Democrats blast Cravaack on Medicare changes
April 25, 2011 at 7:00 pm in Duluth News Tribune
In February, before freshman Republican U.S. Rep. Chip Cravaack had even taken a vote on Medicare, left-leaning groups made it clear they would use the issue to try to define Cravaack as out of touch with his district.
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It would appear that the revolt already started, last fall, with the involuntary “retirement” of a number of liberal politicians. Anyone who thinks we can just keep blindly (key concept, here) funding unsustainable government programs is liable to discover just how out-of-touch they really are when those of us in the middle-class – who actually pay most of the taxes collected – decide we’re not going to be the liberal-left’s sugar-daddies any more.
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your argument is not valid, everyone is forced to take government services in one form or the other whether they want them or not.
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by you’re reply it appears you completely don’t understand what I said. I can use your own argument back by saying why don’t you write an extra check to the IRS instead of taking a tax refund. Seams that would be less hypocritical than advocating to raise taxes on producers.
when the government gives you no option to opt out of FICA , isnt that forcing you to take a S.S. check?
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Sure! Just as soon as obama pays for this latest one out of his own pocket.
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Yeah, we were running a surplus due to the dot.com bubble, which burst around the time of the 2000 Election and had nothing to do with government in the first place. The surplus had nothing to do with higher taxes; it had to do with fiscal restraint pushed by House Republicans that were elected in 1994, though it might be noted that the budget was only running a small surplus when the increase in Social Security taxes was taken into account.
Even in 1996, Nobel Peace-prize winning economist and noted liberal Paul Krugman was pushing for Paul Ryan-esque reforms to entitlement spending–most specifically, Medicare and Social Security. Like Kerry, he was “for it before he was against it.”
As for your “Eat the Rich” philosophy, we could tax every dollar of income over $250k at 100% and still not cover the budget deficit for the current year. Of course, in doing so, we’d effectively destroy the engine of job creation in the United States.
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Lloyd and Pat, could you stop with the caveman ignorance and intimidation tactics and tell us all how we can eliminate the deficit spending and fulfill the currently unsustainable Medicare, Medicaid and Social Security promises, future obligations?
I’m eager to hear a factual answer, if you can.
Thanks.
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Lloyd, this was on CBS’s 60 Minutes in March of this year. Take the 13 minutes to watch it and then let me know how well that taxing the rich corporations is doing.
I can’t wait to hear back from you.
http://www.cbsnews.com/video/watch/?id=7360932n&tag=cbsnewsMainColumnArea.10
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What is it that liberal democrats don’t understand about a 14 trillion dollar in the hole debt? Everyone needs to have “Skin in the game” as Obama quoted. Obama needs a lesson in Economics 101. How many of you are in unsustainable debt? Cuts are hard, we are all going to be affected. Chip Cravaak has the courage to do what we elected him to do.
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Taxing the rich will give them some skin in the game.
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Todd, please define “the rich”.
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and who do we tax once we’ve confiscated the wealth from the “rich”? No one here can give a sustainable answer on how you keep funding debt plus policies that add to the debt. We don’t have a revenue problem, we have a spending problem.
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Even the rich don’t have enough money to fund these promises:
http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424052748704621304576267113524583554.html
**** But assume that tax policy confiscated all the taxable income of all the “millionaires and billionaires†Mr. Obama singled out. That yields merely about $938 billion, which is sand on the beach amid the $4 trillion White House budget, a $1.65 trillion deficit, and spending at 25% as a share of the economy, a post-World War II record.*****
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Todd Ronning, Taxing the 47% paying no taxes will give them some skin in the game!
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Raising tax rates does not translate into raising revenue. It translates into a weaker economy which results in REDUCED revenue and more poverty and a lower standard of living for everyone.
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David, we are well on our way into a weaker economy and a lower standard of living.
I think we can all agree it sucks going economically downhill.
I hope we can figure out that this is an American problem but it appears we are too divided and have lost our way as the great country we once knew.
