i thought cutting was the goal?
 

aren't we supposed to be trying to lower spending?

the 2012 military budget was passed, 336-87. 649 billion for fiscal 2012, up 2.7% from '11.
included: 119 billion for wars in iraq and afganistan (thought we were done in iraq, how odd), funding for a c-17 cargo plane that the air force does NOT want.

and the oh-so important 320 million to fund those military bands...because when i think strength, and needed defense, i think of trombones and tubas.
a new destroyer, 32 f-35sm 32 v-tols, 48 unmanned drones, 28 super hornets, 35 ospreys, two satellites, tanks, etc, etc, etc.


yep, they're right on target in d.c.


oh..and the bill to slow the rate of growth by only 1.3% instead of the end result above, of course that failed.

Yesterday the House Speaker turned down $4 billion in cuts, wanting only $2 billion in cuts. Naw, cutting is not what it's about.

What was that plane that the military didn't want, that Congress literally kept forcing them to take year after year? They just got rid of it this past year?

the c-17 in the budget is the same plane that has been unwanted in other budgets. there may be others, but that one keeps showing up. no doubt in my mind the plane is made in an area where a long-time senator is from. the military may not want it, but it's wanted by the company who makes/sells them!

the c-130 was another unwanted...that is made in ga--former senator newt gingrich was a pusher of that one. so was nunn.

http://www.watertowndailytimes.com/a...ON01/302159971


here's another, from a year ago...

http://politicalticker.blogs.cnn.com...ojects-remain/



nothing ever changes.

what i put in the initial post was from an article in today's paper; here's a link to msnbc's take on it..

http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/43688283...ime-austerity/

House boosts military budget in time of austerity (poor choice of words, this is no example of an austere appropriations bill!)
Measure includes $119 billion for the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan


On a 336-87 vote Friday, the Republican-controlled House overwhelmingly backed a $649 billion defense spending bill that boosts the Defense Department budget by $17 billion. The strong bipartisan embrace of the measure came as White House and congressional negotiators face an Aug. 2 deadline on agreeing to trillions of dollars in federal spending cuts and raising the borrowing limit so the U.S. does not default on debt payments.

While House Republican leaders agreed to slash billions from the proposed budgets for other agencies, hitting food aid for low-income women, health research, energy efficiency and much more, the military budget is the only one that would see a double-digit increase in its account beginning Oct. 1.


what asinine bullsh!t. does anyone here know that we outspend china six times over? russia? that 43% of military spending in the world is by us? that probably will increase with this bill. absolutely ridiculous. and what has that spending gotten us?? we can't even win a fukking war in afganistan with all these billions-so what's the point??

"While House Republican leaders agreed to slash billions from the proposed budgets for other agencies, hitting food aid for low-income women, health research, energy efficiency and much more, the military budget is the only one that would see a double-digit increase in its account beginning Oct. 1. "

Yeah - because in the middle of a great stagnant recession recovery, slashing billions from those things keeping people alive is exactly what is needed. While keeping people working at Halliburton and the other defense contractors, including their lobbyists, is good. For campaign funding.

You do not slash budgets in a recession recovery. Money is never cheaper than now. So you borrow at those cheap rates and have another huge stimulus, targeting infrastructure repair (bridges have to be fixed, why not do it with cheap money rather than expensive, and hire the currently unemployed, too? Duh!) and green technology advances.

That Obama has allowed the Republicans to highjack and control a routine deficit ceiling raise (that these same Republicans did seven times under Bush without a peep) and make the public discussion instead about spending cuts is something that will literally kill this country and any growth for two decades to come.

We borrowed in the past, we have to pay for it. That has nothing at all to do with future spending. Zero. Zip. Nada.

not sure if you saw this line in the msnbc article i posted above.


'The overall bill is $9 billion less than President Barack Obama sought.'

also:

The overall bill must be reconciled with a still-to-be-completed Senate version.

Yet not every House member thought spending was set high enough. Rep. Randy Forbes, R-Va., opposed the bill for cutting too deeply.

"It is dangerous for Congress to begin hollowing out the United States military without fully realizing the national security risks this may entail," Forbes said in a statement. (laughable at best)

The House also acted to slow the repeal of the policy allowing gays to serve openly in the armed forces. Lawmakers voted to block money to train the Chaplain Corps on the practices it should use once the "don't ask, don't tell" policy ends. (a damn crying shame)

Rep. Tim Huelskamp, R-Kan., sponsor of the measure, said its purpose is to prohibit chaplains from performing same-sex marriages on military bases without regard to a state's law. The House approved the measure 236-184.

