13 thoughts on “An Important Word To You From Your President:”
I see no way that this helps us get the economy out of the tank. We need to cut spending everywhere. That would include the defense budget. In fact, we should tax Germany and the other NATO countries for being there or just stand down and go home. I’ll include Japan and S. Korea as well. I’m seeing massive savings and/or a windfall of cash when we threaten to leave and they say “don’t go! we’ll pay you to stay!” Let’s take the U S Navy: Do we really need 12 Aircraft carriers when no other country on Earth has even one that comes even close to matching the sheer size and firpower of one of ours? Nuclear subs that outnumber and outclass anything even the Russians posess? I can see having our Army and Marines, and even the USAF (which could still be put on a diet as well, with no more B-2’s or F-22’s. Both of them “hanger queens”. The F-22 can’t even fly in the rain!) The Dept. of Homeland Security is also a joke. Isn’t that the FBI’s job? Come on! Another useless layer of government. And let’s face it: it’s time to raise the retirement age to collect Social Security AND decrease the benefit, and the same goes for Medicare. These four spending items eat the lion’s share of the federal budget and until these sacred cows are gored there will be no meaningful deficit reductions. I’m tired of hearing “wash my hands but don’t get me wet” from both parties in power.
Tim, I can try to weigh in, in order:
Cut spending everywhere? I wouldn’t disagree.
Taxing NATO countries for our protection? Though the Italians DO call that “protection money,” perhaps its time to make this assertion and/or, as you indicate, withdraw troops. I’m thinking we exist in Europe simply because we always have. A bit of a WWII mentality, that.
Japan, S Korea? Hmmm. I’d especially have to consider the tactics of abandoning base on Okinawa.
Actually, there are 11 US CVBGs. And yes, I’d say the way we’ve been using and projecting, we need them all. Many problems have been in the littorals, but I’d be the first to say we can’t abandon a true Blue Water Navy.
B2s or F-22s? I’m of two minds. I’m an advocate of techno DIGITAL. But I also wouldn’t mind a MASSIVE amount of ANALOG Northrop F-5E/F Tigers.
DHS? Concur. Predominantly gone.
What age would you consider SSN and Medicare?
But let’s not stop there. Let’s focus on federal spending on education. NOT its job.
Let’s focus on federal spending on other forms of welfare. NOT its job.
Let’s focus on federal spending on housing. NOT its job.
BZ, Cutting spending. What a novel concept. As for cutting spending on military, we do so at our peril. We need a very sober analysis of our military spending.
That said, we don’t need to whack at the military to the point of emasculating it. We need to keep our edge because I don’t think our only enemies are Islamofascists. I think we should watch for the Russians and others.
I hate to be a conspiracy theorist but we need to be vigilant about our place in the world.
I would go further on NATO: leave it.
If they can’t be bothered to send combat troops with ROEs to actually fight the enemy, then they have a different designation: targets. Send us your Mountain and Alpine troops, not your base guards… and let them work with us to fight, not sit in cities worrying if the fight will come to them. They need to go to the fight. From that we will keep the UK, Poland, Czechs, Slovaks, Romanians and Bulgarians. Sounds like a good working group to be with.
After that leave: Japan, S. Korea. Japan wants us out,fine. S. Korea either needs to either back their One Peninsula grandstanding or not,we can’t sit there on a cease-fire forever.
With a good base in Iraq we can almost do the entire long-range re-supply deal via newer and smaller bases in Eastern Europe. Israel would be a handy place for a base, but the US Left would have a shitstorm over that.
I would be perfectly happy with a lean, mean, cut to the original bone of the Constitution government. No waste to be seen once we get rid of the feel-good departments for entrenched businesses and unions: DoE, Education, HHS, Agriculture… the list is long, easier to say we keep a few parts of the Interior, Treasury sans Federal Reserve, DoD, DoJ, Border Patrol/ICE, USCG, State put under DoD so we can stop having turf wars when they need to operate together just as Washington enjoyed it,and the few cats ‘n dogs of USPTO, USPO, Archives.
