Where can Democrats find money to fix the deficit?

[survivor999]

Raise:

1) The Estate Tax. Significantly at the higher ends. Make X million tax free, hammer anything above that. When they call it the "death tax" say "damn rights. I figure 3 million is enough headstart for any Amercan kid, and last time I checked, dead people don't need money. The estate tax is the fairest of all taxes, it lets you keep your money when your alive, and only taxes it once you don't need it any more."

2) Tax unearned income at the same rate as earned income. "What, you think money people earn by working should be taxed higher than money from trading stocks?"

3) Tax all corporate income at the highes rate amongst jursidictions. If a corporation is earning money in China, they pay the US tax rate if the Chinese one is lower. Period. This is so easy to defend it's a joke.

More: http://agonist.org/ian_welsh/20061109/taxes_2

[LonelyLRLiberal]

1. Very good. Even raising the minimum wage would produce more tax revenue.

(even though I think that people making minimum wage should pay zero income taxes)

[KingFlorez]

2. It can be done without raising taxes

It's hard, but it can be done.

[razors edge]

3. Shut down the Federal Reserve

and have congress print what they need, like Kennedy was doing just before he got killed.

[darkworkz]

21. Yes. You're right!

Now that the Dem's have taken over people will have to figure out quickly the things needed to get our country back on track. And fast! We have every thing we need to become a prosperous free people once again. Thanks to the internet we have built a tool that we're using for self-education and interpersonal communication (Wins in 2006! Can you say 'proof'?)

Now we must cast off those things that have proven most harmful to our Republic and way of life. The fed is one of the most, if not THE most, harmful institution on our nation.

Get informed, educated, and let's all TELL our new legislative body that we DEMAND our own money paying interest to NO ONE! This is for us and our prosperity.

That's what our Constitution and the Founders intended.

http://www.freedomtofascism.com/
http://imdb.com/title/tt0772153/
http://www.metacritic.com/film/titles/americafreedomtofascism

[flowomo]

4. put Grovelbot on it.....

that thing is relentless.

[originalpckelly]

5. 2) Is a bad idea for seniors living off of investments...

which may pay interest to live on, but not much.

We need to eliminate their taxes, but everyone else should be taxed the same with income.

[survivor999]

14. Good point. There could be an exception.

[sandnsea]

24. Only 20%

Most seniors don't have investments to live off of. Just as many seniors work for income to supplement their social security. The ones who need tax breaks are the working seniors, just like the rest of the us.

[Greeby]

6. Remove all the crap from these bloated "defense" bills

The ones they recently passed are now over $500 billion a year. When Clinton left office it was $338 billion a year. So even getting back to where we were is gonna take someone with balls of steel to stand up to the MIC

[originalpckelly]

10. Did you know we cannot audit the Defense Department with GAAP?

GAAP or Generally Accepted Accounting Practices, are the standards used in business to do accounting math. The DD cannot do that, I heard the Comptroller General of the Government Accountability Office say it.

We need to fix that.

[survivor999]

39. wow...

And where is all the money for classified projects coming from?

[Kiouni]

7. are you insinuating that we tax the wealthy!

i knew the second the democrats took power they would raise taxes and make us poor billionaires pay more then 3 dollars a year in income tax! dammit, som'bitch. :sarcasm:

[survivor999]

8. Reduce Defense budget.

And the crazy waste of money by military/corporate entities I see every day: people who get 5K a day to participate in meetings where nobody has a clue.

[Old and In the Way]

25. Absolutely....we can't afford a $500BB/year corporate welfare program.

We can't pay vet benefits or get our troops properly equipped, but we can dole out billions of no-bid contracts for 'research'. Right. Let's cut 50% and figure how we can maximize that investment. True, we won't be able to start elective wars, but our bigger threat is economic meltdown at home. What good is a war machine to protect our security if we have nothing worth protecting?

