I don't think most people mean "all deductions" when they say "tax loophole" but whatever.

I'd be fine with getting rid of middle class loopholes, but only if we started at the top with corporations and the ultrawealthy and then worked our way down.

I'm for raising Sosec retirement age and for closing mortgage interest deduction AND for eliminating corporate deduction for paying for the PERSONAL insurance of their employees. These fixes could reduce the amount we need to collect from repeal of the Bush tax cuts.

@bo

"@James ... "dependency" programs are the responsibility of a centralized government in today's world whether you or I like it or not"

so were concentration camps in Nazi Germany. BAD argument bro.

"and make up for the fact that a system that is capitalistic by nature must have losers that need dependency programs in order to exist."

oh yes, because capitalism MUST have losers, and those losers MUST be coddled.

ridiculous.

if we could all simply do sustenance farming with basic trading, there are no losers. we all coexist. uh-oh, that means it's not capitalism by NATURE.

what you MEAN is RELATIVE losers. the poor, the homeless... they're never even given the option of self sustainment. as someone who has worked at inner city day shelters, many of these people are mental perturbed, elderly, or have several kids. it's not capitalism and freedom that's keeping them down.

in fact, support for orphaned mental perturbed kids would be the ONLY gov't entitlement i'd ideally support.

"If you want to eliminate "dependency" programs, eliminate capitalism and then we'll talk."

Capitalism is freedom. eliminating freedom means FORCING dependency programs. your rhetoric is sloppy

"Otherwise, all you're doing is leaving the poorest of the poor to fend for themselves without assistance while the rest of us watch in ignorant silence."

allowing people to live without others propping them up? gasp. no!

"If you have a more constructive solution, such as phasing out *specific* programs, let me know. Otherwise, cap it."

social security. that's one. eliminate price ceilings on agriculture which will naturally eliminate food stamps. eliminate welfare limits that don't allow for people to buy cars or full time housing and maintain full benefits.

there are some. turns out i'm not all rhetoric

@Hauta

NOOOOOOOOOOO

WROOOOOOONGGGG

http://www.craigsteiner.us/articles/16

i'm sorry i just went full Trump... that was scary

Clinton did not give us a "modern" budget surplus

SURPLUS

that was a lie too,

Newt Gingrich and company — for all their faults — have received virtually no credit for balancing the budget. Gingrich’s finest hour as Speaker came in March 1995 when he rallied the entire Republican House caucus behind the idea of eliminating the deficit within seven years. Skeptics said it could not be done in seven years. The GOP did it in four. Now let us contrast this with the Clinton fiscal record. Recall that it was the Clinton White House that fought Republicans every inch of the way in balancing the budget in 1995. When Republicans proposed their own balanced-budget plan, the White House waged a shameless Mediscare campaign to torpedo the plan — a campaign that the Washington Post slammed as “pure demagoguery.” It was Bill Clinton who, during the big budget fight in 1995, had to submit not one, not two, but five budgets until he begrudgingly matched the GOP’s balanced-budget plan. In fact, during the height of the budget wars in the summer of 1995, the Clinton administration admitted that “balancing the budget is not one of our top priorities.”

@Hauta

"@yan, @Brad, If the federal government created a program that added more to the economy than private investment could do, would you be against it? I'm thinking mission to the moon stuff from the 1960s. Sounds like you'd be against it."



HAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA HAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA HAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA HAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA HAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA HAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA HAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA HAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA HAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA

Nasa is SHIT. look at Musk... privatization kicks gov't ass for that. BAD example

@Yan, @Brad -- Brad seems to agree that there was a surplus but that Newt should get the credit. To me, that's an argument for another day, but Brad and I DO agree that there was a surplus. Dunno who www.craigsteiner.us is, is that a friend of yours at school?

@Yanik, SpaceX didn't exist back then. If it did, I would've used a different example. At the time, NASA was only game in town and the economic benefits of their research far exceeded the outlays. If you won't accept that, then you really need to double down on school.

@hauta

no... there was a gov't surplus, but they used money from SS and Pensions. @CaptBRAD is WRONG.

furthermore, he's a man who did a VERY simple thing: looked at aggregate debt over time.

Clinton's aggregate debt went up over time

https://www.treasurydirect.gov/NP/debt/current

do it yourself

mission to the moon stuff from the 1960s.

that was using the ICBM missiles for something other than sending nukes to russia and china

@hauta

of course telling kids to do science is school was good! and in this case, society benefited.

