Posted on 07/18/2011 12:38:25 PM PDT by gwjack
Sen. Tom Coburn's deficit-reduction plan
Details of Sen. Tom Coburn's $9 trillion plan to balance the budget
NewsOK Related Articles
Sen. Tom Coburn's plan:
Would save about $9 trillion over 10 years, including $3 trillion from entitlements, $3 trillion from government departments and agencies, $1 trillion from defense, $1 trillion from ending or modifying tax breaks and deductions, and $1 trillion in interest on the debt.
Would reduce the size of government by 25 percent over 10 years.
Would balance the budget within 10 years.
Read more: http://newsok.com/details-of-sen.-tom-coburns-9-trillion-plan-to-balance-the-budget/article/3586676#ixzz1SUBIXa8X
(Excerpt) Read more at newsok.com ...
Would reduce the size of government by 25 percent over 10 years.
yeah sure. I’m sick of hearing about 10 year plans.
Who’s going to be around to be accountable in 10 years, what party will control congress, the Executive Branch? Our 10 year old children will be 20 and won’t be contributing because they’ll all be unemployed.
I’ll start believing government is serious when they start spending less than they take in, not in 10 years but NEXT year
Correct. Do it now and cut deep. This 10 year BS is just that. It will never happen. Kicking the can once again.
Dude, lighten up. He’s not talking about vets he’s talking about the numerous non-military (ab)users of TRICARE Prime.
Disabled service members receive medical care from the Veterans Administration. I rate the VA as good or better than TRICARE. I’m a Line-of-Duty disable vet btw.
There’s nothing wrong with limiting TRICARE Prime to active duty and dependents.
You wouldn’t believe all the fed. civilians and dependents sucking on that teat now.
How is that free healthcare for life promise working out for you?
If you are a wounded veteran, but don't have a disability rating over 50%, then you can kiss goodbye the VA taking care of you. Oh, and even if you had 50% or greater rating, your family can go to hell as far as they are concerned.
Oh, let's mix it even more. If you have disabilities that add up to 50% using simple math, you soon discover the VA does a little "cheat" there and recalculates your disability at a lower rating.
There are a lot of leeches using USAA for insurance also - I don't want my rates going up with the promise that we'll get the leeches off. Where is the logic in that?! There isn't any!
Moreover, let's take disabled vets out of the equation: they were STILL lied to about their health care before TRICARE, they were lied to when TRICARE was implemented, and now they are being lied to again as TRICARE sucks more dollars out of them.
And all of this is a "good" thing because........?
It won't make a dent in the deficit. If any citizens deserve to be exempt from the "cuts", it is military veterans. But, guess what? Politics rears its ugly head again. There are a lot, lot, lot more grannies getting SS checks and signed up for Medicare than you, I, or other veterans.
Take a wild one about which group the Washington weasels cut?
I like it already.
Any plan that takes 10 years to balance the budget isn't reducing government.
"...and eliminate ALL deductions, even the sacred cow mortgage interest."
Earth to almcbean...
So your plan is to forcefully crater the economy starting with the already weakened and beaten down housing industry. You want to kill business R&D, destroy investment in machinery and tools, and you support double taxation by eliminating the deduction from the federal taxes all of the local taxes assessed.
I'm also assuming you want to do this in an abrupt fashion to make sure that it is impossible for anyone to prepare for the massive onslaught of taxes other than sheer liquidation of assets for pennies on the dollar.
I think I prefer Obama's plan to destroy America over a couple years rather than yours to destroy it totally right now.
Yes that is the story the modern day globalists tell. Not true for the USA.
In 1929 at the time of the crash exports comprised less than 5% of GDP. Half of exports were agricultural. Therefore manufacturing exports were responsible for 2.5% of GDP.
At the bottom of the depression in 1932, GDP and manufacturing activity had both dropped about 40% from 1929 levels. Even if the Smooth Hawley tariffs on manufactured goods had caused the USA to loose 100% of its manufacturing exports due to retaliation by other countries, the impact would have been no more than a 2.5% decline in GDP. What explains the other 37.5% — drop in domestic demand, the same thing we are experiencing today.
In reality, exports dropped about the same 40% as domestic demand so manufacturing exports continued to contribute about 2% of GDP in 1932. In the late 1930’s US manufacturing exports boomed, without any change in tariffs, as the manufacturing plants began sending arms to Europe.
The US and China have been in a one sided economic war for 20 years. We opened our markets to cheap Chinese products produced by slave labor. China retained restricted access to its domestic markets while subsidizing exports, subsidizing capital for its export industry, and using what is essentially slave labor to undercut US industry. Not to mention bribes of US politicians through undercover campaign contributions. On top of that they steal intellectual property and are conducting a high tech espionage campaign against corporations and government. The consequence has been the loss of 20 million US manufacturing jobs in the past 10 years alone. Our government has not defended our economy from this ongoing effort to undermine our industrial infrastructure. It is time to fight back. Higher tariffs would be a powerful response.