We have yet to pay for it. We've had a national debt since at least 1930.

The party is over. Time to cut all the freebies.

And whether it's a household, a business, or a government, debt has very much to do with future spending. The juvenile actions of Congress in spending whatever figures suit their whims, regardless of actual resources and revenue, MUST cease.

Here's the most controversial statement any presidential candidate for 2012 can make: "Effective upon my inauguration, this government will spend a sum going forward that is always less than the previous year's tax revenue. The remainder, which will always be a yearly surplus, will be put toward retiring the debt we have already accrued, with a fraction of that to be accumulated for emergencies."

I laughed my tail off at the president's chief of staff on ABC news yesterday. What a joke - these guys will never get it. We as a country need to spend LESS than we TAKE IN starting RIGHT F**KING NOW!

andrew jackson was the last president to have this country out of debt.

hopefully the senate can do something about the house's appropriations bill. or the white house will do what they've threatened and veto the thing.

http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/43708556/ns/politics/


lol gotta laugh at the new euphemism of 'revenue increases'. let's not call it what it is.

Yeah, next thing you know, they'll stop counting the unemployed people after a couple of years, thus reducing the reported figure. Oh, wait a minute....

a wsj view on the debt crisis, etc

http://online.wsj.com/article/SB1000...p_mostpop_read


and i found this link, as i had read the piece in the paper here...

http://www.shreveporttimes.com/artic...imate-speeches


i went to factcheck, and did find this from obama's april budget speech:

http://factcheck.org/2011/04/factche...budget-speech/







and all that is all well and good...but i can't help but wonder why the govt let the debt ceiling get so close before doing anything. why didn't they let the tax cuts expire rather then extend them? how much would that have helped? why is the military budget larger than a year ago? why didn't obama and his party take more steps when they had the majorities in congress and held the executive? it's been left til now so that they would have to rush, just jack it up, and worry about all the reform later.
the ceiling will be raised. the question is what else will occur? i'm figuring not a lot.

One congressman says "Let's LOWER the debt ceiling":

http://tpmdc.talkingpointsmemo.com/2...bt-ceiling.php

then he's an idiot. they've let this go too long not to raise.

In the LONG term, the debt ceiling should be lowered, then, once debt is paid off, eliminated.

That's ignorant. We could stop spending 100% tomorrow, and the debt ceiling will still have to be regularly raised.

It's physically impossible to eliminate us having any rolling debt. A country doesn't function like a household, no matter how many pols try to use the analogies.

Because they didn't hold a supermajority in the Senate, so they had extreme difficulty getting routine things passed. Remember? The most obstructionist Senate ever?

And the current House is the least working (two weeks on, one week off), and least bills passed, in modern times. And 1/3 of the bills they passed were simply naming things.

There is raising the marginal tax rate, and eliminating loopholes. Eliminating loopholes could open up the base to an increase that would allow the rates to be lowered.

Call it what you wish, we have never had lower tax revenue compared to our spending. The inbalance is too significant. We gave away too much revenue in cuts, and we need it back. We cannot "cut" our way to prosperity in a recession. Well, we can, but we have to decide who gets to die on the street from the Congressional death panel: young disabled or old starving and sick.

We need to address the two biggest expenses, Social Security & (SSI) and Medicare/Medicaid. At the very least as average expectency of life goes up so should the minimum retirement/benefit age.

Social Security does not contribute to the debt at all, and is solvent if left alone until 2030, when 78% of current rates are payable if nothing at all is done.

Medicare-Medicaid is doing well, it is proven far more efficient and cost-effective than private insurance for the same population, but needs some definitive tweeks. Perhaps we can allow the government to bargain for drug costs, and cut several billion a year over time. Changing duplicate pay policies saves some more. Obama already took 500 billion of waste out for the PPACA.

Oh - and Obama offered a raised Medicare age in the big deal benefits package, according to leaks to Sam Stein, which he published today. The GOP just turned that one down. Sorry. The GOP party of "we screw ourselves" continues.

i feel that if they were able to get obamacare passed, they left plenty undone. i wonder if that was the deal? the reps allowed that to pass, at the expense of other things the dems wanted. wouldn't surprise me a bit to know that backdoor deals like that happen.

social security is funded by iou's. everyone has recognized it needs help, but no one wants to be the one to grab onto that one.
the govt has borrowed from itself-it just hasn't figured out how to pay itself back yet. of course, it can't default on that debt. problem now is that they are so far in debt elsewhere, where will the money come from the pay ss back???

Remember...We have to pass the bill to see what is in the bill...Famous word's of?????

