Government Shutdown?

[Unbound Draykon]

This article Government shutdown could derail economy says how this government shutdown might affect the economy. And this slideshow Government shutdown of 1996 explains the effects of the last government shutdown.

[Randomizer]

I have a friend that used to work for the government during an earlier one. That's when he found out he was classified as non-esssential.

 

It's mostly a contest to see who will blink first.

[BainIhrno]

Watching MSNBC, it seems this is mostly over Planned Parenthood.

[Enraged Slith]

Well, the American people have begun to learn that the largest abortion provider in the country is also the largest recipient of federal funding under Title X, and they want to see that come to an end.

[Sudanna]

This American person wants no such thing.

[Goldengirl]

Originally Posted By: Enraged Slith

Well, the American people have begun to learn that the largest abortion provider in the country is also the largest recipient of federal funding under Title X, and they want to see that come to an end.

I'd hardly say that that view is representative of the whole country. Abortion is traditionally very controversial, and I'd say the issue, if anything, is split roughly even across the nation. Some areas will obviously sway more one way than the other, obviously. Also, I'd just like to bring up the fact that the Hyde Amendment makes it so that the federal funding does not go towards abortion.

Lastly, watching the news, it seems as if a deal has been worked out that will prevent the federal government shutting down. I'm not thrilled with the cuts, but at this point anarchy just needs to be averted.

[Jerakeen]

It's strange to me how easily Americans accept the idea that because some people strongly disapprove of abortion, no taxpayer money should ever be used to pay for it. This standard doesn't seem to apply to any other issue.

[Sarachim]

Originally Posted By: The Turtle Moves

It's strange to me how easily Americans accept the idea that because some people strongly disapprove of abortion, no taxpayer money should ever be used to pay for it. This standard doesn't seem to apply to any other issue.

Policies that substantially restrict access to abortion for the poor but only mildly inconvenience the middle class tend to pass pretty easily.

[RCCCL]

I may be wrong, but I'm pretty sure that the federal money given to Planned Parenthood goes to programs to help educate people to try and prevent unwanted pregnancy and STDs, as well as prenatal care for those who can't afford health insurance.

[Dantius]

I really hope that at sone point in my lifetime, I'll see the top marginal tax raised back up to Eisenhower-era levels. That would be pretty wonderful.

[Metatron]

Originally Posted By: The Turtle Moves

It's strange to me how easily Americans accept the idea that because some people strongly disapprove of abortion, no taxpayer money should ever be used to pay for it. This standard doesn't seem to apply to any other issue.

You are free to donate money to support abortion clinics. But spending the money of another person is different, isn't it? From the pro-life perspective, you are seizing their money in order to kill babies. That is cruel.

[Sullust]

Except the government isn't doing any such thing...

 

Edit: I'm with Dantius on this one, just raise taxes.

[Sudanna]

Originally Posted By: Metatron

Originally Posted By: The Turtle Moves

It's strange to me how easily Americans accept the idea that because some people strongly disapprove of abortion, no taxpayer money should ever be used to pay for it. This standard doesn't seem to apply to any other issue.

You are free to donate money to support abortion clinics. But spending the money of another person is different, isn't it? From the pro-life perspective, you are seizing their money in order to kill babies. That is cruel.

You're also seizing other people's money to fund wars, which kill actual people.

[Randomizer]

Originally Posted By: Metatron

You are free to donate money to support abortion clinics. But spending the money of another person is different, isn't it? From the pro-life perspective, you are seizing their money in order to kill babies. That is cruel.

You can use that argument to eliminate any government program. The pacifists believe it's immoral to pay for wars. Government subsidies for different agricultural and business interests, public support for arts programs (all those government grants for questionable art), ....

How many pro-lifers (anti-abortion) Republicans voted against prisons where executions occur or the military? Is it only permissible to kill someone after they are born?

[Sullust]

At any rate, the crisis seems to have been temporarily averted for now. Let's not forget that this entire fiasco could've been avoided months ago.

 

Edit: Response To Randomizer

Presumably as long as the government only kills the 'bad' people it's okay.

[Enraged Slith]

I was quoting Rep. Mike Pence, by the way.

 

Quote:

How many pro-lifers (anti-abortion) Republicans voted against prisons where executions occur or the military? Is it only permissible to kill someone after they are born?

I doubt most pro-lifers base their arguments on morality. I'm sure it has much more to do with money and the refusal to support the refuse of society.

[Sudanna]

Heh. Sentient refuse. Our standards for refuse are too high.