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b.d. I am afraid not everyone agrees this sucks. How may times have you read
** Americans constitute less than 5% of the world’s population, but consumes 26% of the**
This is true since America has been creating 26% of the world’s wealth. I am afraid that the people who repeat the above mantra, AS IF IT”S A PROBLEM, are perfectly happy to see America decline economically.
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David, wealth cannot be “created”. It can only change hands. That’s what the GOP doesn’t get.
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That depends, Lloyd. What constitutes a “stronger economy”?
Also: How did the Bush tax cuts result in the recession of 2008?
Please be specific. You’re lobbing some pretty big bombs without much information backing it up.
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If those “Bush tax cuts” were so great, why did Obama continue them. How about the democratic talking point of TARP and the bailouts. The American people were told that unemployment would not go past 8% if TARP was passed, and please remind me the figure it went to. According to Google data, it was 10.6% January 2010.
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President Obama continued the tax cuts because when he assumed office there was a recession and potential depression on-going. The worst thing he could have done in those circumstances would have been to add more taxation on the population as a whole. Now that the economy is beginning to recover, some tax increases could be utilized to bring down the debt.
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So taxing the job creators during an alleged “recovery” is conducive to continued economic growth?
I’m going to assume you mean bring down the “deficit”, and not bring down the “debt”, so I won’t comment on the obvious difference between the two.
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Just as Obama said “Elections have consequences.”
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That’s not courage; that’s pandering to his base. When Chip manages to figure out how to maintain our social safety net without destroying it, let me know.
The big sell on AM radio this week is that Chip really didin’t vote to end medicare. The talk show hosts are blatting that he only voted to end medicare for those 55 and under. Guess what, those 55 and under are going to need it just like the oldsters today need it. Chip voted to end medicare. He’d rather do that than raise taxes back to their pre-Bush level so that we could get oiut of the budget mess we are in.
Chip is not courageous. He is fearful of losing his big money backing.
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Oh my word. I’ve never seen so much blatant misinformation in one post. Let me go point-by-point:
1. It’s a reform of Medicare, Patty. Not “ending Medicare”. I see no problem with giving seniors the choice as to what their health insurance covers and does not cover. Medicare is one-size-fits-all, is driving doctors out of the market of caring for seniors and has driven up the cost of health care across the board. Also notable is the fact that this reform will not affect anyone over the age of 55, so current benefits will remain as they are. This will allow for future recipients to become educated on their health care options.
2. Raising taxes to pre-Bush levels will generate about $150 billion, which is 10% of our projected budget deficit–and that is only if ALL of the cuts are rescinded, not just the ones for the “rich”. To even DREAM that $150MM will fix our fiscal issues is preposterous.
3. Chip doesn’t have any “big money backing”. His campaign funding was 1/4 of Oberstar’s.
Once again, a FABULOUSLY SENSATIONALIZED POST by Patty Pretender. Stop with the lies.
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You know why we’re in such dire straights? It’s because liberals can’t do the math. You Bolsheviks want to tax the rich. OK, tax them. Tax them at 100% of their income and you won’t raise enough money to run the gov’t for more than 140 days. Not enough you say? OK, then tax the corporate profits at 100%. That will buy you a total of 6 months of gov’t.
The real answer is to stop the runaway spending. That means making certain that medicare is still around in 10 years to provide protection for our seniors. It’s sad but true that the left still continues to lie in its attempt to hang onto power. Come November 2012, we’ll see just how stupid the people really are. My bet is on the people prevailing against the socialist/collectivist cabal of Barry Hussien Obama
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The reason we’re in debt is due to both Democrats and Republicans. There is responsibility on both sides. It started most recently with President Reagan. He, I’m sorry to say, caused a major increase in government spending during his presidency. Clinton started to head things back the other way, but then we became involved in the war in Iraq and bailed out the banks under Bush 2. Now under Obama, we are more involved in Afghanistan, another money pit. He also is trying to commit major funding to medical and social programs.
