Ryan: America becoming a welfare state

[undeterred]

SOMERS - In an editorial cartoon projected on a screen behind U.S. Rep Paul Ryan, there was a picture of a small Chinese submarine telling a U.S. Navy ship to turn around. "Turn around or we will sell all our T-bills," it said.

With America's current debt at just more than $13 trillion, and a large portion of that in foreign hands, our nation has to rely on other countries, Ryan said Wednesday at a listening session at the University of Wisconsin- Parkside that about 80 people attended.

The stop at Parkside was the final one of the day, with earlier stops in Burlington and Union Grove drawing nearly 100 people each. "It is not in our interest for other governments to control our money," said Ryan, the Republican congressman from Janesville. He addressed some questions about the repeal of the military's "Don't Ask, Don't Tell" policy - a repeal he was against because he wanted more information from the Pentagon - and national health care, but he mostly addressed concerns about the deficit.

Under the federal government's current budget, the national debt will double in five years and triple in 10 years, Ryan said. The federal stimulus program and national health care reform did not help that, Ryan said.



http://journaltimes.com/news/local/article_3c992b2e-6ecc-11df-b9c1-001cc4c002e0.html

Right winger down to the bone.

[closeupready]

1. You gotta love how these guys play with statistics.

When a Republican is in charge, they refer to the debt as a percentage of GNP.

But when a Democrat is in charge, they throw out real big scary-sounding numbers, the bigger the better.

Bunch of liars.

[daggahead]

3. They also love to hide things from the GDP numbers ... like WARS! n/t

[CynicalObserver]

4. I have noticed most posters on DU either don't understand or care about the

long-term implications of the federal debt, or seem to support or agree with it.

It baffles me how anyone could support or not be outright appalled at the fiscal state of the country, no matter what duopoly party you let frame your views for you. Do people think that they will be exempt from the terrible consequences of this in the not-to-distant future?

waiting to see how many posters are able to address the federal debt concerns of the article without ad hominen attacks, rants, death threats, and other lunacy.

[bergie321]

6. Rollback

Bush and Reagan tax cuts.

Yay! Debt crisis resolved. Bergie for President!

[bergie321]

8. If you want to speed it up:

1. Cut defense spending by 66%.
2. Close 90% of our overseas bases.
3. End the wars immediately.
4. Medicare for all (only way we are not going to go bankrupt eventually).
5. Tariffs on imports from countries that do not abide by a minimum set of labor standards.

Bonus for getting us out of the current job recession:

-New WPA projects to rebuild our crumbling infrastructure for the 21st century.

[unhappycamper]

9. Let's put some $$$ to your ideas:

1. Cut defense spending by 66%. Saves $660,000,000,000 per year.
2. Close 90% of our overseas bases. Part of the $660,000,000,000 savings.
3. End the wars immediately. Save $200,000 a minute.


I would also add that the Department of Defense should fully fund the Veterans Administration out of the $340 billion they have left. Before they spend a penny on new toys.

[burnsei sensei]

15. +1

about fucking time.
This is the national debate we have needed to have for a long time.
I'm definitely on board.

[jwirr]

12. As an old FDR democrat - I like your plan.

[Scuba]

14. +1

Say hi to Tank.

[midnight]

13. Sound advice. But you better phrase it to Mr. Ryan in terms he understands.

Tell him you are getting rid of entitlement programs,Bush and Reagan tax cuts, and he might even help you.

[CynicalObserver]

18. this is an example of simply running from the topic by

invoking partisan examples which somehow exonerate the deadly serious crisis the country faces now. I do wonder about people whose analytical capacity is limited to finding a partisan counter-example of every very serious thing the country now faces.

[bergie321]

29. Huh?

Topic=Debt

My solutions = No more debt.

But hey maybe if we cut taxes again the money will start trickling down...

[closeupready]

7. I categorically reject engaging in discussion with those who would cut SS yet keep warring

in Afghanistan, Iraq and elsewhere. Top of the list for cuts should be the mortgage intererst deduction; yet, we are told 'oh, no, we can't do that.'

[undeterred]

10. The National Debt is appalling.

But how do you get a sluggish economy going? I don't agree with the bailouts, but I do think there had to be a stimulus package or we would have seen the economy get worse and worse.

National Health Care is not an entitlement program- if it works as it is supposed to, costs spent on Health Care should be lowered. The government should get more for its money.

If we followed the ideas of Paul Ryan and other Republicans- slashing entitlement programs like Medicare, Medicaid, Social Security- millions of people would enter poverty and many would die.