[Sarachim]

Originally Posted By: Enraged Slith

I doubt most pro-lifers base their arguments on morality. I'm sure it has much more to do with money and the refusal to support the refuse of society.

So we'll stop paying for their birth control. This is an excellent, well thought-out plan.

[Aran]

Originally Posted By: RCCCL

I may be wrong, but I'm pretty sure that the federal money given to Planned Parenthood goes to programs to help educate people to try and prevent unwanted pregnancy and STDs, as well as prenatal care for those who can't afford health insurance.

You are correct. Three percent of Planned Parenthood's services involve abortion, and none of that is funded publicly since public funds are already blocked from providing abortion. This stand-off instead aims at contraception, sexual education and (who guessed) healthcare for the poor, which in turn will lead to disease and malnutrition going untreated. The capacity for doublethink that allows Republicans to demand legislation that will kill babies while calling the other side baby-killers is staggering.

[Kelandon]

Just so we're clear: The money that Republicans wanted to cut from Planned Parenthood is the money that prevents unwanted pregnancies, via the services Aran mentioned. Once an unwanted pregnancy occurs, abortion becomes more likely, not less. Thus, the Republicans, by cutting funding for an agency that provides abortions, were perversely going to increase the number of abortions that actually occur.

 

This is why an arguably principled but poorly thought out stance is sometimes unbelievably foolish. It's grandstanding, not good policy.

 

Of course, short-term deficit reduction of the sort that some Republicans want is itself grandstanding and not good policy, so I don't suppose we should be surprised here. (But the real agenda of most Republicans — cutting taxes and cutting spending simultaneously, which doesn't actually reduce the deficit unless you resort to voodoo — is simply insidious.)

[Mittens]

Fun fact: In certain African countries, voodoo charms, known as grisgris, are the third most popular contraceptive measure.

[Sudanna]

Wonder if they work on AIDS.

[TheBadAgent]

Sad that the Republicans caved to twenty billion less than desired. How could we cut that money? Simple: education systems need to be cleaned the fack up, useless people fired, Social Security abolished (VERY necessary, but will never happen because the elderly outnumber the youth), more useless people fired (dep. of transporation, IRS, dep. of energy, etc.), redo thetax code from ten thousand pages to one sentence "TWENTY PERCENT SALES TAX" so no a-hole can get out of taxes and everyone has to put into it...need I add that the pensions have to be cut?

Teachers whine that they don't get paid enough, but after 12 years educating, they get a FULL pension? (Senators get one too after what? Two or three terms? For $300k for life too?...wtf)

 

Honestly, the solution IS there, but, you know what? It'll require America to man the **** up and grow a pair and to realize that it WILL NOT be easy, but it must be done!

 

With S.S., the reason it must be cut is that a minority cannot support a majority. An upside down pyramid does not support itself. We, the country's youth, are outnumbered 3:1...we cannot keep Roosevelt's laws going.

 

Bit.of ranting...but I am SO tired of watching these imbeciles screwing the country up. What happened to the fatherly thought of making our children's future better than mine was? (Posting from a touchsceen, don't rage over some gramatical aspects please)

[Sudanna]

lol

[Sullust]

http://marquee.blogs.cnn.com/2011/04/12/stephen-colberts-not-factual-hashtagging/?hpt=C2

 

It was a remark seemingly made for late-night TV comics: Sen. Jon Kyl's claim that abortion is "well over 90 percent of what Planned Parenthood does."

 

When the actual figure turned out to be 3 percent, his office released a statement clarifying that Kyl's figure was "not intended to be a factual statement."

[Alorael at Large]

Originally Posted By: TheBadAgent

For $300k for life too?...wtf)

I have some other issues with what you said, but try sticking to honesty. It's under $200,000 per year. That's a very nice salary, but it's less than two thirds of what you claim.

—Alorael, who assumed all birth control and family planning was renamed abortion. Makes sense, right?

[Dantius]

Originally Posted By: TheBadAgent

[edited for size]

Okay. A couple quick things to educate you, since you're obviously misinformed on several important issues, and a misinformed citizenry is a danger to democracy.

1. Social Security is not an issue. It not only enjoys widespread support amongst members of the public from across the spectrum, but growth in real wages and overall economic expansion will allow it to remain solvent and even in the black until after the Baby Boomers have all died of old age, at which point it will no longer be attempting to support an inverted pyramid, but a pyramid shaped pyramid. It is also worth noting that if immigration quotas were increased, population growth would also increase and there wouldn't even be a demographics issue in the first place. The only countries that face such an issue a la Italy or Japan are the countries that have essentially halted immigration and then stopped having kids at replacement rate. So long as we don't do anything stupid and reactionary like ban immigration, we'll be fine.

