Comments

1
Ask Dino.
2
Dino would say "Don't ask me. Ask the man behind the tree."

And then he'd pick your pocket.
3
This needs to be a t-shirt and every democrat needs to wear it at least twice a week.
4
Dan, you ignorant slut.
Deficits are caused by spending too much.
You can not tax your way out of a deficit.
In fact, regardless of tax rates, the government only ever collects about 20% of GDP in taxes.
Raise rates and people shift income to avoid taxes.
Lower rates and economic activity picks up so the government collects the same revenue from the lowered rates.
The key is for government to keep spending under 20% of GDP.

Too bad Obama and Pelosi aren't listening.
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@4 - no, they're caused by overspending on arresting, prosecuting, and jailing hard-working American citizens for consuming MJ.

Fact.

Well, that and foreign wars of adventure that aren't actually against al-Qaeda.
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Exactly.

So everyone can see that Obama projects rising deficits going forward for the next NINE years.

Does Obama expect the Recession to last FOREVER?

Is Obama going to keep the wars going FOREVER?

Why will Obama's deficits get larger from 2014 to 2019?
Is that Bush's fault?

When will pussy Obama man up to the office he was elected to?

Where does the FUCKING BUCK STOP?
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Don't bother us tea baggers with no facts. We don't need no stinking facts.
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@4 - if "shifting income to avoid taxes" is such a sure thing, tax cuts shouldn't be necessary in the first place, should they?
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5

If every penny spent on MJ enforcement were recouped would that end the deficit?

Would it even cover the cost of the deficit for 24 hours?

Jackass.
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@5

Why doesn't Obama end the foreign wars of adventure that aren't actually against al-Qaeda?

Like, today.

Why?
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@6 - Yes, it's still Bush's fault. Project Bush's budget unchanged into the future, and the deficit continues to rise indefinitely. Mostly it's because of that graph you're seeing. Obama can get the budget under control by curtailing Bush's policies you see in that graph (the war, the tax cuts for the rich) and dealing with the rising cost of health care, which is the principle item responsible for the rising baseline deficit in the first place (see: Medicare).
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11

You do know that the CBO now admits that Obama's Health Care "Reform" will cost $110BILLION more than they said.

And will INCREASE the DEFICIT.

You do know that, don't you?
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@12 - No, you're wrong; in the long term, the bill reduces the deficit, and the CBO report doesn't say what you think it says:

http://www.tnr.com/blog/jonathan-chait/7…
http://voices.washingtonpost.com/ezra-kl…

Also: you need to bone up on your linking skills if you ever want to have a chance of people taking you seriously.
14
Palin is demanding the gumermint get involved in the great Louisianna oil spill. Droll, baby, droll.
15
That graph has clearly been manipulated by the left and doesn't reflect the facts.
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you have red koolaid stain on your lips.......
17
Conservatives - republicans and teabaggers alike - are so embarrased and ashamed by their party's complete failures in the past decade that they desperately want everyone to just pretend it doesn't matter and hope it'll go away and be forgotten.

Bush took a long time to carefully destroy this country's prosperity. Nobody... not Obama, Reid, Pelosi... nobody can fix that disaster in such a short time.

Yes, the current administration is still working to clean up Bush's mess. Yes, Bush is still at fault teabaggers.

The scary thing is, Reagan's mess has yet to be cleaned up, and I'm not sure it ever will be.
18
Um...Are not the four biggest items in the 2011 budget Medicare/Medicaid, Social Security, the Department of Defense budget, and interest on the federal debt? And, don't these four items make up 80% of the 2011 budget?

So, which of the four will be cut? Eliminating every other program won't make a dent in that 80%.
19
@7 ftw.

@18 I recommend we cut Medicare, Medicaid, and Social Security and SSI for any of the Tea Bag Terrorists who say they are against socialized government programs.

And then ship them back to their home countries. Like Panama for McCain or Russia for Palin.
20
I think what they are really concerned with is making changes to the OED (ie grammatical sob-sister elitists) so that any mispellings of words will then become the new, official spellings of said words.

(example: taxes > tax's)

(grinding,buzzing noise)
21
Man Bush and his cronies are fucking brilliant. You gotta admit that planting a poison pill to the country for expiring tax cuts was a genius move. It set the future president up (who was obviously going to be a Democrat) to have to deal with the economic issues of the tax cut.

Make no mistake tax cuts even to the rich do provide a benefit to the economy and by setting up the economy to decline when your opponent takes office is a move showing the tactical master of the Republicans.
22
@21 - no, having the tax cuts for Billionaires expire now is good.

Really really good.

Too bad hedge fund managers are exempt.

For that I blame the America-hating Republic Party of No.
23
@4: People don't "shift income to avoid taxes", you uneducated prick. Let's do a little thought experiment here:
Suppose the tax bracket from $0 to $100,000 is taxed at 35%, and the tax bracket from $100,001 to $200,000 is taxed at 50%. If someone makes $110k per year, they'll pay 35k+5k=$40,000 in taxes. This means they'll take home $70k after taxes.
So suppose they want to make less money next year so that they pay less in taxes. Well, if they reduce their income to $100k, then they'll only pay $35k in taxes. This means that they'll take home only $65,000 after taxes.
Did I just blow a bunch of GOPher/Teabagger minds? Yup, if you duck into a lower tax bracket to pay less taxes, YOU LOSE MONEY; getting out of taxes that way is cutting your own nose off to spite your face.
And the only people who'd take home less money just so they don't have to give any to the government are people who hate America and want to make it impossible for its government to do anything. Do you hate America?
24
To quote Dick Cheney. "Deficits don't matter unless they occur during a Democratic administration."
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@ 23 - People may actually roll income into, say, an IRA, but the impact of that is modest at best. It only makes sense as a strategy if (1) you know you're going to be making significantly less money some time in the next few years, at which point you can pull money out without facing higher marginal taxes, and (2) you know you're not going to be spending that money this year. Which is why they're retirement accounts, really. (Also, while traditional IRA's are deductible, Roth IRA's are not.) But the idea that this is somehow gaming the system is absurd; IRA's are designed for precisely this purpose, so the tax burden will more accurately reflect your real economic power.

