Define irresponsible spending. Is that spending on programs you don't agree with or programs I don't? Maybe if corporations paid their taxes, the government would have enough to support both sets of programs and we wouldn't call it irresponsible spending. That is what multibillion dollar corporations paying no taxes has to do with your 'irresponsible' spending.

The low estimate of the real national debt (which includes all obligations like Social Security IOUs, etc) in 2008 was $70 trillion. The total amount of money in the world is about $60 trillion. If you take into account entitlement obligations, the United States owes more than all the money in the world. Fleecing corporations isn't gonna cut it. You need to radically restructure the whole damn thing.


http://www.forbes.com/forbes/2008/0929/034.html
http://www.nationalreview.com/exchequer/246159/our-debt-more-all-money-world

Its disturbing for people that are supposedly all angry about deficits only harping on spending, and not revenue.

For a political movement that claims to be more about common sense, refusing to discuss revenue issues is just... crazy? Naive? I'm not sure. Not practical is what I'll stick with.

To say that the tax system being short-changed by the wealthy has nothing to do with budgetary woes is just flat out wrong. Revenue - expenditures = surplus/deficit. If we do work on both sides, the resulting difference will be much more so than just harping on spending.

Ok, gotcha. Missed the obvious connection, but I'm right on board with you. I was never in favor of the bailouts, and my main point from the beginning was the desperate need to change the tax system in america from a loophole ridden system that screws the middle class, to a more effective (and lower rate system for most I might add) that brings in more revenue.
However, simply increasing revenue is not going to cut it. We have to eliminate any spending beyond what we take in as revenue. Irresponsible spending is spending money you don't have. In some cases it is necessary, but for a yearly budget? Show me a household that can spend more than they earn every year and sustain that for half a century. How much spending is too much? Once government spending exceeds GDP? (yeah I know that isn't possible, but trust me, the government will find a way).

Fix revenue AND cut spending. And do both drastically and immediately.

The problem with going after entitlements is that its politically a dead letter.

Abolishing Social Security, for example. Are you really thinking that telling 50 year old people that the system they paid into is going to basically get shitcanned before they ever get any benefits? This is assuming you grandfather in people currently drawing on Social Security.

Yeah. Not gonna happen, guys. Reform, I can buy. But talking about abolishing Social Security, Medicare, etc is simply crazy talk. It ain't gonna happen.

I'd be in favor of lighting the current tax code on fire, putting out a simple graduated scale (I'm still in favor of progressive taxation), removing 95% of tax credits. This might actually allow us to have less nominal tax rates, but more actual revenue.

Of course, the problem with that is that there are entrenched interests that like the tax code just how it is: That would be the rich. Actually paying taxes is for suckers, right? So I don't hold out much hope for actual reform there, but it would be nice.

Invictus + 1

Entitlements are killing us more than anything. The problem is only going to get worse with a steadily increasing life expectancy and a static retirement age.

"Entitlements are killing us more than anything"

wrong.

Not wrong. Did you not read what Invictus wrote?

Entitlements are not the problem. The anti-entitlement crowd created this fiscal crisis so they could go after entitlements with political support. Social security and Medicare were fine before the Republicans torpedoed our nation's finances with two wars that were never paid for.

Also the fact that the right will never never ever ever ever raise taxes for any reason, but will continue to cut them. Grover Norquist spoke honestly when he said that the point is not to reduce the deficit, the point is to eliminate the scope of government. That's why he could sit there and oppose the bogus tax write-off for ethanol production with a straight face. Because more revenue means more government capacity.

The Tories in Britain did the same thing. Claimed over and over (with great exaggeration) that they were in a fiscal crisis and then proceeded to cut everything in massive chunks for ideological reasons. The predictions about the economy suffering as a result of these cuts have come true.

Social security and Medicare / Medicaid were a problem long before 2001. Check the reports from the GAO at the end of the last century and you'll find that we knew they were going to go bankrupt as the boomers started retiring.

