Merciless.
http://www.theblaze.com/stories/shock-graphics-show-severity-of-proposed-obama-budget-cuts/
http://www.nytimes.com/2011/02/06/opinion/06lew.html?_r=3&ref=opinion
Shock Graphics Show Severity of Proposed Obama Budget Cuts
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Now, back to Senator Paul's budget. Look at it. I mean REALLY look at it. This is about as dead on arrival as is politically possible for a budget proposal to be. These two items positioned right next to each other show you everything that you need to know. DEFENSE.......................................................$47,500,000,000. (6.5%) EDUCATION..................................................$78,000,000,000 (83%) Only the Pell grant program survives. Cutting out 47.5 billion dollars from the Defense budget would only reduce it by 6.5%, but Rand Paul would rather eliminate over 83% of our Education Budget? This is honestly nothing more than a Republican fantasy dream put on paper. I doubt that there are even that many Republicans that want to go face the voters and say things like: "Because we think our children are the future of this country and we're falling behind the rest of the world in things like math and science, we've cut spending on their education by 83%.""Because it's so important for the U.S. to be on the cutting edge of new scientific developments, we've cut the National Science Foundation by 62%."
"Because we think it is important that there be no discrimination when it comes to Fair Housing and Equal Opportunity, we're eliminating the Department of Housing and Urban Development completely." (Among other things that cabinet level position is responsible for...) You get the idea. These programs/government entities exist and get more and more funding every year for two very important reasons: 1. They do useful things. Things that we, as a country, have felt is the legitimate role of government for decades.
2. The U.S. keeps growing each year, therefore the jobs that these programs/government entities do needs more resources because the job they need to do keeps getting bigger. As a simple analogy, think of staffing a tech support call center. Let's say that three people can handle 40 calls a day and give good service. If the call volume goes up to 80 per day, then those three people may not be enough and you need to invest in a larger tech support staff. Pretty basic right? It's the same way things like education work. If the number of kids that need to be educated goes up, then the money you need to spend to do things like build and maintain more schools, hire and train more teachers and support staff, etc. also goes up. And since the U.S. population is going to continue to grow, so is the size of government if we want to continue to have a public school system. So for Mr. Paul to blithely suggest cutting the education budget by 83%, what does he think is going to be the result? Unless you really feel that our education system is so bloated and inefficient that we can magically IMPROVE the quality of our schools and our education by removing 83% of the funding then what will happen is that our kids will get deeply dumber, less of them will be able to go to college, and the U.S. will gradually over time lose our ability to compete globally. Go through the rest of the list and think about what each one does and how slashing their funding billions and billions of dollars a year will impact their ability to do what they do successfully. So all these cuts that would utterly ravage our government's ability to do important things, and it still wouldn't actually accomplish it's goal. We'd still have a huge budget shortfall of approximately 800 billion to 1 trillion dollars. Let me repeat that: Even if every single one of Senator Paul's draconian cuts to all these discretionary spending programs went through, we'd still have an annual budget deficit of one trillion dollars. A serious approach to reducing the longterm structural deficit involves precisely three things. 1. Entitlement program changes (Social Security, Medicare, etc.) 2. Defense/military changes 3. Tax changes Any deficit reduction plan that is not 95% composed of some combination of cuts to Entitlement and Defense and increases in taxes is, flat out, not a serious deficit reduction strategy. It is unserious from a political standpoint, since I would wager even the majority of Republicans will run away as fast as they can from Rand Paul's recommended cuts to the "everything else" category of the first pie graph above. And it's unserious from the end goal it is trying to accomplish: actually reducing the longterm deficit since those are not the major areas we spend the vast majority of our money.
This is not difficult to understand when you take a high level view and look at where our spending really comes from as a country.
[QUOTE="nocoolnamejim"]
We need to get our asses out of Iraq and Afghanistan SOON.
Storm_Marine
Are there any estimates to how much those to place are costing the US?
PS I feel you've hijacked what was supposed to be a humorous thread. :(
I'm sorry! I didn't mean to hijack. I can back out if you want? To be fair, there's plenty to mock when it comes to politics! (And to answer your question...) This is the best visual representation that I've seen on the cost of the various factors causing our deficit.
[QUOTE="Storm_Marine"][QUOTE="nocoolnamejim"]
We need to get our asses out of Iraq and Afghanistan SOON.
nocoolnamejim
Are there any estimates to how much those to place are costing the US?