Pay-off all the entitlements: we will pay less by paying-off now than dragging them on for another 2-10 years when they drag down the entire federal government. Add up the entire federal bill, divide by the number of adult citizens, apportion that to the States to collect via population size so we can get rid of the IRS, too… just like we USED TO DO. Hey! You want a lower tax burden, then don’t pay-off entitlements… but as those were a promise we need to say ‘we are damned sorry we did such an asinine thing as promise things we couldn’t deliver and you are SOL for believing it could be done’. A lump sum with interest and one-time hit to the debt that can be paid off sounds a lot better than shafting everyone. We are headed towards the latter if we don’t do anything about entitlements.
DoD is dwarfed by entitlements. Those have got to be Target #1. Yes DoD can advance to a NextGen set of smaller platforms and that is a decade in the doing. Mind you Obama started to axe things like the NLOS-C that would be more capable, have fewer troops, be more mobile and extremely accurate… don’t come crying to me about cheaper platforms with more capability when this Administration is cutting them.
I am a ‘Back to Basics’ government sort of person. I know how to spend my money better than any bureaucrat and get better value for it. So far I’ve seen wrong-headed promises wiping out wealth and being unable to deliver at a sensible cost. Medicare/Medicaid was supposed to take care of the elderly and poor… so, no, we don’t need ‘reform’. We have broken our promises with those, SSN and many social programs and they have fooled us once. Once is enough in the high stakes area. I will donate to charity for the poor, sick and needy, and to disaster relief… but first comes our soldiers and I donate to those organizations directly caring for our wounded and disabled vets. The swell-hearted types said they would do the rest and are slackluster on it… don’t take my money and I will do that job in my own way with my own amounts on my own schedule. That works a helluva lot better than what we have and I can keep it accountable to ME. I can’t do that with DC.
Yep, pretty much ‘on target’! I agree with TIm also!
Wow. A semblance of unanimity! And now, ON to the Super Bowl!
BZ
BZ- I’m not saying get rid of the Navy, I’m saying that we could easily cut it by 1/3 or more and still not even notice that we did. I also agree with you on much of the other spending cuts, but identified the four areas I did because those four are where probably 2/3’s of the money goes. I’m for increasing the retirement age to 70, strarting tomorrow, for Social Security. When it was started, life expectancy was such that the avg. person collected it for five years, not 20. “You want a lower tax burden, then don’t pay-off entitlements… but as those were a promise we need to say ‘we are damned sorry we did such an asinine thing as promise things we couldn’t deliver and you are SOL for believing it could be done’. A lump sum with interest and one-time hit to the debt that can be paid off sounds a lot better than shafting everyone. ” AJ- Exactly.
As far as the Superbowl:GO COLTS!
Damn shame when the cartoons are smarter than certain comment makers…
I would restruction SS in such a way to insure that it would remain solvent into the future—making some of it private. I know not easy to do. The military, well frankly, I would leave that up to the expert, not the jerks behind those desk in the capital building. I’m sure some programs can be cut while others may need expanding. We cannot afford to let the Chinese catch us or even get close and the percentage of GDP they are spending on their military–well…….!
Ron, we will never compete with China in an all out land war in Asia. They have numbers on their side. As far as containing their global aspirations, they are expanding economically and have little need to do so militarily. They are eating our lunch in the area that really matters, in trade and business. Really, cooperation for both the USA and China is in our best interest. They are not the new USSR. The real enemy to both of us is Islamic terrorism, and any arms race between our nations is counter productive since we have such interconnected economies. BTW- that 6.8 billion arms deal with Taiwan is a better way to go if you want to contain China. Sell them, Japan, S. Korea, and the other Asian nations the arms to defend themselves. We make money and they do the detering. Think win win.
The subtle flipping of the bird says it all, doesn’t it?
Obama should have done nothing to fix the mess Bush left us with. We’d all be meeting new friends in the bread lines!
