Liberal free for all coming to an end

[smc]

Originally Posted by TracyCoxx

LOL
smc: oh well uh, I already answered that in previous posts. Yeah, it's there somewhere, but jolly good one there Tracy. So uh let's move on now. Here's some questions for you...


And I see you're taking the democrats strategy of not proposing any real cuts of your own and letting someone else be the bad guy. No, I am not for a budget agreement that includes revenue increases. I do like Paul Ryan's plan to reduce the deficit by $4.4 trillion over the next 10 years. Repeal Obamacare, even if it takes money to do it, it would be nothing compared to the drain it will have on our economy in the future. I would also support Trump's plan of putting a tax on Chinese imports in order to pay back the debt and also encourage domestic production. Social Security also needs to be reformed. For people 45 and up there would be no change; for the rest, the younger you are, the more you would pay into your own retirement plans instead of Social Security. That would be a good start...

Any reasonable person, regardless of political positions, who reads the full record of our back-and-forth posts can easily see that I long ago proposed cuts. Your positions on these questions, Tracy Coxx, are worthy of honest, respectful discussion. Your method, though, is -- as always -- bankrupt, lying, and reprehensible.

My starting point for budget cuts would be to remember that it is not working people who caused the deficit, and therefore it is not working people who should be punished. This country can afford every single "entitlement" that is the norm in most of the industrialized world. The reason we don't have them is that we subsidize the wealthiest Americans and their corporations, whether directly or indirectly.

I would cut the so-called "defense budget" by nearly everything, until someone can prove that it is defense and not offense. I would cut every subsidy to the oil companies and other mega-corporations. I would eliminate the tax loopholes that make the United States have the most regressive taxation in the industrialized world and that make the United States have the largest income disparity in the developed or developing world, including China.

Here are some specifics:

- eliminate at least $10 billion in "non-defense discretionary" spending by cutting programs that benefit large corporations that are making record profits and need no "assistance"

- nearly $110 billion could be cut from the 2015 defense budget without taking as radical a step as I propose above; this would include savings through efficiency measures, reducing troop levels, eliminating unneeded weapons systems, and scaling back the wartime increases in the size of the military. To this I would add an immediate, 100% withdrawal from Afghanistan. (Did you know that, all told, the United States spends in excess of $20 billion each year to provide air-conditioning to soldiers in Iraq and Afghanistan? That includes all the ancillary costs.)

- leave Medicare benefits alone, but implement all the well-known cost-savings measures (e.g., allowing Medicare to negotiate drug prices)

- cut agriculture subsidies by at least half, saving nearly $8 billion; most of this goes to mega-agribusiness concerns.

- eliminate 100% of tax subsidies for companies that ship American jobs overseas, which would increase revenue by more than $132 billion.

Anyone who thinks cuts without revenue increases will solve the budget problem is either a deliberate liar or delusional. So, let's:

- treat capital gains and dividends as regular income in the tax code; reform the estate tax; and enact cap-and-trade with protections against price increases for low-income people. These measures will raise close to $150 billion in revenue.

- eliminate the Bush tax cuts for the top two tax brackets and return to 2009 estate tax levels

- address every loophole that allows for underpayment of taxes by the private sector, estimated to account for $7 billion.

This is a start. The United States is the wealthiest country in the world, but its wealth is concentrated in an unsustainable way that will provoke social unrest and class warfare as time goes on. History is clear. We can either have an equitable nation, or we can have a nation that kowtows to the interests of a wealthy few. That is the nation Tracy Coxx wants, assumedly because Tracy Coxx buys into the uniquely American social lie that this is a land of opportunity in which everyone has an equal chance to rise to the top.

Is rising to the top at the expense of humanity worth it, even if it were possible?