truthiness

What could cause the formerly, allegedly fiscal conservative republican party to want a very high deficit? Because they love debt itself? No, it is a means to an end:
Reality: Because they want to reduce social security and medicare. They want to scare us into such reductions by providing a fiscal problem that can only be solved with reductions that affect the middle and lower economic classes.
https://www.theatlantic.com/politics/archive/2017/12/blowing-up-the-deficit-is-part-of-the-plan/548720/

Crayons Loc: St Jo, Texas

Git lost 'sunshine' The home grown c****e party l*****t's spew this garbage every e******n

Crayons Loc: St Jo, Texas

Now, Miss T***hy; What I have done is Not for everyone; But I legally opted out of socialist security decades ago...

There are better ways to save for those so called golden years...But my work is just too damned fun and life is
just too damned short to worry about this nonsense

EconomistDon

Now tell us why Democrats want a high deficit. They are so much better at getting it.

Seth

It figures you obtained that pearl of wisdom from The Atlantic, sort of like a far left wing production of The Onion meets the National Enquirer.

truthiness

I'm sure you will tell us. All I know is that the democrats did not add $2T to the deficit this year.

Seth

And The Atlantic associates that with some stealth strategy to deprive the elderly of their Social Security and Medicare?

That's only a fraction of the deficit Obama oversaw in about the same time frame. What evil deeds does The Atlantic associate with THAT?

Or don't they say?

PeterS

Snip>>>MITCH MCCONNELL CALLS FOR SOCIAL SECURITY, MEDICARE, MEDICAID CUTS AFTER PASSING TAX CUTS, MASSIVE DEFENSE SPENDING

fter instituting a $1.5 trillion tax cut and signing off on a $675 billion budget for the Department of Defense, Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell said Tuesday that the only way to lower the record-high federal deficit would be to cut entitlement programs like Medicare, Medicaid and Social Security.

"It’s disappointing, but it’s not a Republican problem," McConnell said of the deficit, which grew 17 percent to $779 billion in fiscal year 2018. McConnell explained to Bloomberg that "it’s a bipartisan problem: Unwillingness to address the real drivers of the debt by doing anything to adjust those programs to the demographics of America in the future." The deficit has increased 77 percent since McConnell became majority leader in 2015.

New Treasury Department analysis on Monday revealed that corporate tax cuts had a significant impact on the deficit this year. Federal revenue rose by 0.04 percent in 2018, a nearly 100 percent decrease on last year’s 1.5 percent. In fiscal year 2018, tax receipts on corporate income fell to $205 billion from $297 billion in 2017.

GettyImages-1052082022
Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell speaks as President Donald Trump looks on during a 'Make America Great Again' rally at Eastern Kentucky University, in Richmond, Kentucky, on October 13. The deficit has increased 77 percent since McConnell became majority leader in 2015.
NICHOLAS KAMM/AFP/GETTY IMAGES

Still, McConnell insisted that the change had nothing to do with a lack of revenue or increased spending and instead was due to entitlement and welfare programs. The debt, he said, was very “disturbing” and driven by “the three big entitlement programs that are very popular, Medicare, Social Security and Medicaid.… There’s been a bipartisan reluctance to tackle entitlement changes because of the popularity of those programs. Hopefully, at some point here, we’ll get serious about this.”

President Donald Trump promised to leave Medicare untouched on the campaign trail, but Republican leaders like House Speaker Paul Ryan and Florida Senator Marco Rubio have long indicated their desire to cut entitlement programs to pay for their tax cuts.

"You have got to generate economic growth because growth generates revenue,” Rubio said at a Politico conference late last year. "But you also have to bring spending under control. And not discretionary spending. That isn’t the driver of our debt. The driver of our debt is the structure of Social Security and Medicare for future beneficiaries."

“We're going to have to get back next year at entitlement reform, which is how you tackle the debt and the deficit,” Speaker Ryan said on a conservative radio program around the same time.

Democrats, meanwhile, jumped on McConnell’s admission as proof that Republicans had long planned to cut entitlement spending to fund the tax cuts that largely benefit corporations and wealthy Americans. “The t***h comes out! This was their deceptive plan all along,” said Representative Lois Frankel of Florida.

“When Republicans in Congress said their tax cuts to wealthy multinational corporations would pay for themselves, they lied,” wrote Ohio Congressman Tim Ryan on Twitter. “Now, they're going to try to come for hardworking people to foot the bill by slashing Medicare, Medicaid, and Social Security. We can't let them.”

