Connie Mack's "Penny Plan" Gets More Exposure Now With Other Debt Plans Tabled

Fox News Sean Hannity Show ^ | July 29, 2011 | Sean Hannity Show

[casinva]

See the attached video from The Sean Hannity Show dated July 29, 2011 to discover more about Connie Mack's Penny Plan - a debt cutting plan backed by Freedom Works, a Tea Party associated organization. It's supported by Senator Rand Paul, more recently Congressman Marco Rubio, and many other conservative politicians and organizations.

I'm challenging all FR readers to become more informed on this bill, The Connie Mack Penny Plan, also known as The 1% Solution and known in The House as H.R. 1848.

[Retired Greyhound]

A. Obama will never sign this plan.

B. I’m still waiting for someone to actually propose REAL cuts, not these nonsense Washington cuts that merely lower the rate of growth from 8% to 7%.

There really is nobody serious in Washington.

[Gvl_M3]

Thanks for the link.

[casinva]

It does indeed look as if these are actual spending cuts. It cuts 1% off our base budget each year (if I said that correctly) as opposed to saving on projected costs with inflated prices down the road.

Amazing, and so simple too. Who would have thought!

Oh, and I explained to FerociousRabbit that I really didn’t think you wanted a tax hike and were only exhibiting an enormous amount of joy at which time he agreed! :)

We’re all good here!

[liberalh8ter]

As Tim Gunn from Project Runway always says, “Make it work!”. This plan is the answer to our problems because it makes the most sense and would be the easiest to implement. In other words, the dems will do their best to kill it.

[SUSSA]

Hannity got this bill the exposure the “leadership” and the MSM didn’t want it to have.

This needs to pass along with HR 2402.

[Reagan Man]

The “Penny Plan” is good legislation. One problem. It won't pass.

The ONLY way to pass conservative legislation into law is with a strong right leaning GOP controlled House and Senate. Along with a conservative potus in the WH. Otherwise... spinning wheel...

[Oatka]

A point that should be hammered into the naysayers: The good news for the Obama White House is that the executive branch can elect to decrease one department by 9% so that it can raise another department by 8% if it wants. The one per cent cut is not a flat rate for every department, but the total federal budget must go down one per cent.

This could be a problem IF obamacare isn't repealed: One major problem looming for Mack/penny will be Social Security and Medicaire. Because of the aging population social security costs can't be easily contained and because of Obamacare we are essentially putting 30 million new people into a quasi private-public insurance wonderland. Probably the only way for Mack/penny to accommodate those challenges will be means testing. The one penny per dollar rubric could be maintained by only applying that reduction rate to the richest 10% of pensioners.

[Aria]

The very idea that government spending should continually grow is really unbelievable and now with the economy in the tank their Ponzi scheme is blowing up in all our faces.

I suppose the rats see cutting the growth as they will only be able to bribe for 7% more votes rather than 8%.

These people who support this spending should all be thrown out of D.C. for malfeasance - stealing from the public and in many cases enriching themselves while bankrupting the country. They ought to be in prison along with Madoff.

[casinva]

Hi Retired Greyhound!

As I have mentioned, I am no financial analyst, and I’m also not a lawyer or politician (wow, how the Good Lord has blessed me, lol), but if I understand this Bill correctly, it DOES cut starting right from today’s budget, not from proposed budgets or proposed growth. It does not base savings on projected increased in budget (that we’ll just not add AS much next year or the year after), but actually starts cutting from TODAY and keeps cutting from there, each year which means this WOULD be real cuts, real cuts starting from where we are RIGHT NOW.

I do see your point about Obama’s acceptance or rejection of this and believe this is a legitimate concern. However, this bill does just what conservatives want, cuts our expenditures, so it should be acceptable to them, and it is flexible in its cuts (each agency, organization, etc. cutting downright fraud, streamlining, organizing, getting smarter about things, or whatever it takes in each individual agency, organization, etc to get their budgets down in increments, 1% at a time), so I can’t see how this bill would be that distasteful to Democrats. (Of course, God blessed me by not making me a Democrat either, so maybe I’m missing something they will go after here.) :)

However, the BIG thing here, I think, that we need to take hold of and run with is that if this plan does what it appears to do and does it in such a sensible and simple way, I believe this will go over with the American PEOPLE, the voters.

Many of our politicians are eyeing this as an option, especially now with the traditional political bills that have not gained any ground. It makes sense we start looking at this more so, if this is a plan we as a people could live with, we can support those who want to see this bill go forth.

[MHGinTN]

With your tag name I would have thought you would understand that the We The People Republic is about, informing the people and building support for the plan. So, if you want to play defeatism, at least sit down and shut up while the adults try to work on the problem.

