Money – The US is insolvent. There is simply no way for national bills to be paid under current levels of taxation and promised benefits. Federal deficits alone now total more than 400% of GDP.
Here is another reason to impeach Bush.
It's politicians, not just Bush. All of them won election and would sell their first-born to hold on to their seats! NO politician would ever fix this problem.
And stop saying impeach Bush for every problem...you sound like a schmmuck.
Okay, you sound like you're contributing to the overall problem we are facing. If you're going to go on an imbeciic tirade use facts. What about the oil reserves? Of was that a Rush Limbaugh/Fox source? Congenital problems anyone? Or is this the last vestige of the GOP lemmings "Stay the course". FYI - here at the Natl. Trng Center in Graf, Germany - we (military instructors) were ecstatic at Rumsfelds removal as well as the possibility that Bush can be impeached. In addition, Hillary nor Bill are anti-military so go bark up another tree.
Maybe you're the one that needs the education...impeach doesn't mean "remove", it means to bring charges against. Bill Clinton was impeached even though he wasn't removed. And President Bush is the perfect candidate for impeachment. He doesn't care about the military if he sends our brothers and sisters to war for nothing!! There was NO PROOF of ANYTHING!!! He has the blood of close to 3,000 US citizens on his hands...
You people seem to forget that the majority of the major UN nations agreed for 10 to 12 years that Saddam indeed had WMDs, they passed resolution after resoulution that they wouldn't back up. After 9/11 we had to do something..besides he(Saddam) was violating the terms of the ceasefire from the 91 gulf war.
You seem to forget that during the latest control for WMD (under dirrection of Hans Blitz), the conclusion was that there was no indication that Iraq had any WMD left. So, indeed, most members were of the opinion that an invasion was not called on.
It is also nice to remember, that the US expenditure for the military equals (or even surpasses) the total expenditure of all other nations combined.
Is it not president Eisenhower (an ex-milatary) who warned, leaving his presidency, of the danger to the American people and the American democracy, of the US becomming in the grip of the military industry and lobby.
Witch of cours gives the US the advantage of NOT having to obey any International law, charter or treaty. What can the others do?
Some of those articles speak about timeframes before the inspection by the Hans Bliz team.
Also, the more recent articles speak about "scrap" or some chemical amunition.
It is certainly not in the magnitude as was let to believe.
Furthermore, Iraq was not able anymore to produce new ones.
That Iraq WANTED to produce WMD was never in doubt (actualy, in the beginning, before the Kuwait invasion, Iraq was well helped by the United States AND Europe.
Iraq could very easaly have been contained, had the UN inspections and monitoring been allowed to continue.
A very expensive (both financialy and humanly) warr, with the known (and by some predicted) consequences could have been avoided.
But this is leading us away from the coore of this forum: the US deficit and national debt. I was just showing how the enormous US milatary budgets and expense (US expense=rest of the world expens) puts a heavy burden on the American people and American deficiet
Again, what ever was found(if ever, as it is strange that it never made the BIG news, NOT even just after the "war was finished and wonn"), it is/was not in the magnitude that was indicated to be by the US administration.
Saddam was not in a position any more to either produce or use on massive scale, WMD on the neighbouring countries nor the West.
WMD has never be the reason for the Iraq invasion.
If WMD was the reason, other countrie were/are bigger treaths to their region or to the West. e.g. Lybie, North Korea.
But, seriously, and I dont mind this topic at all, was this forum not about the US deficiet??
ps: Hans Blitz wrote a book about his findings in and about Iran. it's good reading about the "behind the scene" stories and how to present things to public oppinion.
I'm not going to jump into this one. Trading articles like this is often like the blind men and the elephant. We only get a piece of the picture. I can find a dozen articles that "prove" the holocaust never happened. But I will challenge the Bush administration to declassify, or make available to the intelligence committees, documents and meeting minutes developed in the runup to the war. I think Bush misuses his classification authority for reasons of "poliitcal security" rather than for national security. But that is only an opinion.
Impeach and Convict Bush!
Cheney for President!
Then impeach and convict Cheney. Get them all.
For the same thing Bush did. They were in on it together.
This site allows only 1000 characters so there isn't enough room to list all of Bush's and Cheney's high crimes and misdemeanors. But, here's a few: Lying about the threat Saddam posed, illegally eaves dropping on American citizens, implementing torture, etc.
