Morning read: Gibson on raising the debt limit
Republican Representative Chris Gibson is among House Republicans holding out for more spending cuts as the back and forth over raising the national debt limit continues.
The Albany Times Union’s Jimmy Vielkind blogs that Gibson is still hopeful there’ll be an agreement.
Gibson offers some ideas for budget cuts, and downplays the threat of a government shutdown.
“What you’re talking about here is, without the authorization to borrow, the government can only spend about 60 cents on the dollar until an agreement is reached. So you’re not talking about a full government shutdown. Now, we’re in a situation where we would have to find a way to make do on 60 cents on the dollar. So I think this is the time and this is the moment to really work out the deal to get us back to where we should be.”
Lawmakers are under a four week deadline to increase the government’s borrowing power to avoid a default.
House Republicans want spending cuts to match the increase in the debt ceiling.
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I would still like to hear your, OA, Knuck, whom ever, thoughts on why it’s right to allow the Federal Gov’t to force anyone to participate in an insurance scheme of any type. Whether it’s SS, UEI, Medicare, or Obamacare, I simply can’t understand why anyone would support the idea of letting gov’t extort (there is no other accurate word) money from us.
Bret, with all due respect you have wrongly claimed that SS was supposed to voluntary. You have also claimed that we should read the Federalist papers which will show that the income tax was illegal. Would you please cite the number of the Federalist paper that supports your claim?
I’ve read some of the Federalist papers, specifically number 12, number 30, 31, 32, 33, 34, 35, and 36, all of which concern the “General Power of Taxation”. I have yet to find where Hamilton says the income tax is illegal. In fact I have placed some quotes below that appear to indicate (at least in my liberal, commie, mind) that Hamilton was arguing just the opposite.
“The conclusion is, that there must be interwoven, in the frame of the government, a general power of taxation, in one shape or another.”
“Upon this ground, which is evidently the true one, it will not be difficult to obviate the objections which have been made to an indefinite power of taxation in the United States. ”
“and it is evident that it has at least the merit of reconciling an indefinite constitutional power of taxation in the Federal government with an adequate and independent power in the States to provide for their own necessities.”
I would still like to hear your, OA, Knuck, whom ever, thoughts on why it’s right to allow the Federal Gov’t to force anyone to participate in an insurance scheme of any type.
I’ll be happy to chime in. We have a representative government and a Supreme Court in accordance with our Constitution. We personally elected representatives to pass laws, including Medicare, SS, and “Obamacare”. We have a Supreme Court to insure those laws are constitutional. I guess you may have the opinion that those laws are not “right”, but they are certainly legal. Although, “Obamacare” has yet to be brought before the Supreme Court, many Constitutional scholars claim it would pass the “smell test” of even the current conservative court.
Bret asks for “thoughts on why it’s right to allow the Federal Gov’t to force anyone to participate in an insurance scheme of any type. Whether it’s SS, UEI, Medicare,…”
So that old people don’t starve to death and young children get vaccinated, for two.
Anyway, apropos of nothing, or maybe everything, that we’re talking about:
http://digbysblog.blogspot.com/2011/07/death-of-common-sense.html
Mervel, it sounds like your agency, whatever it is, is very generous in terms of benefits — especially for part-time workers. If all employers were that generous I might not support universal single-payer health care. On the other hand, wouldn’t it be great if the government just handled health care and the employee would pay more in taxes, possibly a similar amount to what they are paying now anyway?
P, sorry, but where did I claim the Federalist Papers addressed the Income Tax?!!!! I said read the Federalist Papers to get a sense and flavor of what the Founders thought.
FWIW, Hamilton was not one of the guys I agree with. In fact I don’t agree with the whole Federalist movement. But, Hamilton did manage to create and run what would be similar to our Fed today. He was a big centralized gov’t guy. Somewhere in his writings or quotations he basically said he wanted a King again, but he wanted a King that agreed with HIM! Odd guy.
