The proposed 2012 budget...
 

Before you start screaming about how this plan is going to make seniors live on dog or cat food, before you start arguing how lower taxes create economic growth, and before you take up whichever ideological arguements you already know.....

Try reading the thing:

http://budget.house.gov/UploadedFile...rityFY2012.pdf

Once you have, lets have a discussion on is this the right thing to do.

No talking points - lets deal with it as what it is - not what one side or the other CLAIM it is.....

Well this is not the actual budget document. This is a propaganda document reflecting partisan viewpoints.

What we need to find is the actual proposed budget that the House of Representatives, as a whole, is proposing (which has not been released yet).

Then we can talk.

This document is only what the GOP wants us to believe they are going to propose.

The file linked pretty much makes this obvious.
budget.house.gov/UploadedFiles/PathToProsperityFY2012.pdf

Path to prosperity? REALLY?! Says who? And does everyone agree this is the path? It's not named something official like "ProposedBudget2012.pdf", but a file named with a "make you feel good" choice of words. I just wasn't going to say anything, but i couldn't help but respond to your post Platapus. Damn you!

The Onion nails it again.

And what they said. This is pure partisan propaganda. If you want to deal with something as is instead as one side claims it is, (your words) start by junking this document.

me good them bad.
Dealt with as what it is:up:
Or if you go by the wondeful charts on projections
me amazingly good me the best thing since unsliced bread, them real crazy loons who couldn't tie a shoe lace.

Actually pull up the document......

This IS the 2012 fiscal budget resolution released by the House committee on the Budget. Sorry you take offense to the name - and yes the name is partisan politics. But it IS the official resolution by the committee.

Try checking page 4 for the "Statement of Constitutionality and Legal Authority"

No - its no Binding (as the full house must vote, then send it thru the senate and exec)m, but it IS a starting point.

So how come no one wants to actually read the thing? People too entrenched in their partisanship?

Sad.... Just plain sad....

It is because it is a shallow pice of political posturing which completely lacks any real detail. For example the spending proposals on health are completely vacant apart from cut here/spend there when the programs are interconnected and interwoven at nearly every level.
With any buget the devil is in the detail and here it is absent

Of course it is Hap. The Dems are scared to death that the Republicans might actually address their run away spending habits so instead of actually considering the bill they will reject it because of who created it rather than what it contains.

What's sad is that you're so entrenched in your partisanship that you refuse to see that this is a piece of GOP propaganda and you don't even realize it. I mean it's even got a link to the GOP website on the cover. It quotes the Heritage Foundation. And you're gonna try and tell me that this is a unbiased and objective document? If I tried to link you to an analysis from MoveOn, you'd all flame me to oblivion.

Your only response to that is "it's not because it says it's Constitutional on page 4."

From glancing through it, looks to be more a policy document outlining the Republican agenda rather than a budget document.

I read it.

It is the same, lame "solutions" right wing conservatives have been proposing for 30 years:

1. cut taxes;
2. cut spending;
3. balance the budget.

They will cut $178 B out of defence spending this year, but no specifics.

They will eliminate waste in government by firing 10% of all govt employess, but without affecting any services. :doh:

They will cut Medicare spending "by ending wasteful fraud", but without affecting the current level of benefits. :doh:

They will solve the Social Security crisis by forcing the President to come up with a plan. :doh:

And their magic weapon: producing untold amounts of savings by REPEALING THE OBAMA HEALTH CARE PLAN! which is repeated on a special BLUE page every few pages in case we dont get the point.

And what will this wonderful plan do for America? OMG, the cut in taxes will create an economic boom that will generate untold tax revenues to PAY OFF THE NATIONAL DEBT!!!!

This was not written by politicians, it was written by the inmates of an insane asylum. :haha::rotfl2::har:

Just write bad checks and let the grandkids worry about it.

1. Cut taxes
2. Cut spending
3. ????
4. PROFIT!

The Democrats held both houses of Congress and the Oval office yet they still didn't address the deficit other than to massively add to it.

I will make one serious comment. One of the proposed solution to the medicare/medicaid issue is to transfer responsibility to the individual states and have the federal government make lump sum payments, with limited future increases presumably capped to cost of living. Unstated, but presumably under the premise that individual states could administer Medicare/Medicaid at a lower cost by tailoring the system to local conditions.

This solution is what was implemented in Canada 30 years ago. In the late 70s, the can. federal govt. was facing ballooning deficits. At the time, the fed. govt was funding 50% of public health care and many other social programs and the other 50% was paid by the provinces. They came up with a similar plan where the responsibility for the programs would be transferred to the individual provinces and the fed. govt would only pay a lump sum annual payment, increased each year by a cost of living increase.

Well, it turned out to be a great plan for the federal government. Over the past 30 years, the federal share of health care spending has gone down from 50% to around 30% while the provinces now pay around 70%. The federal govt, up until 2008 was running surpluses while the provinces have chronic deficits and the political problem of trying to figure out what programs to cut or what taxes to raise.

So the GOP solution sounds fine on paper, but all you wind up doing is transferring the problem to the individual states.

Could some one explain this "lower-taxes-fixes-everything" idea? Simple Finn does not understand... :hmmm:

I assume that GOP wants to go competition with PRC and lure industries back to USA. In that case my simple mind says that they would have to either:
1. implement tariff system to make importing goods unfeasible and ease export
2. or cut wages.

In my understanding option 1. would conflict with St. Free Trade (patron saint of conservatives am I correct?) and would therefore be out of question. I personally doubt success of option 2...

It really doesn't address the issues, just the same old theory of voodoo economics, make the rich richer and we'll see a trickle down effect from it.
Due to regulations, shelters, trade laws, etc, 10% now hold about 80% of all wealth. That's where selling out to corporations has got us. Make no doubt about it, lobbiest wrote this bill. Some things sound good, but they always do, cap and decide what and how much to spend on this or that.

As long as lobbiest and special interest run this nation we'll be changing dance partners every election.

I have no doubt we'll have to scrap medicare/caid/SS to a great degree in the future. That's where the money goes. Until we can solve healthcare, we'll continue to see mass unsubtainable debt. The only way to do it is make all health care nonprofit, regulated and affordable. The GOP
for healthcare is simply thin the herd...can't keep up, fall out and die.

is that that road map tax plan again? I read a report from a watchdog group that tore it a new one.

they said it would actually raise taxes for the middle class, while cutting taxes for...guess who!...the rich. and that it actually wouldn't solve the budget.


also...defense spending to "below 2008 levels" that probably means just below. But what they don't mention is that we were in a war in 2008, so what does that mean? will we be spending as if we were in a war for the next 10 years? I bet GE loves that. Free money! they don't even pay taxes here.

My personal belief is that the people responsible for creating taxes should be of the opinion that all taxes are evil. I'm not saying that they are, but too many people think that they're good, rather than just a tool.

In my ideal world there would be no taxes. Impossible? Of course. Government has no means to generate revenue, so if we want roads, police etc. we need taxes. If people were perfect we wouldn't need governments, but people aren't perfect, so we have governments and we have taxes.

But at the same time you mock the idea of lower taxes fixing things, I don't see you addressing the opposite. Are you saying that higher taxes can fix everything? If that's the case then shouldn't you be advocating 100% of everything we make going to the government, and then the wonderful people we elect can decide how much we need to live on?

I see you mocking one side, but ignoring the problems of your own. It's an all-too-common idea around here: "I'm right and you're stupid."