I really like this cookie analysis on our budget priorities from Ben Cohen (Ben and Jerry's Ice Cream). It's simple, but powerful.
http://www.truemajority.com/oreos/

[survivor999]

34. Also, get back some of the defense money into health research

There is so much useful stuff that could be studied. Defense research is research to kill people, ultimately.

[mike_c]

9. at the pentagon....

Stop throwing money down the hole for a starter.

[Jcrowley]

11. That's the easiest question I've heard all week

Cut the military budget by 80%.

Don't hear anyone talking about that. And to think with such a massive cut the US would still be spending twice as much as the next country.

It's the number one issue of our times. It impacts everything from global warming, to foreign intervention, to health care and on and on and on....

[originalpckelly]

18. I don't think that is a great idea...

and we certainly won't be able to do that. We need to rebuild the military with better equipment for the 21st century. It sucks that we at this time have to do this, but we need to. There are a lot of fucked up people in our sorry world, and we do have to protect ourselves from them.

Ironically the biggest cost in our government goes to Medicare (this is from the non-partisan comptroller general) not the military.

If we can reform health care and cut the fat from it to make it more affordable for the government and the poor, then we can start talking.

We also have a large number of employees, we should have a civil service draft. Young men and women should have to do one year of government service before they go to college. They can live at home with their parents, this idea will only slightly delay the great happiness and unburdening of parents when children move out or go to college.

We'll put a hiring freeze on in the government, we won't hire anyone for any job whatsoever that a person can do with little training.

[sandnsea]

33. That's what they always say

We have to rebuild the military bla bla bla. Over and over and over. Decade after decade. We spend more on our military than the next 5-10 countries COMBINED. We could cut our military budget in HALF and still destroy the world. We're paying to destroy bio/chem/nuke weapons while developing more that we'e only going to have to pay to destroy 20 years down the road. It's stupid. We have to stop this and stop letting Republicans brainwash people into believing there's any reason for this half a trillion dollar military.

[Jcrowley]

41. Wrong on several accounts

What I suggest you do is investigate the actual accounting for the military which comes to nearly 50% of all US federal expenditures. If you do not wish to do that I will present the figures to you on the condition that you will then actively support large cuts in the military in a very tangible manner. And the figures that are taken into account in the estimate I will present to you are even MUCH lower than the real figures. We could get into that if you wished.

Secondly, you have it completely backwards. If the US would remove it;s 725 bases from the 132 countries those so-called "fucked up people" would not be as you call it "fucked up." It is they who must protect themselves from US. And like the above first paragraph we are considering only the 725 bases that are the DOD figures not the other 350-450 various outposts that are in place to prop up the corporate military industrial empire.

The biggest cost to the US taxpayer is BY FAR the US military.

[TexasLawyer]

20. and shut down the dang Iraq war

while we're at it.

[originalpckelly]

32. You know we could have given away $100 million to 1000+ Americans...

and still have saved over $200 billion and almost 3,000 American lives?

[mike_c]

23. agreed, 100 percent....

Cut DEEP into the military budget.

[wakeme2008]

12. I think there should be three tiers on Capital Gains

0-18mons --- Reg. Income.
18mons - 60mons - 25%
Over 60 mons 15%

the over 5 years would cover peoples retirement accounts.

[Jackpine Radical]

13. Just nationalize the entire resources of Halliburton.

Try it for capital crimes as a corporate "person," execute it and seize its property as the ill-gotten gains of its crimes.

[Workers To Power]

28. The military budget

The US military budget is 441.6 BILLION!

There are 295,734,134 citizens, according to official estimates. 441,600,000,000 = $1,494 PER PERSON!

Just half of that, along with heavy taxation of the richest 1%, would be enough to solve lots of problems: to create 24 hour daycare centers, end all taxation on poor workers, create job training centers, free healthcare and education, etc.

