President Obama Re-Elected - Page 146

On June 21 2012 03:28 farvacola wrote:

Yes, it is wrong and disingenuous to simply cut and paste names/specifics of one instance and superimpose them overtop the current one, especially when judicial precedent in regards to executive privilege puts such a strong emphasis on the context/facts concerning each individual case. It is wrong to ignore that Bush's protection of Rove came as part of a string of executive claims on the part of Bush, it is wrong to assume the impossibility of national security being a factor in the F&F scandal, and most importantly, it is generally wrong to make judgements based on assumptions.

Based on the manner with which executive privilege is usually used, this is what will happen. After an extensive interior investigation, Obama will remove the executive privilege, punish those who are responsible, and life will go on. Until something more substantive comes to pass, everything is mere conjecture and posturing at this point.

On June 21 2012 03:38 xDaunt wrote:


What has Obama ever done that gives you the impression that he would actually do this? This smells suspiciously like a willful suspension of disbelief.

On June 21 2012 01:32 Harrow wrote:


Uh...no. Reagan didn't lower the national debt. Public debt nearly tripled under his administration.

Where in the World Will Mitt Romney Get the Money to Fund His Promised Increase in Defense Spending?
GOP presidential nominee Mitt Romney likes to give speeches in front a big banner that reads "cut the spending." But he remains coy about what he wants to see cut, and there's one major part of the budget that he says he'd actually like to see increased significantly: defense spending.

Romney has not only not promised to cap military spending, he's consistently touted his promise to subject the military budget to a mandatory minmum equal to 4 percent of GDP, which would make the Pentagon budget 0.7 points higher than the defense spending baseline under President Obama. Where's he going to get the money for a big spending increase? The best answer is: He's probably not going to get it from anywhere.

Cato's Christopher Preble points to a Defense News article making the obvious point: Even if you can make the numbers add up, the politics don't.

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"Yet combined with his commitment to cut taxes and reduce the national debt, Romney’s pledge to grow the defense budget appears politically impossible, if technically doable, according to defense budget experts.

"“If you put all of the promises together, it doesn’t all add up,” said Todd Harrison, a senior fellow for defense budget studies at the nonpartisan Center for Strategic and Budgetary Assessments.

"“The administration may change, but the math remains the same,” Harrison said. “If you want to increase spending on defense over the next decade and reduce the deficit, then that necessarily means sharp reductions in Social Security, Medicare and Medicaid or sharp increases in taxes, or some combination of the two. But those are the major components you have to work with within the budget.”

"Over the past decade, the U.S. government borrowed to increase spending, including money to fund the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan and larger base budgets at the Pentagon."

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According to Preble's calculations, Romney's spending floor would require a 42 percent increase in defense spending compared to the Reagan era and a 64 percent increase over average annual budgets post Cold War. All together, the requirement would add $2.58 trillion over the next decade's current baseline. That's an even bigger challenge given Romney's other commitments. He has variously promised to cap overall government spending as a percentage of GDP, not cut Medicare, and not raise taxes. How might all of these promises fit together? Romney won't say, admitting that his budget plan can't be scored. Independent analysts that have tried to score his proposals suggest it will increase the debt over the next decade.

The 4 percent spending floor is the sort of policy gimmick that suggests that Romney doesn't take spending or budgeting seriously. He and his campaign just throw out ideas because they think it's what people want to hear. It's absurd to think that these sorts of increases in defense spending are at all necessary. And it's just as absurd to think that they're even remotely plausible given the political climate and the rest of Romney's stated policy commitments.

On June 21 2012 08:25 Defacer wrote:
I know that some of my fellow TL members despise Obama's economic plan/policies.

But this article sums up why I prefer Obama's plan over Romney's -- becasues at least Obama has proposed an actual plan, more or less. You can criticize or question whether or not it will be effective, but at least it's intellecutally honest and make mathematical sense.

