You know what they say:
“the apple doesn’t fall far from the tree...
How about ending aid to Hamas and those Middle East states that sends out terrorists?????
Why are all freaking librarians nuts????
Yeah Rand, lets de-fund our friends and strengthen our enemies. A mind is a terrible thing to waste.
Welfare isn’t the right word - tribute is more appropriate. As for other countries - bribe money is more appropriate a term (Pakistan, Egypt etc).
Why should we cover the cost of our military providing security for other countries? A cost-plus basis of reimbursement would be more than fair. Europe, Korea, Japan, Taiwan and others can all afford to cover the cost plus a percentage - why not? If they don’t want to pay - then we leave. No baloney.
700+ bases in 120 or so countries is darned expensive - no more free ride for these sponges.
Hey Rand, if you’re reading this, how ‘bout you first focus on ending aid to 4th world sh!tholes that provide no vested interest in our national security.
what a friggin jackass.
The U.S. should be providing military aid to our RELIABLE allies - that includes Israel.
We SHOULD be cutting ALL aid to the U.N., and funds given to foreign ratholes where we have no strategic interest.
Paul should keep his mouth shut when it comes to foreign policy and stick to domestic issues. Like his father, he is as much a foreign policy idiot as the moron in the White House.
Egypt first.
Why would we take from our allies and keep giving to those that want us DEAD?Is the world up side down because every where I go it seems these morons are making some of the biggest, idiotic decisions ever..
For anyone who’s thought it through, cutting off US aid to Israel would put them at real risk of being overrun by their many enemies. Israel has extraordinarily large defense needs for a nation of their size. I hope the US continues helping with those needs, and I hate to see Rand Paul sounding like a nut so early in his senatorial career.
That’s one foreign aid program we should continue above all others, unless someone wants to see that nation overrun.
Simple solution to the Education budget - ship all the illegals and anchor kids back to wherever they came from (not that that will ever happen). We still need to protect our foreign interests so instead of an all out end to foreign aid (again, will never happen) buta drastic cut to foreign aid.
Laurence Kotlikoff
Aug. 11 (Bloomberg) — Laurence Kotlikoff, an economics professor at Boston University, talks about the state of the U.S. economy. Kotlikoff speaks with Erik Schatzker on Bloomberg Television’s InsideTrack.” (Source: Bloomberg)
Let’s get real. The U.S. is bankrupt. Neither spending more nor taxing less will help the country pay its bills.
What it can and must do is radically simplify its tax, health-care, retirement and financial systems, each of which is a complete mess. But this is the good news. It means they can each be redesigned to achieve their legitimate purposes at much lower cost and, in the process, revitalize the economy.
Last month, the International Monetary Fund released its annual review of U.S. economic policy. Its summary contained these bland words about U.S. fiscal policy: “Directors welcomed the authorities’ commitment to fiscal stabilization, but noted that a larger than budgeted adjustment would be required to stabilize debt-to-GDP.”
But delve deeper, and you will find that the IMF has effectively pronounced the U.S. bankrupt. Section 6 of the July 2010 Selected Issues Paper says: “The U.S. fiscal gap associated with today’s federal fiscal policy is huge for plausible discount rates.” It adds that “closing the fiscal gap requires a permanent annual fiscal adjustment equal to about 14 percent of U.S. GDP.”
The fiscal gap is the value today (the present value) of the difference between projected spending (including servicing official debt) and projected revenue in all future years.
Double Our Taxes
To put 14 percent of gross domestic product in perspective, current federal revenue totals 14.9 percent of GDP. So the IMF is saying that closing the U.S. fiscal gap, from the revenue side, requires, roughly speaking, an immediate and permanent doubling of our personal-income, corporate and federal taxes as well as the payroll levy set down in the Federal Insurance Contribution Act.
Such a tax hike would leave the U.S. running a surplus equal to 5 percent of GDP this year, rather than a 9 percent deficit. So the IMF is really saying the U.S. needs to run a huge surplus now and for many years to come to pay for the spending that is scheduled. It’s also saying the longer the country waits to make tough fiscal adjustments, the more painful they will be.
Is the IMF bonkers?
No. It has done its homework. So has the Congressional Budget Office whose Long-Term Budget Outlook, released in June, shows an even larger problem.