LOL - Yeah. When there's a proposed bill in the Senate committee, and proposed bills in the House committees, and a proposed bill content from the President, and different factions are trying to get their different proposals passed, and a reporter asks the Speaker of the House "What of those options will be in the final bill?", the Speaker rightly answers, "We'll have to pass the bill to see what's in it".

Oh, it's so clever to hear people quote right wing "out of context" nonsense from two years ago! :)

Guess what was said today? Same thing. We'll have to have a final bill, before we know what will be in the final bill.

Why then is the Pres. saying SS checks won't go out unless he's allowed to borrow more money. He's not going to divert SS money to pay something else, like Pelosi's salary is he?

You can't possibly be this stupid.

This is precisely what I mean by your repeated demonstration of your "willful ignorance". We have discussed Social Security, how it works, the trust fund, etc. repeatedly on this board, and you've participated.

It's apparent you don't pay attention in the least to the real world, and you haven't the foggiest notion how Social Security or this country's budget works, let alone what the debt ceiling is and how we borrow and finance our country.

You seriously do not have a clue about these most basic things in our country. Things that have been all over the news the past 4-8 years.

Think really hard, and think of the concept of "cash flow". Good luck with it.

Remember that in the House, all Republicans and 34 Dems voted against it (but it still passed); but in the Senate, a 60 vote supermajority was needed, and all 40 Republicans voting against it, and the Independents joining the Dems to pass it with the 60 supermajority (a supermajority isn't needed for regular bills in normal times, but the Republicans were obstructing every senate vote)

Joe Leibermann at the last minute voted for it, passing it.

and you can't be that naive unless it's on purpose.

And that silly, meaningless answer proves you don't understand what the debt ceiling is, what it is used for, how our government finances the 70-80 million checks we write monthly, and the Social Security trust fund, SS funds and what they are, and how Social Security works; and how we finance this country on a daily basis, and what Treasury bonds are.

If you had just the most rudimentary, basic, elementary understanding of the above, you'd never ask why we would have to borrow money to pay out Social Security checks, yet how Social Security has nothing to do with our deficit, but yes, with the debt ceiling.

Let SS go try and borrow against that 'trust fund' that's solvent till 2030 as you claim. :zz:

Ponzi anyone?

You seriously haven't got a clue. You just contradicted your own original question, along with neglecting to realize you duplicated something I said. While demonstrating again, with your "ponzi" comment, that you don't even understand how SS is set up to work.

Pretty good toll for two sentences.

You make me want to support a poll tax.

its was actually the unprecedented use of the Slaughter rule that got obamacare passed. very very shady

and like i said above, if that bill that so many were against could pass, so could other democrat measures. that's one of the reasons many in his own party are unhappy with obama; he had an opportunity to do more, and he squandered it. because he didn't want to do too much, and possibly lose seats he tried to play it safe and it cost him.

If the SS tax was eliminated today how long would it be solvent? The SS administration is a PERFECT example of a Ponzi scheme in that without new investors (chumps) it would cease to exist. I suppose IOU's could still be sent out as they have plenty of them.

As I've said before. Government has NO business being involved in retirement planning and or a lot of other areas, period!

No. It was not "deemed passed". It was voted upon in a regular up and down vote in the House, and passed 219-212.

Except for the 154 times the Senate Republican minority prevented passage of Democratic bills due to invoking a supermajority. I don't know what you expected the Dems "could have done" when they needed 60 votes for routine matters due to the GOP forcing a supermajority need, and they only had 58 Senators?

Yes, the progressive wing of the Democratic party is unhappy with Obama, because he's not a "left liberal socialist". He's quite centrist.

"Do more" for them would have been to pass single payer healthcare: like that would have happened, when all they could barely pass were the basic insurance reforms of the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act! ("Obamacare")

Demonstrates zero understanding of how social security was set up and why it was set up that way. Suspects he's uncovered a magical secret!

i just know that i've heard plenty of 'he could have done more' talk-tavis smiley immediately comes to mind. seems like there was a lot of excitement about them having both houses and the exec, and there's a lot of feeling that opportunities were squandered.

The real far left progressives wanted single payer healthcare, immediate withdrawal from all wars, immediate closure of Guantanamo, immediately end DADT, etc.

And a pony.

A bit unrealistic. Turns out the President wasn't willing to say, "Screw you, Republicans, we'll just completely ignore you and shove what we want down your throat" and yeah, there was a faction of his party were mad about that.

Those same folks just held a two-day blogosphere "Obamahatefest" about what they thought was going on within the deficit ceiling talks. They all shut up starting Tuesday afternoon, Wednesday.