Comments about ‘Letter: Fixing our debt problem’

How about we no longer start wars without first paying for them, return the Social Security taxable income ceiling to its original legislative intent,, and set federal taxes back to where they where when Ronald Reagan left office?

That wood go a loooooong way towards getting the debt under control while simultaneously stabilizing the social safety net for our nation's most at-risk citizens - certainly a lot more than the Ryan budget plan.

#1: Eliminate most of the federal departments and turn these tasks over to the states to manage to avoid waste, duplication and mismanagement. #2: drill in Anwar and other government owned lands and the royalties, fees and taxes oil companies would pay to the federal government would pay off the national debt within 10 years! Problems solved!

Mr. Slater if you recall, the President proposed spending cuts of 3 to 1 versus revenue increases in the grand bargin with Speaker Boehner. Regardless of whether the bargin was consumated the President and the left are well aware of the need for spending cuts. They simply also understand two things Republicans don't. One spending cuts alone also won't fix the debt issue, and two spending cuts need to do more good than harm, therefor they must be judiscious.

Lastly your fixation with social security is way off the mark. Social Security isn't the elephant in the room (pun intended)..it's medicare..and other health benefits.

It is unfortunate the business world has brainwashed so many people into believing government is a business and not a tool of civilization for the benefit of people.

Their greed causes them to forget the real purpose of government and why it was created in the first place.

Government is not a corporation owned by share holders, government is the embodiment of the agreement between individuals to live together in a civilized manner. It’s main job is to enforce that agreement and prevent others from endangering the individuals who live by that agreement.

Government is not expected and not desired to make a profit and if debt is incurred, too bad. The only important thing about government is that it do it’s job that the citizens ask it to do. And since the citizens are paying for the job done, they want the job done regardless of cost. And if the citizens want any particular thing they want, and are willing to pay for it, there is no rule that says they cant have it.

Debt has never effected us before or now, it is a smokescreen used by criminals to prevent civilization.

Gutting society and government from the revenue side and spending side is going to cause society as a whole to deteriorate. Hack and slash will leave little worth having.

Lets see, entitlements that keep our nation's lowest classes from sinking, or billions on billions spent on war against other countries and drugs in our own country.
Where did the debt come from? Well its certainly not partisan.
I'm sure entitlements could be kept, and then some. When our country stops being the world police for corporate interests, that is when we can climb out our debt, that both dems and repubs got us into.

The basic principles for honestly handling debt:

1. Pay off debts in a timely manner (honor government bonds including those held for SS).

2. If you can't afford it don't do it. Stop spending more than we have.

3. If it's not legal (constitutional) Stop it!

4. If you can't use it responsibly cut up that credit card. (FRB)

Ultra Bob, I've tried a number of times to say what you said here and failed. You've done an outstanding job of capturing what a government is and isn't. I hope you don't mind if I use your ideas in the future. Well said.

Before you say another thing remember that there is not a single person that comments in these forums that was not saddled with government debt from a previous generation. This is not to say that we don't need to be prudent but the answer is not to cut out more teachers, firefighters policemen and other services like Mountainman and others are proposing. We don't need millions more thrown on to the unemployment roll. Britain and other conservative governments that are taking the Romney approach to government finances are experiencing a double dip recession and depression is just around the corner. The answer is to stimulate and if we don't then expect an economy that makes the 1930's look like a cake walk and unless you are a wealthy person then you are going to be the victim. It will be the 99% that will pull us out not the 1%.

Maintaining a permanent entitlement constituency is a political goal of Mr. Obama. They are a very reliable voter base. Why would anyone on the left disturb that?

Broken record time: we're in a demand-side depression, and the solution is lowering unemployment through stimulus. The deficit is a symptom, not a cause of our economic woes. Of course it's not sustainable, long-term. Some judicious spending cuts should be considered, mostly in defense spending. But the sky is not falling, our problems do have solutions, and sensible government programs can solve them. And our President has not failed our country.

The components of the federal budget

Sources of Federal Revenue:
47% individual income taxes
36% social insurance taxes
9% other (excise, gift/estate, customs duties, Federal Reserve, etc)
8% corporate income taxes

Distribution of Federal Spending:
Discretionary Defense 20%
Social Security 20%
Discretionary non-Defense 18%
other mandatory 15% (unemployment, EITC, SNAP, SSI, civilian/Military retirement etc)
Medicare 13%
Medicaid/CHIP 8%
net interest 6%

(CBO Jan. 2012)

For each percentage point reduction in the corporate tax rate reduces revenues by an estimated 102.5 billion to $120 billion over 10 years
(Joint Committee on Taxation, Pres. Economic Recovery Advisory Board)

4601: "Maintaining a permanent entitlement constituency..."