I would suggest you look into the methods of taxation Hamilton espoused. I think you’ll find tariffs and duties were high on the list. The tax on whiskey was one of the first attempts at a tax on the general population. This lead to the Whiskey Rebellion in which the Federal Gov’t fielded a larger army than it had during the Revolution! IIRC it was lead by Alexander Hamilton.
Bret, I don’t see it as extortion at all. Every possible thing that can happen to people will. Some people will be rich through no great effort of their own and some people will be poor in spite of hard work for a lifetime and vice-versa. Many people will need assistance with health care or just basic necessities of life and wont be able to provide for themselves. The government will have to take care of them anyway. I would prefer to make it very simple and therefore less expensive and jsut provide a basic level of services for everyone at government expense and remove the inefficiencies of the feee market from the equation, to save money.
Without Hamilton, there is no United States of America.
Okay P, OA, so if it’s fine to force people to buy insurance or some sort, then is it also okay to force them to buy certain cars or clothes or foods? Is it okay to force them to limit their tv and radio to certain types of entertainment on certain stations? Is it okay to force them to live in certain areas or to build certain types of homes? Is it okay to force them to give up things too? Chocolate or soda or coffee or cigarettes? Is it okay then to limit how many kids they can have or to force them to have kids?
We can pass laws and make it all legal, we can change the Constitution if needed. When does all this end? Why is it right to force someone to be vaccinated? Why is it right to force someone to pay money to support someone who didn’t plan for their future? Doesn’t this go back to a question of finding the balance between freedom and servitude? If our choice is to work and try and build something only to have someone take whats ours…why bother? Why not just sit back pop a brew and surf some porn? The gov’t will take care of us.
Sorry guys, I think this is a basic wrong from the start. I know you think differently, but I just see this going downhill with no end in sight.
No Bret, you just refuse to see the other side. If you were dying on the side of the road because you were dumb enough to get hit by a car why should anyone stop to try to help you?
Is Gov’t the only car that will stop and help me? Seems to me that’s the assumption you’re making, that ONLY GOVERNMENT can do anything. I think it’s my job to provide for myself and my family as much as possible, after that comes my extended family and community. You seem to think doing the bare minimum is good enough or something. The gov’t can just take from some other people and fill in your problem areas.
We need a certain amount of gov’t and gov’t services, I don’t argue that. It’s this mindset that more, more , MORE is somehow the only answer. I disagree. A guy I know said this just this AM-
1. You cannot legislate the poor into prosperity, by legislating the wealth out of prosperity.
2. What one person receives without working for, another person must work for without receiving.
3. The government cannot give to anybody anything that the government does not first take from somebody else.
4. You cannot multiply wealth by dividing it.
5. When the first half of the people get the idea that they do not have to work because the second half of the people are going to take care of them, and when the second half of the people get the idea that it does no good to work because the first half of the people are going to get what they work for, that is the beginning of the end of any nation.
I realize you don’t see things that simply, but it’s seems pretty accurate to me.
your points”
1. Red herring. I’m not making any claims about legislating prosperity.
2. This is not a one to one equation we are talking about. It is the same idea that insurance companies work on except it is bigger and far older. Governments were created to support the goals of the citizenry that individuals could not provide for by themselves.
3. Basically the same answer as #2. For example, if a person becomes injured and unable to work, maybe paralyzed, it can cost tens of thousands of dollars every year to take care of that person. That is a severe hardship for even a large family to bear but it costs less than a penny per person when spread across the population of the whole country.
4. Absolute nonsense. Wealth is created as money moves through the economy. When all the money is in the hands of a very few people the economy grinds to a halt.
5. Who are all these people who don’t want to work? I can’t remember EVER meeting anyone who didn’t want to work. I have met many people who are lazy, or who hate the job they are doing, or haven’t the skills to work a job they would prefer…there are innumerable permutations…but it is one of the most basic desires of human beings that they want to do something, to make something, to provide service to others, to be recognized for doing something good, for accomplishing something. The goal of government and society is to provide the best possible opportunity for all those people to find the situation which bests suits them in order to be a productive part of the whole scheme.