But guess what, the Democrats aren't going to cut military spending. Their criticism of the Republicans has been that they're SOFT on North Korea, Syria, Venezuela and Cuba. They're going to fight "the war on terror" more effectively (so they say). If anything, this is going to mean a HIGHER military budget (and the trend points towards that).

[dougkeenan]

42. I know a guy that would testify ...

... he saw Halliburton smoking marijuana and waving $100 bills.

[TexasLawyer]

15. windfall profits taxes on oil companies

[CharmCity]

16. Close the Tax Gap

Each year, the U.S. leaves $345 billion dollars on the table -- those are federal income taxes that are known, owed and not paid. For example, a person filing and signing a tax return, owing money, and not including a check with the return.
Most of the tax gap is made up of "underreporting" -- not claiming income. Self-employed folks are believed to be a big part of the problem.
Anyhow, closing the tax gap requires
1. Giving the IRS more $ so it can do its work
2. Helping people understand and comply with the tax law
3. Boosting enforcement
4. Some support forcing those who hire contractors to withhold taxes
5. Simplifying the tax code -- bottom line is it's complicated, and it can be hard to comply
And so on.
Anyhow, this does not require ANY new taxes -- just enforcing or strengthening the ones we have.

[originalpckelly]

26. The government has already tried to this, and if I heard the news correctly...

it came out as a losing endeavor. We might look into why it wasn't working.

I totally agree with simplifying the tax code, but I am concerned about certain parts of it. We need to continue the tax exemption for internet commerce. We should actually take the lesson of the internet and its tax free zone benefiting entrepreneurship, and apply it to all business, only instead of a total exemption we should have a small business exemption for its early years.

We should also cut the red tape in starting a business, so that people will be able to get their ideas off the ground...easier.

This new competition would definitely help keep big companies on their toes, because little ones would be able to better compete with the bigger ones.

It would also allow our nation to compete better with China & etc.

[CharmCity]

38. No, they really never tried.

It's all about IRS resources, and increasing its budget has always been a political problem. Nobody has the guts to give the IRS a boost. But the bottom line is this is an investment that pays for itself and can be done in ways that aren't particularly painful.

[BlackVelvet04]

17. Sell the white house china on ebay. n/t

[upi402]

19. make Bush do his bunny pants trick

and grab the BILLION$ that fall to the floor.


just an idea...

[damntexdem]

22. Fully tax income for Social Security.

That will save Social Security, and further build the SS 'surplus,' which is used to make federal revenues look bigger than they really are.

[Rainscents]

30. NO!

Go after rich people!

[StrongbadTehAwesome]

35. exactly.

get rid of that MFing cap!

[originalpckelly]

37. A good idea, I Misunderstood at first.

Now I remember, SS is a regressive tax. I am used to hearing it called FICA. Sorry.

[boolean]

27. CUT. MILITARY. SPENDING.

No, not the troops. I'm talking about all the PORK in there.

[ACK]

29. What about Corporate Welfare

Over like $86 Billion dollars in corporate subsidies, giveaways, pork and sometime straight out grants. And I think those are old numbers too.

The Repukes had a ton of pork in the budget we can find the money.

[SoCalDem]

31. Put the national budget on a "family-footing"

Pay the important stuff FIRST..

stuff like

health
education
infrastructure


If we don't go around the globe starting shit everywhere we go, probably most people are not going to be interested in fighting us.

If we focus our attention on ourselves for a few years, fixing what needs to be fixed, and planning better, perhaps we would not NEED so much military stuff..

In a real family budget, toys & games come LAST

[Workers To Power]

36. Yeah

The military should be used only for defense, within the borders of the US. That is, if we lived in a truly democratic society.

If this were the case, the military budget could be cut by MORE than 80% (who needs 10,000 nuclear missles??).

[LiberalPartisan]

40. 'Pay yourself first'

For 10 years allocate 25% of all revenues collected by the IRS and use them to pay down the national debt before anything else. Fund the government with the remaining funds.