‘Unofficial’ Liabilities
Based on the CBO’s data, I calculate a fiscal gap of $202 trillion, which is more than 15 times the official debt. This gargantuan discrepancy between our “official” debt and our actual net indebtedness isn’t surprising. It reflects what economists call the labeling problem. Congress has been very careful over the years to label most of its liabilities “unofficial” to keep them off the books and far in the future.
For example, our Social Security FICA contributions are called taxes and our future Social Security benefits are called transfer payments. The government could equally well have labeled our contributions “loans” and called our future benefits “repayment of these loans less an old age tax,” with the old age tax making up for any difference between the benefits promised and principal plus interest on the contributions.
The fiscal gap isn’t affected by fiscal labeling. It’s the only theoretically correct measure of our long-run fiscal condition because it considers all spending, no matter how labeled, and incorporates long-term and short-term policy.
$4 Trillion Bill
How can the fiscal gap be so enormous?
Simple. We have 78 million baby boomers who, when fully retired, will collect benefits from Social Security, Medicare, and Medicaid that, on average, exceed per-capita GDP. The annual costs of these entitlements will total about $4 trillion in today’s dollars. Yes, our economy will be bigger in 20 years, but not big enough to handle this size load year after year.
This is what happens when you run a massive Ponzi scheme for six decades straight, taking ever larger resources from the young and giving them to the old while promising the young their eventual turn at passing the generational buck.
Herb Stein, chairman of the Council of Economic Advisers under U.S. President Richard Nixon, coined an oft-repeated phrase: “Something that can’t go on, will stop.” True enough. Uncle Sam’s Ponzi scheme will stop. But it will stop too late.
And it will stop in a very nasty manner. The first possibility is massive benefit cuts visited on the baby boomers in retirement. The second is astronomical tax increases that leave the young with little incentive to work and save. And the third is the government simply printing vast quantities of money to cover its bills.
Worse Than Greece
Most likely we will see a combination of all three responses with dramatic increases in poverty, tax, interest rates and consumer prices. This is an awful, downhill road to follow, but it’s the one we are on. And bond traders will kick us miles down our road once they wake up and realize the U.S. is in worse fiscal shape than Greece.
Some doctrinaire Keynesian economists would say any stimulus over the next few years won’t affect our ability to deal with deficits in the long run.
This is wrong as a simple matter of arithmetic. The fiscal gap is the government’s credit-card bill and each year’s 14 percent of GDP is the interest on that bill. If it doesn’t pay this year’s interest, it will be added to the balance.
Demand-siders say forgoing this year’s 14 percent fiscal tightening, and spending even more, will pay for itself, in present value, by expanding the economy and tax revenue.
My reaction? Get real, or go hang out with equally deluded supply-siders. Our country is broke and can no longer afford no- pain, all-gain “solutions.”
(Laurence J. Kotlikoff is a professor of economics at Boston University and author of “Jimmy Stewart Is Dead: Ending the World’s Ongoing Financial Plague with Limited Purpose Banking.” The opinions expressed are his own.)
I’d rather give the money to Israel than Illinois.
Tea Party Caucus or no — Rand has lost credibility with this. I’m still waiting for my Senator, Jim Demint, to rebuke his fellow Caucus member for this stupidity.
End foreign aid.
Oy Vey......
FURP.
Almighty God has promised the following regarding HIS special people Israel: "I will bless those who bless you and CURSE those who curse you." Hey Rand Paul... that goes for America too!
It looks like Rand Paul wants to throw Israel under the bus. It is the same old song and dance: "It's all the JEWS fault." ... "If we get rid of Israel and the Jews and our support for Israel then all of our problems will be solved and the world will love us."
America... Israel is the ONLY free nation and true friend America has in the Middle East and Rand Paul and his ilk want to bring the curse of almighty God upon America by throwing them under the bus!
Rand Paul, does not represent the Tea Party, he does not represent CONSERVATIVES and he does not represent me. He makes me ashamed to be an American!
"I’m not singling out Israel."
Instead of reason, all I see are knee-jerk reactions smearing Paul as an anti-Semitic bigot.
Dear Rand Paul, the Christians trust the Israelites to preserve our Christian heritage more than we trust the Islamists. Should Israel fall, Christian landmarks also fall, as any non-islamic relics would immediately be destroyed. In the bigger picture, I don’t mind paying Israel to play security guard.