Welcome to the meme of 2011.
How do you feel with it? All comfortable and rosy? Does it bring a warm feeling knowing that all Americans will pull together in this crisis?
If it does, you've been had.
No doubt the Weeper of the House with his plan for an austere swearing in ceremony will set the tone through a flood of tears.
"We are going to fight for their priorities: cutting spending, repealing the job-killing health care law and helping get our economy moving again."
Yep, after we slashed the revenue raised by taxes; now it's your turn to pay the weeper piper.
The rich got their just rewards.....oh you don't think so? What a shame, too late now.
Now where to share this sacrifice.....hmmmmmm
The military
With no end in sight in Afghanistan, and saber rattling going on over N.Korea and Iraq; the chances of making any cuts in the worlds most expensive military must be considered as being zero.
Just regard it as being ring-fenced no matter what mumblings you hear.
Well that is $1 trillion of the budget pretty much spent.
Direct and related expenditure
DOD spending $721.3 billion
FBI counter-terrorism $2.7 billion
International Affairs $10.1–$54.2 billion
Energy Department, defense-related $20.9 billion
Veterans Affairs $66.2 billion
Homeland Security $54.7 billion
NASA, satellites $3.4–$8.5 billion
Veterans pensions $58.4 billion
Other defense-related mandatory spending $7.5 billion
Interest on debt incurred in past wars $114.8–$454.2 billion
Total Spending $1.060–$1.449 trillion
Now the estimated total revenue for 2011 is $2.567 trillion for the Federal government.
This leaves $1 and $1.5 trillion for the rest of the Federal government.
Planned expenditure pdf $3.834 trillion
Now the first fight in 2011 will center around raising the debt ceiling.
"I don’t see why anybody’s playing chicken with the debt ceiling," Goolsbee said today on ABC’s "This Week" program. "If we get to the point where we damage the full faith and credit of the United States, that would be the first default in history caused purely by insanity."
Ah but you haven't been speaking to Michele Bachmann and Rand Paul now have you?
Insanity?
Well that pretty much sums up the Republican Party in the House.
The first austerity measures have taken place
The bill cancels pay scale increases for federal employees under the General Schedule and other similar pay systems, although already-scheduled step increases will still be awarded. The White House said this will save $5 billion by the end of 2012, $28 billion over the next five years, and more than $60 billion over the next 10 years.
Obviously the military was excluded.
Is there somewhere else we can get the money?
Where can we cut since we refuse to increase revenue?
Well there always is the Social Security Trust Fund, and would they dare to go there?
OK, so that may well be on standby for the next couple of years since it would be political and economic suicide.
So where do we cut?
Medicare?
Medicaid?
Raise the retirement age?
Discretionary spending accounts for $1.376 trillion [security $0.84 trillion]
Mandatory spending accounts for $2.1 trillion.
So that leaves $0.53 trillion of discretionary spending that is not security related. How much can be cut from that, what programs can be sacrificed?
Lets looks at the main sources of revenue again
Personal income tax revenue £1.121 trillion
Corporation income tax $0.297 trillion.
Whoa...we have some of the richest corporations in the world and that is all they contribute?
'We don't pay taxes. Only little people pay taxes,'
~Leona Helmsley
The study showed about 28 percent of large foreign corporations, those with more than $250 million in assets, doing business in the United States paid no federal income taxes in 2005 despite $372 billion in gross receipts, the senators said. About 25 percent of the largest U.S. companies paid no federal income taxes in 2005 despite $1.1 trillion in gross sales that year, they said.
Yep, Ms Helmsley appers to be right.
Congressional Research Service Report
The federal government loses both individual and corporate income tax revenue from the shifting of profits and income into low-tax countries, often referred to as tax havens. The revenue losses from this tax avoidance and evasion are difficult to estimate, but some have suggested that the
annual cost of offshore tax abuses may be around $100 billion per year. International tax avoidance can arise from large multinational corporations who shift profits into low-tax foreign subsidiaries or wealthy individual investors who set up secret bank accounts in tax haven countries.
Estimates of the cost of individual evasion have ranged from $40 billion to $70 billion.
Yep. and we just gave them a tax cut.
sigh.
So you can tell just who is going to pay for whatever shared sacrifice is put on the table, the same people that bailed out the banks.
The lower 99%.
It is going to be a crazy next two years and we will see just how well divided the shared sacrifice is going to be, and I think President Obama is fooling only himself if he thinks the tax system can be reformed.
Now you can read this some highlights:
Enact a "payroll tax holiday" for one year (2011) – excusing employers and employees from paying the 12.4 percent tax into the Social Security Trust Funds:
Done, but for two years and is not foreseen to be paid for.
Cut tax rates; broaden the tax base; boost incentives to work, save, and invest; and ensure, by 2018, that nearly 90 million households (about half of potential tax filers) no longer have to file tax returns.
OK so we continue reducing revenue further
Cut the top corporate tax rate to 27 percent from its current 35 percent, making the United States a more attractive place to invest.
What you mean the taxes they avoid already? Pure genius.
Establish a new 6.5 percent national Debt Reduction Sales Tax (DRST) that – along with the spending cuts outlined in this plan – will reduce the debt and secure America’s economic future.
Pie in the sky, wont happen a silly recommendation that will hurt the poorest amongst us the most...Oh wait..sounds like a plan.
Transition Medicare, starting in 2018, to a "premium support" program that limits growth in per-beneficiary federal support (to GDP-plus-1 percent, as compared to current projections of GDP-plus-1.7 percent). The new system maintains traditional Medicare as the default, but will charge higher premiums if costs rise faster than the established limits. Alternatively, beneficiaries can opt to purchase a private plan on a health insurance exchange. Competition among plans will improve the quality of care and increase efficiency.
Ah ha now we are getting somewhere, do I smell so good old privatization in the pipeline?
Gradually raise the amount of wages subject to payroll taxes (currently $106,800) over the next 38 years to reach the 1983 target of covering 90 percent of all wages
OMG a sensible plan....nononononono not the rich!
Freeze domestic (i.e., non-defense) discretionary spending for four years and cap at GDP thereafter.
You do know they mean all the service we all use don't you?
Freeze defense discretionary spending for five years and cap at GDP thereafter (from a baseline that assumes reduction of troop levels deployed in combat to 30,000 by 2013).
Now that is the funniest one of the lot, have you no shame...think WarrenTerra.
Have a read, then you can tick off the boxes over the next 2 years.
Perhaps if they only got the tax code right, if everyone paid their fair share, and if offense spending was reduced we could actually balance the budget to within acceptable deficit levels......nah
Who am I kidding?
No New Taxes!
No to big government!
Well until you need it that is.......
Shared Sacrifice?
You just know who is going to pay for this mess?
Come on be honest, it's us.
Gosh; we are really such suckers.
Welcome to the Fuck America project.