The Pelosi Plan....

[Rex Kickass]

Nancy Pelosi has outlined the first 100 hours of the Democratic Congress as she would see it.

 

Day One: Put new rules in place to "break the link between lobbyists and legislation."

 

Day Two: Enact all the recommendations made by the commission that investigated the terrorist attacks of Sept. 11, 2001.

 

Time remaining until 100 hours: Raise the minimum wage to $7.25 an hour, maybe in one step. Cut the interest rate on student loans in half. Allow the government to negotiate directly with the pharmaceutical companies for lower drug prices for Medicare patients.

 

Broaden the types of stem cell research allowed with federal funds — "I hope with a veto-proof majority," she added in an Associated Press interview Thursday.

 

All the days after that: "Pay as you go," meaning no increasing the deficit, whether the issue is middle class tax relief, health care or some other priority.

 

http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20061006/ap_on_...e/pelosi_time_1

[NUKE_CLEVELAND]

Nancy Pelosi has outlined the first 100 hours of the Democratic Congress as she would see it.

http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20061006/ap_on_...e/pelosi_time_1

 

 

I agree with everything but the minimum wage part. Some specifics on the lobbying thing would be nice though. Also, Pelosi's pay as you go plan is defenitely a good thing as long as the tax cuts are left alone.

 

Unfortunately, I also suspect that one of her other priorities that she didn't mention is the reversal of tax relief put in place by Republicans. She, as well as other leftists believe that our deficit problem is caused by tax relief. However..............

 

http://www.latimes.com/business/nationworl...-wires-business

 

Tax receipts are up $253 billion, a whopping 12 percent over last year.

 

^^

 

My new siggy.

 

This slam dunks anyone who says Bush's tax cuts have caused our deficit problem. This needs to be put in a bright red flashing neon sign for anyone who still thinks that way. If Pelosi wants to be a true defecit hawk and rein in spending then Im all for it but the reality is she probably will look to raise taxes instead.

Edited October 8, 2006 by NUKE_CLEVELAND

[NorthSideSox72]

Nancy Pelosi has outlined the first 100 hours of the Democratic Congress as she would see it.

http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20061006/ap_on_...e/pelosi_time_1

I agree with all of that.

 

I just don't think Pelosi would follow through with some elements of that plan (the Pay as you Go part, most specifically).

[Rex Kickass]

Actually I think she'd work as hard as possible to do so. This won't be a large majority in the Congress - 5 to 10 seats. She'll be able to do a pay-go type situation because there is a good cross section of bipartisan support that will force her into doing that actually.

[southsider2k5]

Most of that I can at least respect, but an artificial fixing of money supply by refusing to deficit spend anymore pretty much went out of conventional thinking with Thomas Jefferson's fear of a central bank. The ability to deficit spend is a need of the American government in order to periodically rescue the economy with injections of liquidity.

[Balta1701]

Most of that I can at least respect, but an artificial fixing of money supply by refusing to deficit spend anymore pretty much went out of conventional thinking with Thomas Jefferson's fear of a central bank. The ability to deficit spend is a need of the American government in order to periodically rescue the economy with injections of liquidity.

I don't think anyone, even strong supporters of the "Paygo" rule, would argue that having the government totally unable to issue debt is a good thing.

 

The key point though is the current fiscal mess we've gotten ourselves in, which makes instituting that rule, at least on a temporary basis, a good idea. We're deeply in the red right now, but we're not deeply in the red at a time of national crisis. The economy is strong, and has supposedly been strong for years. Yet we're still printing money like it's going out of style at the federal level in order to finance such emergency measures as the Medicare Insurance Company Bailout act and so on. In other words, we're spending a ton of money on credit cards basically because we can. Given the fact that there can only be so far any nation can push its creditors, and the large bills coming in the future to provide health care for the retired baby-boomers, something needs to be done to get this deficit spending under control now.

 

Presumably, in the event of a national crisis of some sort, that legislation could be overturned.

[longshot7]

http://www.latimes.com/business/nationworl...-wires-business

^^

 

My new siggy.

