An short excerpt from the CNN.Money website
Couples making more than $250,000 and individuals making more than $200,000 seem to be lawmakers’ answer to paying for … well, everything. Health reform, tax reform, random other legislative initiatives and, of course, deficit reduction.
The problem is that there’s just so much money that can be reasonably squeezed from this very small group of Americans.
“The president thinks we will somehow reduce the deficit and fix the tax code without raising taxes by a dime for those poor souls making a quarter million dollars-a-year or less. Unfortunately, that’s 95 percent of us. Can’t wait to see how he does it. ” Howard Gleckman, editor of the blog TaxVox wrote in a recent blog post.
The need to think (really big)
The only way to really lasso the debt situation, budget experts say, is to make a serious attempt to curb spending growth and boost taxes across the board (emphasis mine), but particularly with respect to Medicare and Social Security.
That will inevitably mean a reduction in the benefits promised to future retirees and a host of other castor-oil-type remedies that won’t garner much applause from the electorate.
Whether lawmakers will make that happen is an open question, Gleckman suggested.
“As long as politicians believe that fiscal discipline is career suicide, little will change.”
All I can say to the above is Amen.
Joe
Obama has established a bipartisan group to study this question– IIRC Alan Simpson and Erskin Bowles (sorry for spelling). But I think that a steady expansion of our economy on a solid financial system will make this question of taxation a moot question.
http://www.charlierose.com/view/interview/10895
Here’s a Charley Rose Show on the Congressional Oversight Committee on the finance reform (TARP) question– the chair Elizabeth Warren. Professor Warren has good ideas in her past appearances on Charley Rose. Same here on 3/4/10 Thursday. She continues to point out that there is no consumer protection in the Feds. IMHO it’s a little like the Hawaii PUC, the Fed/Treasury tends to represent the industry and the government, and operates dysfunction-ally for the consumer. The different branches under it don’t work together and worse, they work against each other.
Now that people are not on a brink of a financial crises, we don’t want to do anything really effective. It’s more important that we have a solid economy where we aren’t trying to cut each other’s throats to protect our network of services for the needy.
Comment by Al — March 6, 2010 @ 1:08 pm
I still think that the bipartisan committee is good because it will take a lot of courage to end welfare to military contractors in the form of lucrative and unnecessary weapons acquisition.
Comment by Al — March 6, 2010 @ 1:38 pm
I forgot to mention that there was an economist Joseph Stiglitz also on Rose’s show that says for the short term we shouldn’t be trying to fix the deficit. It’s the same thing that other economists are saying– ie that you need to think in terms of the long term debt. If you spend the money now for a stimulus, then you’ll have less debt in the long term.
For a second stimulus, he advocates a minimum of $200B for the covering state budget deficits, and stimulus money for extension of unemployment benefits and job creation such as aid to colleges and universities to expand enrollment. He says like Paul Krugman and the Chair of the Presidents Economic Advisers IIRC Christine Romer, that the first stimulus should have been double– like about $1.2Trillion rather than about $700Billion. He says it’s harder for a second stimulus because people don’t believe that things could be even worse than now without the first stimulus. They just don’t believe that the first one worked. You can find the Stiglitz interview on the same above website.
This is not related to NEW programs which Congress now says is pay-go. Or in the case of health care, it will actually lead to a reduction in the deficit in ten years.
Comment by Al — March 10, 2010 @ 9:10 pm
I just noticed that the House has passed both Senate Bill and the amendments. Rep Stupak of Michigan who wants to abolish all abortion in this country made a deal with the President… I wonder what the story behind that is?
Comment by Al — March 21, 2010 @ 11:11 am
Al:
I admire Bart Stupak, at least in a way, for sticking to his principles. Though I’m glad he finally was able to get on board for health care reform legislation. As I have told you before, I am philosophically opposed to abortions unless they are done because the mothers life is in danger. It has nothing to do with my Catholic roots. I disagree with thge Catholic Church on a whole lot of things. This abortion issue comes down to a matter of conscience. Probably most PDH members will disagree with me on this issue. But I still go to the meetings because I am on the same page with PDH on most issues. Thanks for your input on things that I post.
Not many others seem interested.
Joe
Comment by Joe — March 21, 2010 @ 1:49 pm
Thanks for your post Joe. They may care they just may not comment. 70 or so years ago the uber rich were taxed at something around 90% under Roosevelt. Although I think that is too high, with loopholes today I think most of the uber rich(people making more than a million a year let’s say) end up paying around the same percentage in taxes as someone making 60k. I think there is something wrong there. Although, I haven’t made more than a million a year so I am assuming.
Comment by Christian — May 4, 2010 @ 10:19 pm