Are you referring to business who feel entitled to corporate welfare? Like the businesses such as ATK and Goldman Sachs that collect your state income tax, but keep it for their own business operations and don't send it along to the state for funding schools, roads, etc., all with the blessing of the legislature?

Defense contractors who feel entitled to no-bid, cost-plus contracts?

Millionaires who feel entitled to huge tax breaks on their private yachts and jets?

Is Mitt "entitled" to pay a lower percentage in taxes on his income than I am on mine?

Remember, the folks who lobby most furiously against tax reform are the folks who make out like bandits from all the special tax loopholes they paid their lobbyists to get from your government.

Talk about entitlement.

"The real problem is spending. Government claims that they can't touch Social Security or Medicare — or other entitlements. Social Security has little resemblance to the original act passed in the 1930s during the Depression years"

Neither does our defense budget, which has gone through the roof!

What about oil subsidies (remember folks, these companies are already making record profits)?

What about foreign aid?

I find it interesting that repubs want to bash SS and compare today's SS to the early 20th century or even further, when the Constitution was first drafted while ignoring the runaway spending in the defense budget.

Think George Washington would have attacked Iraq for no reason? Think Abe Lincoln would have supported the building of a $122 million dollar jet that quite frankly just isn't needed? Think Ben Franklin would have supported giving trillions away to Karzai?

Yet, no mention of this from the radical right. If anything, they want more of it. More oil subsidies and more wars.

Throw the repubs out!

@Samuelsen: Loss of aggregate demand is also a symptom, not the cause. The cause is massive debt deleveraging. Any kind of keynesian stimulus will only prolong the inevitable deleveraging that must happen before the economy can regain its health. Look at the sharp recession after world war 1, compared to the Great Depression. In the first instance there were two years of economic pain which effectively hit the reset button on the economy and boom times followed. Contrast that with the Depression, in which misguided government meddling paralyzed the economy for 15+ years. The moral of the story is that we need to bring on the austerity, get back to reasonable budgets and get it over with rather than compounding our problems by piling on more debt.

Re:Invisible Hand
So how is austerity working in Europe? It isn't. It has significantly compounded the problems. Austerity at this point would bring our economy to a grinding halt and reverse any recovery we've made. Eventually we do need to look at some austerity measures, but is way too soon.

Btw France just elected a socialist who wants to try govt stimulus to help the ailing economy.....

Social Security is not your problem. Untouchable spending like military and the bloated national security stuff is killing us, along with cutting revenue. How stupid are we?

To Invisible Hand: During the last hundred years, we have had only two financial events caused by a collapse of the financial industry: the Great Depression and our current Great Recession. Neither the post WWI recession, not the recession of 81-83, nor any other recession was precipitated by a financial collapse. That's what makes these two unique, and if you study world financial history you will see that recessions caused by banking collapses are always far longer and far more brutal than garden variety recessions.

Read the conservative economist and Reagan adviser Bruce Bartlett on why Reagan's policies worked in the eighties, and why they would not work now.

Roland you highlight an important point that I'm always harping on..to republicans a recession is a recession, debt is debt..and something is either one thing or it's the other. There never is context there is only, only, cut taxes..and small government. Pure ideology..no thinking.

Obviously Democrats can't fall into the same trap. All recessions aren't solved by government spending. Carter proved that. Stagnation had plenty of demand it was just bottled up with inflation.

In a response to another letter a writer was cheering for Romney because she had lost her business to bankruptcy. You lose your business and you want austerity progams..talk aboust shooting yoursef in the foot.

To "Ultra Bob" the problem wouldn't be there if there was only a little debt owed to the citizens of the US. The problem is that our debt is so large now that it is a security problem. See "Debt is top national security threat" at CNN. There we find that interest payments are nearly equal to military spending.

From Fox News, read the transcript titled "Why the Massive U.S. Debt Is a National Security Risk". There we find that leading politicians realize that the US debt is a threat because it tells the world that we are unable to pay for our military and that we are a weak nation. We are also at the economic mercy of China and Japan. That debt to China is so large that they could collapse our economic system at any time.

To those who think we can just tax our way out of debt, explain how you propose to do so? Historically the US has been able to collect 16% to 20% GDP in taxes regardless of tax rates on the rich. We are currently spending 24% (or more) every year. How do you balance 24% with 20% GDP?