From the beginning, Romney's 'proposals' have been nothing more than emptry rhetoric and posturing, and I think people are finally noticing.



http://reason.com/blog/2012/06/19/where-in-the-world-will-mitt-romney-get?utm_source=feedburner&utm_medium=feed&utm_campaign=Feed: reason/HitandRun (Reason Online - Hit & Run Blog)

On June 21 2012 08:28 smarty pants wrote:


This isn't a plan?

On June 21 2012 08:28 smarty pants wrote:


This isn't a plan?

On June 21 2012 08:39 Defacer wrote:
Let's just look at this example from Romney's 'plan'

"Requires spending cuts of approximately $500 billion per year in 2016 assuming robust economic recovery with 4% annual growth, and reversal of irresponsible Obama-era defense cuts."

In the same sentence, he proposes cutting spending by $500 billion while increasing defense spending. What kind of double-speak is this?

On June 21 2012 08:48 smarty pants wrote:
fuck tl has horrible shitty programming.

delete this post.

On June 21 2012 09:46 Probulous wrote:


Don't insult the wizard. He is powerful and doesn't take kindly to petulant minions

On June 21 2012 10:47 Signet wrote:

That's the point of the reason article. The federal government spends most of its budget on defense/national security, medicare, and social security. In fact when you add those things together, plus interest payments on the debt, that's already about $300 billion more than the government takes in in tax revenue.

So if you decrease taxes, increasing defense spending, keep medicare and social security the same (which Romney has also said he'll do), you basically have to completely eliminate all other federal spending - from roads to the justice department to the state department - in order to keep the deficit what it is right now.

Then again it's not even clear if he understands what the term "defense cuts" means. Here is defense spending before and after Obama entered office:


Discretionary Spending: Department of Defense
FY 2008: $481.4 billion
FY 2009: $515.4 billion (this is the last budget submitted by Bush, covering October 2008 - September 2009)
FY 2010: $663.7 billion
FY 2011: $700 billion
FY 2012: $688.3 billion

(2011: http://www.cbo.gov/publication/42636
other years wikipedia, eg http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2012_United_States_federal_budget )

On June 21 2012 11:03 biology]major wrote:

Politics aside, Romney's economic plan is not only vague and unexplained fully (tax loop hole removals?), it is also illogical and irresponsible.

Under current tax law, certain kinds of financiers, including private equity investors and some managers of hedge funds, are allowed to treat bonuses like long-term investment income, called carried interest, taxable at the maximum 15 percent capital gains rate. Others have to pay up to 35 percent taxes on their labor income. The cost to the U.S. Treasury is more than $1 billion a year.

Mitt Romney’s remarks at a private fundraiser Sunday, overheard by two campaign reporters, reveal that, even when confiding in well-heeled supporters, his tax plan doesn’t add up.

At a Palm Beach, Fla. estate, Romney told big-money donors he’ll “probably eliminate for high-income people” the mortgage interest deduction on second homes, as well as deductions for state income and property taxes. “By virtue of doing that, we’ll get the same tax revenue, but we’ll have lower rates,” he said, in remarks overheard by NBC News and the Wall Street Journal.

A big mystery of Romney’s tax pledge — to “cut tax rates across the board by 20 percent” and reduce the corporate tax rate from 35 percent to 25 percent — is what tax loopholes he’ll close to pay for the cost.

Romney’s tax cuts are projected to cost the federal government $5 trillion over 10 years, on top of the $4 trillion 10-year cost of making the Bush tax cuts permanent. Existing deductions and exemptions in the tax code, all together, reduce receipts by about $1 trillion per year, according to estimates.

Chuck Marr, director of federal tax policy at the Center on Budget and Policy Priorities, said all the deductions Romney proposed to scrap “would pay for less than 20 percent” of the $5 trillion cost of his tax plan. “The deductions he unveiled would raise less than $1 trillion,” he said.