True income shifting doesn't happen on the individual level, but on the business level; but the tax system is, again, actually designed to promote this. Congress could easily rework the tax code so as to eliminate these benefits.

But your general point stands; someone in the highest tax bracket only pays the higher rate on income above the threshold for that bracket. The idea that people will stop making money because of a higher marginal tax rate is absurd, and is frankly a lie spun to people who don't quite understand the way taxation works.

It isn't as if rich people are finding magic loopholes in the tax code that Congress didn't anticipate; Congress specifically wrote in those "loopholes" to promote various and sundry economic policies. Everyone talks about "closing loopholes" like it's a good thing, but the tax system is used for much, much more than simply bringing in revenue for government spending; it's structured in a particular way so as to promote particular public policies. Whether some provisions of the tax code are misguided (and I believe some are) is one thing; but pretending that Congress isn't aware of the consequences of these provisions is just silly.
26
The entire point of the republican party was "starve the beast", they spent all the money we didn't have and then planned to spend more, they got the worst possible bills passed at the worst possible time because they want to be president again, they bailed out the banks and pointed the finger at Obama. Anyone voting for an R is voting for the same deficit spending, the same willful ignorance of facts, the same revenue crushing bullshit of the last decade. No republican will run on "maybe since our debt is ballooning out of control we should consider tax cuts", they'll never make it through the primary, and they refuse to cut spending, because medicare and social security can't even be touched according to them.

The war is far more costly, I'm not sure it trumps the "tax cut" of the largest transfer of wealth in decades but it's certainly more than that. The government needed that money because it was spending too much, but instead of cutting spending like all republicans claim they only reduced revenue, which they do constantly irresponsibly. It's a crock of shit, it's disingenuous and it's a slap in the face to anyone voting for that R thinking they'll get anything close to fiscal discipline from children. The D's look like parents in this equation, and while I'm not exactly sold on the idea that we need parents in congress, I'd rather them than whiny little brats who couldn't balance a budget unless it was sitting in their own personal bank accounts. All for them and none for you, they work hard scamming the shit out of people, they deserve to keep more of it while people die in the streets from curable diseases.
27
23
You're cute Jr.
We love it when college boys who've never paid taxes lecture on economics....

Your example taxpayer makes $100K.
He has the chance to work overtime and make an extra $10K. He'll only keep half of it. Does he bust his butt for the priviledge of giving half of it away?

You also keep ignoring the fact that half of all Americans pay zero Federal Income Tax.
And the "rich" already pay an obscenely disproportionate share of income taxes.
The upper 10% who pay 70% of taxes already CAN shift around their money to gain advantage tax-wise. Are they going to put it places that spur economic activity and create jobs for the working slobs and grow the economy or are they going to put it somewhere else?

Since WW2, regardless of the tax rates, the government collects a steady 19.5% of GDP in revenue. The only way to increase government collections is TO GROW THE ECONOMY.
Government spending DOES NOT DO THAT.

So go ahead. Soak the rich. They'll hire lawyers and accountants to show them how to avoid the new taxes. And at the same time shrink the economy even more because the rich are dodging Democrap taxes and not investing where they will get the best return (and grow the economy the most...)

19.5%.
That's all you'll get your greasy greedy hands on.
Your only hope is to make the pie bigger..
28
Don't be silly. Teabaggers don't care about deficits, they only care about having low taxes. We could go the way of Greece for all they care as long as we keep their taxes low. Of course if we don't give them all the services they want they'll be the first and the loudest to bitch.
29
I wouldn't blame Bush as much as the rest of you. That is not to say his policies weren't wrong, but they were not unique to him. The whole cut taxes and deregulate stupidity started with Reagan. Clinton learned the wrong lesson from Bush I's fall, and joined the cut and deregulate crowd. All Bush II did was take it to its natural extreme.

The problem with most analysis of the problems caused by 20 years of tax cutting is that it is usually too superficial, it only looks at the revenue missed from the cuts, and not the distortions to the system produced by them. They also treat the effects of the taxes someone pays on the first $50,000 they make the same as the taxes on the second million they make in that year. Prior to Reagan, the high tax rates paid in the top tax brackets acted as a dis-incentive to executive compensation. Once someone was making 10 million or so as a CEO, they didn't see any benefit in doubling their pay. Profitable businesses had a real incentive to put their profits into growing the business, and had money to allow the worker's wages to rise with the profits. The real cost of 20 years of tax cuts is the stagnation of worker compensation, and jobs lost to off-shoring.
31
@30: Thanks. #4 is doubly FAIL, since apparently the US collects about 140% of what he claims it's possible to collect. But hey, ain't no rule says Mickey Mouse can't grow up a cow, and ain't no rule says Alleged can't talk about shit he has no comprehension of. Presencolinensinaincusol.
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aaawwww-
you girls doing research on wiki?
that's precious!

We told you Federal Income Tax receipts run 19.5%-
you girls are citing TOTAL tax receipts.

remember girls, a little knowledge is a dangerous thing,
which is another way of saying
when you don't know what the fuck you're talking about
you end up looking like a horse's ass
(which, admittedly, is an improvement in appearance for venom...)

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