Well,
it's only been 1,434 days since the Senate passed a budget, but there is "hope" that this may soon "change." Of course, change doesn't always mean good.
Senate Budget Committee Chairman Patty Murray (D-WA) is set to release a budget
on Thursday. While the word "balance" is thrown around a lot,
make no mistake, the Senate budget is only balanced insofar as it raises taxes
($1 trillion), closes "loopholes" on the "evil rich" and
even more "evil corporations," makes more "investments" in
infrastructure, education, and "green" energy, cut domestic programmes
by $493 billion and slice $240 billion more from defence, assumes much more
robust growth than we have at present, and engages in the wishful thinking that
interest rates will drop even lower than the historic lows that they are at
currently resulting in $242 billion in savings.
See? It’s balanced. It’s a balanced budget. Sock it to the rich, spend
more money that we don’t have, and engage in wishful thinking. Et,
voilà! “Plus ça change, plus c’est la même chose” becomes “L’espoir, le changement, et l’équilibre!” (The Hope, Change and Balance!).
And,
Harry Reid has the nerve to talk about budget gimmickry!
From
the IMF:
To restrain the
U.S.’s future budget crisis, the federal
government must raise taxes by at least 35% and cut entitlements such as health
care and Social Security by 35%, International Monetary Fund
economists warned Monday in a new working paper.
While the projected
ballooning of future costs of entitlements as the so-called baby boomer
generation enters old age isn’t new, the IMF paper’s quantifying just how much
the federal government will have trim its balance sheets sheds fresh light on
the political hurdles ahead.
Raising taxes and
cutting spending on health care, Social Security, Medicare and Medicaid are
some of the most sensitive issues for voters.
The IMF paper,
written by Nicoletta Batini, Giovanni Callegari and Julia Guerreiro, shows that
if the government doesn’t cut entitlements,
it will have to raise taxes by 88% to pay for their costs.
Since the federal
government has historically collected around 18% of gross domestic product in
taxes, the mandatory entitlement programs may
absorb all federal revenues as early as 2026, when the cost of
servicing the debt is included in the calculation, the economists say.
The
typical argument that “people have paid taxes specifically to fund their future
Social Security payments. Of course the actual funding mechanism is nothing
like a trust or retirement savings account, but that’s not relevant to those
who paid into the system” will be – and has already today been – made. To that, I say:
1.
People have NOT paid taxes to, specifically, fund their future social
security payments. They’ve paid taxes
to pay for OTHER PEOPLE’S SOCIAL SECURITY PAYMENTS.
2.
There is no right to either Social Security or Medicare. NONE. See, for Social Security, Flemming v Nestor, 363 U.S. 603 (1960), and, for Medicare, Heckler v Ringer, 466 U.S. 602 (1984).
3.
If the reactionary idiots on the Left continue to be so intransigent in their
refusal to reform the three main drivers of deficits and future debt because they,
fantastically, believe that the Brokest Nation in the History of Civilisation
should continue to fund the Medicare of and send Social Security cheques to
Mitt Romney, Al Gore, and Warren Buffett instead of worrying about keeping the
programmes viable for their secretaries, well, then, if I were them, I’d start
putting up signs that state: “Please
don’t feed the humans.”
When I heard that the National Parks
Service “had” to cut the bison maintenance programme due to Sequesterquatch,
all that I could think was:
“Well, thank goodness the government had
the foresight to tell visitors to Yellowstone National Park not to feed the
animals. If they hadn’t, how would those poor bison survive now that the teat
has run dry?”
Entitlement programmes are unsustainable
and Stein’s Law will, at some point, come into play whether or not they like
it. A few points to keep in mind about
Social Security and Medicare:
Fact: In 2009, 38.47% of the entire budget went to Social Security and
Medicare and the two
programmes consumed 64.48% of all Federal tax revenues.
Fact: The 2009 Social Security and
Medicare Trustees Reports show the combined
unfunded liability of these two programmes has reached nearly $107 trillion in
today's dollars and Laurence Kotlikoff, a well-known professor
of economics at Boston University, puts the real figure over $222 trillion dollars in
future dollars!
Fact: In 2010, 41.29% of the entire
budget went to Social Security and Medicare and
the two programmes consumed 69.17% of all Federal tax revenues.