But the numbers would sure be purty.

[CynicalObserver]

17. thanks for your civil reply. in detail -

"National Health Care is not an entitlement program- if it works as it is supposed to, costs spent on Health Care should be lowered."

Are there any not-entitlement compulsory participation programs you can cite on a national scale which did in fact save money vs. the private sector structure, or did come out at or below initial cost projections made at the time the legislation was being voted on? I think the entitlement title is a quibble.

"But how do you get a sluggish economy going? I don't agree with the bailouts, but I do think there had to be a stimulus package or we would have seen the economy get worse and worse.""

Matters being where they were, some form of bailout/tarp was going to happen at the instant of late 2008. There is tremendous blame for what led up to this with both parties (the dnc especially on fannie/freddie, notably) It is my understanding that the stimulus still is over half un-disbursed. As far as what it has accomplished, I don't believe meaningful numbers exist - there are far too many example of rampant over-counting on 'jobs created or ''saved'''. A huge % of new job gains this year are census jobs, additionally, which badly skews that statistic.

"If we followed the ideas of Paul Ryan and other Republicans- slashing entitlement programs like Medicare, Medicaid, Social Security- millions of people would enter poverty and many would die."

Most republicans are as happy to run a huge federal deficit as most democrats, as was shown during the gop congress/bush years. I don't see that the gop has any credibility left on the topic. I don't think the DNC has more or less, either. 'bush's fault' is a common theme, but it only goes so far, and it certainly wont work until 2012 or 2016.

as far as Ryan, it is a matter of making numbers work that don't destroy (I mean destroy) the dollar and bankrupt the country. That event will put nearly EVERYONE into poverty, and in fact people will die as well. I can promise you that that event will not be concerned with political affiliation, but with social caste. If you aren't very very wealthy to begin with (I mean 8 digits or more), you are in an awful lot of trouble, dnc or gop or none of the above or both. Given where the country is now fiscally, I also don't see how that is avoidable, in some form or other.

From another perspective, assume you could in fact make genuine changes in how the federal budget works. Also assume there is no magic savings from 'squeezing out the fat.' I am amazed people don't laugh out loud when they hear this, which everyone hear must have heard all their life from every president. You don't eliminate graft in government. At any rate, you have the country on a fiscal cliff which is going to reduce the long-term buying power of the dollar by a huge %, and potentially create a debt spiral where the country can no longer borrow or have the fed print enough no matter how high interest it pays. That pretty much wipes ALL personal savings in dollars, guts the economy, and the very real possibiolity of major civil unrest/upheaval. Those are bad things.

dramatically cutting entitlements are not good things, even though I think it is generally understood that social security is a ponzi scheme and in fact ponzi scheme's don't work forever (the difference being that you are compelled to participate in this one). Medicare and Medicaid are two of those major entitlement programs you might compare for your expected savings from socialized medicine. Do you happen to know the original cbo and omb budget projections on what either were to cost their first 10 years or whatever? I am not being obnoxious, the numbers were not even close to reality iirc, and I mean reality was vastly more expensive. So it will be with the nationalization of 1/6th of the economy.

Interested in your thoughts. This country is going off a financial cliff, and the wolves are circling, both within the US AND in foreign capitals. The parallels to so many late-stage republics finally falling down the stairs is so frightening I don't have words for it. None of us tax sheep are going to come out ahead on this one.

[girl gone mad]

22. You deficit terrorists are all the same.

You seem to have absolutely no clue how modern money works.

[CynicalObserver]

23. please enlighten me. 'deficit terrorist' certainly sounds like a hate crime!

So how does modern money work? I don't mean the part where the fed monetizes debt issued by treasury (know that one already). How does inflation play a role? What may occur when the federal debt exceeds 100% of gdp? How does this impact the population of the country? How does the role of (shadow, since the fed has ceased publishing it) M3 impact all of this (do you even know what M3 is?)

If the best you can do when presented with problems you don't understand or even care to understand is call me a 'deficit terrorist,' I am not sure what basis for conversation we have.

I cannot be the only forum member that shudders when they realize you are serious and represent the attitude of a decent portion of the voting (if not necessarily taxpaying) population.

[girl gone mad]

25. You want to talk about inflation?

How is that working out for Japan?

Japan has had 2 decades of deflation, despite the same dire warnings from the same hysterical deficit hawks about Japan's debt levels exceeding gdp.

Unless demand grows faster than the real capacity of the economy there will not be generalized inflation. The size of the public debt ratio is completely irrelevant in making this risk assessment.

