Geitner: Obama's Budget Is Unsustainable

Discussion in 'Politics' started by pspr, Feb 16, 2012.

  1. Brass

    Brass

    Bush incurred deficits when they were not necessary because of ideological excess. (Tax cuts during two wars in the hopes of trickle down?) Obama arguably incurred deficits when such measures are actually needed -- in states of serious economic crisis, let alone mere cyclical dowturns.
     
    #31     Feb 17, 2012
  2. Ricter

    Ricter

    Friday, February 17, 2012
    "Are Budget Problems Due to Rising Health Care Costs as Scary as We've Been Led to Believe?

    "Not too long ago, I sent the following email to several people I thought might have the answer:

    " Something that's been bugging me -- I don't know much about how they estimated future health care cost increases, but since that is largely behind the budget problems -- and hence the source of the ability to use the deficit for ideological purposes -- is there any reason to try and question these numbers? Do we really know what these will be 30 or 40 years from now?

    "I didn't get an answer.

    "We can't forecast very well beyond a 3 to 6 month horizon, yet we are relying upon projections for decades in the future as the basis for cutting social programs now. The CBO, for example, uses a 70 year projection for revenues and outlays, and that is the basis of a lot of the worry over the long-term budget picture. But, did we have any idea at all 70 years ago -- in 1942 -- what health care costs would be today?

    "Jeff Sachs takes up this issue:

    " Entitlements Hysteria, by Jeff Sachs: One of the unshakable myths of the punditariat is that the federal government is going bankrupt because of entitlements spending, especially spending on Medicare and Medicaid. Each day we hear the drumbeat saying that either we cut entitlements now or we are finished as a nation. This is a stampede of unreason, contradicted by the facts. ...

    " So what is the source of the hysteria? Some of it is simply propaganda, by those with the political agenda to gut the country's social safety net.

    " But there is something else. Confusion! The punditocracy is repeating the results of forecasts that indeed suggest calamity, but calamity in the late 21st century, not now. These long-term forecasts are arbitrary but have been repeated as an immutable fact by those who don't read the fine print. The most frequently quoted forecast is that of the Congressional Budget Office.

    " The CBO's long-term forecast assumes that health care costs will continue to rise steeply during the next 70 years, though at a diminishing rate. If healthcare costs continue to soar for decades to come, then yes, lo-and-behold, the government would eventually go broke. ...

    " Yet somehow I'm not ready to panic about the health care costs as of 2085. Mechanical extrapolations that assume that health care costs will rise much faster than GNP between 2011 and 2085 are utterly unconvincing. Why should healthcare costs continue to rise so far and fast when healthcare costs are already vastly over-priced now compared with what other countries pay for the same services? Why should we assume failure decade after decade to use the new information technologies to lower the costs of health-care delivery and administration?

    " In fact, the recent trends are mildly favorable. As J. D. Keinke of the American Enterprise Institute writes today in the Wall Street Journal, the idea of runaway health spending is a "myth" because "new data show that health spending over the past several years has been normalizing toward the rate of general inflation, rather than growing higher and higher, as had been the case almost continuously since the 1970s." ...

    " Even if we don't get all the way down to the lower costs that we should have, there is no reason to assume that health care costs will continue to soar year in and year out for another seven decades.

    " Let's therefore fight the right-wing hysteria demanding immediate and harsh cuts in Medicaid and other health outlays. We do not need to cut off the lifeline of the poor and elderly. We simply need to keep up the pressure against the healthcare lobbies, and resist the panic of the punditariat."

    http://economistsview.typepad.com/e...sts-as-scary-as-weve-been-led-to-believe.html

    And all this without even mentioning where the boomer generation is going to be in 2040...
     
    #32     Feb 17, 2012
  3. Tsing Tao

    Tsing Tao

    So his entire argument is that because health care expenses have been rising so much he doesn't think they can continue to rise at the same rate? Did he short APPL at $300, too?

    Wow, profound logic there. Ok, I'm convinced!

    :confused:
     
    #33     Feb 17, 2012
  4. Thanks Ricter, makes some sense. I really hate the idea of long term doom and gloom simply for political talking points. Why not just say that AIDS and Cancer will be cured in the next 20 years, and health care costs will be cut by half in 2085. Either could be true, just no one knows for sure.


    c
     
    #34     Feb 17, 2012
  5. rew

    rew

    We are *always* told that a balanced budget is a good idea, just that now is not the right time to do it. An alcoholic never thinks that "now" is the right time to go on the wagon.

    We got into this mess by living beyond our means. Doing more of the same will not fix the problem.

    I don't buy the line, "Bush deficits bad, Obama deficits good." We are cheating the future regardless of whether the President is a Republican or a Democrat.
     
    #35     Feb 17, 2012
  6. rew

    rew

    If cancer is cured we'll just have more cardiac patients, busting health care anyway. If all heart and artery disease is cured then people will live much longer and Social Security will blow up. The doom and gloomers are right.
     
    #36     Feb 17, 2012
  7. Lucrum

    Lucrum

    While channel surfer a couple days ago I ran across Pelosi standing behind the podium. You know what she was arguing for - A TAX CUT.
     
    #37     Feb 20, 2012
  8. pspr

    pspr

    Noooo. Don't come here and lie to us Lucrum! :D
     
    #38     Feb 20, 2012
  9. rew

    rew

    I didn't see that Pelosi speech but I'd guess the explanation is that she proposed a tax credit for hiring handicapped transgendered illegal aliens of color and called that a tax cut. That's the kind of "tax cut" we get from Democrats.
     
    #39     Feb 21, 2012
  10. Brass

    Brass

    You're just broadbrushing it to support your narrative. It's not that deficit spending is occasionally required, but spending. Had the powers that be not engaged in deficit spending when entirely unnecessary and unwarranted, then the spending that was required during the recent near economic collapse would not necessarily have rendered deficits (if it had been required at all). It would just have partially depleted the national treasury of some of its surplus. But remember it was Reagan, the "fiscal conservative," who blazed the trail by increasing the national debt 185% during his administration alone. And Bush Jr. did his best to keep up. Again, when it was not necessary. And then, as a result of absolutely no fiscal restraint on the part of the GOP when in power over the last few administrations, when the economy genuinely needed defibrillation after the party was over, NOW it raises your ire. How very convenient.
     
    #40     Feb 21, 2012