2. Instituting a national sales tax would be pointless, as their are better ways to raise revenue, such as windfall profits taxes and financial transaction taxes. This has two main benefits
a) It discourages the level on irrational exuberances that got us into this recession in the first place, and will actually manage to raise large amounts of revenue ($140b) from sources where it will not be missed.
A national sales tax would disproportionatly affect middle- and lower-income families, as the amount of money they spend on necessities as a % of income is far higher than for the wealthy. Raising this percentage is a bad thing, and it should in fact be as low as possible, except for certain commodities that are nonessential or harmful (cigarettes, liquor, etc).

3. Abolishing the income tax is stupid and can never happen. Income tax in the US is about $900,000,000 per year, which is over 40% of the Fed's income. No amount of sales tax could compensate for that without essentially stopping the economy, and as discussed above, raising sales taxes disproportionately affects the poor, which will only worsen the current depression. While I don't disagree with the fact that the code should be simplified, but "it's long and complex" doesn't justify KILL BURN DESTROY. What should be done is an income tax hike on the very wealthy, and then sales tax cuts and tax cuts and stimulus for the lower tax brackets. And BTW, when I say tax HIKE, I mean let's raise it to like 50% on people making over $500000 or a million. And if they complain, stuff 'em on a time machine and send them back to 1950. They'll be begging to be paying 50% again real fast.

4) The single most important action that can be taken to balance the budge and reduce the deficit is to fix healthcare issues by providing public-sector healthcare (see fig. 4). As mentioned in the article, the US has the most inefficient healthcare system in the world- with countries such as Cuba beating us out on that count. If the US could provide free public healthcare to all its citizens and do so in an efficient manner (ala Canada or Britain), a massive portion of both our deficit and debt would be eliminated with ease. Furthermore, quality of care would either remain constant or increase for the majority of Americans, and if the uberrich don't like it, then they can move to another first-world country- oh wait, those all have national healthcare systems, too!


There are of course other things that can be done to fix budget issues, like eliminating wasteful military spending or other such suggestions, but I really don't have the time nor inclination to exhaustively research every misconception held by people about the federal government and the way it interacts with the economy as a whole.

[VCH]

Is there no federal sales tax in the US?

[Lilith]

Originally Posted By: Dantius

4) The single most important action that can be taken to balance the budge and reduce the deficit is to fix healthcare issues by providing public-sector healthcare (see fig. 4). As mentioned in the article, the US has the most inefficient healthcare system in the world- with countries such as Cuba beating us out on that count. If the US could provide free public healthcare to all its citizens and do so in an efficient manner (ala Canada or Britain), a massive portion of both our deficit and debt would be eliminated with ease. Furthermore, quality of care would either remain constant or increase for the majority of Americans, and if the uberrich don't like it, then they can move to another first-world country- oh wait, those all have national healthcare systems, too!

And if you really insist on whining about ~my healthcare choices~, there's no reason you can't have a private healthcare system operating in parallel with the public sector, so that people who are willing to pay large sums of money for non-urgent surgery can get seen slightly earlier. Australia and the UK both do this and it works reasonably well.

[Sarachim]

I never thought I'd say this, but Dantius is making a lot of sense.

 

The only thing I'd add is this: BadAgent, you seem to have a skewed idea of exactly what the federal government spends its money on. Imagine everything the government spends its money on that isn't defense, Medicare, or Social Security. Hundreds of things, most of them pretty important, right? All those things combined are less than any of those first three things I listed. You could slash federal education spending, the IRS, and the Department of Energy to the bone, or even abolish them entirely, and it wouldn't even make a dent in the deficit. The bugets of stuff like PBS and Planned Parenthood are so small, they might as well be rounding errors. I don't blame you for this mistake, since many Congressmen make even bigger ones.

 

Ultimately, the way to fix the deficit is to reform our healthcare system in the ways Dantius and Lilith just talked about, get rid of the obsolete Cold War-era stuff that's bloating our defense budget, wait for the baby boomers to die off, and raise taxes on the wealthy enough to pay for what's left. Cutting taxes for the rich and shifting the burden onto the poor, like you're proposing, would only make the problem worse, and that's before the poor start throwing bricks.

 

Finally, one last question: why is a deficit a bad thing? I'm serious. The US has been running one almost continuously for nearly 100 years, and the collapse that deficit hawks warn about still isn't here. If the US has kept it up this long, what makes you say it can't do so indefinitely?

