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<p>Everyone wanted a bigger comprehensive bill. The problem was that they couldn’t agree on cuts that big without resorting to smoke and mirrors (the defense “savings” that come from not spending un-budgeted dollars to stay in Afghanistan and Iraq for ten more years) or tax increases.</p>
<p>At $3 or $4 trillion, you are either looking at phony cuts or cuts that really start to be painful.</p>
<p>I like the plan that from 2011 spending level, cut 1% each year. will balance in 8 years?
Should not be that painful considering how much waste in gov.</p>
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<p>Or revenue increases.</p>
<p>Tigerdad, cutting 1% per year is harder than you think. Remember that with the aging of the population (that is, new people move into Social Security and Medicare every year) and with the general increase in population, and with the increase in interest payments every year because we haven’t balanced the budget yet, it costs more each year to deliver the same amount of services. Also, if your proposal is in nominal dollars rather than real (inflation-adjusted) dollars, it costs even more each year to deliver the same services.</p>
<p>The other huge elephant in the room, and, in my view, the real issue, is the increase in medical costs. Medical costs are going up way way way faster than inflation. The cuts now being discussed are doing nothing to deal with that problem.</p>
<p>One percent of the yearly budget right now is something like $35 billion. When challenged to list $35 billion of waste and fraud, somehow politicians never seem to be able to do it. There probably is $35 billion of waste and fraud, but how the heck do you identify it and eliminate it?</p>
<p>dissolve public empoyee unions. they are fighting their boss, the people.</p>
<p>some gov funded initiatives such as inner city job training have funding in over 70 gov agencies. cutting gov by 30% should be able to deliver the same service.</p>
<p>Cut the debt, and you drive the country into depression. (which is what “some” want, and others will go along). But please don’t tax my mother - she is a “job creator”.</p>
<p>Dissolving public employee unions and eliminating all job training programs will not come remotely close to the first year’s $35 billion. Even if you could get Congress to agree, which you couldn’t.</p>
<p>Now Boehner has cancelled the vote for tonight, and the scuttlebutt is that he needs ten or twelve more votes. </p>
<p>He may discover his choice is between either cutting the Tea Party wing adrift and making a deal with centrist Democrats, or keeping his Speakership and letting the US default.</p>
<p>By all means Boehner should put his political aspirations ahead of the country. :rolleyes:</p>
<p>I was a Tea Party “supporter” in that I appreciated the fact that they believe in fiscal conservativism, something many Repubs had abandoned. But with the privilege of being elected to office comes the responsibility to govern responsibly. And they’re not being responsible, IMO.</p>
<p>I almost feel sorry for Boehner, and I’m a Democrat.</p>
<p>someone on the today show just said…apple has 76B in cash while the govt has 73.4B Scary!!</p>
<p>Maybe its time Apple gives some back to its shareholders in a form of a dividend</p>
<p>"someone on the today show just said…apple has 76B in cash while the govt has 73.4B Scary!! "</p>
<p>It’s not scary at all if this were true. The scary part is gov has -14.6 trillion in cash.</p>
<p>Apple, and a ton of other US companies with $1.5 trillion in cash, are waiting for a better tax deal before repatriating their profits.</p>
<p>I don’t know who is more ludicrous - the Tea Party zealots pursuing their BBA or Pelosi and her fight to “save the world as we know it”.</p>
<p>Pelosi for sure. I don’t understand why balance the Budget is so ridiculous.</p>
<p>Balancing the budget is good, you just don’t balance the budget using the debt ceiling.</p>
<p>if you keep raising the debt ceiling you will never have to balance the budget… until no one wants to lend money to you and you become Greece.</p>
<p>I can’t believe what I read sometimes…</p>
<p>One …the federal government never has to balance the budget.</p>
<p>Two…the debt problems aren’t going to affect the economy for a long time…</p>
<p>Three…debt is only one side of the balance sheet…</p>
<p>What about assets?</p>
<p>I think some of you should look at assets before you freak out…</p>
<p>This is such a bs issue…</p>
<p>It’s really annoying for the country to focus on the debt issue…when cutting the deficit in a large way will lead to a depression…and then we can really worry about the debt…</p>
<p>dstark, do you still think that this gets resolved before Tuesday?</p>
<p>I really thought it would…</p>
<p>but I may have overestimated the intelligence of some of these politicians…</p>
<p>I still don’t think this will have debt ceiling crap will have any long term effect…</p>
<p>The economy stinks though…</p>
<p>What do you think BCEagle91? Do you think this issue will be resolved by Tuesday?</p>