Budget Flimflam (2): “Irresponsible Policy Choices”
This is the second in a series on Obama’s claim to be a victim of previous “irresponsiblie policy choices.” The first is here.
One of the budget documents Obama published las week, “Inheriting a Legacy of Misplaced Priorities,”(ILMP) is a campaign style propaganda piece, intended to justify the upcoming budget. A key ILMP assertion, and the foundation for several more assertions and conclusions was…
…for far too long, the resilience, optimism, and industriousness of the American people have been frustrated by irresponsible policy choices in Washington. Prudent investments in education, clean energy, health care, and infrastructure were sacrificed for huge tax cuts for the wealthy and well-connected.
Obama’s intent is to plant in the mind of the reader the perception that since Ronald Reagan’s tax rate reductions there has been a trade-off, that Congress and previous presidents faced a choice between tax cuts and “prudent investment,” that they chose the tax cuts, and that as a result the government didn’t collect enough money for education, energy, health care or infrastructure.
If one does hold the perception that too little tax revenue and too little spending caused all our nation’s economic misery, then of course the Obama agenda of tax increases, reckless borrowing and immense spending increases makes sense. But as the data in this chart shows, the perception promoted by the Obama budget document is false.
In fact, total tax revenue collected by the government has grown by 124% since the Reagan tax rate reductions, after adjusting for inflation. Spending in each of the categories Obama calls “prudent investments” increased, from 17% to 432%, after adjusting for inflation.
The Bottom Line:
The American economy did not crash because government taxed, borrowed and spent too little. In reality, governmement imposes thousands of financial and regulatory barriers to economic recovery and prosperity, and the Obama administration plans to increase and intensify those barriers. Obama’s claims are deliberately misleading and are targeted at people who are uninformed and too busy to go digging through governemnt budget documents for the truth.
When 40 million Americans go without healthcare too much has been given out in unnecessary tax breaks and too little to providing this basic human right.
What about the Trillions that have been wasted on bombs and missiles and no bid Halliburton contracts to line Dick Cheney’s pockets?
We could be been finished with oil and be using cheap, renewable energy if government had made that investment instead of pouring those trillions into more aircraft carriers and more bombs and more wars.
This is so frightening. The whole economy is crashing down all around us and all we get from so called leaders is corrupt earmarks to study cattle farts and fish dna.
I’m a nurse and I’ve seen families that want to keep grandma on the ventilator and IV feeding at $20,000 a day, even though there’s no possibility of survival. That’s What Obama is doing with these brain-dead banks.
They are loading a crushing debt just to keep these brain-dead banks on life support and keep paying these idiot Wall Street CEOs their bonuses for a few more weeks.
Then what? Then they’ll be coming back for even more!
This is so psychotic. We are literally watching our country being destroyed by this ignorant, arrogant, President who doesn’t even realize how far over his head these problems are.
Sharon -
Take two deep breaths…….
On your first point. What would you prescribe about a very valid issue you raise: so much of health care costs are expended on the terminally ill?
On the “zombie” banks, do you prescribe the “good” bank, “bad” bank model?? Or nationalization?
aaa
I don’t know about national statistics, but From what I see in my little corner of the world, there isn’t a whole lot of extra money spent on TRULY terminally ill. They’re given drugs if for pain or discomfort and allowed to die.
There is a lot spent on people with serious illnesses or injuries that can’t yet be diagnosed as terminal. Then some of them turn out to be terminal. So what should we do? Cut off care if they might be terminal? As his King Obama, the smartest guy in the world once said, the answer to that is above my pay grade.
I guess the bank thing is above my pay grade too. I understand they can go into reorganization or conservancy or something and get broken up and that investors will buy the pieces at discount prices. If that’s true, then thats what should happen. Whatever it takes for AIG and Citibank to cease to exist and stop getting transfusions of taxpayer blood that leaks out of severed arteries and swirls down the drain.
And no millions to pay off dumb-ass CEOs who mismanaged them! If I had my way they wouldn’t even get Social Security. They’d have to support themselves as janitors till they dropped dead.
I’m am taking a breath but it makes me so mad I can’t see straight that an SOB who turned a company like Citibank into a worthless hulk gets $100 million to go away! I don’t care if its Bush or Obama or whose calling those shots, its outrageous!
The future with President Obama will bring us retirement security, universal healthcare and education that works.
For now celebrate! We finally kicked out the war criminals.
C’mon now, Sharon. Tell us what you really think!
I like you. Let’r rip and tell it like it is.
My information may be outdated, but there was a statistic floating around that (in the aggregate)something like 85% of health care expenditures occurs in the first and last six months of life. Think preme babies and nursing homes.
So advances in medical technologies have caused the first issue, an no one would seriously question the expenditure. The end of life problem is a really thorny one. It brings together practical and ethical issues. I don’t have an answer, but a real public debate that acknowledges this issue would be a good start.
Bickering about doctors and Big Pharma, which is the want of leftists, is not helpful.
I have posted previously about temporary nationalization of the banks. If it is of interest I can repost. I think it does the moral justice you seek, but without forced labor as a sanitation engineer.
LOL! Yeah, I do let’r rip. People say I’m “passionate.”
I don’t have any statistical info on expenditures in first or last six months. All I know is what I see at work, and 85% sounds way too high. my guess would be about 30%.
We have plenty of patients that get expensive surgeries and treatmnts and then recover, and live normal lives. We just had a man for 33 days with a mysterious infection they never identified. He was close to death for a few days but he finally recovered and went home. He was only about 30.
I guess I don’t need that “forced labor as a sanitation engineer.” But I think it would do them good! Cleaning toilets is honest work, and their supervisor could see right away if they did a good or lousy job.
What they did in their banks was dishonest! And I guess nobody could tell if their work was up to par until it was too late. I’d be happy if they got fired, like anyone else, with a few weeks severance pay, at $1,000 a week, instead of 100 years severance pay at a million dollars a year!
TAKE ANOTHER TOKE, THOUSAND FLOWERS…….