[Adak]

Originally Posted by Ibby

Your definition of "actual current spending" makes no broader political sense (as has already been pointed out to you IN THIS THREAD) and so i shall ignore it.

Yes, the left ALWAYS has an excuse for not cutting spending - 'tis too hot, 'tis too cold, 'tis the wrong season to cut spending, You can't cut spending now, because we <enter excuse here>.

The left wanted single payer. Then they wanted exchanges. Then they got a plan that the Heritage Foundation invented. Oops. They ended up where the right was ten years ago, and the right moved right! yum yum, taste that compromise.

The conservatives are not against a nationalized health care service, IF they run a pilot in a region, and show it can work as well as they claim it will.

You can't just take over some odd 20% of the nations economy (the health care system), with something as full of nonsense as Obama care.

I loved Nancy Pelosi (former Speaker of the House)'s comments on it: "You don't need to read it - vote on it first, and we'll finish writing it, later".

What kind of horse shit thinking is that?

Remind me who we're at war with? Russia? no, wait, China? No, uh, NK? well, yes, technically, but not a shooting war anymore, ...

Well, let's see:

1) North Korea - has nukes, developing ICBM's, and a crackpot of a dictator. Need I say more?

2) We are providing security for every tanker (almost) that travels through the Straits of Hormuz, because the Iranians have attacked several of them with high speed gunboats.

3) We are still in Afghanistan - another year or two for that.

4) Still guarding Japan, which is in a heated argument with China, over ownership of some islands between the two.

5) Assad in Syria has chemical weapons, and is moving them around. At some point, he's likely to use them, since he is slowly losing the civil war.

Guess who will have to step in, if a slaughter is (hopefully), to be avoided?

6) If Iran goes ahead with developing nuclear weapons, or closes the Straits of Hormuz, we will immediately be at war, since nearly 38% of the world's oil passes through those Straits.

Yes, we need to keep our military strong, clearly. The UK, for instance, doesn't even have a single full size air craft carrier, for 2013.

Obama has done absolutely nothing to change the guns laws from when he was elected into office, except to allow concealed carry in federally-maintained parks. OH GOSH LOOK AT THAT GUNHATER!

He tried - the calls to the Senate and House switchboards were so numerous, he had to stop.

The left would be happy to close all the loopholes, if it meant we could lower taxes on the middle class/poor to make up for taking THEIR deductions away! it's the right's dogmatic insistence that CORPORATE and WEALTHY loopholes and deductions stay, or that the WEALTHY deserve to pay less, that is stopping comprehensive reform. The left has been compromising for years! (see, continuing the bush cuts for the wealthy, even though they didn't want to and bernie sanders filibustered it, to save the tax cuts for the poor and the middle-class)

The Republicans have to plead "guilty" on this one. They want to favor their constituents with tax exemptions, etc., just as much as Democrats want to favor theirs. Conservatives just want low taxes, and a relatively flat tax rate.

You and I are at a fundamental disagreement about what level of corporate regulation is GOOD for business. I would slam any company who wanted to sell goods or services in the US with HUGE fines if they use exploitative labor tactics, which would then encourage economic growth here at home, as companies who kept jobs here would be no more profitable than ones who use cheap labor. That's a fairly common left-wing idea. It's the right who isn't letting regulatory tightening, and is in fact still asking for less regulation. The right is generally further from the status quo than the left when it comes to how much regulation is necessary.

You can't slam a business for responding to a new law or treaty, that demands they act, or risk going bankrupt. It's our politicians we should be furious at, not our businessmen. They didn't WANT to have to move to China, they were forced into it, by economic realities which our signed treaties forced down their throats.

Oh, China doesn't call their workers "virtual slaves", NO, NO! The workers there have been committing suicide at the Foxconn (Intel motherboards) plant, because they really LIKE their jobs.

Nobody likes wars, but what are you going to do when Assad starts using nerve gas on the rebels, from aircraft sprayers (like Chemical Ali did in Iraq)?

What are you going to do when Iran stops all the oil going through the Straits, as they have threatened, and attacks our fleet in the Gulf of Persia? I don't believe running away and hiding is a viable option.

Wait, so, we should put more money into our military, strengthen it, but bring back most of the people out there being our military? That seems like a total contradiction to me. ...

I don't want to increase funds to the military, but I do want to stop any cuts to it, and use our funds better - and we can't do that with our personnel spread out all over the globe, guarding nations that have long ago been able to guard themselves. That's very expensive, year after year. Very hard on the military families, as well. My nephew was an officer in the Army - and was overseas or in the field, nearly all the time. Bosnia, Iraq, year long training in Germany, year long deployment in South Korea, long field training, exercises, etc. After 10 years of that, his marriage was in the toilet. He got out, but it was too late to save his marriage.

I haven't documented all of my assertions in this thread, because I believe the most basic one, is self-evident.

We have sharply increased our spending, and we can't continue to do that, without running the risk of a total fiscal crisis. Which would be much worse than the fiscal "cliff", btw.

We CAN and we SHOULD cut our current spending, back to the levels of the Clinton years, and perhaps, increase our tax revenues, as well - and not just on the rich.

Problem is, the Democrats won't hear of cutting our current spending, and only want to even TALK about cutting our projected spending, by a small percentage.

That won't do the job. It still continues to run up our National Debt, and continually diminish the value of every US dollar, everywhere. This seems like easy to understand, common sense to me.