[Randomizer]

For decades the US had a balanced budget and sometimes ran surpluses. The huge government debt was created to help the country in poor economic times, however the Republicans forgot that in good economic times when tax revenues increase you are supposed to reduce debt.

 

For two years under Clinton the government ran a surplus and started to reduce the public debt. Then Bush II took over and ran us sharply back into deficit spending with a war whose costs were added as a special item outside the budget and decreasing taxes at a time when total spending was increasing. Reagan and Bush I only look better compared to Bush II. They pushed for tax cuts and didn't cut spending except for minor reductions in social programs.

 

Sound bites about welfare moms and waste aside, the Republicans didn't do anything to fix the problems.

[Erebus the Black]

Originally Posted By: Dantius

Originally Posted By: TheBadAgent

[edited for size]

3. Income tax in the US is about $900,000,000,000 per year, which is over 40% of the Fed's income.

FYT you lost a few zeros there.

Originally Posted By: Sarachim

All those things combined are less than any of those first three things I listed.

660B$ per year for keeping politician's secrets (discretionary) seems kinda steep, don't you think (I'm assuming CIA and NSA activities are included under 'defense', if they are even included)?

About US national deficit: IIRC Historically there has been only one president who actually eliminated the national deficit and he was blamed by historians for the following financial crisis after his term. This might have created a superstitious curse among politicians (like the 9th symphony curse for composers) which ... (you know the rest).

[Lilith]

Originally Posted By: Erasmus

660B$ per year for keeping politician's secrets (discretionary) seems kinda steep, don't you think (I'm assuming CIA and NSA activities are included under 'defense', if they are even included)?

A lot of that discretionary spending gets funnelled to the military. Discretionary spending also includes big one-off expenses like infrastructure projects, or it would if the US government ever actually spent money on that stuff.

[Randomizer]

The last major infrastructure was the construction of the interstate highway system under Eisenhower. The next was repairing some bridges from that era after a series of newsworthy collapses along the Mississippi River.

 

Now infrastructure means the bridge to nowhere. There is talk about upgrading the railroads and ports. But it is mostly talk and pork barrel politics.

[keira]

Originally Posted By: VCH

Is there no federal sales tax in the US?

No, sales taxes are a state (and occasionally local) thing. Each state sets its own taxation level and all that, and some don't even have a sales tax (Montana, for instance)

[Aoslare]

Originally Posted By: Sarachim

I never thought I'd say this, but Dantius is making a lot of sense.

This.

[Sarachim]

Originally Posted By: Erasmus

About US national deficit: IIRC Historically there has been only one president who actually eliminated the national deficit and he was blamed by historians for the following financial crisis after his term. This might have created a superstitious curse among politicians (like the 9th symphony curse for composers) which ... (you know the rest).

Are you referring to Hoover? Andrew Jackson? The US has had no budget deficit several times in its history, most recently during the last few years of the Clinton administration. Clinton tends to get a lot of credit for how he managed the economy, so whatever that superstitious curse was, he broke it.

[A less presumptuous name.]

Originally Posted By: Sarachim

Originally Posted By: Erasmus

national deficit

budget deficit

Two different terms. Since it's creation, I believe it is accurate to say that we've only been out of the hole once. However, we didn't always allow for a national deficit.

As for deficit spending, there have been many periods where we didn't have that. But since the Great Depression made deficit spending the norm, we have almost always been in the red.

[Niemand]

Originally Posted By: Sarachim

The US has had no budget deficit several times in its history, most recently during the last few years of the Clinton administration.

There's a difference between not having an annual deficit and eliminating the cumulative total of previous annual deficits. People aren't very careful, but when they say 'the deficit' (or 'the national deficit') they usually mean the total accumulated deficit.

[Erebus the Black]

Originally Posted By: Sarachim

Are you referring to Hoover? Andrew Jackson? The US has had no budget deficit several times in its history, most recently during the last few years of the Clinton administration. Clinton tends to get a lot of credit for how he managed the economy, so whatever that superstitious curse was, he broke it.

nope, never broken, Jackson got it to ~33.5k and ever since it has spiraled to millions and billions and trillions, so there seem to be no cure for the national deficit (federal debt) blues
clicky

However it does appear that for a government to be indebted to who knows how many organizations is common practice in today's world.

[Aoslare]

As already mentioned, budget deficit ≠ national deficit.

[Sarachim]

Originally Posted By: Erasmus

nope, never broken, Jackson got it to ~33.5k and ever since it has spiraled to millions and billions and trillions, so there seem to be no cure for the national deficit (federal debt) blues
clicky

However it does appear that for a government to be indebted to who knows how many organizations is common practice in today's world.

