Excellent. $400B+ of tax revenue decreases. Only $100B of spending cuts. And best yet, we stay in Iraq and spend $700B+/yr on Military. If this nut whack gets elected, Eurusd at 3.00 here we come. (personally I think we need to increase infrastructure and energy spending, cut military spending to maintenance requirements, and just cut medicare and soc sec benefits to levels that guarantee solvency long term.. and do this with a balanced budget. Impossible? no.) http://www.bloomberg.com/apps/news?pid=20601070&sid=a72L7_AJ5P9c&refer=home McCain's $3.3 Trillion Tax Cut, Budget Pledge at Odds (Update3) By Ryan J. Donmoyer and Indira Lakshmanan April 18 (Bloomberg) -- John McCain's plan to cut taxes and balance the budget wins praise from fellow Republicans. Economists and nonpartisan analysts say his numbers don't add up. McCain's proposal, outlined April 15, would extend President George W. Bush's tax cuts, reduce the top corporate rate, repeal the alternative minimum tax and double exemptions for dependents. Price: $3.3 trillion by the end of a President McCain's second term in 2017, according to figures from his campaign and the Treasury. The Arizona senator said that would be offset by eliminating pork-barrel spending, freezing a portion of the budget, and saving from Medicare spending. He could cut the budget by $100 billion a year ``in a New York minute,'' he said in a Bloomberg Television interview yesterday. Robert Bixby, executive director of the Washington-based Concord Coalition, a nonpartisan group that advocates budget restraint, said ``the huge imbalance'' in McCain's plan ``is that the tax cuts are specific and large and the spending cuts are small and vague.'' Once, McCain was a deficit hawk, Bixby said, but ``strange things happen when people run for president.'' Tax Cuts Extending Bush's tax cuts would cost $1.5 trillion through the end of a hypothetical second McCain term, according to Treasury Department figures. His proposal to reduce the corporate tax rate to 25 percent would cost $100 billion a year, McCain's campaign estimates. Doubling the exemption for dependents to $7,000 a year would cost another $65 billion annually and the AMT repeal adds another $60 billion a year, his campaign said. McCain released tax returns today that showed he paid $5,413 in AMT in 2007 and $6,979 in 2006. McCain's spending cuts, combined with increased revenue from economic growth, total $1.5 trillion over eight years, leaving a $1.8 trillion net increase to the national debt. ``This is really a massive increase in the deficit,'' said Joel Slemrod, an economist specializing in tax policy at the University of Michigan. Two Washington research groups said McCain's plan would cost more. The Center on Budget and Policy Priorities estimated his tax cuts would total $5 trillion over a two-term presidency. The Tax Policy Center, run jointly by the Brookings Institution and Urban Institute, said they would cost at least $5.7 trillion. McCain senior economic adviser Douglas Holtz-Eakin dismissed such estimates as ``fantasy-land budgeting.'' McCain's proposals, Holtz-Eakin said, would balance tax and spending cuts to meet his balanced-budget goals. Romney's Reaction ``The numbers add up,'' former Republican presidential candidate Mitt Romney said in an interview. In an interview today on Bloomberg Television's ``Political Capital with Al Hunt,'' McCain said budget slashing is essential because ``we Republicans presided over the largest increase in the size of government since the Great Society,'' referring to a series of government entitlements, including Medicare, that were enacted in the 1960s. To help pay for the tax cuts, Holtz-Eakin said he would save $30 billion a year by eliminating so-called ``rifle shot'' provisions. Those include items such as tax breaks for small insurance companies. A Treasury Department report Holtz-Eakin cited as the source of his estimate states $27 billion could be raised by eliminating narrowly used tax preferences spread over a decade, not a single year. The Discrepancy When asked about the discrepancy, Holtz-Eakin replied that McCain would start with those provisions and target others like them to recover $30 billion annually. Len Burman, director of the Tax Policy Center and a former Clinton administration Treasury official, said that is unrealistic. ``We looked for loopholes when I was there and couldn't even come up with $10 billion a year,'' he said. McCain, 71, said he would offset the costs of lower corporate tax rates by freezing spending growth for a year on items unrelated to defense, veterans or entitlement programs like Medicare. So-called discretionary spending, which includes programs such as medical research and space exploration, makes up 18 percent of the budget. McCain said the freeze would save $15 billion. There's a precedent. Former President Jimmy Carter attempted to implement ``zero-based budgeting'' that would have forced each agency to undergo an annual review and start from scratch. The idea ``didn't really work,'' Bixby said. Tax Reduction To balance the rest of the cost of the corporate tax reduction, McCain would eliminate spending on lawmakers' pet projects, known as earmarks, added in the last two years. That would save $35 billion. McCain also assumes $20 billion in additional tax revenue stemming from stronger growth. The senator said he would also eliminate $65 billion worth of federal programs, including $2 billion in savings by charging affluent Americans more to participate in Medicare's prescription drug program. McCain's campaign said a 10 percent tax credit for research for businesses and a provision that would allow companies to expense equipment purchases in the first year of use would come at no added expense. Treasury Report A Treasury Department report