Posted on 01/27/2015 6:18:02 PM PST by presidio9
I agree with Republicans - the United States has a deficit problem.
It's just not the same deficit problem Republicans are freaking out about.
Shortly after sweeping the November midterms, Speaker of the House John Boehner and Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell wrote an op-ed in The Wall Street Journal, outlining their plans for the upcoming Congress.
In that op-ed, they wrote that Republicans would work to address, "a national debt that has Americans stealing from their children and grandchildren, robbing them of benefits that they will never see and leaving them with burdens that will be nearly impossible to repay."
As usual, Boehner and McConnell were sounding the alarms over our nation's federal deficit, something Republicans like to do a near-daily basis.
But, what they didn't say in that op-ed is that our federal deficit has actually improved A LOT in recent years.
Our federal deficit has been slashed by more than two-thirds since President Obama took office, and deficits over the next decade are going to be around $4.7 trillion lower than what the Congress Budget Office estimated just four years ago.
Instead of focusing on a federal deficit that's at its lowest point in years, Republicans should instead be focusing on the United States' real deficit problem.
In a new report titled, "We Must Rebuild the Disappearing Middle Class," Sen. Bernie Sanders talks about the other deficits we are facing as a nation, and how we can go about addressing them.
Those deficits are in jobs, infrastructure, income, equality, retirement security, education and trade.
Right now, millions of Americans are unemployed or underemployed. As Sen. Sanders points out in his report, the real unemployment rate, which counts those underemployed and those who have given up looking for work, sits at a staggering 11.2 percent.
This is not a problem that we can just ignore.
Instead, Sen. Sanders is arguing that we take a page out of FDR's playbook, and create a new federal jobs program, which would put millions of unemployed and underemployed Americans to work in well-paying jobs.
One of the fastest ways to create those jobs is by addressing our nation's infrastructure deficit.
As we speak, our bridges are falling down, our roads are buckling and our transportation systems are a joke compared to the rest of the developed world.
As a result, the American Society of Civil Engineers gives the US a dismal D+ rating on overall infrastructure.
Ever since Reagan came to Washington and blew up federal funding for infrastructure projects, our country hasn't been the same. It's literally been crumbling to the ground.
Lawmakers on Capitol Hill have neglected our nation's physical infrastructure for too long, and it's time for a change.
By investing $1 trillion in infrastructure spending over the next five years, as Sen. Sanders suggests in his report, we could help create over 13 million well-paying jobs AND bring the US out of the 19th century and into the 21st century.
Meanwhile, while we're addressing the United States' infrastructure deficit, we must do something about the income and equality deficits plaguing our country.
It's absolutely insane that in the richest country in the world millions and millions of people are struggling to survive and put food on the table.
As the Sanders report points out, "We must raise the minimum wage to a livable wage. In the year 2015, no one in America who works full time should be living in poverty."
But raising the minimum wage alone isn't enough to level the playing field and combat our nation's wealth inequality epidemic.
Right now, the top 1% of Americans control nearly as much wealth as the bottom 90 percent, while 400 Americans own more wealth than the bottom 150 million Americans combined.
That's inexcusable.
Heck, even Ronald Reagan thought it was crazy.
Speaking about the United States' tax loopholes during a speech in 1985, Reagan said that, "in practice they sometimes made it possible for millionaires to pay nothing, while a bus driver was paying ten percent of his salary, and that's crazy. Do you think the millionaire ought to pay more in taxes than the bus driver or less?"
And, of course, the audience answered, "More!"
It's time to make the wealthy elite and giant transnational corporations pay their fair share to support our economy.
While it's important to make sure that all Americans have an equal shot at success, it's also important to ensure that all Americans can retire comfortably.
As Sen. Sanders points out, "Today, only one out of five workers in America has a traditional defined benefit that guarantees income in retirement. Nearly half of all Americans have less than $10,000 in savings."
Fortunately, there's a pretty easy fix for the United States' retirement deficit: expand Social Security.
Instead of focusing on cuts to it, our lawmakers need to be talking about how to expand this vital lifeline for millions of Americans.
Next, we need to address our nation's education deficit, which is keeping us so far behind much of the developed world.
Right now, there's over $1.2 trillion in outstanding student loan debt in the US.
That's because college has become so expensive that getting a degree also means taking on mountains of student loan debt.
And those mountains of student loan debt are also hurting our nation's economic recovery. It's a lose-lose situation.
We need to make to be making it easier to get a college degree in the US, not harder.
Finally, we need to tackle the United States' ballooning trade deficit and out-of-whack trade policies.
Last year, our trade deficit stood at $493 billion.
Meanwhile, years of so-called "free trade" deals have exported millions of good-paying US jobs overseas.
We need to rework our trade policy, and stop signing on to so-called "free trade" deals that export jobs and screw over working-class Americans.
So, when Republicans whine about the US having a deficit problem, they're right. We do have a deficit problem.
BUT, it's not our federal deficit that's the problem.
Instead, it's the deficit in our spending on infrastructure, on education and on job creation that's really keeping our country down.
As Sen. Sanders writes, "While we must continue to focus on the federal deficit, we must also be aware that there are other deficits in our society that have been causing horrendous pain for the vast majority of the American people."