NOW society is benefiting MORE from competition: instead of gov't monopolies!

someone do this and tell me what you see with debt.

https://www.treasurydirect.gov/NP/debt/current

Clinton's time in office. GO

@Brad ... I am literally in the process of submitting paperwork to the state of Illinois and the federal government in the foundation of a nonprofit benefiting the Boy Scouts of America and Special Olympics. I volunteered throughout my childhood, received a number of local scholarships, and was recognized publicly on a couple of occasions for years of volunteer work, particularly with Special Olympics and Invisible Children. I'm not like you, though, and don't feel the need to offer up my résumé wherever I go, nor do I believe that my experience in working for charities and nonprofits makes any difference at all as far as my credibility on the matter goes. You should respect what I have to say on wider social issues without trying to frame me as a hypocrite and without trying to act like you're automatically right and automatically smarter when it comes to policy enactments because you have done charity work in the past and maybe some people haven't.

@bo

don't get sidetracked

"If you want to eliminate "dependency" programs, eliminate capitalism and then we'll talk."

what. to you. does eliminating "capitalism" look like? what do you think capitalism is??? and how could we stop entitlement programs with it gone???

they used money from SS

i agree james, but to delve into that technical detail was just piling on.

i hang my hat on this with the entitlement programs. if we took all the money we pay into those programs we could give everyone $30,000.00 cash if we eliminated the government bureaucrats that administer it. we get less than 30 cents on the dollar for the taxes collected and redistributed. if a charity did that it would be prosecuted for fraud

@yan, did it. What's your point, that the national debt went up over the 8 year period? Sure, I concede that. Of course that ignore the nation's ability to service that debt, unfunded obligations, whether the infrastructure was in better or worse shape than before -- lots of things.

@Hauta


@yan, did it. What's your point, that the national debt went up over the 8 year period? Sure, I concede that. Of course that ignore the nation's ability to service that debt, unfunded obligations, whether the infrastructure was in better or worse shape than before -- lots of things."

yes. that's my point. Clinton's federal budget surplus, means nothing with the intergovernmental holding debt increases. don't use that as an argument (you already did)

@Brad, please cite source for 70% admin costs for Sosec Administration and Medicare Administration (?).

Back to the statement on rich not being taxed enough... it was shown in a TedX article that the 40% poorest US inhabitants owned the same amount of wealth, collectively as the 4 richest FAMILIES in the US. This is economic inequality at it's finest, and is not okay

You should respect what I have to say

it was you that said 'watch in ignorant silence'. you clarification was helpful

i see you are one of those working for a solution and i salute you!

bo is a volunteer for Special Olympics and also for webDip, but now I'm just repeating myself.

@WyattS14

if we all live on farms, in a middle of a field, then someone goes out into the city makes it rich and builds mansion next to our farms.

inequality here. is that not okay? how dare someone grow and become better.

btw, ever since the gov't allowed for farm and land monopolies, freedom has died in many ways. sustenance farming is near impossible, thanks to gov't.

big gov't WANTS you dependent upon it, so it can grow. it doesn't want self-dependent citizenry, liberal gov't THRIVE off of votes from people being kept eternally poor

"@yan, you do realize that under Clinton, America had its first budget SURPLUS in well over 100 years!"

This is flat out false most likely, but even if by some minuscule chance it is true, it is very misleading. Before FDR in the 1930s, there was no such thing as a flexible fiscal policy. Balancing the budget was the ONLY way that the federal government operated.

"Back to the statement on rich not being taxed enough... it was shown in a TedX article that the 40% poorest US inhabitants owned the same amount of wealth, collectively as the 4 richest FAMILIES in the US. This is economic inequality at it's finest, and is not okay"

This is clearly an issue. People should be paying taxes based on how much money they make, not a subset of income that greatly benefits the most wealthy.

@Yan, then you clearly missed the point of my bringing up Clinton. It was in connection with Clinton era tax rates being better for the country's finances than the post-Bush Tax Cut era.

@agbemacht

yes, that is the correct way of going about it. simplifying the tax code would go a LONG way to solving that...

"@abge and @Manwe, taxes collected at the Pre-Bush levels are always lower than the stated rate."

I'm well aware of the difference between the marginal tax rate and the average tax rate, but no matter which you look at, the U.S. is at highest end for both. We lose so much business because our tax rates are ridiculously high. I could name you examples if you want of companies that decided to go oversees rather than remain here because of the tax rates.

Manwe, check out chart 4.02: http://www.usgovernmentspending.com/debt_deficit_history
You'll see that federal deficits are the norm throughout ALL of American history.

@Hauta

"@Yan, then you clearly missed the point of my bringing up Clinton. It was in connection with Clinton era tax rates being better for the country's finances than the post-Bush Tax Cut era."

well then you're still wrong. Clinton was not responsible for the economy, just as Bush wasn't responsibly for the dot com crash, OR decreasing market confidence after 9/11 (VERY significant in fact)

with that having been said, i'll concede Clinton had marginally better short term finances. long term, he's created problems with SS security that's we're going to be hard pressed to fix