I think somebody called that “the pursuit of happiness.”
Its a small human services charity Knuckle. Our benefits are good in a relative sense because many places don’t pay people working 25 hours a week health insurance, but to buy our family health insurance the employee still has to pay close to $400.00 per month our agency kicks in another $700.00 per month that is not that great of a deal. For people making between $10-18 per hour many just can’t afford it and elect not to take any health insurance. If they are the only earner at $10.00 per hour they can come close to qualifying for Family Health Plus, but not always it depends. These are college educated caseworkers and when a county position comes open I lose them instantly.
We need drastic change in our basic cost structure for all benefits in my opinion. I mean I would like to see health insurance totally disconnected from employment. You should be able to go out and buy health insurance the same way we buy car insurance. It is just way to expensive and that is the core of the problem in my opinion.
A guy I know said this just this AM-
Just who was that guy that said those things just this AM? I googled those statements and it seems that 2.1 million other people said the same things (not necessarily this AM). Just right-wing, “common sense” talking points. And no, I don’t see things that simply because it is not that simple.
BTW, how many people died from smallpox and polio before those diseases were erradicated by vaccination. People get vaccinated for the common good.
The thing that is bothersome is that the debt is not about the safety net. I know we keep hearing that entitlements are the problem, but we should not confuse entitlements with our social safety net. A significant portion of the people receiving medicare and social security don’t need it, they are already wealthy or can afford retirement and their own health insurance yet they pay the same as some guy who worked his whole life at minimum wage. We need a system to catch people when they can’t afford health insurance, when they can’t afford retirement, and when they are out of work through no fault of their own or do not have enough to eat.
But right now with the health care system in the US basically sucking the lifeblood out of this country, along with the military; it does not matter what kind of games we play with public or private funding, someone has to pay. I guess I am confused about how universal health care is supposed to work when we can’t pay for universal health care for the elderly right now? Also if we had 250,000 troops in Iraq three years ago and we have 50,000 troops now, has the military budget gone down in the same manner? Once you start spending money it is almost impossible to shut it off for the military or for social programs.
P, I don’t know or care where he got it, it rings true. And yes, I can understand why we want to have people get vaccinated (for instance), but why do we think we have the right to force it? What else does that right give the gov’t to do? The basic question IS that simple.
Knuck, #1 isn’t a red herring at all. It’s the whole idea behind wealth redistribution, a very popular idea around here. The “rich” have more, the “poor” have less, so the rich should be robbed and their money given tot he poor who will then, somehow, become solid, middle class tax payers.
#2 is certainly true. Gov’t at any level has no money of it’s own. To give a grant or build a road or insulate a low income house someone else has to lose a portion of what they earned. In the more germane sense, to support someone on welfare or food stamps or to give them HEAP or Medicaid then someone else must lose a part of their income to pay for it. Governement was not created to tax the worker.
#3 follows 2 as you said.
#4 is obvious. You cannot make the poor middle class by giving them $800.00 rebate checks once as Bush did. You can’t borrow your way out of debt either. $100.00 divided among 100 people doesn’t make that $100.00 $100K, especially if you have to tax their neighbors $2.00 (to cover administrative costs of course!) to give them that $1.00.Wealth is created by taking a lower cost raw material and turning into something marketable. Money changing hands doesn’t create actual wealth because it loses value with each change of hands. If you had an economy with $100.00 in it and 100 people in that economy, and every person takes 5% of that dollar in profit every time it changes hands…before long you have no money. Unless someone is using that money to produce something else it’s just a shell game.
P, I don’t know or care where he got it, it rings true. And yes, I can understand why we want to have people get vaccinated (for instance), but why do we think we have the right to force it? What else does that right give the gov’t to do? The basic question IS that simple.
Knuck, #1 isn’t a red herring at all. It’s the whole idea behind wealth redistribution, a very popular idea around here. The “rich” have more, the “poor” have less, so the rich should be robbed and their money given tot he poor who will then, somehow, become solid, middle class tax payers.
