Replies

You're positing that a primary candidate of 1% to 5% support in the Republican Party will become President and voila, when he vetos a spending bill, Congress, who is likely agait him by 95 to 1 will say, gee, we can override, but let's cut spending by 5% for the good fellow from Texas. And again and again and smaller government and again and smaller government again. Alice in Wonderland stuff. Let Paul stand up, reject the lunatic support he relies on today, and make his case.

Seriously!! Let's just keep doing the same thing over and over. I mean hell it's worked so well so far right?

I said it was hypothetical as it hasn't even been tried in this generation. Too many politicians have gone along to get along. And limited government conservatives are tired of it. I'm not going to vote for a candidate that gives nice platitudes without specifics on what he's going to work to cut. Income taxes and superfluous departments are specifics.

As for 'Alice in Wonderland' stuff, IIRC Reagan wasn't well liked by the party faithful in his day either.

Seriously!! Let's just keep doing the same thing over and over. I mean hell it's worked so well so far right?...I said it was hypothetical as it hasn't even been tried in this generation. Too many politicians have gone along to get along. And limited government conservatives are tired of it. I'm not going to vote for a candidate that gives nice platitudes without specifics on what he's going to work to cut. Income taxes and superfluous departments are specifics....As for 'Alice in Wonderland' stuff, IIRC Reagan wasn't well liked by the party faithful in his day either.

It's been tried, marginal candidates run all the time. And lose.

And yammering about "abolishing the income tax" isn't a proposal without details about how the revenue will be replaced, and what cuts will be made.

I'll play though, Wikipedia is good enough for this exercise.

By eliminating the income tax without a replacement, you've just dropped federal revenues from $2.2 trillion to just over $1 trillion. You're going to continue Social Security and Medicare, you've got $122 billion left to run the government.

Scrapping SS and Medicare, you save $890 billion in expenses, but lose $818 billion in tax revenue. If Paul prefers that approach, he should be honest about throwing grandma off the train, he's got about $195 billion to run the government.

So tell me, how is President Paul going to run the government on $122 to $195 billion?

What goes, what does he keep.

BTW, I'm assuming we default on our debt, if Ron pays the interest, he's got nothing left to run the government.

Paul is a curmudgeon good for sound bites and nothing more. The classic empty suit.

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Total Receipts

Estimated receipts for fiscal year 2006 are $2.2 trillion. This expected income is broken down by the following sources:

$966.9 billion (44.4%) - Individual income tax
$818.8 billion (37.6%) - Social Security and other payroll taxes
$220.3 billion (10.1%) - Corporate income tax
$75.6 billion (3.5%) - Excise taxes
$26.1 billion (1.2%) - Estate and gift taxes
$28.3 billion (1.3%) - Customs duties
$41.6 billion (1.9%) - Other

Total Spending

The President's budget for 2006 totals $2.6 trillion. This budget request is broken down by the following expenditures:

$544.8 billion (20.90%) - Social Security
$512.1 billion (18.00%) - Defense
$359.5 billion (13.79%) - Unemployment and welfare
$345.7 billion (13.26%) - Medicare
$268.4 billion (10.30%) - Medicaid and other health related
$211.1 billion (8.10%) - Interest on debt
$88.7 billion (3.40%) - Education and training
$70.7 billion (2.71%) - Transportation
$68.4 billion (2.62%) - Veterans' benefits
$43.1 billion (1.65%) - Administration of justice
$38.4 billion (1.47%) - Foreign affairs
$31.2 billion (1.20%) - Natural resources and environment
$26.0 billion (1.00%) - Agriculture
$24.0 billion (0.92%) - Science and technology
$19.1 billion (0.73%) - Community and regional development
$17.8 billion (0.68%) - General government
$2.1 billion (0.08%) - Energy