China was the second largest economy going into the 20th century. They are the second largest economy going into the 21st. The crushing poverty has not lessened and will be made worse by lack of farm workers due to the one-child policy. China has financed its growth through NPL debt vehicles that they put on a 5-year plan, twice. Now those creditors want their money and China doesn’t have it. China’s only solvent areas were in investments in the US, which now go belly up. China can inflate their currency and people will not deal with it due to a set exchange rate set by Beijing as its money becomes worthless. China can pay off its debts, not inflate its currency and go into deflation with those inside China seeing their money disappear overseas and not much left to buy ANY goods inside China. China can default on its debts and not be trusted by anyone as its status as a Nation goes to ‘junk bond’ status.
Those are the three paths China has to deal with its debt. Which one makes it a world power to be dealt with in 20 years? We paid off big businesses to go to China starting with Clinton and the Chinese added incentives to that, too… and floated lots of bad loans they didn’t want to pay off immediately. Those that will get burned are: western businesses, the Chinese government and the Chinese people. The last matter, the first two less so. If you want to prop up a regime that does that then you are encouraging more bad behavior and a worse judgment day when China picks its one course of three… with a declining population base.
BTW this is the course the US federal government is on, but it is tied up in the government by and large. The US can get through this problem by: cutting entitlements, cutting taxes, and encouraging savings away from the government that the government can’t touch. Or we can float lots of bonds and become a ‘junk bond’ status third rate country unable to manage its finances. Or we can inflate the currency, with resultant problems of devalued currency. Or we can pay off our debts and not print money causing deflation as money is moved from those who work for it to those who don’t via taxation.
We gots our choices there.
Obama could have taken the path of Clinton and JFK and cut taxes, cut spending and get the economy back up on its feet. Instead he went to Carter and FDR and is trying to spend the Nation to prosperity and solvency. That is the one that gets you bread lines. You want bread lines? The push for lots more money to go into the hands of government and taken from those who work for a living as the rich could be taxed into poverty and STILL not pay down the deficit. And you still get the same choices outlined above with an Administration that doesn’t recognize that a choice needs to be made.
I see no way that this helps us get the economy out of the tank. We need to cut spending everywhere. That would include the defense budget. In fact, we should tax Germany and the other NATO countries for being there or just stand down and go home. I’ll include Japan and S. Korea as well. I’m seeing massive savings and/or a windfall of cash when we threaten to leave and they say “don’t go! we’ll pay you to stay!”
Let’s take the U S Navy: Do we really need 12 Aircraft carriers when no other country on Earth has even one that comes even close to matching the sheer size and firpower of one of ours? Nuclear subs that outnumber and outclass anything even the Russians posess? I can see having our Army and Marines, and even the USAF (which could still be put on a diet as well, with no more B-2’s or F-22’s. Both of them “hanger queens”. The F-22 can’t even fly in the rain!)
The Dept. of Homeland Security is also a joke. Isn’t that the FBI’s job? Come on! Another useless layer of government.
And let’s face it: it’s time to raise the retirement age to collect Social Security AND decrease the benefit, and the same goes for Medicare.
These four spending items eat the lion’s share of the federal budget and until these sacred cows are gored there will be no meaningful deficit reductions. I’m tired of hearing “wash my hands but don’t get me wet” from both parties in power.
Tim, I can try to weigh in, in order:
Cut spending everywhere? I wouldn’t disagree.
Taxing NATO countries for our protection? Though the Italians DO call that “protection money,” perhaps its time to make this assertion and/or, as you indicate, withdraw troops. I’m thinking we exist in Europe simply because we always have. A bit of a WWII mentality, that.
Japan, S Korea? Hmmm. I’d especially have to consider the tactics of abandoning base on Okinawa.
Actually, there are 11 US CVBGs. And yes, I’d say the way we’ve been using and projecting, we need them all. Many problems have been in the littorals, but I’d be the first to say we can’t abandon a true Blue Water Navy.
B2s or F-22s? I’m of two minds. I’m an advocate of techno DIGITAL. But I also wouldn’t mind a MASSIVE amount of ANALOG Northrop F-5E/F Tigers.
DHS? Concur. Predominantly gone.
What age would you consider SSN and Medicare?
