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Republicans win first budget skirmish; bigger fight looms

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Just $99 billion away from the debt ceiling. Just cut everything except the military/police in case of riots. First, a theater near you, stagflation 2011.

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“These cuts reflect this Republican majority’s continued commitment to significantly reduce spending, rein in the nation’s exploding deficits and debt, and to help our economy continue on the road to recovery,”

USA is a on a road but afraid it is not the "road to recovery". Also, how about asking the obvious question about why there are exploding debts and deficits in the first place? Because you don't want to know the answer, that is why. The debt was intentional, and nothing to do with party politics. This is Alice in Wonderland stuff, where everybody pretends that nobody knows how economics and money works. Pretend that you can fix things by stopping doing what you were doing to cover up things in the first place, and which is what screwed everything up. Two ways for this to go. One, they have no real intention of cutting spending, just shifting it so services are down but spending stays the same (and of course use the black hole called the Federal Reserve to top things up), or two, they really will cut spending and then face the shocking realization that that doesn't fix anything. Crazy times. And are they really spending their time talking about $4 billion? That is Dr. Evil money, less than peanuts in the overall picture.

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TumbleDry: Abraham Lincoln too.

Just to be clear on my previous rambling post, and to save anybody from wasting their time with the usual "we are going broke" Keynsian bashing, just because I am saying solution A) "cutting spending" won't work, does not mean I think solution B)"continuing to spend" will work either. The correct answer is solution C) but not much point in talking about it as it will never be allowed to happen. That is why everybody argues about non-solutions A and B, because C is off the table.

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the $4 billion in cuts over two weeks is the same pace as cutting $60 billion through the Sept 30 end of the budget year.

When consider the annual federal budget is $3.5 trillion, this is pretty meaningless. We need to be talking about hundreds of billions in cuts.

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Cutting out the TSA/Homeland security and getting rid of the FEMA camps would be a good start. Eliminating the CIA that are starting all these wars and running the drugs would help also.

But both of these two are "too big to fail" with many ObamaJobs at stake.

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Badsey: Cutting out the TSA/Homeland security and getting rid of the FEMA camps would be a good start.

Social security and medicare make up 50% of the US budget. Cutting these would be an even better start.

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Helter Skelter : You nailed it. Just a drop in the bucket. This is all posturing and just an opportunity to cut programs that are hated for ideological and political reasons. The biggest problem is Medicare and Medicaid, Social Security to a lesser degree( it only needs to be tweaked ) But no politician ever wants to tackle those things because there's always another election to worry about.

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Let the guv shut down. Who would miss the DoE, the FDA and the other unconstitutional bureaucracies the Dems have saddled us with.

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$4 billion in spending cuts.

Where's the conservatives cheering from the sidelines thinking they've fixed the budget crisis? :-)

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This is truly peanuts and look how tangled up in knots Congress and President Obama have been over this. It's pitiful that the Democrats are whining about even this tiny cuts.

What will really matter is what happens in April when the Republicans come up with their own budget. Obama's budget released last month was a joke - cut's nothing and adds over a trillion in debt each year well after he is long gone from office. He complained that he didn't want to suggest any cuts because he would just set himself up for criticism for doing so. Well, if he were a leader he could stand the heat - but his budget shows that he is not a leader at all. Just another run of the mill Socialist trying to force others to do his bidding.

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I don't about you guys, if your a US citizen, but I've had it with the entire US gov. We elect these people to lead, but instead all they really do is conjure up ways to take more and more of our money. Look at some of the things that are being paid for... fish mating habits, and what not. Social Security probably is not as bad as many say and maybe it is, but I would prefer for them to let me keep my money and let me put it into my own retirement (yes, many treat SSI as though it is their retirement fund). For those in need, again, I'd prefer for me to have more of a say of how it is paid and for what. Or even allow us to build our own help organizations at a local level. Sorry, but I can't fathom food stamps paying for things like alcohol or tobacco products which many places sell and paid for with food stamps. Education, again here too.. the DOE has done a terrible job over the years. when you are under a government such as the US government taking money left and right, really I ask what's the difference of living under a king?

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Shut down Social Security! It is an entitlement, of course, so doing so would also require eliminating withholding, thus eliminating the approx. $100 billion surplus Social Security is expected to run in 2011 (according to the CBO). Then, of course, there is the legal obligation to pay back what has previously been paid into the system. So shut it down, and good luck with that.

And shut down Medicare and Medicaid. Just as there is no such thing as a free lunch, hospital costs would soar as they would be forced to care for indigent patients. Of course, laws could be changed to allow hospitals to force nonpaying patients out on the street; I am sure there is great support for that.

Similar is true with the DoE, FDA, etc.: relative pennies would be saved at the expense of a national energy policy and safety of food and medicine.

Liquidate it all! It'll be fun to watch the end of what is left of American civilization.

