So we should elect a president from the party that historically has the worst fiscal management... and has run up the worst deficits...and has made the costliest blunder in our history...because the other guy might just roll the rate back to where it used to be...to a rate lower than income tax... on a tax most people in any year don't pay...and never ever pay?
I'm not buying this.
Sabro, don't forget. "The Sky is Falling".
Republicans do not really want fiscal responsibility. If they did, they would have had it. Instead they went away from a balanced budget to massive deficits. It was their choice, and they did it deliberately. Given their record on managing the fiscal health of this country, we should not listen to them when they whine about "taxes" are hurting us. What is hurting us is a war in Iraq, and deficit spending.
Democrats and Republicans need to work together and balance the budget
William Mulgrew
Issue date: 2/15/08 Section: Ed-Op
Our generation is going to be faced with some of the most difficult choices in the history of our nation. I'm not just referring to the upcoming 2008 presidential election; I'm talking about over the course of our lives.
The national debt is roughly $9.2 trillion. If students don't understand that figure, here's an illustration that I've heard: if you earned a million dollars every day from Jesus Christ's death until the present, it would only pay off roughly 7.9 percent of it. Republicans and Democrats have contributed to this debt, but Americans disagree over whether their contributions were equal. We'll get to that, but first there's something else far more troubling.
The baby boomers are retiring; they're living longer and had far fewer children then their parents. None of these are bad if they hadn't consistently voted for congressmen who wouldn't change the social security pay-as-you-go system. With more retirees than workers, our generation will pay more taxes than ever and receive fewer benefits. The social security actuaries report that this unfunded liability may reach $11.1 trillion by 2042, doubling the national debt over 30 years.
The problem doesn't stop there. The Board of Trustees for Medicare report that their unfunded liability may reach $61.6 trillion over the same time span. That's more than six times the national debt.
The reason the debt is so important, aside from the fact that inflation damages our economy, is that it is an indirect tax on the American people of all classes, secretly extracting more of their hard-earned money.
In 2005, then U.S. Sen. Rick Santorum came to Drexel to talk about this problem. He even brought one of the social security actuaries with him in hopes that students could understand what was at stake and consider the alternative of privatization.
Asking for an alternative is not a partisan diatribe; it's an honest question. At least Sen. Barack Obama understands that. When Social Security came up at the Drexel debate, he said, "Now, it is important, if we are going to lead this country, to be clear to the American people about what our intentions are."
The senator admitted Democrats have fallen short, that "this is part of the politics that we have been playing, which is to try to muddle through, give convoluted answers. Ultimately, we then don't have a mandate and we can't bring about change, in part because we're afraid to give Republicans talking points." I guess that's as close to an apology for Santorum as we can expect.
Obama said that social security isn't in a present crisis, but will be in the long run.
"It is common sense that we are going to have to do something about it. That is not a Republican talking point. And if we don't deal with it now, it will get harder to deal with later," he said.
Obama favors taxing the wealthy, but said, "even after we deal with those issues, we are still going to have an actuarial gap that has to be dealt with."
Both he and Sen. Hillary Clinton believe fiscal management can hurdle this problem. The social security actuaries have repeatedly reported that taxing the wealthy and improving fiscal management are not enough. The unfunded liability will eat away at the budget until it's swallowed. Unless the national birth rate rapidly increases and we have more workers per retirees, there is no other solution to raising taxes on everyone and cutting benefits except privatization.
The Drexel Democrats use former President Bill Clinton as evidence of their party's commitment to balanced budgets, but this is a simplistic reinvention. It's easy for our culture to blame or praise presidents when they preside over a deficit or surplus, but when it comes to the national debt, the president and congress must be examined together.
If social security balloons to more than the entire national debt and Medicare balloons to more than six times it, cutting "essential" services is going to be the challenge of our generation.
President Clinton's 1993 tax hike did not balance the budget; it was the dot-com bubble, sending revenue to the federal treasury above and beyond the tax hike. Adjusted for inflation, spending during the Clinton years increased an average of three percent.
