McSame's Insanity: Fix the budget by attacking it where it is healthiest.

[Zynx]

McCain's proposal to reverse the budget deficit by cutting entitlement spending is close to the looniest thing I have heard in a while. The federal budget this year will be in deficit to the tune of $410 billion, according to the Bush Administration's estimates, which are probably a little bit too rosy. However, this is only possible by borrowing from Social Security roughly $192 billion. In short, without borrowing from Social Security, the federal budget would be $602 billion in deficit.

Social Security is in reality its own set of accounts with its own revenue source and its own independent expenditures. It is not part of the appropriations process every year like the rest of the budget. This is like blaming a good lung for the deficiencies of the cancerous one.

No, the problem is that Defense and Homeland Security have risen from just over $350 billion in 2001 to something on the order of $730 billion for FY2009. That is the single largest cause of this problem. The second problem in our $600 billion deficit in the General Fund(spending outside Social Security) is that revenues are too low due to Bush's tax cuts. The third problem is that debt interest, an absolutely inescapable cost, is much higher now than it should have been with sound fiscal management, costing us something to the tune of an extra $60-70 billion a year more than if Bush's war and tax cuts had never happened.

Something interesting to note is that the $600 billion deficit in the General Fund is so large that if every dollar of non-defense discretionary spending were eliminated, some $480 billion, it would still not plug the gap. McCain is out of his flipping mind on this one to attack the one part of the budget that works and is currently bailing out the rest of it. He should be hit on this and hit hard. He will continue to increase defense spending and cut taxes, which are the two large causes of our problems, while attacking the only healthy part of the budget. This is lunacy taken to its most extreme.

http://www.whitehouse.gov/omb/budget/fy2009/summarytables.html

[freesqueeze]

1. Must .... cut .... the .... budget....

Simply...must....cut....the....budget....

[Zynx]

3. That's kind of how I picture McCain on this one.

[eleny]

2. This is why he can't deny that his term would be a third Bush term

Social Security is W's unfinished business and McCain is right on it.

[Zynx]

4. Bush's privatization scheme derailed his second term early along with Terri Schiavo.

McCain will never even get going with it.

[eleny]

6. But not for trying

:(

[Johonny]

8. I know

Who the heck is advising him. Social security hated by a few insane Republicans, loved by the general public.

[Zynx]

12. You're absolutely right. He's running a fringe campaign on this issue and has

to be called out on it.

[calimary]

5. It's also proof of VERY old, VERY calcified thinking. Maybe it should be "thinking."

Total knee-jerk. NO imagination. NO new ideas. NO innovative approaches. Just the same old crap that's already been stamped "REJECTED" and sent back. This is the best he's got. Old. Stale. Unimaginative. Same-ol'/same-ol'. Yawn. There you go again, mr. republi-CON. That's all you got, isn't it? Shit that won't work, doesn't even address the problem, makes things worse, and nobody wants it to begin with. "Maverick"? WHERE? HOW?

VERY uninspiring, stodgy, unremarkable, uninspiring, and thoroughly one-dimensional thinking. NOT what we need in any sort of leader, much less a President of the United States.

[Zynx]

7. Indeed. The obscenely bloated Pentagon is the single greatest problem.

Time to cut that bastard down to size. McCain wants to increase it and Homeland Security to the stars since he apparently thinks government can't do anything other than kill people and make a police state.

[calimary]

9. That and all the tax giveaways to the rich.

That and diverting all the money for Iraq to other priorities here at home. We could use a trillion dollars or so HERE, doing something that's actually constructive and worthwhile in the short term AND long run.

[Zynx]

10. Damn right. That war money was literally pissed away.

[underpants]

11. SS cut or Payroll tax increase?

http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=show_mesg&forum=132&topic_id=6465492&mesg_id=6465492

300 of his own economists don't like it
http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=show_mesg&forum=132&topic_id=6465503&mesg_id=6465503