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#61
08-09-2011, 04:31 PM
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Now, Medicaid? Deep trouble, because the sharing $$ states are broke. The feds have been carrying the states with stimulus money for this. Medicare? Getting to trouble, but the $500,000 billion taken out with Obamacare for duplicate provider services was a start, and that extended it's life by five or seven years or so. "Growing entitlements" isn't a problem by itself. Big entitlement programs isn't a problem when you have a country with 330 million people and have alot of people on it. The size isn't a concern. We are not Germany. We have a growing population. That fact that costs are growing isn't the problem, as the systems were designed, and are generally working well, to be rather self-funded. More people = more income into system = more costs. The problem is that we are reaching the bubble where the "baby boomer" generation is, so that is a financial hurdle we have to get through with Medicare. (By the way, that bubble goes away afterwards. It doesn't keep increasing) This is at a time of high unemployment, so less cash is being contributed into the system, too. If the government would simply allow Medicare to bargain Rx costs like private insurers do, that would save trillions over time. And open it up to those 50 and older. That influx of healthier people will be huge. We have to make health care less expensive. We are the most expensive health care delivery system in the world, it's 1/5 of our economy - most countries it's far less, even if they have nationalized medicine. Of course, the Republicans won't allow "expanded communistic socialistic national health care OMG!" I'm not really in favor of raising the age or having a test - everyone paid in, everyone should get that back, even if you have alot of money in your old age. Raising the age for Medicare is a concern now, as they can't find insurance. Nobody else will insure them. Maybe after 2014, when the insurance exchanges are available. But to do it now is just throwing them to the wolves of non-insurance. Look - these are not impossible problems to surmount. The main setbacks have been the costs of the wars (borrowed) and our massive decrease in revenue (Bush tax cuts - yes, renewed by Obama - money borrowed to keep paying for what they did) Those two things alone are half our debt. We let the Bush tax cuts expire, and our debt is halved in about 10 years, doing nothing else. Without the above, our debt is very, very manageable, and very low, relative to other first world countries. This isn't even a hard fix - unless you are completely against any increase in revenue, or allowing other people to have security with Medicare, as the Republicans are. Did you know the Republicans already announced they will not put anybody on the deficit committee that will be in favor of any revenue increases whatsoever? They are already holding the debt ceiling committee, and the automatic triggers, hostage? Already? And just this weekend Cantor sent a letter to his House Republicans telling them to stand strong on no revenue increases, no matter what? Yeah, that will help. Let's have some more Republican "sky is falling!" scenario, so you can privatize more things (Paul Ryan budget - which even saves part of the Obamacare savings, BTW, because they work and are real) and hand off more money to Wall Street. The elections in Wisconsin are very important today - they do start the 2012 election season. Which way will this country choose to go? The Democratic way, or the Republican way? Reject union-busting, teachers and firefighters as demons, privatizing every last cent - or doing something to help all citzens, to grow this society into something better?
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"Have the clean racing people run any ads explaining that giving a horse a Starbucks and a chocolate poppyseed muffin for breakfast would likely result in a ten year suspension for the trainer?" - Dr. Andrew Roberts Last edited by Riot : 08-09-2011 at 04:42 PM. 
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#62
08-10-2011, 06:32 AM
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You know - like a "budget" is - everywhere else in the world but Washington D.C.
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#63
08-10-2011, 06:48 AM
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http://www.csmonitor.com/USA/Politic...ress-to-shrink Such pronouncements have long been a staple of blue-ribbon fiscal panels, most recently President Obama's National Commission on Fiscal Responsibility and Reform. But with the first of the baby boomers eligible to retire this year, the matter is taking on greater urgency. If current policy does not change, rising retiree health costs and claims on Social Security will propel mandatory spending to levels never seen before, squeezing out room for future discretionary spending. Here's the glide path the US is on: •By 2025, Medicare, Medicaid, Social Security, and interest on the federal debt would claim all federal revenues. •Interest on the national debt would rise to nearly $1 trillion nine years from now, up from $200 billion today. •US debt held by the public would grow to 185 percent of the national economy by 2035, driving up interest rates and lowering growth and living standards. i disagree that there is a need for more than a minor tweak. a big part of the problem is the continued insistence that ss is not affecting our deficit. or that things can wait til the future for a fix-pols insist on that so they can pass the buck, because they won't have to worry about their re-election; some guy down the line will have to be the one concerned.