#2 is certainly true. Gov’t at any level has no money of it’s own. To give a grant or build a road or insulate a low income house someone else has to lose a portion of what they earned. In the more germane sense, to support someone on welfare or food stamps or to give them HEAP or Medicaid then someone else must lose a part of their income to pay for it. Governement was not created to tax the worker.
#3 follows 2 as you said.
#4 is obvious. You cannot make the poor middle class by giving them $800.00 rebate checks once as Bush did. You can’t borrow your way out of debt either. $100.00 divided among 100 people doesn’t make that $100.00 $100K, especially if you have to tax their neighbors $2.00 (to cover administrative costs of course!) to give them that $1.00.Wealth is created by taking a lower cost raw material and turning into something marketable. Money changing hands doesn’t create actual wealth because it loses value with each change of hands. If you had an economy with $100.00 in it and 100 people in that economy, and every person takes 5% of that dollar in profit every time it changes hands…before long you have no money. Unless someone is using that money to produce something else it’s just a shell game.
#5- You need to get out more. I’ve known and know a LOT of people who don’t want to work. They want and expect a living and that’s all there is to it. The people that want to work either want to to make ends meet or to achieve some other goal, to build something or to get somewhere. There are a lot of people that are perfectly happy in subsidized housing, with subsidized heat and food, using the system to their advantage. If you truly haven’t run into a lot of these folks then count yourself blessed. I know a great many people who would be perfectly happy sucking beer down and sitting on the couch all day, every day.
And it is most certainly not “…The goal of government and society is to provide the best possible opportunity for all those people to find the situation which bests suits them in order to be a productive part of the whole scheme….”. That goal you speak of is the individuals responsibility, not gov’ts! That’s simply absurd! It’s not societies goal either, societies goal to foster a workable system of interchange and co-operation among it’s members. Maybe that’s the basic problem we have, you see gov’t as the answer to peoples problems and I see people as the answer to peoples problems. Gov’t and society shouldn’t block someone from achieving their goals, but it’s shouldn’t be giving an unnatural, unfair advantage to one person over another either. IOW, gov’t and society both should stay out of the way as long as the players aren’t doing something blatantly wrong.
Sorry about the double post, thought I got it stopped in time.
What else does that right give the gov’t to do?
Maybe that’s the basic problem we have, you see gov’t as the answer to peoples problems and I see people as the answer to peoples problems.
No, the basic problem is not the government. The government is US. WE get to decide who makes decisions on our behalf. It’s called representation. Unfortunately, Republicans (and conservatives, the same thing) decided that large, multinational corporations get the same rights as individuals. The “peoples” representatives are bought and paid for by those who can afford it. I’m for public financing of campaigns. Hopefully then our representatives would represent us.
Anti-vaccination. Sounds like one of those crazy Hollywood liberals. Guess Bret is pro-plague. Bret, you were a state trooper, right? By your logic, how dare the government set a speed limit?
How dare the government require clean drinking water and an adequate sewage system? Outrageous!
Thanks to PNElba for pointing out how propaganda has influenced what should be rational debates.
Bret, you just don’t understand economics. The economy is not a finite pie.
As the poor get wealthier the pie gets bigger. The middle class do better as the poor do better and the wealthy do better as the poor and the middle class do better. It is true that balancing the system will affect the outrageously super wealthy, the top one tenth of one percent, but when you’re a multi-billionaire you can afford to buy a slightly tighter belt.
The inverse is also true. As the wealthiest get more wealthy the middle class does worse and the percentage of the population who are poor gets larger.
Open your eyes and think for yourself. The economics of the past 80 years shows that clearly.
Mervel, AMEN! Something must be done about the runaway cost of health care. It is driving tax increases at every level of government and drives up the costs for virtually every business in the country. Even the insurance companies themselves have to provide health insurance for their own workers.