[closeupready]

28. You state here that social security is a ponzi scheme.

I'm not sure what more people need to know about you to know that engaging you in discussion is merely an exercise in frustration.

[CynicalObserver]

30. well, how do you propose to fund social security obligations

as they currently stand the next 10-20 years? What payroll tax % would you think is necessary to meet the commitments of the program? If such taxes are not raised, where will the money come from?

Numbers matter, really.

[girl gone mad]

31. What are you afraid of?

Have you ever seen a Social Security check bounce?

Not going to happen.

[Igel]

20. They did.

Three and four years ago the number of people saying that a deficit of $400 billion was utterly unsustainable, it would drive up interest rates and eventually cause economic devastation. Not a Keynesian to be found, even as people complained about the sluggish no-growth or slow-growth economy.

Somehow $1 trillion deficits for a few years won't have that effect, and $800 billion deficits for the indefinite future are okay. We're all Keynesians now.

Personally, I think the problem wasn't the deficit under Bush II but that it was Bush II's deficit. They disagreed with its purposes and uses, plus they found it useful to score political points. Now, with bigger deficits, they agree with the purposes, and defend it against those who would appear to be trying to score political points.

[CynicalObserver]

24. agree, and it is sad but probably normal to see how little people

are able to separate their ideology from simple common sense on the topic. The bush2 deficits were terrible. The current deficits are much, much worse, and speed up the eventual debt crisis for the US many years.

You see one of the comments below calling me a 'deficit terrorist?' Do you ever contemplate that people who think this way also vote? Do you expect any sense of accountability (at least for supporting death-by-debt policies of fedgov) from these types of people when they find their dollars buy much, much less than they do today? I personally think they will find a way to make it (in their minds) some other bad guys fault (or even bush's, at that seems to be in vogue still).

This country is screwed, fiscally.

[girl gone mad]

26. The people in this country are screwed, fiscally.

The country itself is not.

The real danger to our economy comes from a prolonged lack of full employment, a lingering housing crisis, misallocation of resources caused by the excessive military spending (which is a proven drain on the private economy) and misallocation of human and investment capital to centers of financial engineering due to lax regulation and limitless government backstops.

Neo-liberal ideology is and will remain a failure for the vast majority of people on the planet.

It's sad when "deficits don't matter" Cheney has a better grasp on reality than half the people who call themselves Democrats these days.

[girl gone mad]

27. The problem was and is supply side economic theory.

The Bush admin was singularly focused on the wrong side of the economic equation, running up deficits to support tax cuts for the rich and insure profits for the wealthy, while promoting ZIRP and financial deregulation and turning a blind eye to massive control fraud, all of which only caused malinvestment and increased poverty and the concentration of wealth.

Bush's advisers were post-Keynesian. They grokked that under fiat money systems, sovereign currency governments can run large deficits with minimal risk of inflation, but they used this understanding in pursuit of the flawed Reaganomic model, supporting the wealthy and connected and pretending it would eventually trickle down.

Deficits were never the real issue. Deficits in service of a flawed political and economic ideology was (and sadly, remains) the issue.

[teknomanzer]

32. The empire cannot be sustained...

its collapse is inevitable. I would just sit back watch with a tub of popcorn, but I cannot afford such luxuries.

[indepat]

11. Wonder how much concern Herr Ryan showed in the wake of the gipper's "voodoo economics"

which unleashed a 13-fold increase in the national debt in less than 30 years? :grr:

[mitchtv]

2. looks like he's describing something

like his weenie

[denverbill]

5. I know how to reduce/eliminate the debt. End the wars, end the Bush drug program, and

eliminate the tax cuts for the rich.

Those 3 things account for 100% of the structural deficits inherited by Obama. Obama added temporary stimulus spending and HCR, but HCR is (according to the CBO anyway) a deficit reducer, long-term.

[CynicalObserver]

19. people don't get that the RICH are never going to pay taxes at marginal rates.

this isn't a matter of marginal rates, it is a matter of knowing that if you have a 20 million dollar income moving around with who knows what revenues, you can do a huge number of things to mitigate your stated income.

If you are making 500k, there is almost nothing you can do. you are paying full state and federal and local and whatever. others make the mistake of calling mr 500k rich. Need to add some zeros to be rich.

the 500k person isn't rich and isn't avoiding taxes. the 20million+ are the ones who aren't paying proportionally,and aren't going to.

[truedelphi]

21. i don't know that the GOP folks wanna hear much of those truths but

I certainly will :toast: your remarks.

[depakid]

16. Stupidity can sometimes masquerade as delusion

and visa versa.