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Books serve to show a man that those original thoughts of his aren't very new at all. Abraham Lincoln Last edited by Danzig : 08-10-2011 at 07:02 AM.
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#64
08-10-2011, 06:57 AM
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the biggest issue confronting the federal govt and the budget is their entitlement spending. ss, medicare and medicaid-the big three. they are eating up a major portion of the budget, and will only continue to grow. ignoring them is ignoring the biggest problem. there must be reform-there needs to be changes made immediately. the # of credits required to be fully vested must be raised, the amount of money paid in isn't enough, pricing needs to be addressed, the age requirements to get full ss needs to change, the amount paid to people who retire before age 67 needs to be lowered, and people in a higher income bracket need to have their benefits reduced. if you retire before age 65 or 67 your money received should be reduced drastically. many people don't wait til age 65 to retire, or age 67, as there isn't much of a penalty if they retire earlier. brutal to some? perhaps? necessary to keep us going off a cliff? yes. the current life expectancy is 74 for males, 81 for females. it's risen recently to those #'s, thus full retirement should be adjusted as well. there should be automatic increases built in to adjust any time expectancies go up. also, keep in mind that when ss was begun, there weren't pension plans and 401ks, annuities and iras available. people are becoming more and more aware of aiding themselves in retirement. there needs to be a real investigation into just how much the ss portion of entitlements is still needed...will retirement income become less of a concern to coincide with the rising cost of medical needs? aren't we becoming more able to handle retirement income now and in future? btw, anyone who bought life insurance before '08 needs to see their agent. your premiums should be adjusted to meet the new expectancies. but i'm sure they won't be calling you to discuss that!
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Books serve to show a man that those original thoughts of his aren't very new at all. Abraham Lincoln
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#65
08-10-2011, 07:14 AM
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found this, but keep in mind this was all figured on the bush tax decreases expirig at the end of '10-so the scenarios would be that much worse.
http://www.cbo.gov/ftpdocs/102xx/doc...ter1.4.1.shtml The Federal Budget Outlook Over the Long Run Assessing the nation’s fiscal condition requires not only considering the current economic and budgetary circumstances but also analyzing what might happen over the long term if current laws and policies remained in place. Toward that end, the Congressional Budget Office (CBO) has prepared budgetary projections through 2080 under two different sets of assumptions about federal laws and policies. Those projections indicate that, under either set of assumptions, federal debt will continue to grow much faster than the economy over the long run. Although long-term budget projections are highly uncertain, under any plausible scenario rising costs for health care and the aging of the U.S. population will cause federal spending to increase rapidly. Unless revenues increase just as rapidly, the rise in spending will produce growing budget deficits and accumulating debt. To keep deficits and debt from reaching levels that could cause substantial harm to the economy, policymakers will need to increase revenues significantly as a percentage of gross domestic product (GDP), decrease projected spending sharply, or implement some combination of the two. and further down: Returning the Budget to a Sustainable Path How much would policies have to change to avoid unsustainable increases in government debt? A useful answer comes from looking at the so-called fiscal gap. The gap measures the immediate change in spending or revenues that would be necessary to produce the same debt-to-GDP ratio at the end of a given period as prevailed at the beginning of the period. Under the extended-baseline scenario, the fiscal gap would amount to 2.1 percent of GDP over the next 25 years and 3.2 percent of GDP over the next 75 years. In other words, under that scenario (ignoring the effects of debt on economic growth), an immediate and permanent reduction in spending or an immediate and permanent increase in revenues equal to 3.2 percent of GDP would be needed to create a sustainable fiscal path for the next three-quarters of a century. If the policy change was not immediate, the required percentage would be greater. The fiscal gap is much larger under the alternative fiscal scenario: 5.4 percent of GDP over the next 25 years and 8.1 percent over the next 75 years. (For information about how CBO makes those estimates, see Box 1-1.) and so now, the change needs to be greater, as the tax cuts were extended. the longer we wait to take our medicine, the sicker we will be. if they don't want to increase those 'revenue enhancements' then the corrolating changes to outlays must be equal to that loss of revenue, else the problem continues to grow. if you have cancer, would you want your doctor to only cure half of it? what good would that do?