 

This slam dunks anyone who says Bush's tax cuts have caused our deficit problem. This needs to be put in a bright red flashing neon sign for anyone who still thinks that way. If Pelosi wants to be a true defecit hawk and rein in spending then Im all for it but the reality is she probably will look to raise taxes instead.

 

Nuke, did you link to the article "Cigar Industry Heating Up Again"? Because that's the article that comes up when you click that link. You're not trying to pull a fast one on us libs, are you?

[NUKE_CLEVELAND]

Nuke, did you link to the article "Cigar Industry Heating Up Again"? Because that's the article that comes up when you click that link. You're not trying to pull a fast one on us libs, are you?

 

 

Sorry about the wrong link.

 

This one has the same info.

 

http://fullcoverage.yahoo.com/s/ap/2006100.../budget_deficit

[NorthSideSox72]

I don't think anyone, even strong supporters of the "Paygo" rule, would argue that having the government totally unable to issue debt is a good thing.

 

The key point though is the current fiscal mess we've gotten ourselves in, which makes instituting that rule, at least on a temporary basis, a good idea. We're deeply in the red right now, but we're not deeply in the red at a time of national crisis. The economy is strong, and has supposedly been strong for years. Yet we're still printing money like it's going out of style at the federal level in order to finance such emergency measures as the Medicare Insurance Company Bailout act and so on. In other words, we're spending a ton of money on credit cards basically because we can. Given the fact that there can only be so far any nation can push its creditors, and the large bills coming in the future to provide health care for the retired baby-boomers, something needs to be done to get this deficit spending under control now.

 

Presumably, in the event of a national crisis of some sort, that legislation could be overturned.

I personally believe that a Constitutional Amendment requiring a balanced budget would be a good thing. It would allow for 2 exceptions: formal declaration of war (and then, only war spending could go over), and second, a super-majority of Congress (2/3 both houses) for fiscal emergency combined with a required budgetary plan for return to even money (which would become policy on enactment, and need to be overriden by that same supermajority to overturn).

[southsider2k5]

I don't think anyone, even strong supporters of the "Paygo" rule, would argue that having the government totally unable to issue debt is a good thing.

 

The key point though is the current fiscal mess we've gotten ourselves in, which makes instituting that rule, at least on a temporary basis, a good idea. We're deeply in the red right now, but we're not deeply in the red at a time of national crisis. The economy is strong, and has supposedly been strong for years. Yet we're still printing money like it's going out of style at the federal level in order to finance such emergency measures as the Medicare Insurance Company Bailout act and so on. In other words, we're spending a ton of money on credit cards basically because we can. Given the fact that there can only be so far any nation can push its creditors, and the large bills coming in the future to provide health care for the retired baby-boomers, something needs to be done to get this deficit spending under control now.

 

Presumably, in the event of a national crisis of some sort, that legislation could be overturned.

 

Wow. You are assuming that the US government is going to acting correcting and quickly, even without have a crisis event to trigger intelligent action? That's a leap of faith I could never make.

 

Like I said, there is a reason we have things like the Federal Reserve bank, and that is because politicians make horrible bankers. Go back through your 19th century history, and read about all of the panics/recessions/depressions, and the great majority of them had a root cause of having politicians trying to act like central bankers and screwing it all up. It is important, no vital, that the central bank has the ability to change money supply on a moments notice, because in a fluid economy, you probably don't have time to wait for Congress to reconviene before actually doing something. Now if you go in and say that we can't issue any debt, you have fixed money supply, and you have essentially cut out the central bank. You might as well shutdown the whole federal reserve system, because the economy as we know it will collapse the next time we have a recession or panic.

 

I know everyone looks at the deficit numbers and just because they are big, assumes that they are horribly dangerous. The thing is if we had done something rash and fixed money supply when things were booming in the 90's, the recession of 2001 would have been not a temporary thing, but it would have still been on-going today. It was the ability of the federal reserve bank to manipulate rates to add more money to the economy, and the government infusing hard currency into people's pockets that saved that from being the worst drawback since the great depression. The fact that we didn't have to trust our congressmen to do the right thing instead of playing politics insured that it got done quickly and promptly.

[Rex Kickass]

I'm willing to bet that there will be outs to that clause, excepting times of national economic and security crises for example...

