Cut Military or Raise Taxes, take your pick

[furface]

In my view the battle lines for 2016, and in general the soul of the Republican party are being drawn.

http://politicalticker.blogs.cnn.com...ers/?hpt=hp_t1

Anti-tax activist Grover Norquist said Monday that his group, Americans for Tax Reform, would work to unseat Republicans who break their pledge to never vote for higher taxes.

Do you raise taxes to pay for military and foreign aid?

Nut case war mongers & Israel firsters like Lindsey Graham and Peter King certainly think that war is worth raising taxes.

The GOP's got to decide whether or not it's actually for small government or merely big military.

[jmdrake]

Peter King is a terrorist sympathizer. I'd love to see him go.

[nobody's_hero]

Sadly, I think this was the message which fell off the radar after the elections.

Republicans still don't get it. You can't just attack domestic spending and ignore military spending.

[CaptUSA]

Sadly, I think this was the message which fell off the radar after the elections.

Republicans still don't get it. You can't just attack domestic spending and ignore military spending.

Ignore it?! Hell, they had some presidential candidate out there talking about INCREASING it! More than even the military wanted!

[Occam's Banana]

Anti-tax activist Grover Norquist said Monday that his group, Americans for Tax Reform, would work to unseat Republicans who break their pledge to never vote for higher taxes.

Good man! Make the bastards feel the pain. It's the only language they understand.

Let Chambliss & Co. spout their nonsense about how they "must" raise taxes because they "care" so much about the country.

Norquist has been doing this long enough that he seems unlikely to sell out at this point. (Unlike that idiot Amy Kremer who basically told the GOP that they could safely ignore her and her tea party org because she & her org would support whoever the Republican nominee turned out to be, no matter what).

Grover knows the score. This whole scenario is a textbook example of what Michael Rothfeld talks about here: http://training4liberty.org/facl2/info.htm

and here:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1QCzww6EG7E



Give 'em hell, Grover!

[Zippyjuan]

Let's check the math. Can we balance the budget without raising taxes? (let's assume that this is a goal though I am not convinced it really is). What and where do we cut?

Try to take $1.3 trillion from this (figures for 2010- latest I can find with a nice breakdown and $1.3 trillion was the shortfall for that year). If we skip Defense and Social Security/ Medicare stuff (voters won't like you if you touch them)you have to cut $1.3 trillion out of $715 billion in spending. Can't be done. We can let you keep about $78 billion for defense if we cut everything else to zero (keeping Social Security/ Medicare) and not worry about raising taxes.

Mandatory spending: $2.173 trillion (+14.9%)

$695 billion (+4.9%) – Social Security
$571 billion (+58.6%) – Unemployment/Welfare/Other mandatory spending
$453 billion (+6.6%) – Medicare
$290 billion (+12.0%) – Medicaid
$164 billion (+18.0%) – Interest on National Debt


Discretionary spending: $1.378 trillion (+13.8%)

$663.7 billion (+12.7%) - Department of Defense (including Overseas Contingency Operations)
$78.7 billion (−1.7%) – Department of Health and Human Services
$72.5 billion (+2.8%) – Department of Transportation
$52.5 billion (+10.3%) – Department of Veterans Affairs
$51.7 billion (+40.9%) – Department of State and Other International Programs
$47.5 billion (+18.5%) – Department of Housing and Urban Development
$46.7 billion (+12.8%) – Department of Education
$42.7 billion (+1.2%) – Department of Homeland Security
$26.3 billion (−0.4%) – Department of Energy
$26.0 billion (+8.8%) – Department of Agriculture
$23.9 billion (−6.3%) – Department of Justice
$18.7 billion (+5.1%) – National Aeronautics and Space Administration
$13.8 billion (+48.4%) – Department of Commerce
$13.3 billion (+4.7%) – Department of Labor
$13.3 billion (+4.7%) – Department of the Treasury
$12.0 billion (+6.2%) – Department of the Interior
$10.5 billion (+34.6%) – Environmental Protection Agency
$9.7 billion (+10.2%) – Social Security Administration
$7.0 billion (+1.4%) – National Science Foundation
$5.1 billion (−3.8%) – Corps of Engineers
$5.0 billion (+100%-NA) – National Infrastructure Bank
$1.1 billion (+22.2%) – Corporation for National and Community Service
$0.7 billion (0.0%) – Small Business Administration
$0.6 billion (−14.3%) – General Services Administration
$0 billion (−100%-NA) – Troubled Asset Relief Program (TARP)
$0 billion (−100%-NA) – Financial stabilization efforts
$11 billion (+275%-NA) – Potential disaster costs
$19.8 billion (+3.7%) – Other Agencies
$105 billion – Other

[Origanalist]

$78 billion for defense?

I think that is sufficient. Simply defend the country and leave it that.

[The Free Hornet]

$78 billion for defense?

I think that is sufficient. Simply defend the country and leave it that.

Yes, this can handle the nuclear arsenal (or close, IIRC). Also, they should gut SS/medica**.

[furface]

I think the deficit will be about $1 trillion for fiscal 2013.

http://www.usgovernmentspending.com/...cit_chart.html

$78 billion for defense?

I think that is sufficient. Simply defend the country and leave it that.

I agree with that. Cut or eliminate military & a few other hidden military programs like Homeland Security, NASA, & Department of State, & Dept of Energy. Things like Dept of Education? Do we really need that at a federal level?

Then there's the question of how taxation is carried out. These are my suggestions:

1. Move towards taxing truly wealthy people instead of people who merely make a few hundred thousand dollars in a single year. We used to have something called "income averaging." Bringing that back would be a good start. My guess is that it would be difficult, though, because tax laws are written by people with steady incomes like career government officials & government union representatives.

2. Move towards a true consumption tax, where you tax natural resource consumption, not the "Fair Tax" which is an only slightly better form of the income tax.

3. Tax imported goods that don't meet labor & environmental quality standards that we force American manufacturers to adhere to.

4. Allow people to keep more of what they make in order to become financially secure so they won't have to rely on governments to make a living.

5. Not directly a tax issue, but work to bring competitiveness into the medical industry, which is eating up huge portions of individual and business budgets. The lack of medical competitiveness is a defacto tax.

6. Also not directly a tax issue, but have true tort reform so that people can be free to take risks and innovate in order to boost the economy. Lawsuits are a defacto tax written by the same people who write tax laws.

Well, that's my list.

[Dr.3D]

$78 billion for defense?

I think that is sufficient. Simply defend the country and leave it that.

Yep, that would eliminate the offense spending they are always forgetting about.