Brain
Posts: 3792
Joined: 2/14/2007
Status: offline
|
quote:
ORIGINAL: KenDckey
http://bipartisanpolicy.org/sites/default/files/FINAL%20DRTF%20EXECUTIVE%20SUMMARY_0.pdf
"America is the strongest, most prosperous, and most resilient nation in history. However, America’s leadership and greatness, our strength and prosperity, are not guaranteed. We face two huge challenges simultaneously. First, we must recover from the deep recession that has thrown millions out of work, slashed home values and closed businesses across the country. Second, we must take immediate steps to reduce the unsustainable debt that will be driven by the aging of the population, the rapid growth of healthcare costs, exploding interest costs, and the failure of policymakers to limit and prioritize spending
The plan will balance the “primary budget,” the budget other than interest payments, by 2014.
On a “unified budget basis,” i.e., including interest, the plan will ensure that future budget deficits are small and manageable. But, above all, it will ensure a strong economy for future generations of Americans.
America’s Future will:
• Revive the economy and create 2.5 to 7 million new jobs over two years with a payroll tax holiday.
• Balance the primary budget in 2014, reduce deficits including interest to small and manageable levels, and stabilize the debt below 60 percent of GDP by 2020.
• Create a simple, pro-growth tax system that broadens the base, reduces rates, makes America more competitive, and raises revenue to reduce the debt.
• Reduce the unsustainable rate of growth in healthcare costs.
• Strengthen Social Security to ensure that it will pay benefits for 75 years and beyond, while not increasing the retirement age and protecting the most vulnerable elderly.
• Freeze domestic and defense discretionary spending.
• Cut other spending, including farm and government retirement programs. "
This executive summary is 23 pages long. Above is some extracts. The Co-Chairs are Senator Domenici (Republican Author of the Budget Enforcement Act of 1990 and the Balanced Budget Act of 1997) and Alice Rivlin (Democrat that worked first with the Clinton Administration and was the OMB and CBO chairs). The task force was created on January 10, 2010.
OK My 2 cents. I don't agree with everything, but I do think it is a nice start.
Just because there are Republicans and Democrats on this so-called bipartisan committee doesn't make it bipartisan. When I see people like Robert Reich, David Stockman, Paul Volker and Paul Krugman or other people of that background and similar philosophy than the commission will carry more weight with me. Just because it's "bipartisan", even though it isn't, doesn't make it good. In my opinion, the present committee leans too far to the right and does not protect vulnerable Americans. To the contrary, the present commission protects those who have done well in the last 30 years.
Four Deformations of the Apocalypse
IF there were such a thing as Chapter 11 for politicians, the Republican push to extend the unaffordable Bush tax cuts would amount to a bankruptcy filing. The nation’s public debt — if honestly reckoned to include municipal bonds and the $7 trillion of new deficits baked into the cake through 2015 — will soon reach $18 trillion. That’s a Greece-scale 120 percent of gross domestic product, and fairly screams out for austerity and sacrifice. It is therefore unseemly for the Senate minority leader, Mitch McConnell, to insist that the nation’s wealthiest taxpayers be spared even a three-percentage-point rate increase.
The second unhappy change in the American economy has been the extraordinary growth of our public debt. In 1970 it was just 40 percent of gross domestic product, or about $425 billion. When it reaches $18 trillion, it will be 40 times greater than in 1970. This debt explosion has resulted not from big spending by the Democrats, but instead the Republican Party’s embrace, about three decades ago, of the insidious doctrine that deficits don’t matter if they result from tax cuts.
The third ominous change in the American economy has been the vast, unproductive expansion of our financial sector. Here, Republicans have been oblivious to the grave danger of flooding financial markets with freely printed money and, at the same time, removing traditional restrictions on leverage and speculation. As a result, the combined assets of conventional banks and the so-called shadow banking system (including investment banks and finance companies) grew from a mere $500 billion in 1970 to $30 trillion by September 2008. The fourth destructive change has been the hollowing out of the larger American economy. Having lived beyond our means for decades by borrowing heavily from abroad, we have steadily sent jobs and production offshore.
It is not surprising, then, that during the last bubble (from 2002 to 2006) the top 1 percent of Americans — paid mainly from the Wall Street casino — received two-thirds of the gain in national income, while the bottom 90 percent — mainly dependent on Main Street’s shrinking economy — got only 12 percent. This growing wealth gap is not the market’s fault. It’s the decaying fruit of bad economic policy. The day of national reckoning has arrived. We will not have a conventional business recovery now, but rather a long hangover of debt liquidation and downsizing...
http://www.nytimes.com/2010/08/01/opinion/01stockman.html?_r=1&pagewanted=all
David Stockman, a director of the Office of Management and Budget under President Ronald Reagan, is working on a book about the financial crisis.
 Attachment (1)
|
RE: Bi-Partisan Debt Reduction Report - 
Profile
New Messages
No New Messages
Hot Topic w/ New Messages
Hot Topic w/o New Messages
Locked w/ New Messages
Locked w/o New Messages
Post New Thread