Social security was always going to be a parasite. The principles it operates on demand that.

@ Putin33

Can you back up those numbers? I would be very surprised if the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan (you can even throw in the little aerial shootout in Libya if you want) cost more than entitlements.

Putin can't back SHIT up. he is so full of Leftist talking points he doesn't even know what he is saying half the time. he just copies and pastes shit from the Left wing blogs.

He says shit like "the right will never raise taxes blah blah blah" when, if i recall, Bush (31) raised taxes....AND THE DEMOCRATS DEMOGOGUED THE ISSUE TO DEFEAT HIM! So a Liberal saying a Conservative won't raise taxes is not a complaint against POLICY...it is a Democrat complaining BECAUSE HE LOST AN ELECTION ISSUE....

Putin is. AT BEST. a political hack...at worst, just a lap-dog...

"Not wrong. Did you not read what Invictus wrote?"

no. tl;dnr and all that. i was responding to you.

specifically, entitlements are not killing us MORE THAN ANYTHING. i'll list 4 things that are killing us more than entitlements (in no particular order):

- unemployment -- how much revenue are we losing due to unemployment being 5-6% higher than it should be? what if an upfront investment would result in various ... oh say infrastructure projects? would trigger an increase in demand that would get the economy moving again? ... but no ... conservatives don't like to build roads and bridges and rail.
- tax cuts -- why why why why why do we continue to insist that cutting taxes on the wealthiest 3% of the country will result in a boom? it's been proven over and over to be false. if you want to talk about the deficit, in order for me to take you seriously, raising taxes has to be on the table. if not, then it is clear that the deficit is NOT your motivation. that's right, i'm calling your ass #notfactual.
- healthcare costs -- healthcare costs are out of control. conservatives would have us just let people die to solve this issue. reasonable people, on the other hand, would like to address the structural issues and try to find a way to move towards a system where everybody can get coverage at a reasonable price. it's why the first two years of obama's presidency was devoted to solving this issue ... we all know how that turned out.
- wars -- this one applies literally as well as figuratively ... even more so than healthcare ... wars are killing us. financially, morally, and fiscally ... but we persist.

so, entitlements. aside from medicare, which should be addressed as a part of our healthcare issues, what do you want to gut (that hasn't been gutted already)? and don't tell me you want to means-test social security. you're going to spend more in the overhead from means-testing than you would actually pay out.

on wars, i meant to say "literally, morally, and fiscally" ... typo.

Gunfighter: He's not claiming that entitlements cost more than the war, but that the war's costs are part of the problem.

Which is hard to argue with.

According to this study: http://www.fas.org/sgp/crs/natsec/RL33110.pdf
the GWOT has cost approximately 1.121 trillion dollars. Iraq has cost us ~800 billion of that. Considering how little Iraq had to do with 9/11, that is a disgusting waste of blood and treasure by the so-called conservatives.

Considering the deficit was ranging from 250 to 400 billion in the period of 2006-2010, if we had not gone into Iraq, our budge would have been that much healthier. (And sorry guys, go read your Keynesian economics. Its entirely expected for deficits to go up during periods of economic recession)

Putin claimed SS and MC were fine before the wars, Jack. This is patently false as anyone who bothered to keep up with the GAO reports of the late 90s can attest to.

It still IS fine, Draugnar. The projections don't look good, but the CBO says the trust fund the Social Security won't go dry until 2052. I'm not saying that this isn't a problem that we need to solve (and even after 2052, Social Security will still be able to pay out partial benefits, limited to the FICA revenues), but its certainly not broke yet.

I would agree that we should address this problem sooner, rather than later, but to claim the system is out of money is patently false (even after payments exceed revenue for SS in 2017, the interest generated by the fund will keep it making money until 2025).

@ Jack_Klein

I don't disagree. Wars are expensive, and Iraq was more or less unnecessary. But entitlements are REALLY expensive.

@ snappy173

I was talking about our biggest problem in terms of government spending, which would indeed be entitlements.