[Balta1701]

Maybe I'm missing something, and I'm happy to know what I'm missing, but it seems that 2k5 and I are on different topics. I'm specifically focused on the ability of the government to run these monstrous deficits between its income and the amount it spends (which didn't really start until 2002-2003, after the recession ended).

 

On the other hand, 2k5 seems to be referring to the Federal Reserve and its ability to encourage growth of the money supply.

 

I don't know of anyone who wants to limit the Federal reserve and its ability to expand the money supply through its controls on interest rates if the economy turns south. The thing this matter would be aimed at is specifically controlling the spending of Congress, which by any means I can imagine has gone completely out of control.

 

Yes, tax cuts can probably have some finite impact on the money supply, but not nearly as much as for example the expansion in the housing market fueled by the low interest rates did at the bottom of the last downturn. And now that we're in what appears to be an upturn, we're still running these deficits, and they're projected to never go away in the future. Both of those are unacceptable IMO...you can not simply run on a structural deficit for all time, and you can not spend more when the economy turns downwards without making some sacrifices when the economy turns up. That's why this rule is important, especially now as a temporary measure, because now that the economy has turned back up, it's about the best chance we're going to get before the baby-boomers start drawing on Medicare to get the budget back into some state where it can handle that retirement.

Edited October 10, 2006 by Balta1701

[southsider2k5]

Actually it isn't two different things in the grand scheme of things. Money supply is directly related to both interest rates and government spending, especially where government deficit spends.

[Balta1701]

Actually it isn't two different things in the grand scheme of things. Money supply is directly related to both interest rates and government spending, especially where government deficit spends.

Yes, that part I understant. 3 points to make on this issue that I think are important: 1. Because the Federal Government moves fairly slowly, the Federal Reserve is far more effective in terms of rapidly adding to the money supply when a stimulus is needed on the economy, 2. the Federal Reserve is also much smarter in removing that stimulus from the economy when it is no longer needed (i.e. right now), and 3., as I understand it, running a long-term structural deficit increases my taxes quite a bit more than having the Federal Reserve cut rates in order to expand the money supply.

 

This rule being added right now would help encourage Congress to remove its deficit stimulus which it has been running for 5 years. That I think is the key argument in favor of it right now.

[southsider2k5]

2. the Federal Reserve is also much smarter in removing that stimulus from the economy when it is no longer needed (i.e. right now),

 

First of all we have had a surplus for exactly 4 years in the last 44. Its not like we are talking about something that is brand new here. The US government has historically run deficits to support the economy, mostly in the form of government employees and entitlement programs.

 

Next up, did you miss the latest article about the deficit?

 

The deficit has fallen from $413 bln at its peak, to now an estimated $250 bln for this fiscal year, which is down about 35-40%. Even getting past the big scary deficit number, you have to put the number into context to understand it better. The estimated GDP for the US in 2007 is about 13.7 trillion, which means our deficit to spending ratio is looking at about 1.8% or from a historical perspective is lower than all of the 1980's, 6 years in the 1990's, and 4 years of the 2000's so far. We have had 7 years at lower than 1.8% deficit to GDP ratio in the last 36 years (starting at 1980.) Guess what, the deficit is taking care of itself, and removing the excess deficit by turning over tax receipt surpluses way past anyones expectations, dispite the collapse of the booming housing market.

 

You want to really take care of the deficit, there are a couple much smarter things you can do vs the pay as you go fallacy...

 

#1, do not allow spending riders to be tacked onto other bills, if you want to spend something it either goes in the budget, or a new bill.

#2, any spending item must have the person who added it to the bills accounted for publicly.

#3, give the president a line item veto.

 

You don't take away the ability of the government to spend, you take away the ease and the annoumousness of it.

[Balta1701]

Ok, I see your point on the things that would help better and agree with you (although, would this president actually use a line-item veto?) that those would work better.

 

I am still going to argue though that the deficit right now is a major concern, not as much because of the size of it now, but because of the size of it in the future.