Fact: In 1940, the average worker had
to pay only 0.2% of his salary
to sustain the seniors of his time.
Fact: In 1950, the average worker had
to pay only 2% of his salary
to sustain the seniors of his time.
Fact: In 2011, the average worker has
to pay 11% of his salary to
sustain the seniors of his time.
Fact: In 2031, the average worker will
have to pay 17% of his salary
to sustain the seniors of his time. This is a staggering sum, considering
that it is apart from all the other taxes he pays to sustain other functions of
government, such as Medicare, whose costs are exploding.
Fact: On our current path there will be "actual" cuts to Medicare of 17%
and Medicare would "end as we know it" in 2024,
according to the Social Security and Medicare Trustees May 2011 report.
Fact: Medicare
hospitalisation, as we know it will end in 2024, absent some
change in policy or some change in moving forward.
Fact: The average American household
spends 50 times more today on Medicare than
it did in 1960.
Projection: When today's
college students reach retirement (about 2054), Social
Security alone will require a 16.6% payroll tax, one-third greater than today's
rate, according to the non-partisan Peterson-Pew Commission on
Budget Reform.
Projection: When Medicare
Part A is included, the payroll tax burden
will rise to 25.7% - more than one of every four dollars workers
will earn that year.
Projection: If Medicare
Part B (physician services) and Part D are included, the total Social
Security/Medicare burden will climb to 37% of
payroll by 2054 - one in three dollars of taxable payroll, and
twice the size of today's payroll tax burden, according to the non-partisan
Peterson-Pew Commission on Budget Reform.
Projection: More than one-third of the wages workers earn in 2054
will need to be committed to pay benefits promised under current law.
That is before any bridges or highways are built and before any teachers' or
police officers' salaries are paid.
Projection: By 2030, about
the midpoint of the baby boomer retirement years, Medicare will require nearly half of all income tax dollars,
according to the non-partisan Peterson-Pew Commission on Budget Reform.
Projection: By 2060, Social Security and Medicare will require nearly
three out of four income tax dollars.
The
reactionary Left refuses to reform Social Security, Medicare, and Medicaid even
to save them and to give young Americans the same opportunities, shot at the
American Dream, and living standards that their parents, grandparents and
great-grandparents have had.
Sadly,
too many on the Left are far more interested in "getting
theirs"...and getting it now! A recent poll demonstrates this and does so in a devastating
fashion:
“While a majority of
Republicans (59%) thinks major cuts to entitlement programs like Social
Security and Medicare should be made now, even if it is tough on families, A MAJORITY OF DEMOCRATS (52%) THINKS THOSE PROGRAMS SHOULD
CONTINUE TO BE FUNDED AT THEIR CURRENT LEVELS, EVEN IF IT MEANS PASSING ON
TRILLIONS OF DOLLARS OF DEBT TO FUTURE GENERATIONS.
Overall, 61% of
voters say major spending cuts are necessary to reduce the deficit, while 33%
think increasing taxes on high earners would be enough. HALF OF
DEMOCRATS THINK TAXING THE RICH IS ALL THAT IS NEEDED. By contrast, majorities of Republicans (77%)
and independents (62%) think cutting spending is also necessary."
It
would appear that Democrats do not find generational theft to be immoral in the
slightest bit. How sad.
As
Mark Levine states in his book, Ameritopia, “The best that can be said is that all that stands between the
individual and tyranny is a resolute and sober people.” Piling debt upon debt upon
debt upon children and those yet born is anything but sober. It is the
action of an inebriated and immoral people...a people drunk on the fruits of
the labours of others of which they have voted themselves because they are too
lazy, contemptuous, hateful, vengeful, incapable, ignorant, and enfeebled to
work for themselves. They have been enchained by their
"betters" and do not know it. They and their betters seek
temporary satiation in the present at the expense of future generations, who
will be subjected to a lengthy pain and far fewer freedoms.
A
little more than two centuries ago, people declared their independence and went
to war over "taxation without representation." Those that seek
to place burdens on the future, should remember this because I, somehow, doubt
that they will find themselves living in a life of luxury financed by younger
workers, as they believe. In fact, if the selfishness, ADD, and
self-absorption of today's younger generations are any indication, those death
panels - the kind spoken of by George Bernard Shaw, not Sarah Palin - will be
in place a lot sooner than anyone ever imagined.
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