But let’s not stop there. Let’s focus on federal spending on education. NOT its job.
Let’s focus on federal spending on other forms of welfare. NOT its job.
Let’s focus on federal spending on housing. NOT its job.
Let’s eliminate DHHS.
Let’s eliminate DHUD.
Let’s eliminate Energy. Education. Homeland Security.
Let’s enforce immigration laws on the books.
That’s just a start.
BZ
BZ,
Cutting spending. What a novel concept. As for cutting spending on military, we do so at our peril. We need a very sober analysis of our military spending.
That said, we don’t need to whack at the military to the point of emasculating it. We need to keep our edge because I don’t think our only enemies are Islamofascists. I think we should watch for the Russians and others.
I hate to be a conspiracy theorist but we need to be vigilant about our place in the world.
I would go further on NATO: leave it.
If they can’t be bothered to send combat troops with ROEs to actually fight the enemy, then they have a different designation: targets. Send us your Mountain and Alpine troops, not your base guards… and let them work with us to fight, not sit in cities worrying if the fight will come to them. They need to go to the fight. From that we will keep the UK, Poland, Czechs, Slovaks, Romanians and Bulgarians. Sounds like a good working group to be with.
After that leave: Japan, S. Korea. Japan wants us out,fine. S. Korea either needs to either back their One Peninsula grandstanding or not,we can’t sit there on a cease-fire forever.
With a good base in Iraq we can almost do the entire long-range re-supply deal via newer and smaller bases in Eastern Europe. Israel would be a handy place for a base, but the US Left would have a shitstorm over that.
I would be perfectly happy with a lean, mean, cut to the original bone of the Constitution government. No waste to be seen once we get rid of the feel-good departments for entrenched businesses and unions: DoE, Education, HHS, Agriculture… the list is long, easier to say we keep a few parts of the Interior, Treasury sans Federal Reserve, DoD, DoJ, Border Patrol/ICE, USCG, State put under DoD so we can stop having turf wars when they need to operate together just as Washington enjoyed it,and the few cats ‘n dogs of USPTO, USPO, Archives.
Pay-off all the entitlements: we will pay less by paying-off now than dragging them on for another 2-10 years when they drag down the entire federal government. Add up the entire federal bill, divide by the number of adult citizens, apportion that to the States to collect via population size so we can get rid of the IRS, too… just like we USED TO DO. Hey! You want a lower tax burden, then don’t pay-off entitlements… but as those were a promise we need to say ‘we are damned sorry we did such an asinine thing as promise things we couldn’t deliver and you are SOL for believing it could be done’. A lump sum with interest and one-time hit to the debt that can be paid off sounds a lot better than shafting everyone. We are headed towards the latter if we don’t do anything about entitlements.
DoD is dwarfed by entitlements. Those have got to be Target #1. Yes DoD can advance to a NextGen set of smaller platforms and that is a decade in the doing. Mind you Obama started to axe things like the NLOS-C that would be more capable, have fewer troops, be more mobile and extremely accurate… don’t come crying to me about cheaper platforms with more capability when this Administration is cutting them.
I am a ‘Back to Basics’ government sort of person. I know how to spend my money better than any bureaucrat and get better value for it. So far I’ve seen wrong-headed promises wiping out wealth and being unable to deliver at a sensible cost. Medicare/Medicaid was supposed to take care of the elderly and poor… so, no, we don’t need ‘reform’. We have broken our promises with those, SSN and many social programs and they have fooled us once. Once is enough in the high stakes area. I will donate to charity for the poor, sick and needy, and to disaster relief… but first comes our soldiers and I donate to those organizations directly caring for our wounded and disabled vets. The swell-hearted types said they would do the rest and are slackluster on it… don’t take my money and I will do that job in my own way with my own amounts on my own schedule. That works a helluva lot better than what we have and I can keep it accountable to ME. I can’t do that with DC.
Yep, pretty much ‘on target’! I agree with TIm also!
Wow. A semblance of unanimity! And now, ON to the Super Bowl!
