Most of our spending is entitlements and defense. Those are politically deadly to touch. Interest payments can't be touched. Cutting the rest is fairly trivial, but still politically painful.

So any sort of budget balancing is simply not going to happen.

This will continue until it can't. That will be rough time.

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(11-09-2017 09:32 PM)ark30inf Wrote:  Most of our spending is entitlements and defense. Those are politically deadly to touch. Interest payments can't be touched. Cutting the rest is fairly trivial, but still politically painful.

So any sort of budget balancing is simply not going to happen.

This will continue until it can't. That will be rough time.

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Thats why the message to the NATO allies to carry more of thier own weight when it comes to defense was necessary (even if wasnt well received). We can no longer afford free loaders riding the coat tails of our defense budget.

I think we need a Constitutional Amendment requiring a balanced budget. Most states have them. Until then, we should just lower the budget by a half of a percent each year. It wouldnt take that much pain and all that long to reach a balanced budget as long as tax revenues continue to grow. At the very least-- limit budget growth to 1%. Even under that scenario we would reach a balanced budget eventually. Right now, we are not even heading in the right direction.

(11-09-2017 07:18 PM)Attackcoog Wrote:  

(11-08-2017 12:40 PM)Redwingtom Wrote:  

(11-08-2017 12:21 PM)Attackcoog Wrote:  CBO never considers growth in their projections. That said, CBO also never considers recessions. They are also horrible at their jobs. They completely blew the prediction on Obamacare. Seeing as they always show huge overruns for Repubican bills using silly assumptions (like people who choose not to buy insurance are "losing" insurance) and underestimate the cost of Democrat bills---I dont think they are the unbiased non-partisan body they are represented as being.
https://www.forbes.com/sites/theapotheca...791a5b46a7

Big. Hairy. Deal. If they're off by .7 trillion, this would still add a trillion dollars to the debt.
There is just no evidence anywhere that a tax cut will magically spur growth to offset even as "little" as 1 trillion!

Well, there is that whole 80's thing under Reagan where tax "cuts" resulted in rising tax revenue. CBO said that would result in lost revenue as well I believe---but carry on with your narrative. We dont have a revenue problem in the is country. We have a spending problem.

First, it's not $1.7 trillion in one fell swoop. It's $1.7 trillion over 10 years, and these sorts of projections are frequently off by that much, particularly toward the back end.

As for the Reagan tax cuts, they upped revenues for two reasons. One, they came at a point when the top rates clearly were so high as to discourage economic activity, so lowering them spurred some pent-up growth. Nowadays, our tax rates don't discourage economic activity, they just incentivize moving it offshore where rates are lower. How much would come back is the $64 gazillion question. Two, they were accompanied by a massive redefinition of taxable income. How much? So much so that the effective tax rates for most of the "wealthy" went up, not down, despite that lowering of nominal rates. That was the part that is not well understood. It is the problem with the work done by Piketty and Saez, for example. Sure, taxable income (and gross income and AGI) went up significantly for the "rich" after 1987, because the method of calculating it changed.

And CBO is not horrible at what they do. It's just that what they do is not well understood. They are not an unbiased, non-partisan body, although their work is often misrepresented as such. But they are not intended to be, and being an unbiased and non-partisan body is not their mission. Their mission is to crunch numbers under defined parameter limits, no matter how unrealistic those parameters may be. They are given assumptions and told to perform calculations using those assumptions. They are not given latitude to vary the assumptions. Occasionally, as with the Obamacare projections, they will comment as to the unreasonableness of the assumptions. They do a fine job of what they do, it's just that what they do is not intended to be a reliable prediction--nor unbiased nor objective nor non-partisan.

(11-09-2017 08:37 PM)ark30inf Wrote:  

(11-09-2017 07:18 PM)Attackcoog Wrote:  

(11-08-2017 12:40 PM)Redwingtom Wrote:  

(11-08-2017 12:21 PM)Attackcoog Wrote:  CBO never considers growth in their projections. That said, CBO also never considers recessions. They are also horrible at their jobs. They completely blew the prediction on Obamacare. Seeing as they always show huge overruns for Repubican bills using silly assumptions (like people who choose not to buy insurance are "losing" insurance) and underestimate the cost of Democrat bills---I dont think they are the unbiased non-partisan body they are represented as being.


https://www.forbes.com/sites/theapotheca...791a5b46a7

Big. Hairy. Deal. If they're off by .7 trillion, this would still add a trillion dollars to the debt.

There is just no evidence anywhere that a tax cut will magically spur growth to offset even as "little" as 1 trillion!

Well, there is that whole 80's thing under Reagan where tax "cuts" resulted in rising tax revenue. CBO said that would result in lost revenue as well I believe---but carry on with your narrative. We dont have a revenue problem in the is country. We have a spending problem.

We spent a crapload on rebuilding the military under Reagan. Was it the tax cuts or the injection of military spending that caused the growth, or a combination. Makes it hard to pin down.

Exactly. Most studies I've seen show that other factors contributed to the growth as well so it's anything but the certainty the Republicans are promising this to be. Additionally, IIRC, the economy during the second Reagan tax cut actually got worse.

Here's a good history of tax cuts:
How past income tax rate cuts on the wealthy affected the economy

(11-13-2017 12:38 PM)Redwingtom Wrote:  

(11-09-2017 08:37 PM)ark30inf Wrote:  

(11-09-2017 07:18 PM)Attackcoog Wrote:  

(11-08-2017 12:40 PM)Redwingtom Wrote:  

(11-08-2017 12:21 PM)Attackcoog Wrote:  CBO never considers growth in their projections. That said, CBO also never considers recessions. They are also horrible at their jobs. They completely blew the prediction on Obamacare. Seeing as they always show huge overruns for Repubican bills using silly assumptions (like people who choose not to buy insurance are "losing" insurance) and underestimate the cost of Democrat bills---I dont think they are the unbiased non-partisan body they are represented as being.


https://www.forbes.com/sites/theapotheca...791a5b46a7

Big. Hairy. Deal. If they're off by .7 trillion, this would still add a trillion dollars to the debt.

There is just no evidence anywhere that a tax cut will magically spur growth to offset even as "little" as 1 trillion!

Well, there is that whole 80's thing under Reagan where tax "cuts" resulted in rising tax revenue. CBO said that would result in lost revenue as well I believe---but carry on with your narrative. We dont have a revenue problem in the is country. We have a spending problem.

We spent a crapload on rebuilding the military under Reagan. Was it the tax cuts or the injection of military spending that caused the growth, or a combination. Makes it hard to pin down.

Exactly. Most studies I've seen show that other factors contributed to the growth as well so it's anything but the certainty the Republicans are promising this to be. Additionally, IIRC, the economy during the second Reagan tax cut actually got worse.

Here's a good history of tax cuts:
How past income tax rate cuts on the wealthy affected the economy

Worse? Worse than what? The enormous boom of his first term after taxes were slashed?

Reagans second term was actually better than anything Obama put together in 8 years, so you kind of make our point for us.