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Liquidate it all! It'll be fun to watch the end of what is left of American civilization." Odd as it may sound, the US was on a constant up before many of those departments were created....

So shut it down, and good luck with that." You don't trust people would at the very least put their cash under the bed? Believe it or not, you'd probably come out with more these days. Funny you mention hospitals in that manner, there are many "free and low cost" clinics in many states. There are also fee based hospitals too.. of course not in the big cities.

My point is that we, I'm confident, we could do just as good for ourselves without our government in its current form, which all it is now is a scam.

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WolfPack - "What will really matter is what happens in April when the Republicans come up with their own budget."

Ahem....let's not forget the GOP ran up $6 trillion in debt when they were in power.

But HEY! They're a DIFFERENT party now. They are NOT the same as the previous GOP.

Flying pig! - BAM! Got it! heh, heh.

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Ahem....let's not forget the GOP ran up $6 trillion in debt when they were in power.

Why not go with an even more absurd figure of 60 or 600 trillion? No one really believes anyway what you post about "conservatives" in a country you have never been to and know next to nothing about...

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^ The same can be said for you.

Are you forgetting Bush?

Honestly, I wish there was a third major party.

The bipolarity of America is rather sad....

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Remember how the bank crisis happened near the end of his term.

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Honestly, I wish there was a third major party.

TEA.

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TEA.

Not a party at all, it's a voting block of the GOP.

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Anything but the tea party!

They are even more conservative than Republicans.

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My sincerest hope for the Democrat Party I left years ago is that its many disaffected members can also form a true grassroots movement. Influential Republicans and Libertarians, I promise you, will not publicly use derogatory, adolescent names to describe a genuine effort to make the most of the democratic process and the promises enshrined in our Constitution.

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Uh-huh...and my sincerest hope is that conservatives stop giving the wealthy tax cuts and pushing conservative social agendas (restricting women's choices on abortion and social programs for the poor).

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Oh, and to tell Fox News to stop leaning too much on the right and get their facts straight.

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Oh, and to tell Fox News to stop leaning too much on the right and get their facts straight

Again, why can't the so-called progressive movement mount any semblance of a challenge to Fox? - which I do not watch and do not consider to be anywhere near as influential as ppl like u imagine.

The US already has the most progressive tax code in the world. Even the OECD concedes this. The top ten percent of earners pay 70 percent of all taxes. I get so sick of posting this. Please read up on the system before coming here with the rote talking points about tax cuts for da eeevil rich.

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The US already has the most progressive tax code in the world. Even the OECD concedes this.

The OECD never "condeded" this. Dishonest libertarians, such as those at the Tax Foundatin, have taken an extremely selective sample of the numbers presented in the OECD's 2008 report titled "Growing Unequal?: Income Distribution and Poverty in OECD Countries," and spun them in an attempt to make their false point.

They totally leave out the meat of the OECD's report which says, about the United States: "The US is the country with the **highest inequality level and poverty rate across the OECD, Mexico and Turkey excepted. Since 2000, income inequality has increased rapidly, continuing a long-term trend that goes back to the 1970s."

"Rich households in America have been leaving both middle and poorer income groups behind. This has happened in many countries, but nowhere has this trend been so stark as in the United States. The average income of the richest 10% is US$93,000 US$ in purchasing power parities, the highest level in the OECD. However, the poorest 10% of the US citizens have an income of US$5,800 US$ per year – about 20% lower than the average for OECD countries."

"Redistribution of income by government plays a relatively minor role in the United States. Only in Korea is the effect smaller. This is partly because the level of spending on social benefits such as unemployment benefits and family benefits is low – equivalent to just 9% of household incomes, while the OECD average is 22%. The effectiveness of taxes and transfers in reducing inequality has fallen still further in the past 10 years."

I don't know about "evil rich," but it is certainly evil to expect the masses at the low end of the economic spectrum to kick in more in taxes and to give up more out of what has been for them a decline in puchasing power.

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However, the poorest 10% of the US citizens have an income of US$5,800 US$ per year" That's has to be wrong. Welfare pays out more than that. In fact, back in 89' while we collected it, it was a lot more than that.

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That's has to be wrong. Welfare pays out more than that.

Simple arithmetic would prove you wrong.

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"Largely a spectator so far, President Barack Obama..."

Obama, clueless on shrinking the size of government, has largely been a failure.

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Why not go with an even more absurd figure of 60 or 600 trillion? No one really believes anyway what you post about "conservatives" in a country you have never been to and know next to nothing about...

Apparently he knows enough about the USA to know what the figure is.

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Why not go with an even more absurd figure of 60 or 600 trillion? No one really believes anyway what you post about "conservatives" in a country you have never been to and know next to nothing about...

Although 6 trillion is not correct;

Bush added 4.97 trillion, a number that came be found on US treasury department website. He nearly double the national debt, spending more then all previous presidents before him combined.

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