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Books serve to show a man that those original thoughts of his aren't very new at all. Abraham Lincoln
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#66
08-10-2011, 07:16 AM
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more from the link above, but i hope anyone interested in this issue will read over the whole paper:
Long-term budget projections require a stable economic backdrop. For these projections, CBO assumed that even a large increase in federal debt would not affect economic growth or real rates of interest after the first 10 years.3 However, if debt actually increased as projected under either scenario, interest rates would be higher than otherwise and economic growth would be slower. The rising debt would reduce the size of the domestic capital stock (businesses’ equipment and structures as well as housing) and decrease U.S. ownership of assets in other countries while increasing foreign ownership of assets in the United States. Those changes would slow the growth of gross national product (GNP) and, as the debt burden rose, could eventually lead to a decline in economic output.4 The effects would be most striking under the alternative fiscal scenario. In CBO’s estimation, the increase in debt under that scenario would reduce the capital stock by more than 20 percent and real GNP by 9 percent in 2035, compared with the levels that would occur if the debt remained roughly at its current size relative to the economy. Under the extended-baseline scenario, federal debt would be less threatening in the near term but would lead to significant economic harm in the long run. Those economic effects mean that actual fiscal pressures under current laws and policies would be even greater than CBO’s long-term budget projections suggest, because slower growth would limit revenues and a smaller capital stock would imply higher interest rates on government debt and other financial instruments. Holding down the spiraling levels of debt projected under either scenario could therefore result in significant economic benefits. However, accomplishing that goal would require some combination of substantial revenue increases and substantial spending decreases relative to current law. Those changes would have their own economic and social costs. ~again, this was from '09-so now the situation is even more dire, as we're two years past the point, the tax breaks didn't expire, and we're two years further into a sick economy.
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Books serve to show a man that those original thoughts of his aren't very new at all. Abraham Lincoln
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#67
08-10-2011, 07:18 AM
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An alternative policy would be to hold the growth of spending in line with the growth of the economy. That approach would require significant changes in the Medicare and Medicaid programs. Many experts believe that a substantial share of spending on health care contributes little, if anything, to the overall health of the nation, so changes in government policy have the potential to yield large reductions in federal spending without harming health. However, translating that potential into reality would require tough choices. It would ultimately depend on policymakers’ willingness to put ongoing pressure on the health sector to achieve efficiencies in the delivery of health care.
Reducing other federal spending significantly below the baseline levels would be difficult as well. Spending on Social Security has risen from almost 4 percent of GDP in the 1970s to almost 5 percent today and will increase to 6 percent in 2035 as the baby boomers retire. Other nonhealth, noninterest spending averaged almost 14 percent of GDP in the 1970s but has shrunk to about 10 percent of GDP over the past 15 years—aside from the current burst of spending in response to the recession and the financial crisis. Such spending is projected to decline further over time in CBO’s 10-year baseline. From a purely economic perspective, slowing the growth of spending would generally impose smaller costs than boosting tax rates, although that conclusion is somewhat sensitive to the specific measures that would be adopted. From a broader social perspective, citizens and policymakers need to judge the importance of various government programs and the costs of restraining spending on health care, retirement benefits, defense, and so on. That is, lower levels of spending would help address the fiscal sustainability problem, but society would have to make difficult choices about which programs to scale back. The difficulty of the choices notwithstanding, CBO’s long-term budget projections make clear that doing nothing is not an option: Legislation must ultimately be adopted that raises revenue or reduces spending or both. Moreover, delaying action simply exacerbates the challenge, as is discussed below
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Books serve to show a man that those original thoughts of his aren't very new at all. Abraham Lincoln
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#68
08-10-2011, 07:19 AM
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Outlays for Medicare, Medicaid, and Social Security
Over the past 50 years, federal spending has increased as a percentage of GDP, and its composition has changed dramatically. Spending for mandatory programs has grown from about 30 percent of noninterest outlays in the early 1960s to about 60 percent in recent years. Most of that growth has been concentrated in the three largest entitlement programs: Medicare, Medicaid, and Social Security. Together, federal outlays for those three programs have accounted for roughly 45 percent of primary federal spending over the past 10 years, up from 25 percent in 1975. In the future, projected growth in entitlement spending explains almost all of the projected growth in total noninterest spending—and the two big government health care programs largely drive that increase. Medicare and Medicaid are responsible for 80 percent of the growth in spending on the three largest entitlements over the next 25 years and for 90 percent of that growth by 2080 (see Table 1-3). CBO projects that net federal spending on Medicare and Medicaid will rise from about 5 percent of GDP in fiscal year 2009 to about 10 percent in 2035 and over 17 percent in 2080.5 Spending on Social Security is projected to rise at a much slower pace, from almost 5 percent of GDP in 2009 to about 6 percent in later years.
