Pay as you go. What a unique idea!!!!

Frank, you haven’t left the Party, the Party has left you !!!

Now I could put the ball in your court, couldn’t I?. You know that, according to economics 101, tax cuts have produced more revenue.

So spending must be cut.

I never suggested that only reducing adminstrative expenses would do the trick. I was suggesting you could reduce administrative expenses first.

And, if spending has to be cut, it has to be cut.

We are at the point where the costs that are cut hurt people or eliminate national assets.

That’s where we differ, all right. We are not at that point. We are at the point where if we go on spending, we will be hurting people.

Have you been to a VA Hospital lately? It’s full of WW II outpatients picking up free cardio care and expensive heart pills, at taxpayers’ expense. They’re all most likely eligible for Medicare or their own company’s retirement health plan or both, but they don’t want to make a co – pay.

If we don’t stop that, we’ll be paying it for years.

Things like that can be done. Think about it — the money for these services has been going up slowly but surely, year after year, and yet somehow, it is believed that it cannot be reduced to some point in the past.

The expenditures must ever be increased, the number of eligibles must ever be increased, inflation drives the cost of the expenditures up, so sooner or later Democrats will be in power, and taxes will be increased, naturally productivity will decline, unemployment will rise, more benefits will be paid, and round and round we go.

Spending must be cut — period.

You don’t like 10% — fine. Pick a smaller per cent. Stick to it. Sooner or later, expenditures will equal revenues. Stop it right there. The following year, there will be a surplus. Nothing tricky about it.

How’s this — don’t increase expenditures at all, until they are matched by revenues?

On your second point, I would never argue that nothing could be done to balance the budget on the spend side. Al Gore, for all his wonky faults, created the National Performance Review, which saved over $50 billion through government streamlining and personnel reductions. But that was a blue-ribbon panel that took years and only found 2% savings…

If you want to cut the budget at this point, you can’t get there with administrative trimming. Cut off funding to military R&D? Sure. Cut off funding to medicare? That’ll work. Cut off veteran’s benefits? Why not. This is why the debate is flawed. We are at the point where the costs that are cut hurt people or eliminate national assets. That’s where we differ on what can be done on the spend side. So, I submit to you, because I truly believe that you, Frank, are smart enough to see that this issue will need to be solved in other ways. Or we’re in for a world of hurt.

Suppose I gave you an allowance of $50 a week (OK you’re a young kid, I’m a cheap Dad), and you’ve already got a $50 a week nicotine habit — a little more than a carton, where I live.

One day, I tell you, “Sorry, son. I have to cut your allowance by $10 a week.” What are you gonna say? “But, Dad, I’m smoking a carton a week!”?

What would I care? I don’t want you smoking at all…

If what you are arguing is that the budget can’t be reduced, even as revenues continue to climb (meaning the defecit is invincible), then either Clinton pulled off a miracle, or you all should stop complaining about Bush, or both.

The 2006 est Receipts are { http://tinyurl.com/ok39w } [pdf]

2,285,491,000,000

10% = 228,549,100,000

Let’s see you knock that off with some Pentagon cuts…

The question about what would happen if 10% were taken out of any Federal budget can easily be determined by looking at the amount of administrative costs vs. direct goods/services or transfer payments. Typically admin. costs run from as low as 1% for SSI and Medicare to 10-15% in R&D programs where due dilligence costs are high. If you reduce the budget for Medicare by 10%, even if you had all service and processing costs handled by the recipients themselves, an entirely impossible task, the amount of transfer payments would be cut back by about 9%. So this begs a serious question for you. How do you want that impact to be felt? Do you want all recipients of medicare to have their checks reduced by 9% or just find a group of them, say all of those in your state, and put them out on the street to die homeless and penniless?

Finally, I always laugh when people talk about budgets without deep knowledge of the ripples those changes have. You do lose police and firemen for two reasons. First, DHS money goes directly to first responders to pay for the upgrades to service and facilities under enabling Federal legislation. Second, because all payments trickle through the economy from Federal, to State to Local, where local governments simply don’t have the tools to finance local operations. In my great state of California, this starts with Feds who cut back transportation funds, which causes state governments to tighten their belts and reduce state education payments, which force local politicians to decide between schools, police and firemen. So we get rid of effective community policing programs and lower teacher salaries. Your state may have a different approach.

Dugger, you are right. I am inexperienced. People with experience on this board know that you don’t really have or defend positions. You just call people names and change the subject. You can call me experienced now, which is to say, I will ignore you in the future.

They could start with cutting off eligibility to an income level below yours
for access to Medicaid. That should equal about 10%

What name calling? That you are inexperienced here? Thats true otherwise you wouldn’ have asked me to explain positions that I haven’t taken. Otherwise the only name calling I see is partiisan hack and how do you know if I get talking points (actually have never gotten talking points).

You assume too much. You are inexperienced here. I could easily demand you explain Ward Churchill’s positon on 9-11. After all, he is of the left. But that would be ‘assuming’.

Dugger

See, you don’t understand, so you make fun of me — that’s the Liberal way!

Budget pays for services= less $$ in the budget=fewer services. So, your’re right, Frank, a 10% decrease in the budget does not = a 10% decrease in services. It’s probably a lot more.

we could probably cut our budget by 60% or 70% before we got down to the level of 10 third world countries combined
… and the federal gov’t is working on that every day.
Just as long as Halliburton gets paid on the first of the month.

Maybe you two, together, can work out the difference between a 10% cut in the budget, and a 10% reduction in services. I have neither the time nor the inclination

Incidentally, how many firemen and policemen are paid by the federal government?

Remind me…

By the way, we could probably cut our budget by 60% or 70% before we got down to the level of 10 third world countries combined

“Too much money. That was our problem five years ago.”

So we will build 10% fewer roads and have 10% fewer police and firefighters. We will close 10% of veteran’s hospitals and pay 10% less in unemployment insurance. We will equip American soldiers overseas with 10% less body armor and have 10% fewer homeland secuity first responders.

Well, I can’t say you don’t have a plan. It is political suicide and essentially turns us into a third-world country but good luck with it.