That would be great if it is how it works...The Republicans you are supporting are not fiscally responsible. in a time of war spending money on tax cuts plus continuing our spending levels and increasing them as Republicans have done for 6 years will do nothing but increase the debt. This is not the proper procedure. We have to maintain taxes where they are (tax cuts barely impact the middle class and lower class but strongly support the rich as they are percentage based...) and reduce spending and withdraw from our war. Continuing like this will just increase debt and will not stimulate the economy as has been shown. Bush's tax cuts now have us enter into a recession as we move on...how are they working?
As for pulling out of our debt I see countries like Saudi Arabia pulling out and it also lowers our negotiating power if we are reliant on them...
I agree that Bush has not been very conservative about spending at all. That said, Obama plans to increase spending, and raise taxes such as the capital gains tax which will in effect lower the revenue generated.
On his tax cuts:
For the past half-century, tax revenues have gen erally stayed within 1 percentage point of 18 per cent of GDP. The CBO projects that, even if all 2001 and 2003 tax cuts are made permanent, revenues will stillincrease from 18.4 percent of GDP today to 22.8 percent by 2050, not counting any feedback revenues from their positive economic impact. It is projected that repealing the Bush tax cuts would nudge 2050 revenues up to 23.7 percent of GDP, not counting any revenue losses from the negative economic impact of the tax hikes. In effect, the Bush tax cut debate is whether revenues should increase by 4.4 percent or 5.3 percent of GDP.
Spending has remained around 20 percent of GDP for the past half-century. However, the coming retirement of the baby boomers will increase Social Security, Medicare, and Medicaid spending by a combined 10.5 percent of GDP. Assuming that this causes large budget deficits and increased net spending on interest, federal spending could surge to 38 percent of GDP and possibly much higher.
Overall, revenues are projected to increase from 18 percent of GDP to almost 23 percent. Spending is projected to increase from 20 percent of GDP to at least 38 percent. Even repealing all of the 2001 and 2003 cuts would merely shave the projected budget deficit of 15 percent of GDP by less than 1 percentage point, and that assumes no negative feedback from raising taxes.
Further, The 2003 tax cuts lowered income, capital gains, and dividend tax rates. These policies were designed to increase market incentives to work, save, and invest, thus creating jobs and increas ing economic growth. This is exactly what happened.
1) GDP grew at an annual rate of just 1.7 percent in the six quarters before the 2003 tax cuts. In the six quarters following the tax cuts, the growth rate was 4.1 percent.
2) Non-residential fixed investment declined for 13 consecutive quarters before the 2003 tax cuts. Since then, it has expanded for 13 consec utive quarters. The S&P 500 dropped 18 percent in the six quarters before the 2003 tax cuts but increased by 32 percent over the next six quarters. Divi dend payouts increased as well.
3) The economy lost 267,000 jobs in the six quar ters before the 2003 tax cuts. In the next six quarters, it added 307,000 jobs, followed by 5 million jobs in the next seven quarters.
Add to this that in the post-Bush tax era, the rich actually shoulder more of the tax burden.
While high-income households did save more in actual dollars than low-income households, they did so because low-income house holds pay so little in income taxes in the first place. The same 1 percent tax cut will save more dollars for a millionaire than it will for a middle-class worker simply because the millionaire paid more taxes before the tax cut.
First, lawmakers low ered the initial tax brackets from 15 percent to 10 percent and then expanded the refundable child tax credit, which, along with the refundable earned income tax credit (EITC), reduced the typical low-income tax burden to well below zero. As a result, the U.S. Treasury now mails tax "refunds" to a large proportion of these Americans that exceed the amounts of tax that they actually paid. All in all, the number of tax filers with zero or negative income tax liability rose from 30 million to 40 million, or about 30 percent of all tax filers.
Consequently, from 2000 to 2004, the share of all individual income taxes paid by the bottom 40 per cent dropped from zero percent to –4 percent, mean ing that the average family in those quintiles received a subsidy from the IRS. By contrast, the share paid by the top quintile of households (by income) increased from 81 percent to 85 percent.
Expanding the data to include all federal taxes, the share paid by the top quintile edged up from 66.6 percent in 2000 to 67.1 percent in 2004, while the bottom 40 percent's share dipped from 5.9 per cent to 5.4 percent. Clearly, the tax cuts have led to the rich shouldering more of the income tax burden and the poor shouldering less
This is a long misproven arguement. The HMOs are put out of power saving the average american family of 3-4 up to $10,000. The government increases a tax to all people averaging approximately $5000 with less at the bottom and more at the top. The significantly lower overhead allows people to spend less and get the same or better care. Now we spend 40% more money per capita on health care than any other industrialized country in the world and yet our care fails down near the bottom of highly developed countries. In addition the CBO (Congressional Budget Office) claims that UHC would save between 100-200 billion dollars A YEAR even with covering the uninsured and increasing benefits. Why is it that we can't implement a plan that is such as success in France (#1 in the world), Canada, Japan, Britain and others.
HMOs were designed--by Democrats and Republicans--to eliminate individual health insurance. The individual was first discouraged from buying insurance in 1942 when employee health premiums were made tax deductible to employers--not to individuals. Congress created Medicare in 1965, making individual insurance for those over 65 obsolete.
The law created new, supposedly cheaper health coverage with millions of dollars to HMOs, which, until then, constituted a small portion of the market. Kaiser Permanente was the only major HMO in the country by 1969 and most of its members were compelled to join through unions. Combined with Medicare, the HMO Act eventually eliminated the market for affordable individual health insurance.
In my view, this is the reason for higher medical costs. The HMO's do not compete and the government has done away with the market for individual competition. I do not think the solution to this problem (created by government intrusion) is more government intrusion.
Not at all. There are millions of Americans who work 40, 50 or 60 hours a week at minimum wage jobs but are unable to do better because they lack the skills or the economic climate is inhibating them from finding a better job. So don't tell me that they have a choice...some may but others don't...
For the latest stats I could find on minimum wage workers:
The 1.6 million paid-hourly workers who earn minimum wages can be broken down into two broad groups.
1) Over half (53 percent) are teenagers or young adults under the age of 23. More than half (54 percent) of these young workers live in families with incomes two or more times the official poverty level for their family size and 18 percent live in poor families. The average family income of these young workers is almost $50,500 per year. The average income for single young workers is $11,200. Over 63 percent are enrolled in either high school or college.
2) The other half (47 percent) are workers ages 23 and up. More of these workers live in poor families (29 percent). Yet, even within this half of the minimum wage population, the average family income is over $38,100 per year. The average income for single workers is $19,300. Over 30 percent of these older workers did not graduate from high school and another 36 percent had only a high school diploma.
The average family income for all minimum wage workers is $45,200 and their wages account for 35 percent of their total family income. The average income of single-nonfamily minimum wage workers is $16,800.
And quite frankly, in my opinion, many of those who are stuck in a minimum wage job because they dropped out of high school or did not goto college made that choice. They chose to drop out or not to pursue college. I know in my state if you make only average grades you can attend college for free, and recently I read in the paper about a homeless boy who had just graduated high school and was going to college. These people had a choice, and they made it.
