...and just last night we heard again from the private sector that they will not come off their cash reserves because of the uncertainty around the costs of Obamacare which even the CBO admits is going to be much higher than anyone has calculated so far . How can people call for private sector help when it's the public sector creating all the uncertainty ?

We are in a boom economy with a sufficient growth rate right now, for coming out of a recession. Growth is speeding up, and will be even better this year, having performed solidly last year.
The Paul Ryan plan 'balances' the budget by cutting dramatically from every social program they could name.
It sets income tax rates at 10% for the wealthy, 25% for everyone else, and corporate at 25%. To make up for this, it slashes:
$770 billion from Medicaid (lol seniors)
$30 billion from Medicare (lol seniors again)
$133.5 billion from Food Stamps- SNAP (lol single mothers)
$12 billion from State Department
Extra +$40 billion to defense (wut, no cut? lol)

...total horseshit . Any politician or economist who made such a claim would be run out of town .

They aren't raising taxes to 'fix the budget', they aren't fixing the budget. They're lowering taxes on the wealthy dramatically, to the point they only have to pay $10% when everyone else pays $25%, then they're lowering the corporate tax rate
How do they plan to balance the budget without raising taxes? By assuming that the government-propelled economic boom continues at 3% annual growth (only possible because of the government stimulus and encouragement- which they would remove entirely), and then cutting every single social program across the board into oblivion, until they're only shells of what they used to be- basically annihilating medicaid/medicare entirely.

So what they're doing is assuming that our economy continues to grow as it is under Obama's reins right now, which would be implausible once they cut all the guts out of the growth, and then cut everything anyway.
When a sensible approach would be to continue to spur on the economy, and fix the deficit by making the wealthy pay the same tax as the rest of us (something they got to cheat their way out of thanks to Bush, Bush & Reagan)

This post was edited by Goomshill on Mar 29 2012 07:48am

You think a 3% annual growth rate is no longer sufficient to be called "solid", like it has been for the past hundred years?
3% has historically been the healthiest growth rate there is. Any economist will tell you that in a heart beat

If we're below 2-3%, it means we're in a recession. If we're above 3%, it means we're either inflating rapidly, or on the cusp of a bubble, both unhealthy

http://economistsview.typepad.com/economistsview/2007/01/what_output_gro.html

We're in the sweet spot of economic growth right now.

A pretty gross budget to say the least.
Food and health care should not be the first and ~only things cut when we have lots of excess junk in the budget.
We can afford to give billions and billions of dollars away for free to many foreign govts across the world and we can spend trillions on wars we have no business being in, but we have to cut medicaid/medicare and foodstamps instead? Insanity


I know another guy by the name of Paul that is more serious about balancing the budget.

Lol, what makes you think that we're giving it away for free?

You mean Fidel Castro? That guy who says the dollar is devaluating and national debt is undereported and we need to stop American imperialism and bring troops home and stop developing progressively more destructive bombs and quit interventionism?

Paul/Castro 2012!