Simpson-Bowles did nothing to address health care spending. It was the reason that Ryan did not sign off on it.
Yes, entitlement spending must be dealt with. It is the biggest driver of our debt and it is on automatic pilot. I won't make the distinction between earned and unearned entitlement programs. They are both wealth redistribution schemes that we can't afford. You must either cut benefits or raise taxes or some combination thereof to make them sustainable.
The current Sequester suicide plan is madness - it does nothing to stop the Entitlement bleeding, it punishes Defense, and it will cause great harm to the economy.
It will no doubt harm defense, but I am upset with how politicized the military has become in this political fight. The idea that we can't deploy a carrier because of sequestration is nonsense. And I have no doubt that defense will be cut further as we get involved in the "Guns versus butter" battle that characterizes nations in decline.
I think the impact of sequestration is overblown. If reducing government spending by what amounts to a rounding error is so painful, how can we really make the spending reductions we need? We spend $10 billion a day (and borrow $4 billion of that) so sequestration is less than nine days of spending. There is no painless way out of our problem and the longer we delay confronting it, the more painful the solution will be. Sequestration is not madness. The status quo is madness as we run trillion dollar annual deficits.
Welp, I agree with every word you wrote.
But Kabar, I fully understand that Medicare and SS are drains on this country, not operating in the black like planned.
Those of us who got up every morning and went to work, we didn’t know where our money went, it was just deducted from our paycheck and that was the law.
I also understand that all those silly grants and pork barrell things are pennies compared to the enormity of entitlement spending. I am pretty sure the Republicans know this and want desperately to fix it.
BUT they too are part of the problem.
Cause while many of us would stand up and say hey, give me a couple hundred less every month, I am a loyal American, I’m okay with it.....FIRST we want to see the waste in gubmint dealt with.
I predicted to husband, as he busily changed clocks either forward, backward or wherever he was going, that over the next month we will hear stories of gubmint silliness bejeesus.
Already there’s a web site that managed, via compilation of absurd gubmint spending programs, to get all the money needed by the sequester!
Stupid things like watching squirrels mate or setting teddy bears on fire....I dunno....we’ve all heard of it.
But that’s just the really apparent! I’m willing to bet that there are thousands, if not millions, of employees on gubmint payrolls that no longer word there! I’m willing to bet that if somehow some impartial audit firm could get in on what’s going on....man, come on, we all know it goes on.
Then let’s look into those crazy awards....like the so-called “black farmers” nonsense.
My mind boggles.
This is something the citizenry expects before they go after the entitlements.
All those journalists so mad at the bully White House could blow this apart.
We all have to tighten our belts and this insane rule of the Democrats that gubmint spending must NOT be reduced is nuts.
But entitlements?
Gotta do a lot of other fiscal housekeeping first.
The politicos....Rep or Dem....they don’t want this. That pork barrell and study of mating squirrels is often cycled round right back into their campaigns.
Bigger problem...we got an entrenched political class. They are protecting their own.
Folks like us.....pat on head and tell to go away.