PS I feel you've hijacked what was supposed to be a humorous thread. :(
I'm sorry! I didn't mean to hijack. I can back out if you want? To be fair, there's plenty to mock when it comes to politics! (And to answer your question...) This is the best visual representation that I've seen on the cost of the various factors causing our deficit.MMmmm look at those delicious Bush era tax cuts. Imagine if they weren't there. How wonderful.
Oh, and if Rand paul actually would like to go ahead with that kind of buget, he's ****ed in the head. 83% cut to education with a 4.9% cut to military spending? Nice to see his priorities are with making Americans smarter.
Since the TC's link references the Rand Paul proposal, allow me to discuss Senator Paul's proposed budget cuts. For those of you who are at all curious, here is a detailed view of the proposal for the new Rand Paul budget that shows how he would save the U.S. $500 billion per year. Before I proceed further, I want to show you all two important visual representations of how the U.S. spends your tax dollars if you live in this country.
"Because it's so important for the U.S. to be on the cutting edge of new scientific developments, we've cut the National Science Foundation by 62%."
"Because we think it is important that there be no discrimination when it comes to Fair Housing and Equal Opportunity, we're eliminating the Department of Housing and Urban Development completely." (Among other things that cabinet level position is responsible for...) You get the idea. These programs/government entities exist and get more and more funding every year for two very important reasons: 1. They do useful things. Things that we, as a country, have felt is the legitimate role of government for decades.
2. The U.S. keeps growing each year, therefore the jobs that these programs/government entities do needs more resources because the job they need to do keeps getting bigger. As a simple analogy, think of staffing a tech support call center. Let's say that three people can handle 40 calls a day and give good service. If the call volume goes up to 80 per day, then those three people may not be enough and you need to invest in a larger tech support staff. Pretty basic right? It's the same way things like education work. If the number of kids that need to be educated goes up, then the money you need to spend to do things like build and maintain more schools, hire and train more teachers and support staff, etc. also goes up. And since the U.S. population is going to continue to grow, so is the size of government if we want to continue to have a public school system. So for Mr. Paul to blithely suggest cutting the education budget by 83%, what does he think is going to be the result? Unless you really feel that our education system is so bloated and inefficient that we can magically IMPROVE the quality of our schools and our education by removing 83% of the funding then what will happen is that our kids will get deeply dumber, less of them will be able to go to college, and the U.S. will gradually over time lose our ability to compete globally. Go through the rest of the list and think about what each one does and how slashing their funding billions and billions of dollars a year will impact their ability to do what they do successfully. So all these cuts that would utterly ravage our government's ability to do important things, and it still wouldn't actually accomplish it's goal. We'd still have a huge budget shortfall of approximately 800 billion to 1 trillion dollars. Let me repeat that: Even if every single one of Senator Paul's draconian cuts to all these discretionary spending programs went through, we'd still have an annual budget deficit of one trillion dollars. A serious approach to reducing the longterm structural deficit involves precisely three things. 1. Entitlement program changes (Social Security, Medicare, etc.) 2. Defense/military changes 3. Tax changes Any deficit reduction plan that is not 95% composed of some combination of cuts to Entitlement and Defense and increases in taxes is, flat out, not a serious deficit reduction strategy. It is unserious from a political standpoint, since I would wager even the majority of Republicans will run away as fast as they can from Rand Paul's recommended cuts to the "everything else" category of the first pie graph above. And it's unserious from the end goal it is trying to accomplish: actually reducing the longterm deficit since those are not the major areas we spend the vast majority of our money.
This is not difficult to understand when you take a high level view and look at where our spending really comes from as a country.nocoolnamejim
To be fair, this is exactly what Rand Paul says about Education:
The mere existence of the Department of Education is an overreach of power by the federal government. State and
local governments, parents, and teachers are far better equipped to meet the needs of their students than this redtape laden department, which benefits teachers' unions more than pupils. However, Pell Grants will be preserved in
this proposal.
The Department of Education has increasingly meddled with the more traditional idea of education being tailored to
the needs and requirement of communities and states. The growth in education spending at the federal level has
gone from nearly $53 billion in 2001 to an estimated $95 billion in FY2011 – an 80 percent increase. When the
federal government spends money, those are resources that are drained from the state, diluted by way of large
Washington bureaucracy, and sent back to the school districts with red tape and strings attached.
During the first half of the past century, America ranked among the most educated population in the world. Since that
time, the role of the federal government in education has expanded significantly, at one point (FY2009) accounting for
10 percent of all government spending. The expansion of the role of the federal government in education has been
detrimental, as the U.S. now ranks far below other economically developed countries. In December 2010, the OECD
reported that the U.S. ranked 14th in reading skills, 17th in science, and 25th in mathematics (considered below
average) out of 35 developed nations.
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