Oh, okay, you were referring to the national debt, not the budget deficit. While interesting historically, the national debt is not really relevant to the current policy discussion. The question at hand is how important it is for the government not to expand the debt, and how we weigh that against other priorities. The fact that that national debt existed at, say, both the beginning and the end of Hoover's term in office has nothing to do with an analysis of the consequences of his balanced budget policy.

[Alorael at Large]

The national deficit is a budget deficit. States also have budget deficits.

 

The national deficit is not the same thing as the national debt, but that mistake was only made once here.

 

—Alorael, who thinks that it's worth pointing out that a tax overhaul would be a good thing. There are currently too many loopholes, especially corporate loopholes. More importantly, the effort required to pay taxes, or the money required to get someone to tell you how to do it, has become ludicrous. It is in the state's interests to make paying taxes as simple and relatively painless as possible.

[Unbound Draykon]

The ultimate Debt Clock.

[Sarachim]

Originally Posted By: Unbound Draykon

The ultimate Debt Clock.

The debt "per citizen" is less than half that "per taxpayer." Did whoever made this forget that the federal income tax is not the only tax?

[TheBadAgent]

Originally Posted By: Chop, Thrust, Melee

Originally Posted By: TheBadAgent

For $300k for life too?...wtf)

I have some other issues with what you said, but try sticking to honesty. It's under $200,000 per year. That's a very nice salary, but it's less than two thirds of what you said

Doing this on a touch screen...wrong button pressed.

[TheBadAgent]

4) The single most important action that can be taken to balance the budge and reduce the deficit is to fix healthcare issues by providing public-sector healthcare (see fig. 4). As mentioned in the article, the US has the most inefficient healthcare system in the world- with countries such as Cuba beating us out on that count. If the US could provide free public healthcare to all its citizens and do so in an efficient manner (alaCanadaor Britain), a massive portion of both our deficit and debt would be eliminated with ease. Furthermore, quality of care would either remain constant or increase for the majority of Americans, and if the uberrich don't like it, then they can move to another first-world country- oh wait, those all have national healthcare systems, too!

-----------------

Simple solution- allow the private healthcare companies to expand their business outside the state. Here's another thing, healthcare insurance is NOT there to provide for you, it is there to make MONEY!! They do not give a damn about you! THAT is a misconception many seem to have! And so long as "riders" can be attached to a bill that makes this document many thousand pages, it cannot possibly, even remotely be about true healthcare. Why? Because why does it take several thousand pages to explain it? And THEN...why do the senators get a SEPERATE HEALTHCARE and are exempt from the very bill they are trying to pass?

[Sarachim]

Originally Posted By: TheBadAgent

Simple solution- allow the private healthcare companies to expand their business outside the state.

This would allow them to skirt state law by incorporating in whichever state's laws are the most generous to them.

Quote:

Here's another thing, healthcare insurance is NOT there to provide for you, it is there to make MONEY!! They do not give a damn about you! THAT is a misconception many seem to have!

No, it's not a misconception any of us have. I agree that this is how healthcare companies work, which is why I favor having the government run them out of business.

[TheBadAgent]

Sara...I know that the reasons I provided aren't the only ones. There are too many agencies, departments and laws to even name that leech money and are completely unneeded. the comment that the rich should pay all these deficits is completely ignorant. The rich cannot possibly pay off the debt or really make a sizable dent in it! Raising taxes just encourages them to take their entire industry outside of the US. If you don't think that will happen, look at China!

 

Do you know the taxes that are imposed on a business? Obviously you don't and are inclined to believe that big businesses OWE you a job. Here's an example. Intel was making one of its plants in another country, I believe in Ireland. The people there at the press meeting for this said that they'owed the US people jobs. The CEO casually explained that it would cost them ONE BILLION dollars more to build a plant in the US than in Ireland.

 

Also, the govenment's TRUE intended role was to be a "necessary evil" by the Founding Fathers and was only intended to have power over ninternational trade and foreign defense. For those healthcare fanatics:

“I predict future happiness for Americans if they can prevent the government from wasting the labors of the people under the pretense of taking care of them.” – Thomas Jefferson

[Randomizer]

Healthcare companies are about making money, even the so called non-profits. Until the recent healthcare act, they could exclude coverage of pre-existing conditions so no payments for things you really need giving you the choice of paying it yourself or paying inflated premiums and fighting them to get them to actually pay.

 

Another thing is they increase premiums 10 to 20 percent a year even when they have adequate reserves to cover insurance payment claims. My non-profit company just hit me with an 18% increase with almost no claims.