Somebody please do a total of the increase in spending on health insurance in one small area for this year. Pick a county. How much was the increase for each city, town, village, school district? How does that affect our taxes?
P, I didn’t say “gov’t is the problem”, I said, “you see gov’t as the answer to peoples problems and I see people as the answer to peoples problems.” IMO there is a vast difference between assuming “gov’t will fix it” or “more gov’t will fix it” and getting involved and working on the problem yourself. Some here seem to have this idea that some faceless bureaucrat in Washington or Albany will have the same grasp of the issue as you and a good, workable idea on how to fix it. My experience has been thqat the further away from the issue gov’t is, the poorer the end result of their solutions.
OA, I’m not anti-vaccination, trust me. I’m asking the basic question. In an age where we object strongly to being scanned at airports or to being watched by traffic cams, etc., why is it we have no problem with someone inserting a foreign object into our kids bodies, and under color of law at that? Yeah, we don’t want people getting sick, etc. Got that. What about the basic question though? If you can force inoculation, what else does that mean you can force? If you can force everyone to buy health insurance, what else can we force people to do?
BTW- the speed limit thing- when you apply for the privilege to drive you agree to obey the laws. There’s no choice in inoculation or health care or many other areas, is there?
P- is the Federal gov’t coming into your back yard and checking your well and septic system? Are they even checking your municipal systems? Nope. That local gov’t, not the Federal gov’t. There’s a large difference between Federal, State, County and local gov’ts. It’s the Federal gov;t that is specifically limited by the Constitution and BoR. This goes back to similar discussion in the past- If NYS decides to have single payer healthcare, that’s one thing. If the Federal gov’t tries it then we;re in a whole new area.
Knuck- according to your 5:50 post there is no way the wealthier don’t benefit. Therefore it must be gov’ts job to tear them down???
I didn’t say the economy is finite, I said just taking from one group and giving it to another doesn’t create wealth or anything else unless that money is used to add value to a marketable product. You cannot create wealth from thin air. Simply trading the same money back and forth is a no win game. That is very simple economics. It’s also simple economics that if someone with money invests it in a marketable product that requires workers to produce, then both the worker and the guy with money will profit. Again, simple. In your scenario the rich guy never loses, in real life that’s not the case.
You use the phrase “balancing the system”. That means, as I read it, taking from the guy who has the most and allegedly giving it to someone else with less. How does that balance anything in our current state? I can see in a sterile, almost “balanced” environment where taking a given percentage from the guy with the most and giving it to the others would seem to bring them “up” to his level. But we don’t live in a sterile environment. What you propose, I think, is taking from those with more through gov’t, letting gov’t skim off what it needs/wants and then passing that money on somehow and that will “fix” the system. Our problem is one of spending and debt with a devalued and falling dollar in a world that is anything but sterile. Our Federal Income Tax, the chief method of fleecing the public, is dependent on the top 40% of tax payers for 90% of it’s revenue. The lower 50% effectively pay no tax. That may seem “progressive”, but it’s not sustainable. And you want more of the same!
This system can’t go on, I’m sorry, it just won’t work. It’s like Maggie Thatcher said, “The problem with socialism is sooner or later you run out of other peoples money to spend.” We need a new, effective and sustainable paradigm where everyone can benefit to a degree if they choose to try. That doesn’t mean we’ll all be the same. If that’s what you want then you’re going to be disappointed.
“There’s no choice in inoculation or health care or many other areas, is there?”
Yes, in both. Depends on the state for vaccines, but almost all have a religious exemption, as well as other philosophical exemptions. Usually, your kids just can’t go to a school without shots. So they home-school. And nobody is required to buy health insurance, since the Obama law hasn’t kicked in yet, the way drivers in almost all states are forced to buy auto insurance.
So your vaccine argument is kind of off the original topic. The question you asked was why government should provide health insurance like Medicaid. I still say vaccines are a good reason for it. It’ll reduce my kid’s chances of gettting sick if the kid next to him in school has shots.