It's time to stop that pain, and start making the United States great again.
>>As the Sanders report points out, “We must raise the minimum wage to a livable wage. In the year 2015, no one in America who works full time should be living in poverty.”
We don’t need a “living” minimum wage. That’s for unskilled teenagers. We need jobs in America for people who don’t have college degrees. That means building things in America for Americans. That’s the only rising tide that truly raises all boats.
We also need families again—with a father! We need young people with a sense of modesty and respect for themselves and others.
The Democrats and the only honest Socialist among them, Sanders, helped to destroy all of that and now they want to pretend to be the champions of the middle class.
To them, middle class means people who live well on the dole while working temp jobs to make the Democrats’ big Wall St donors happy.
This should read, "a national debt that has politicians stealing from our children and grandchildren..."
I have two words for you. “Barf Alert”.
The national debt has skyrocketed under Obama, what imaginary world do these leftists live on?
The debt was a hair over 100 billion in 2006 before Pelosi became speaker. It was coming down to nearly balanced because the economy was on a strong and steady climb.
Then, it ballooned to 1.5 trillion under Obama, Pelosi and Reid. It has come down quite a bit but is still historically high. Last check, north of $500 billion, but that may be down more.
The left measures from the worst level under Obama and then shows how he’s lowered it 2/3rds. Interesting math.
If I overspend my salary by 100,000, and then the next year overspend it by only 33,000...I am doing good, right?
Those deficits caused so much economic devastation that the only possible solution was to have Obama come in and immediately start spending trillions of dollars we didn't have.
Gotta love the Left. They're just wacky.
Get a second job or a third or fourth job until you develop a job skill that is in demand and pays more.
That is what people did before the country began electing socialist governments and paying people not to work.
He can stick this idea up his "shovel ready" porkulus.
>>Get a second job or a third or fourth job until you develop a job skill that is in demand and pays more.
>>That is what people did before the country began electing socialist governments and paying people not to work.
Yes, and they could use that skill in a place called a “factory” where Americans with skills instead of a college degree could make things and learn more skills in that workplace and get promotions as a reward for their service and loyalty to the employer.
US debt was $10.6 trillion when Obama took office. It currently stands at $18 trillion, or $154,000 for every tax paying citizen in this country. Over the 8 years of George Bush’s presidency, he added $4.9 trillion.
We haven't had real growth in decades. We won't have much in the future as well do to the different gangs running our .gov and economy.
>>By investing $1 trillion in infrastructure spending over the next five years, as Sen. Sanders suggests in his report, we could help create over 13 million well-paying jobs AND bring the US out of the 19th century and into the 21st century.
Funny, I seem to remember something called a “stimulus bill” that said the same thing....
Biggest deficit in Washington DC is a moral one.
Let’s just give everyone a Federal Government job that pays $1,000,000 a year with very generous benefits. All private sector jobs will be declared illegal and everyone must undergo a transpecies operation. No rules of morality and ethics must be forbidden.
Are we forgetting to add in the “unfunded federal debt”?
“To figure out the “unfunded federal debt” of the United States, you simply take the government’s total liabilities, set it aside into a lump sum (plus interest), and subtract projected future taxes.
You are left with the federal government’s unfunded liabilities, or unfunded federal debt.
What is included?
Underfunded Medicare obligations. Underfunded Social Security obligations. Unfunded military and civil servant pension obligations. The list goes on and on.
The bottom line is that the Federal government is not collecting enough in revenues (not nearly enough) to pay
for its total projected liabilities.
According to the USA Today, each American household owes $546,668 as their share of the total US debt. “
taken from the following website...
http://www.davemanuel.com/investor-dictionary/unfunded-federal-debt/
“I knew a lot of Leftists who hated Bush. Hated him. Hated him. Hated him. Why? Well, he was a spendthrift!! He had deficits! His deficits were huge! They were like — they were like $100 Billion!!!!”
The cumulative national debt doubled under George Bush from $5.8 trillion to $11.9 trillion. The only year he came close to $100 billion was his first year, 2001 at $133 billion. Technically 2001 was the last Clinton budget year since it was approved under Clinton and began in October 2000, three 1/2 months before Bush was inaugurated.
Bush deficits by year in billions were:
$421 in 2002
$570 in 2003
$596 in 2004
$539 in 2005
$575 in 2006
$500 in 2007
$1,018 in 2008
$1,887 in 2009 (budget year began October 2008, while Bush was President)
a national debt that has Americans stealing from their children and grandchildren, robbing them of benefits that they will never see and leaving them with burdens that will be nearly impossible to...
And it should also continue with as guaranteed upon their earnings via the income-tax, which is non-voluntary, and therefore essentially equivalent to selling them into slavery.
The soon-to-be Black, Hispanic, Asian majority is not concerned.
They'll solve it the old fashioned way.
Default!
I thought the $100 billion deficit claim for 2006 sounded way low.
There are no universally accepted historical standards for comparing presidential deficits, but I'll guess that Nixon, Reagan, and George W. Bush are right up there with Franklin Roosevelt before WW2 started.
And I'll guess that Lyndon Johnson ranks number one in terms of non-military spending increases.
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