Ah, right-wing apologists are so loyal. Or is it that right-wing loyalists are so apologetic? Whichever it is, it is sweet.
The more Congressional votes I look at the more I wonder why so many of them are supported by large numbers of Democrats as well as almost all of the Republicans. One spending bill after another gets rubberstamped.
And in case the debt seems manageable, four year's GDP would be impossible to raise if the debtors quit rolling over our bonds.
If you hold Bush responsible for the budget deficit, at least give him the power to fire congress for doing all the spending.
Didn't need to. GOP was in total control for the last 12 years. Can't even point a finger and blame the DNC on this. So now what? Everytime someone blames the Congress in the past 12 years, the GOP had total control of both houses! So with that FACT in mind. see where the blame lies.
What really jumps out is that the US financial position has deteriorated by over $22 trillion in only 4 years and $4.5 trillion in the last 12 months (see table below, from page 10 of the report). The problem did not 'get better' as a result of the excellent economic growth over the past 3 years but rather got worse and is apparently accelerating to the downside.
Any economic weakness will only exacerbate the problem. You should be aware that the budgetary assumptions of the US government are for greater than 5% nominal GDP growth through at least 2011.
Define total control please? And yes we can blame the dems along with the repubs, this problem didn't start with Bush...not even close. This problem started some 40 or more years ago when the big social programs started being implemented. This is not a one president or one party problem...we are all to blame
In other words, because no economic weakness is included in the deficit projections below, $53 trillion could be on the low side. Further, none of the long-term costs associated with the Iraq and Afghanistan wars are factored in any of the numbers presented (thought to be upwards of $2 trillion more).
So there we have it. The Democrats are going to have to try and fix this type of a problem again, and if they fail...The GOP will be pointing fingers and yelling "See, see what you get for voting them into power?" And the same imbeciles will fall for their lines again. Shades of Rove!!!
My what arrogance. So because Bush is from the same political party as those who actually did the spending, HE is the one responsible? Therfore, because I am of German descent, I and all other Germans are guilty for what Hitler did. Every congressman, Republican and Democrap is to blame for spending money they don't have. To say it is just Bush or just Republican is plain stupid. The upward spending spiral is a direct result of congressmen buying votes by giving out whatever is asked of them to secure re-election. Take away all the pork, and have an amendment to have a true balanced budget and this too will be resolved.
Actually debt is built into the system. The mechanism by which new money is created by the Fed is simply a flawed design. The fact that all new money is created through borrowing means that non-monetized debt is created automatically as the money supply grows. That means that the total debt can never be paid off. Unless we undo what was done in 1913, these arguments are essentially moot.
EdinABQ
You are probably one of the few that posts here that actually understands Economics 101. The govs spending is ALWAYS front loaded. In essence it is ALWAYS in debt.
Go Jayhawks!!!
(:>)
God, I wish they would teach this in Econ 101. I think that we simply designed the system poorly in 1913. As new money is injected into the economy through public or private borrowing, a non-monetized debt is created along with it. This means that there is always more debt in the economy than there is money. Money is created by the banking system when we borrow, and extinguished by it when we make payments. Remember that the Federal Reserve is not a government agency, but owned by the private banks, whom the system benefits greatly.
If we re-engineered the Fed system more along the line of what Lincoln did with greenbacks, it wouldd be possible to actually grow our way out of debt. As it is, a growing economy only gets us further behind. Weird, but true.
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Heh, and that's right now. Wait until Social Sec. pummels my generation for about a decade. That'll do us in.
400% of the GDP? We really are a nation of slackers, eh?
I don't know if you are joking or completely ignorant of SS accounting. My generation has been thriftfully building a surplus in Social Security since 1983. Social Security is completely solvent until about 2042 or 2052 depending on whose figures you use. So it is not going to pummel anybody's generation.
The money is "invested" in Treasury Bonds.
Guess how the the bonds will be repaid? By issuing new bonds or out of tax money.
There are no assets backing the bonds such as you would have with corporate investing.
Chile has a better system. Put in place by Pinochet. Their Social Security is backed by real assets.
The Chilean system is the same system that Bush tried to implement a few years ago. All the money would've been placed into the stock market. Who benefits?
the stock brokers. Big business. The stock market could crash and then you're personal retirement acct could be wiped out. Great plan.
Here, only 45 would have been put into the stock market. Only 4%...yes, I know that would have broken the budget right? If we are this insolvent, it had to be happening for a long time..not just this presidency. I say, lets do away with the needless social programs..that alone would help tremmendously.
