QuakerOats;678504 wrote:http://www.bloomberg.com/news/2011-02-14/irs-would-add-5-000-employees-under-obama-s-budget-proposal.html

UNREAL! We should already be in the process of dismantiling the IRS and here he goes with adding another 5,000 bureaucrats to harass and regulate THE PEOPLE even further.


Change we can believe in ............

tk421;678652 wrote:You're okay with the government spending 1.6 Trillion dollars more than it takes in?

ptown_trojans_1;678613 wrote:IRS is not going anywhere, sorry. Hell, even Reagan didn't get rid of it.
Also, what is wrong with going after tax cheats?
Even my R friends are in favor of that one.

I'm ok with the budget. It obviously could have gone more, but that is irrelevant as no budget submitted is the same as passed by Congress.

Writerbuckeye;678691 wrote:I'd have preferred 5,000 new investigators to find and eliminate Medicare and Medicaid fraud. Those folks could easily pay for themselves quicker than further harassment of taxpayers.

ptown_trojans_1;678658 wrote:No, but dramatically balancing the budget right now is not an option as is destabilizing.
A more gradual balancing is the more prudent way to do it.

QuakerOats;678758 wrote:Completely false, rookie. The best way to do it is QUICK and DEEP. Get the most massive amount of pain out of the way quickest .... any turnaround specialist knows this. I think many in DC are still in complete fantasy land and they have lived it so long they simply cannot realize the extent of insolvency we are already in. If we do not IMMEDIATELY halt the growth of the debt, we are finished.

GET IN THE GAME, PLEASE!

ptown_trojans_1;678658 wrote:No, but dramatically balancing the budget right now is not an option as is destabilizing.
A more gradual balancing is the more prudent way to do it.

I would have loved the budget to tackle SS and Medicare, as well as guy the Education and other domestic departments. I would have loved to see some of the recommendations from the budget commission. But, we'll see what Congress does as that is what matters now. I'm ok with this budget as it is just a starting point.

ptown_trojans_1;678658 wrote:A more gradual balancing is the more prudent way to do it.

believer;679016 wrote:That sounds great but a more gradual spending increase is a far more likely scenario. It may not be prudent but not much coming out of the Beltway is.

ptown_trojans_1;679037 wrote:Sadly, I see that too as more likely.
No one has the guts to really tackle SS and Medicare and as a result, the budget will keep going up.

Belly35;679052 wrote:The first step into SS, Medicare and Welfare is to be serious about fraud within the organization and with those creating fraud. If the public would see a serious effort to elimination of abuse and fraud them the cuts many not have to be so deep.
Cut to just cut without correcting the abuse first will only lead to addition fraud and the same old same old situation. Clean the house before cut the power off

Despite its savings, Obama's budget projects a record $1.65 trillion deficit this year, falling to $1.1 trillion next year and easing thereafter. Even so, it stands to generate a mammoth $7.2 trillion sea of red ink over the next 10 years, a number that would be even larger had the president not claimed over $1 trillion in 10-year savings by winding down the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan.

By 2021, Obama projects that $844 billion out of the $5.7 trillion federal budget would go toward paying interest on the government's debt. Such interest payments would exceed the size of the entire federal budget in 1983.

ptown_trojans_1;679337 wrote:Again, 80% of the budget are four programs: SS, Medicare, Medicaid and Pentagon.
Pentagon went down, but all the others went up-hence the budget went up.
The money quote this morning from Morning Joe:
Joe Scarborough: "When it comes to touching these three programs [Social Security, Medicare and Medicaid], President Obama is a coward, politically. And it is impacting Republicans on the Hill, who are cowards politically as well. While this country economically burns, they are doing absolutely nothing."

Even during his Press conference the President said he is waiting on the R's to offer solutions. Thing is the President needs to man up and offer his solutions.

jhay78;679370 wrote:Republicans don't even have to talk about actual cuts in SS to get roasted by Dems. If they even dare to mention scaling back COLA's, they get blasted.

I find it ironic that programs created by Dems, lauded by Dems, and paraded as great American success stories by Dems, are supposed to be fixed (at great political consequence) by Republicans. Obama and the Dems don't have to fix it because nobody in the mainstream media holds them accountable.

jhay78;679370 wrote:I find it ironic that programs created by Dems, lauded by Dems, and paraded as great American success stories by Dems, are supposed to be fixed (at great political consequence) by Republicans. Obama and the Dems don't have to fix it because nobody in the mainstream media holds them accountable.

BGFalcons82;679421 wrote:Excellent point, jhay! Funny how programs, such as the "Great Society" of LBJ, have had their yokes placed around the necks of the party that didn't want them to begin with.

And ptown... "R's are in power now, so they need to offer solutions." Ummm....did the R's overtake the Senate and White House in the past hour or so? :rolleyes:

ptown_trojans_1;679337 wrote:Again, 80% of the budget are four programs: SS, Medicare, Medicaid and Pentagon.....

ptown_trojans_1;679391 wrote:I think most people blame both parties for the mess.
I'll give W credit, back in 2005 he tried to reform SS, but got killed on the Hill, and his plan died.

The reason why R's are getting tasked with fixing the big three is if they want to tackle the debt, they have to tackle those issues.
R's are in power now, so they need to offer solutions. The D's are weak on it, really.