Balancing the budget is easy during economic booms; the real test of leadership occurs in a recession. Democrats are willing to raise taxes, but they are not willing to cut spending. Higher taxes are sometimes necessary, but with increasing global competition they will hurt America's robust economy. And higher taxes, even on the wealthy, will not fix the social security and Medicare unfunded liabilities.
With Democrats and liberal Republicans, President Bush drastically expanded Medicare. Democrats criticize him for not spending enough. They routinely blame deficits on the Iraq War while ignoring a 56 percent increase in non-defense discretionary spending between 2001 and 2004.
Congressional Democrats routinely fail to restrain spending. On June 24, 2005, they were divided over HR 3010, a resolution that forbids Medicare coverage of impotency drugs like Viagra. Medicare is supposed to provide life-saving medicine for seniors. Recreational enjoyment is hardly "essential." When Medicare is projected to expand more than six times the national debt, cutting cost is vital. If that wasn't enough, The New York Times reported how this use of Medicare money benefited convicted sex offenders.
Shall we conclude that Democrats control spending 50 percent of the time? There are always exceptions for either party (33 liberal Republicans voted against HR 3010), but Democrats say one thing and do another. Republicans have also been terrible, but Democrats are even worse. This isn't promising for America and as students we will have to make equal demands on the parties to stop this trend.I can use a million different examples, but let me use a better one.
When Sen. John Kerry accepted the presidential nomination at the 2004 Democratic National Convention, he said, "When I came to the Senate, I broke with many in my own party to vote for a balanced budget, because I thought it was the right thing to do." Now why would he say such a thing if Democrats are committed to balanced budgets?
The president has a constitutional responsibility for national defense, not elder care. I will happily debate the merits of Iraq, but our country must be prepared for the growing world threats of the 21st century first before we blame deficits on defense spending.
William Mulgrew is a senior majoring in history-politics. He is also the Chairman Emeritus of the College Republicans. He can be reached at ed-op@thetriangle.org.
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It is amazing how these Republicans, after years of holding the reigns of power, still like to blame the Democrats for bloated up government and huge record deficits. The don't mention tax cuts in the equation, because they still want us to believe that these actually raise revenues--- but if you roll back Dubya's tax cuts about a third of this mess disappears. The GOP- starting expensive and endless wars, increasing bureaucracy will decreasing its effectiveness, cutting services to working families and the poor, while giving away tax cuts, incentives, breaks, grants, loopholes, free leases, no bid/cost plus contracts.... this is the recipe for a fiscal disaster and one McCain intends to continue.
It has been the hallmark of every GOP administration since Nixon.
"The don't mention tax cuts in the equation, because they still want us to believe that these actually raise revenues--- but if you roll back Dubya's tax cuts about a third of this mess disappears." -Sabro
Your paycheck gets rolled back on too. Don't forget that. Thanks to the tax cuts, I am well on my way to having my student loans paid off. If the Capital Gains Tax stays where it's at for the next few years, I should have both my wife and my own loans paid back entirely. I just read somewhere that Obama just finished paying his student loans off. What a loser!
More form the Heritage Foundation (yor favorite website)
http://www.heritage.org/research/taxes/bg2001.cfmSo we should vote Republican so that their irresponsible fiscal policies will help us pay off our student loans? And I am supposed to think that Obama should have shirked the responsibility for paying for his JD... which he just finished a while ago. I have to continuously take classes for my profession and I hope you don't think I'm a loser because I haven't let government stupidity hep me pay off my loans.
"I have to continuously take classes for my profession and I hope you don't think I'm a loser because I haven't let government stupidity hep me pay off my loans." -Sabro
Ha-ha! I don't think you're a loser, but the government allowing you the opportunity to pay your loans off quicker through tax breaks is hardly "stupidity."
Continuing education is a tax write-off. I've done it. Needless to say, there are problems with the tax code in this area that need to be addressed by both parties. Currently, you don't qualify if the classes you took prepare you for another career. I think that's stupid.
Photographers (06:48 am)
Capital Gains Tax