What needless social programs are those?
I can tell you who benefits.
The people who's money is invested in real assets.
Their retirement funds would grow faster than the rate of inflation and whose retirement money would be backed by real assets.
BTW since the Chilean government adoped the plan its economy's growth rate is the highest in Latin America.
Which would you rather have? Retirement funds backed by something like a copper mine or funds backed by government promises?
This idea to privatize Social Security is the biggest scam the govt. has ever tried to pawn off on us. If the elected representatives of the People would keep their hands off of our money it wouldn't be a problem. The issue with insolvency for SS is that there isn't any money in the fund. It was all dissappeared by Congress. Right now it is a huge IOU. If they had left it alone, right now it would be fine. But, they couldn't leave all that money just sitting there doing it's job, no, they had to spend it on tax cuts and millitary buildups.
SS is a great thing.
What are you talking about? How is Social Security a Pyramid Scheme?
A Pyramid Scheme works by talking a little bit of money from a lot of people (with the promise of a larger return) and giving it to one person (or a much smaller group) then never paying off the return to the original investors.
Social Security takes a little bit of money from a lot of people, pays it to another, smaller group which has done this for the people before them and the people afterward will do it for the people now. If anything, Social Security is a Pyramid Miracle because it works. The reason Pyramid Schemes are illegal is because the payoff never happens. With Social Security it does.
It isn't Red Communist. It is socialist, but that is a bird of a different feather. What is so bad about some socialism anyway?
Are you STILL fighting the cold war David? The wall came down a number of years ago. But you are right SS is an income resistribution scheme. It has taken from the pockets of the workers who fund it and given to the non-working (i.e. investing) class. If any thing, it is a Capitalist "direct income redistribution pyramid scheme".
Consider that for 23 years, SS had been running a surplus. That surplus was, wrongly in my mind, used to buy government bonds. If that surplus wasn't there, then during that period taxes would have to have been higher or money borrowed from other sources to cover spending. So by borrowing from the workers, we were able to keep taxes artificially low for the non-working and investor class. In effect, they were borrowing money from those with earned income. Hmmmmm now they want to default on paying it back. You gotta hand it to them, they got some balls.
Sheesh I'd better practice "duck and cover" under my desk. I had on idea the red menace was at my doorstep. Damn, the Nicaraguans are getting closer to Harlington as we speak.
The boomers have received no services from SS yet, constitutional or otherwise. We have mererly been paying into the system.
There is accountability in the SS system. Its books are open and audited. And what things has Congress done that would get someone in the private sector tossed in jail? You tossed that invective out with absolutely no backup. Very Limbaughesque of you.
dude are you plugged in ? the only reason social security has problems is because presidents and congress keep borrowing from it and leave ious. every president since carter has done that.
Insurance is a scam. the stock market is a scam. income tax is a scam. lots of gov't scams.
and have you seen Chile lately? If you don't work fulltime for your whole life, you get NOTHING, even if you paid in.
go move to Chile if their GNP and living conditions are so great..
oh wait they aren't and you know it.
You are absolutely right. We should have used the surplus to pay down the national debt rather than buying bonds. I was only pointing out that SS is no different than any other organization which holds T-bills. All of which will have to be paid out of future taxes. SS is actually in very good shape. So it makes no sense to consider it the bogeyman.
The problem is the total federal debt, of which SS is a fairly small portion. A big problem is the amount of the debt held by foreign countries, particularly Japan and Germany. Their boomers come to retirement age just slightly before ours. They are going to want to cash out soon. So the Bush solution was to call my SS bonds "worthless pieces of paper". Why didn't he term ALL bonds worthless? Probably because it was politically easier for him to screw the workers who have been building the surplus than to screw his benefactors.
David, he did call them worthless pieces of paper. I saw the news clip. My point was that they are no more or less worthless than treasury bonds held by priviate pension funds, and no less an oblibation for the government.
Whats this crap about 'non-constitutional'. You are either in compliance with the constitution or not. Every signing statement the current pres. has done has been anti constitutional.
(Until every technique described in the Communist Manifesto has been eliminated) - you do know that what was implemented in the USSR and China was not 'Communism' but dictatorship with communist slogans.
The national sales tax is unfair to the poor and less than fair to the extremely wealthy.
I guess that means no more wars? danm!!!