+100 The PRESENT deficit is $1,500 billion for ONE YEAR. Talk of even just $500 billion is a joke! -gastropod
I don't think people understand. There are a lot of people moving from productive to unproductive jobs (I believe most people want to be productive), and just to maintain the GDP, we need more government spending for the very reason I mentioned above. I live in ILLINOIS and I know how it feels to pay higher and higher taxes.
DoE provides grants and loans to students, whose going to make up for this?? It's obvious the private sector cannot guarantee a stable flow of funds as the credit crisis illustrated a freezing of capital and credit across the board. DoE always certifies legitimate programs with accreditation so graduates have a license that the public can verify. Would you really want someone operating on you that wasn't certified?? Would you trust a charlatan??
When 40% of your tax payers are paid from taxes collected from the other 60% the writings on the wall. 40% of all US tax payers work for govt: state, local, federal, education or military/military prime contractor. Traditional geographic borders.. countries, states, counties, cities have been obliterated by advances in technology. Our financial system, taxes, budgets have relied primarily on local transactions. The feds insure an regulate interstate commerce... Internet sales tax loopholes dilute the local tax income but the money keeps circulating in the US... Overseas commerce.. We have transferred jobs, tax income, money and our future. Our system was never designed for individuals to freely transfer money outside of our vacuum. Our govt relies on collecting a 10% tax on all monetary exchange. Once the money is outside all cyclical compounding benefits are lost.
Shocker that a self-confessed old guy wants to get rid of the Department of Education -- a piss in the ocean -- but makes no mention of cuts to Defense, Social Security, Medicare, or Medcaid. I give Rand no credit at all -- his proposals don't go far enough, and don't go after the real money. It's political grandstanding. Not that there isn't a bull market for that...
No question it's alot of grandstanding, but let's face facts, you can count on one hand the number of politico's these days that share his ambition to seriously cut spending. Sure, there are any number of Republicans (come election time) who will pay lip service to the idea, but can't find anything to cut. The spending and budgeting is so obscene, that a return to 2008 levels makes these fools cross-eyed. How about going back another 8-9 years, just for starters...why not align spending to the "pre-bubble" years that weren't using the rising stock market as a stop gap measure for tracking the economy's health.
It was only a few years ago that republicans didn't even pay lip service to the idea of less government. During the last presidential election, they did not even have a plank in the party platform about smaller government. Exactly. This is a crazy bill and the probability of passage is zilch yet it doesn't come close to being enough. What we have is a 500 pound woman who's not going to eat the entire cake that's in her refrigerator so she can fit into that size 4 dress next weekend. The fact is, she's likely to eat some of it and even if she avoids it, there's NFW she's fitting into that dress. Our current system is broken beyond repair.
That's nowhere near enough. It doesn't seem extreme at all. It looks ineffective and an instrument for politicking rather than a legitimate attempt to do something about spending. It's disappointing when even the "mavericks" are tame ponies. If he had said "$200B out of the defense budget now!" or demanded raising the SS age to 75...well, then we'd have something "extreme" and worth talking about.
Politics can be frustrating because it is the art of the possible. Give Paul credit for producing something credible yet too aggressive to be passed. It will give legitimacy to the next person who advances an even more far-reaching proposal. And if it ever gets to a vote, puts pols in a very awkward situation.