A recent Pew poll found that the majority of both Democrats and Republicans thought the rising federal deficit and cost of health care were major problems facing the U.S.—something that Democrats are taking note of and will try to package into their midterm campaign platforms over the next three weeks.

“Every Republican Senate candidate is on the hook for Mitch McConnell’s plan to cut Medicare and Social Security. First it was jeopardizing pre-existing conditions coverage, then it was pursuing an age tax that would charge older Americans more for care, and now it’s targeting the benefits Americans have paid into,” wrote Democratic Senatorial Campaign Committee spokesman David Bergstein in a statement. “This platform is disqualifying, and just like taking away coverage for pre-existing conditions, it's exactly what GOP candidates don't want to be talking about weeks before the e******n.”

Now it's republicans calling to cut SS and Medicare all because their tax cut caused a massive deficit...

Bad Bob Loc: Virginia

Seth

Their "cuts" would not effect those receiving retirement benefits, they would be for people who have enough advance years to prepare themselves for retirement and would include tax deductions to cover retirement savings.

I am presently in Southern California and spend some of my time in Santa Monica and Venice. These towns are literally overflowing with young homeless people who are receiving about a thousand a month for treatable conditions that are instead labelled, falsely, as "disabilities." Most of that money, off the backs of the hard working taxpayer, is spent on crystal meth and crack. At the same time, MediCal, which is California's equivalent of Medicaid, burns up a lot of money picking up the pieces from these people's drug mishaps.

This is undoubtedly the same situation in other places all over the country, by nature places governed by liberals like N.Y. and Chicago, and rather than make any real efforts to fix the problem they simply permit the funds to keep flowing out of the Social Security and Medicare/ Medicaid coffers like water from a fire hose.

The difference between Democrats and Republicans in fiscal situations is that the latter tend to think things through and devise more efficient spending policies while the former simply throw more and more money at a problem, building large, expensive and grossly ineffective bureaucracies around it and actually allow these bureaucracies to perpetuate themselves, feeding them more and more money as the original problems grow rather than diminish.

A Republican solution wouldn't eliminate programs, it would make them more cost effective by requiring accountability on the part of those in charge.

I recall when Mitt Romney was running for president, when he observed that it shouldn't cost the taxpayer sendn hundred dollars or wh**ever to issue one person two hundred dollars' worth of food stamps. All he meant was that we needed a more cost efficient method of doling out the funds, but immediately liberals began falsely yelling that the man wanted to discontinue food stamps altogether.

This is a typical liberal reaction to any attempt at fiscal responsibility in government.

All McConnell and Company are talking about is streamlining the cost of administering these programs and eliminating the attendant fraud. They also consider the conservative approach, which is creating employment and eliminating the need for employable people to l***h off the taxpayer.

Conversely, liberals apparently love to throw the taxpayers' money around like confetti, then when they need more they simply raise taxes.

Lonewolf

We're not throwing future generations under the bus were going to stop the trillion dollar wars we have been losing for 27 years!
We're not going to spend 25 billion on a wall were going to crack down on people who hire i******s , if your fined 10,000 for your gardener you will stop hiring him! No jobs no i******s!

buffalo Loc: Texas

Why not cut excessive military spending and the fraud, waste and abuse that comes with it and stop US continual, illegal, unConstitutional, immoral warmongering and while at it cut out the 100s of BILLIONS in corporate welfare? Wouldn't that be more fiscally responsible? Oh, wait, that would cut the money flowing to the wealthy 1%, banksters and military industrial corporations that own DC politicians. Better to fv(k the elderly, disabled and poor.

truthiness

If source is important to you, let's try Forbes, that bastion of left wing financial f**enews that meets IBD at the WSJ:

https://www.forbes.com/sites/teresaghilarducci/2018/10/16/senate-republicans-set-sights-on-cutting-social-security/#317fb46e5da1

truthiness

;;;
The worst case scenario is that the moral difference between republicans and democrats is zero.
Republicans do not work any more than your friends on the beach; they take the savings of others (in the form of high taxes), bribe v**es to pass laws (e.g., the so-called tax cut and v**er repression) that further their economic interests at the expense of others.
Democrats do not work any more than c**pon clippers and use their population (v****g) majority to pass laws that allow costly programs to proliferate.

The issue is not fiscal responsibility; if it were both groups would pay their fair share and contribute to real production: they don't.
The issue is morality: both are bankrupt as will be the country if a solution is not implemented.

Unintended Consequences

(Bloomberg) -- Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell says the U.S. budget deficit is "disturbing" and spending on entitlement programs must be addressed by both Republicans and Democrats. 6:42 AM - Oct 16, 2018