I suggest you also consider the American experience in the second half of the 19th century when the US manufacturing and industrial base was created. Through that entire period the federal government was funded almost 100% by high protective tariffs which allowed infant US industries to develop and flourish. The income tax to fund government was a 20th century phenomenon.
Correction: Actually it does reduce government by about 25%.
“Though I think eliminating deductions is a good long term goal, I don’t think it is either fair or economically advisable to just - Wham! - slam the door on them. People have based their lives and their budgets on the current rules and should be given time to adjust - a phase out over at least five years.”
Eliminating deductions on Mortgage and Charity should NOT happen. Charities would be hurt and most middle class home owners as well. For many, the difference between mortgage deductions vs not having them...is the difference between buying a home or renting foreever. Mortgage deductions are GOOD for the economy because they DO increase home purchases.
“Thoughts?”
Yes. Why another Republican plan? All of this just another distraction from the fact that Barry and useless senate dims HAVE NO CURRENT SCORABLE BUDGET PLAN. They have been able to run out the clock because we continue to get sidetracked. The focus and ridicule should have been on THEM after July 4th. They have no serious plan to tackle the deficit/debt and the Republicans have let them get away with it.
I’d also go for the immediate imposition of a 25% tariff surcharge on imports from China.
Right. Drive us all into poverty in no time flat.
Look, I really don’t have the time to explain concepts such a “zero elasticity” and the legalities of our WTO legal obligations, but rest assured that even if China didn’t reciprocate - and it would - and the WTO didn’t slap a huge tariff on everything made in America - which it would - and the consumers who but all of this stuff actually didn’t buy it anymore - which they will - then you could make that Tariff a 100% and not 1 job would return to this country under the present (1970 to now) legal, regulatory, and labor environment.
Not one.
I have.
The Smoot-Hawley tariffs, in fact, did little to restrict trade. The Fordney-McCumber Act way back in ‘22 was of more consequence in trade levels and trade retaliation going into the late 20’s.
We had a larger collapse in trade levels in late 2008 to mid-2009 than Smoot-Hawley “caused,” and we had no tariffs or trade wars being enacted by anyone then - which begs the question whether S-H caused the impact on trade, or the failure of the world’s banking system was actually the cause.
Smoot-Hawley being blamed as the “cause” of the Depression is one of those cherished fairytales that parents tell kids when they want the kids to become university economists when they grow up.
I was listening to him explain that he had decided to take time to examine all our expenditures which is something that had not been done before. Wasn’t this something the Grace Commission was supposed to do, or was that only for military expense? Does anyone remember?
While there are parts of it that we many will take issue with, I think Coburn has done two things right in this plan:
1. He’s spread the pain around to almost everyone. EITC limited to only five years? There’s going to be a whole lot of Democrats who will howl at that. Ending the deductibility of home equity loans? Oh, there’s going to be howling from bankers at that.
Ending deductions for second homes? Oh, I can hear more howling from here. Anything that makes bankers howl receives some positive feedback from me.
For that, I have to give him credit: He’s spreading the pain to as many interest groups as possible.
I’d leave the veteran benefits out of this tho. Vets earned those benefits. The typical grifter with both their trotters in the trough haven’t.
I agree with his notion of reducing troop levels in Europe and Asia, and I’d cut much more deeply on various wasteful projects. eg, I’d kill the F-35 project deader than a wedge.
2. His proposal is finally up to an amount that is getting closer (NB, I said “closer”) to what we need. The current GOP proposals aren’t anywhere near close enough to what we need, and we know what the DNC’s proposals are (more taxes).
The beefs I have:
1. How will this be kept in place for 10 years?
2. The cuts need to be front-loaded. We need at least $3T of cuts in the next two years, with another $2T ASASP after that. He doesn’t spell out how quickly these cuts will come online.
And both of those problems leave the plan open for defeat in successive years by politicking bootlickers in Congress.
Declare and find China guilty of currency manipulation and the WTO allows tariffs for dealing with that.
No one can argue that a currency peg isn’t currency manipulation. Especially when so many have complained to China about said peg.
You are free to come up with your own method of cutting government by 25%.
I can only tell you this much: Reducing Government by 25% is the MINIMUM amount of cutting required to get it done.
“How will this be kept in place for 10 years?”
Perry/Rubio 2012!
California home prices have always seemed insanely high to me. A friend of my daughter in one suburb of LA lived in a house valued at about a half million that would go for under 100 grand in the DFW area.
Just curious, most employers dump retired employees medical coverage when they reach the age for medicare, how they goingt to handle that?
Disclaimer: Opinions posted on Free Republic are those of the individual posters and do not necessarily represent the opinion of Free Republic or its management. All materials posted herein are protected by copyright law and the exemption for fair use of copyrighted works.