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Books serve to show a man that those original thoughts of his aren't very new at all. Abraham Lincoln
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#69
08-10-2011, 07:24 AM
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Moreover, the fundamental cause of the rapidly rising debt in CBO’s long-term scenarios is not economic fluctuations resulting from business cycles. Instead, debt soars because of unrelenting growth in federal spending on health care programs and a rise in Social Security spending as a share of GDP, combined with a much smaller increase in tax revenues. The ever-greater budget deficits projected under those scenarios would negatively affect the economy through several channels. More government borrowing would drain the nation’s pool of savings, reducing investment in the domestic capital stock and in foreign assets. In addition, a worsening fiscal situation might put pressure on monetary policy, potentially endangering the Federal Reserve’s ability to keep inflation low and stable. If the budget continued along the path of rising debt, serious concerns about fiscal solvency would arise. Investors would require the government to pay an interest premium on its securities to compensate for the risk that they might not be repaid or that the value of their securities would be eroded by inflation. Such a premium would drive up the cost of borrowing. Finally, the longer the growth of debt persisted, the larger and more costly would be the policy changes needed to control debt, which could further increase the burden of fiscal tightening on future generations.
Most economists agree that greater government borrowing would raise interest rates and lead to greater private saving. But the offset would be far from complete, so national saving would decline.10 That decline would in turn reduce investment in the United States but not on a one-for-one basis (at least initially), because higher interest rates would attract foreign capital to the United States and perhaps induce U.S. investors to keep more of their money at home. As investment was displaced by government debt, GDP would grow more slowly and eventually decline. In the longer run, as the debt continued to grow and unless the interest premium was very large, capital would probably flee the United States, further reducing investment.
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Books serve to show a man that those original thoughts of his aren't very new at all. Abraham Lincoln
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#70
08-10-2011, 07:26 AM
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What Are the Costs of Delaying Action on the Budget?
The choice facing policymakers is not whether to address rising deficits and debt but when and how to do so. Debt is projected to soon grow to unsustainable levels even under the extended-baseline scenario, which assumes that spending on programs other than Medicare, Medicaid, and Social Security will decline substantially (relative to GDP) over the next 10 years and that revenues will increase as a percentage of GDP over the long term from their average historical levels. Under the alternative fiscal scenario, debt is projected to soar almost immediately. Reducing the growth of the major entitlement programs—Social Security, Medicare, and Medicaid—would go a long way toward lowering the projected levels of debt relative to GDP. The aging of the population has the most significant impact on entitlement costs over the intermediate term, but policymakers have little control over such demographic changes. However, policy changes that altered the eligibility age for programs or modified benefits for the elderly could help offset some of the effects of aging on federal spending. In the long run, the growth of health care spending per beneficiary will drive federal entitlement spending. It would be difficult to produce a sustainable fiscal policy without reducing such spending growth.12 The longer that policy action on the budget is put off, the more costly and difficult it will be to resolve the long-term budgetary imbalance. Delays in taking action would create three major problems: ■ The amount of government debt would rise, which would displace private capital—reducing the total resources available to the economy—and increase borrowing from abroad. ■ The share of federal outlays devoted to paying interest on the federal debt would grow, so lawmakers would have to make ever-larger policy changes to achieve balance. As interest costs rose, policymakers would be less able to pay for other national spending priorities and would have less flexibility to deal with unexpected developments (such as a war or recession). Moreover, rising interest costs would make the economy more vulnerable to a meltdown in financial markets. ■ Uncertainty about the economy would increase. The longer that action was put off, the greater the chance that policy changes would ultimately occur suddenly, possibly creating difficulties for some individuals and families, especially those in or near retirement. Announcing changes to entitlement programs or to the tax structure well in advance would give people time to adjust their plans for saving and retirement. Those adjustments could significantly reduce the impact of such policy changes on people’s standard of living.