Romney’s mortgage interest proposal would yield “probably less than 1 percent of the total cost” of his tax cuts, Marr said, while axing the state and local deduction for everyone, which would be very difficult to enact politically, would yield about $800 billion to $900 billion over 10 years. “So that’d be a major step but still pay for a small share of his tax cuts,” Marr said.

It’s unclear whether Romney would eliminate these expenditures entirely or simply cap them, to limit the extent to which they benefit high-income earners.

The deductibility of home mortgage interest and the tax exemption for employer-provided health care eat up a big chunk of the $1 trillion in revenue the government loses annually because of tax expenditures. Both are very popular politically, and they’ve become fundamental to the country’s housing and health care policy. Other perks, like the low capital gains rate and oil and gas subsidies, are backed by powerful constituencies that both parties, but particularly Republicans, are at pains to scale back.

The Romney campaign backed away from the remarks Monday morning, suggesting they’re aware the bad math could become a political liability. “He was just discussing ideas that came up on the campaign trail,” Romney surrogate Jim Talent told reporters on a conference call Monday. “He wasn’t announcing a policy yesterday. We don’t have any plans now to announce new policies.”

That has given Romney’s political opponents ammunition to fire away at his tax plan.

“I’m not sure how much stock we should put into overheard remarks at a fundraiser, but even if these were the two deductions he would eliminate, they wouldn’t come close to offsetting the tax cut he wants to give to the rich,” said Seth Hanlon, director of fiscal reform at the Center for American Progress Action Fund. “It’s a small fraction of filling the fiscal hole he’d have dug.”

On June 21 2012 11:03 biologymajor wrote:

Even if he cut all of public sector jobs and eliminated all other federal spending, it would not be enough to compensate for the deficit created by defense spending + decrease in taxes for the wealthy. A raise of taxes on the middle class would be a last resort, and ofcourse that would be some of the worst economic policy at the moment. This is the time to invest in the public sector, put people to work and drive the economy. The infrastructure created by investing in the public sector will not only put people to work now, but also improve efficiency of the country for the future. In contrast to Romney's economic plans which relies completely on trickle down theory. The trickle down theory has already been shown to be obsolete, because of the global market. A company can always extend its profits by hiring outside of the U.S., which is basically whats happened in the last decade. Even through this recession, the top 1% have had the highest profits they have seen in decades, while the middle class is significantly worse. U.S is ranked at around 100th in the world in income inequality, which is pathetic for "the greatest country in the world".

Politics aside, Romney's economic plan is not only vague and unexplained fully (tax loop hole removals?), it is also illogical and irresponsible. From a personal perspective, I have always valued education, infrastructure and research to be the highest of importance after economic stability. The way the plans are proposed from both candidates, it is an easy choice for me personally. Romney's lack of solid stance on any of the important topics is also very troublesome. Atleast having an opinion to critique is important, how can we even consider a candidate running for the greatest nation if he is afraid of putting his ideas forward?

On June 21 2012 11:53 smarty pants wrote:


What broken thinking. This will only take away from the labor pool that could be working else where in the private sector. Building roads would be contracted from government organizations that will get comfy with construction companies and would end in lots of deals and only enhance government corruption.

Instead the government should give incentives to job creators that actually put people to work. We have a huge lack of manufacturer in this country, with most jobs being created going to the service sector which generally pay less.

On June 21 2012 12:32 DoubleReed wrote:

We really don't have a huge lack of manufacturing in this country. It may be declining, but it's still huge. But you're implying that that manufacturing should be our strength, when realistically that's only one part of our massively powerful economy. If we don't need more manufacturing or we don't have the comparative advantage then who cares?

So you don't think that infrastructure is a worthwhile idea? I'm so confused here. Infrastructure makes the economy more efficient and powerful. Even conservatives agree with this kind of thing. Public projects to enhance infrastructure is not a controversial idea at all. You're acting fringe.