said those come with a cost. Extending a permanent research credit would cost the government about $13 billion a year, and a less generous form of his expensing provision would cost more than $34 billion annually, according to the report. And McCain's AMT repeal estimate falls short of an analysis prepared last year by the nonpartisan congressional Joint Committee on Taxation, which put the cost of repeal at $100 billion a year. The AMT was created in 1969 to prevent 155 wealthy Americans from avoiding federal income tax and now ensnares about 4 million people. McCain's plan doesn't address the cost of the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, which now total more than $12 billion a month. He also said he'd back a permanent overhaul of the estate tax that exempts the first $10 million from any tax and subjects the rest to a 15 percent rate. Such a policy would cause the government to forgo $278 billion during an 8-year presidency, according to the Tax Policy Center. The estate tax is being temporarily phased out. It will impose a top rate of 45 percent on estates valued at more than $7 million a year for couples in 2009, will disappear in 2010, and return in 2011 with a top rate of 55 percent on estates valued at more than $1 million. Ultimately, said Stan Collender, a former analyst for the House and Senate budget committees, it would take substantial cuts to Medicare and Social Security to balance the budget with the tax cuts McCain is proposing. Even then, ``there's no way McCain could balance it by the time he leaves, unless he doesn't leave for 25 years,'' Collender said. To contact the reporters on this story: Ryan J. Donmoyer in Washington at Indira Lakshmanan in Washington at ilakshmanan@bloomberg.net
Look at where having a Fed Chairman in his eighties got us. Peoples ability to percieve things as they are, rather than how they were or how it would be nice, becomes seriously impaired with age to the point where even the formerly highly competent have to be made to step down. I think additionally total morons should not be allowed to stand, just look what Bush has done to the US.
What I find interesting is that according to the Constitution you have to be 35 years old to be President. Evidently the only problem the framers of the Constitution saw with age was with being too young, not being too old. LOL! What I'm wondering here is whether the ignorant comments you two have just made have anything to do with youth and inexperience. You two aren't under 35 are you? OldTrader
Any tax cut which is not accompanied by an equal or greater reduction in Gummint spending is just "smoke and shine"... The Gummint will "make up the difference" with greater deficit, print-money inflation and currency debasement. If we can find someone who will run on a "stop deficit spending... reduce the size of Gummint" platform, THAT'S the guy to vote for. Shoot, I'd even try to hold down my lunch and vote DemoCrapic if that were thier schtick.
These are examples of what a senior is capable of under optimal conditions. This is profundity. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5s_Oo7HcQKw or http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=m5qx_-B9RwI But these are exceptions. I am 28, and like the idea that old age gives knowledge and wisdom. But at the same time, it gives scenility and forgetfulness. And those are not traits we should all gamble our futures with. Running the country requires more than profound poeticism. It requires acuity and multidimensional logic capabilities. There's a reason google's founders weren't 70 when they figured out those search algorithms. 35-45 is a good age for presidents. Not too shallow, and not inept from dementia (thus forgetting where they came from). McCain of today is not the vietnam POW he was forty years ago. He's gotten comfortable and complacent, and likely is not the sharpest tool in the shed judging by proposals like this.
WE lowered the voting age to 18 from 21. The illogical reason was that if you are old enough to die for your country you are old enough to vote. That's wrong. The typical 18-year-old is neither wise enough to vote nor to make an informed decision on whether he should go to war. We should have Raised, not lowered, both the voting age and age for serving in the military in a combat role to at least 25. Then we'd have fewer moron presidents and fewer wars.
You're kidding? If the 18 to 21 year olds weren't voting the US voter turnout would drop to less than 33%. Yes that is less than 1 in 3 American citizens actually making the effort to vote for their president. I can only watch in "shock and awe" as a resident alien in the USA why there is such voter apathy. http://www.infoplease.com/ipa/A0781453.html
Because everyone has ipods, drinking water, food, and we're not in civil war. Unless those 4 basic needs are satisfied, no need to vote.
(John McCain advisor to John)--- Come here John..... Now look John.....You got Shiites and you got Sunnies. Then there's the Al Qaeda group. You've got to keep all this straight. Then there's Iraq and then there's Iran. Now you need to say this over and over till you get it. You don't want to keep looking dumb before the voters. McCain: (Scratching head with bewildered look on his face.) Uh, let me see.....Can you go over that one more time for me? Wait, I got an idea. I'll just carry Joe Lieberman with me everywhere I go. This man is too damn old to be the President.
Lower voter turn out is a good thing, in my opinion. We have way too many people voting for the candidate that sounds the best or "seems most presidential". Most people really have no clue what the issues are facing this country and how the various candidate fall on those issues. Right now, our election is nothing more than a popularity contest.