[casinva]

I understand the first part pretty well with the exception that I believe I heard the 1% overall cut could be tailored to provide some flexibility if needed so long as the overall cut was still 1%. For instance, if a special request were to come in (ie The WH asks there be a smaller cut in one given year to Social Security in exchange for a larger, offseting cut that year to Food Stamps or the EPA or the military, or whatever, to offset the smaller social security’s reduction), that could be permitted so long as Congress agreed to the same tailored change and the overall budget reduction was 1% still). That kind of flexibility is what I am thinking would make this bill a little more palatable to some Democrats.

However, to safeguard any irresponsible change requests (ie the WH requesting all 1% of the entire federal budget cuts coming from the military’s budget), if I understand it correctly, I believe the bill requires that if no agreement by all parties on any tailored request for any given year, the across the board 1% cuts remains in effect for each agency, organization, etc. It’s a ‘fail safe’ to keep Congress and the White House from keeping things going forward with endless debates, fights, and stalling. (At least that I what I took from reading info about the bill.)

The second part RE Obamacare and its effect of putting more and more people into social security and how that could be a problem for cutting debt straight down the line is confusing to me, being math challenged. I’m open for someone helping with that!

[chris_bdba]

I hear this last night and like it.If they present it as a common sense solution I don’t see how they can’t get the votes in the senate to pass it.

[casinva]

See here:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DcQEan0wIfY

The link above is Rand Paul talking with Sean Hannity about his support for the Connie Mack Penny Plan (AKA the “One Percent Spending Reduction Act”, current House Bill HR 1848) which is available for a vote in the House.

It does verify what I mentioned to you earlier... that if Congress does not come up with any specially tailored cuts for the overall 1% cut in the base each year, the fail safe kicks in for an across the board blanket 1% cut to every agency. Simple cut across the board (and yes, this does include Medicare and Social Security as well).

Also, Rand Paul’s description of the bill (HR 1848) may help set your mind at ease that these are real cuts to the budget. These are not cuts based on projected growth but on our current budget. In other words, it estimates a growth of 0%, and in fact, doesn’t take any future growth into account what so ever when estimating its cost effectiveness based on today’s baseline budget.

That said, proponents of the bill say it cuts 7.5 Trillion from the federal budget, has a cap federal spending at 18% of the economy, and balances the entire budget in 8 years.*

Hey, I didn’t intend for that, but didn’t I just provide a cut, cap, and balance kind of description in that last paragraph! LOL

*From: http://www.cbn.com/cbnnews/politics/2011/July/Rep-Mack-Penny-Plan-Could-Save-Trillions/?Print=true

[casinva]

Also found this.

The 46 House co-sponsors of the Mack Penny Plan (HR 1848)

http://thomas.loc.gov/cgi-bin/bdquery/z?d112:HR01848:@@@P

[Retired Greyhound]

Thanks for the info. It is the best plan going at this point, since Harry won’t let the Senate vote on CCB.

[Indomitus]

This basically is a 6% tax imposed on federal employees over the next six years. There would be huge political fights over where 1% could be cut and where it couldn’t and it would end up simply being 1% across the board. Here is one scenario of exactly how it would work:

Colonel Johnson, you’ve been serving our military faithfully for 20 years, but not only will you not get cost of living increases for the next six years, but you will have to take a 6% pay cut as well. Republicans have decided they need to tax you and your fellow soldiers to balance the budget, but don’t worry, it’s not really a tax increase, it’s a spending reduction. Thank you for your service.

[casinva]

Hey there chris,

I know it seems tough to get anything even to be debated in the Senate these days, it seems, but this has a broad appeal, and if enough voters know and “get it” (and they can because it is so simple and such a common sense approach), it is possible.

I just now signed a petition in support of this bill. If you’re interested, here is the link to that petition.

http://www.onecentaction.org/petition/

[casinva]

Sorry, can’t say today how those cuts would look like in the future now, can we? And... if Obama decided he wanted to cut the military budget and nothing else even, to try to cause distress on soldiers, officers, and veterans, he would have to have the approval of the entire Congress as well. THEN, if Obama’s (or any president’s) tailored request didn’t make sense and the Congress did not agree, the budget would fall back into a 1% cut across the board. No one group would have any bigger challenge than any other group.

Nope, can’t even make ANY story up at ‘tall since we don’t have the Almighty omnipotence to determine now what each agency or department will do each year with their own budget, and last I checked, the One who has it isn’t giving it up.

_____

By the way, I noticed you just joined today for our grand conversation here.

I love it that the Penny Plan must be getting so... ahhhh.... should we say.... noticed today! Thanks Indomitus for just making my leg tingle today!

[RVN Airplane Driver]

TROLL ALERT.....bye, bye RAT plant....

[Reagan Man]

Stuff it, moron.