BZ
BZ- I’m not saying get rid of the Navy, I’m saying that we could easily cut it by 1/3 or more and still not even notice that we did. I also agree with you on much of the other spending cuts, but identified the four areas I did because those four are where probably 2/3’s of the money goes. I’m for increasing the retirement age to 70, strarting tomorrow, for Social Security. When it was started, life expectancy was such that the avg. person collected it for five years, not 20.
“You want a lower tax burden, then don’t pay-off entitlements… but as those were a promise we need to say ‘we are damned sorry we did such an asinine thing as promise things we couldn’t deliver and you are SOL for believing it could be done’. A lump sum with interest and one-time hit to the debt that can be paid off sounds a lot better than shafting everyone. ”
AJ- Exactly.
As far as the Superbowl:GO COLTS!
Damn shame when the cartoons are smarter than certain comment makers…
I would restruction SS in such a way to insure that it would remain solvent into the future—making some of it private. I know not easy to do. The military, well frankly, I would leave that up to the expert, not the jerks behind those desk in the capital building. I’m sure some programs can be cut while others may need expanding. We cannot afford to let the Chinese catch us or even get close and the percentage of GDP they are spending on their military–well…….!
Ron, we will never compete with China in an all out land war in Asia. They have numbers on their side. As far as containing their global aspirations, they are expanding economically and have little need to do so militarily. They are eating our lunch in the area that really matters, in trade and business. Really, cooperation for both the USA and China is in our best interest. They are not the new USSR. The real enemy to both of us is Islamic terrorism, and any arms race between our nations is counter productive since we have such interconnected economies. BTW- that 6.8 billion arms deal with Taiwan is a better way to go if you want to contain China. Sell them, Japan, S. Korea, and the other Asian nations the arms to defend themselves. We make money and they do the detering. Think win win.
The subtle flipping of the bird says it all, doesn’t it?
Obama should have done nothing to fix the mess Bush left us with. We’d all be meeting new friends in the bread lines!
China was the second largest economy going into the 20th century. They are the second largest economy going into the 21st. The crushing poverty has not lessened and will be made worse by lack of farm workers due to the one-child policy. China has financed its growth through NPL debt vehicles that they put on a 5-year plan, twice. Now those creditors want their money and China doesn’t have it. China’s only solvent areas were in investments in the US, which now go belly up. China can inflate their currency and people will not deal with it due to a set exchange rate set by Beijing as its money becomes worthless. China can pay off its debts, not inflate its currency and go into deflation with those inside China seeing their money disappear overseas and not much left to buy ANY goods inside China. China can default on its debts and not be trusted by anyone as its status as a Nation goes to ‘junk bond’ status.
Those are the three paths China has to deal with its debt. Which one makes it a world power to be dealt with in 20 years? We paid off big businesses to go to China starting with Clinton and the Chinese added incentives to that, too… and floated lots of bad loans they didn’t want to pay off immediately. Those that will get burned are: western businesses, the Chinese government and the Chinese people. The last matter, the first two less so. If you want to prop up a regime that does that then you are encouraging more bad behavior and a worse judgment day when China picks its one course of three… with a declining population base.
BTW this is the course the US federal government is on, but it is tied up in the government by and large. The US can get through this problem by: cutting entitlements, cutting taxes, and encouraging savings away from the government that the government can’t touch. Or we can float lots of bonds and become a ‘junk bond’ status third rate country unable to manage its finances. Or we can inflate the currency, with resultant problems of devalued currency. Or we can pay off our debts and not print money causing deflation as money is moved from those who work for it to those who don’t via taxation.
We gots our choices there.
Obama could have taken the path of Clinton and JFK and cut taxes, cut spending and get the economy back up on its feet. Instead he went to Carter and FDR and is trying to spend the Nation to prosperity and solvency. That is the one that gets you bread lines. You want bread lines? The push for lots more money to go into the hands of government and taken from those who work for a living as the rich could be taxed into poverty and STILL not pay down the deficit. And you still get the same choices outlined above with an Administration that doesn’t recognize that a choice needs to be made.