 

In my view, we're sitting there staring at a bill which is guaranteed to come up in a few years to pay for the baby-boom retirement. There's simply no way around it...we aren't going to be able to suddenly deny them health care after taxing them for Medicare for all those years. That bill is going to come whether we like it or not.

 

So here's the metaphor...you've just bought something, say a car, that you don't have to pay for until the start of 2008. Do you a.) save up money in 2007 to make those payments easier, or b.) pretend you don't have that bill coming up, and keep spending and spending and spending in 2007?

[southsider2k5]

Ok, I see your point on the things that would help better and agree with you (although, would this president actually use a line-item veto?) that those would work better.

 

I am still going to argue though that the deficit right now is a major concern, not as much because of the size of it now, but because of the size of it in the future.

 

In my view, we're sitting there staring at a bill which is guaranteed to come up in a few years to pay for the baby-boom retirement. There's simply no way around it...we aren't going to be able to suddenly deny them health care after taxing them for Medicare for all those years. That bill is going to come whether we like it or not.

 

So here's the metaphor...you've just bought something, say a car, that you don't have to pay for until the start of 2008. Do you a.) save up money in 2007 to make those payments easier, or b.) pretend you don't have that bill coming up, and keep spending and spending and spending in 2007?

 

No one has the guts to actually fix social security. People who think they are going to be able to retire on full benefits without getting their taxes raise are just naive. Everytime it gets talked about the AARP and special interest groups like that fly into action, and rally the troops... In reality there are only two ways or a combination of two things that will fix the system

 

1- Raise taxes on FICA

2- Reduce benefits on FICA

 

Anything that doesn't include those at least one of those two things in some way shape or form is a complete waste of time. The sooner we do it the better, but neither party wants to alienate the voting seniors to get something right done.

 

I harbor no delusions about getting government aid when I retire. I don't expect a dime to be around by then.

[Balta1701]

I wasn't talking about Social Security. Compared to Medicare, Social Security is perfectly fine. We only have a Social Security problem in the sense that we have a general fund problem - because we're running a deficit right now, we're not saving up money like we are supposed to in order to deal with that program.

 

Medicare on the other hand is an absolute disaster and shows no signs of getting better without serious and massive health care reform.

[southsider2k5]

I wasn't talking about Social Security. Compared to Medicare, Social Security is perfectly fine. We only have a Social Security problem in the sense that we have a general fund problem - because we're running a deficit right now, we're not saving up money like we are supposed to in order to deal with that program.

 

Medicare on the other hand is an absolute disaster and shows no signs of getting better without serious and massive health care reform.

 

Medicare is the perfect example of why the government shouldn't get into business where the private sector is much more effecient.

 

There are a few ideas I have to help the system outside of medicare...

 

First of all there is an employee shortage in most of the medical sectors. Lots of it is self-imposed because of things like litigant happy lawyers suing the system dry, a big part of it is the huge expense of becoming anything in the healthcare industry, such as the price of medical school.

 

Another thing that would cut medical errors and fraud by a HUGE percentage is to get the entire health and pharma industries onto an electronic system for all drugs and prescriptions. A couple things would be at work there...

 

#1-stupid things like handwriting errors would be elimated, as everything would be electronically entered by the doctor. It would be emailed to the pharmacy of the patients choice, where it theoretically could be waiting for them by the time they get there.

 

#2-Doctor hopping would be eliminated because the persons file would have information on all of their perscriptions

 

#3-Drug interactions would be instantly flagged, instead of depending on incomplete information from a doctor or a pharamcy who might not know everything the patient is on.

 

#4-no call approval needed for narcotics, because by sending the script the doc is giving it his OK.

 

There are some other things I have thought about in the past, but can't remember right now... I am sure I'll have more later.

[kapkomet]

It's amazing to me that it's all about the Republicans losing, and not the Democrats winning. Think about it.

[Rex Kickass]

I don't understand what you're saying.

[NUKE_CLEVELAND]

I harbor no delusions about getting government aid when I retire. I don't expect a dime to be around by then.

 

 

Me neither. The social security system is little more than a Ponzi scam that is doomed to fail. Young people these days who think there's gonna be a SS saftey net to save them are going to be in for a rude shock when they get old and grey. My advice to anyone who has the means is to start saving now.