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Books serve to show a man that those original thoughts of his aren't very new at all. Abraham Lincoln
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#71
08-10-2011, 07:30 AM
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from page three:
Slowing the Growth of Social Security Spending Three broad approaches for constraining the rise in Social Security benefits have received considerable attention. Under those approaches, policymakers could: ■ Reduce the size of the initial payments that new Social Security beneficiaries are scheduled to receive, ■ Increase further the age at which workers become eligible for full retirement benefits (which would reduce the initial benefit received at any given age of claiming), or ■ Reduce the annual cost-of-living adjustment that beneficiaries receive once they become eligible for benefits. Several CBO papers have analyzed those and other approaches for restructuring the Social Security program.9 In addition to reducing future Social Security benefits, policymakers could restore long-term actuarial balance to the program by raising Social Security taxes or dedicating more general revenue to it. If policymakers decide to slow the growth of Social Security benefits, considerations of both fairness and economic efficiency point toward enacting new legislation long before the changes take effect. People generally consider the size of their expected Social Security benefits when deciding how much to save and how long to work. Because those benefits are a major source of income for many people, it will be important to enact any benefit reductions well in advance to give people enough time to respond by adjusting their plans for saving and *retirement. --------------------------------------------------------------------------------
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Books serve to show a man that those original thoughts of his aren't very new at all. Abraham Lincoln
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#72
08-10-2011, 07:32 AM
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joey, this is why discretionary spending isn't the problem:
Discretionary Spending A distinct pattern in the federal budget since 1962 is the diminishing share of spending provided through annual appropriations (see Figure 4-2). As a share of the budget, discretionary spending has fallen from 68 percent in 1962 to 38 percent in 2008. Relative to the size of the economy, such spending has declined from 12.7 percent of GDP in 1962 to 8.0 percent in 2008.
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Books serve to show a man that those original thoughts of his aren't very new at all. Abraham Lincoln
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#73
08-10-2011, 07:36 AM
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#74
08-10-2011, 07:45 AM
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#76
08-10-2011, 08:51 AM
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B. They do follow the golden rule, as long as the help comes at the expense of us "wealthy" people. I have said it before, I will say it again, $250,000.00 is not a lot of money anymore.
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don't run out of ammo.
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#77
08-10-2011, 10:43 AM
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the point of all that above is that ss isn't just in need of a 'tweak', that it has no need of anything being done right now. the longer they wait to do something, the worse it'll get-not better. the gap will be larger, the debt higher, the ability to close the gap more difficult, and the necessary increases in taxes...er, revenue enhancements will be virtually impossile to accept. changes need to be done, now, and need to have automatic adjustments in future. this problem will not go away.
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Books serve to show a man that those original thoughts of his aren't very new at all. Abraham Lincoln
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#78
08-10-2011, 10:45 AM
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perhaps more tax brackets are called for? and every time they mention tax increases, people start in about small businesses being affected. surely there is a way to differentiate between income tax and business?
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Books serve to show a man that those original thoughts of his aren't very new at all. Abraham Lincoln
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#79
08-10-2011, 10:50 AM
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Baby....exactly where are your hot spots besides the obvious, of course.Also,have you ever actually sat on someone's face?If so,did your muffy-poo wiggle on the face or did it pose a stoic profile?
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#80
08-10-2011, 11:04 AM
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There certainly should be a way to help small business out while not burting them under the same rules as large businesses. Smaller ones (like my own) cannot afford to hire teams of accountants to do our books the way they need to be done to not pay double, even triple if you factor in my portion of my employee taxes.
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don't run out of ammo.
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