men of faith--the church of RR--you don't let just anyone in, you've really got to be a man of faith, a republican true believer. It makes me sad.

danivon wrote:Steve, really? Anything that's from the left == Sovietism?

I guess if that's the way this is heading, you were right about the demagoguery...