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No crissy, it started with LBJ’s new society programs that were never paid for but continue to get annual increases.
Why should someone who doesn’t pay taxes, but still receives a refund be allowed to vote themselves an increase(via electing liberal spenders)? Nearly half of those of voting age pay no income taxes, yet they piss and moan about not getting theirs. It’s time to cut off the parasites and force them back to work. You no work? No no eat. Period!
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Hugh I said most recently. I didn’t go all the way back to the sixties. If you read what I wrote you would have understood.
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No. You’re just making excuses. You can’t play the blame game with Repubs if you aren’t willing, or intellectually honest enough, to judge democrats by the same standard. For too long the left has been the master of the double standard, and see what it’s brought us. 14 trillion in debt, and a democratic caucus unwilling to address the mess they’ve made. But does that really matter if they’re successful in lying about who’s responsible? Probably not.
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Chris, you cannot pin federal spending on the President beyond approving or vetoing a budget bill. All federal spending originates in the House of Representatives, and is passed along to the Senate, where it then goes to committee to reconcile the differences.
The President has no say beyond “yea” or “nay”. If you track government spending, you’ll note that Democrat-controlled Congresses presided over the 1960′s, 1970′s and 1980′s. Reagan was able to get broad tax cuts approved; the economy grew at an unprecedented rate–as did federal tax receipts. Unfortunately, the spending wasn’t scaled back. The backpedaling in the 1990′s? Started when Gingrich and Co. took back the House in 1994.
If you want to pin war spending on Bush and the Repubs of the 2000s, fine. The wars in Iraq and Afghanistan racked up $1 trillion between 2001 and 2010. Blame the Bush tax cuts: Another $1.4 trillion. There’s still $11 trillion in debt that has been racked up by someone.
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Just Google The Congressional Progressive Caucus plan. It’s time to start cutting the Defense Budget among other things.
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The Democrats will resort to ANYTHING just to gain political advantage. Democrats love to use scare tactics, lies and BULLYING to gain ground. Even if you already expect the worst from Democrats you will still be surprised over the next year at how low they will sink just to try to bring Chip and any other opponent down. Dirty politics…you ain’t seen nothin yet! Don’t trust Democrats, it all just a power struggle for them and you are just pawns in their game. Think before you vote!!!
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Chip realizes this system is broken, it needs to be fixed. I am not under the impression he wants to charge seniors more, he is asking the hard question: Where is the money going to come from? As I have said in the past, before we jump into Obamacare, health care reform needs to take place. The cost of health care has gone through the roof, and caps need to be set. There is no reason in the world we should be charged $100.00 for an ibuprofen, you can a bottle of 50 at the the dollar store. This is one place to start, the pharmaceutical companies. Make health insurance affordable and accessible.
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Exactly my point above. None of the proposals from either Repubs or Dems address escalating costs. All they do is ignore the facts that costs are going up whether we have the new health care law, private insurance or adopt the Ryan plan for Medicare. None of the posts so far addresses this problems either.
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Exactly..Why doesn’t everyone else get this? They spend too much time blaming the other side of the aisle!
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If Chip is so stupid, but is able to recognize the trouble we’ve gotten ourselves into, what does that say about the alleged intelligence of our liberal posters? They degrade Chip for being stupid, but he’s still light-years smarter than the combined IQ of every socialist/marxist/democrat poster on this site. Are democrats born stupid, or do they have to practice to get that thick?
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Generations of Libs have come to expect decades of entitlements. Birth to grave, the government will take care of you. Not any more. The cookie pot is empty. You will work for what you want. It will not be handed to you. You hate the rich. Why? Because they have what you don’t? The old and the poor don’t create jobs, the rich do.
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It’s the old class warfare tactic. Dems resort to that when they have no real solutions to problems.
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Darned funny how the amount of “lazy” people seems to go up and down with the unemployment rate. When businesses started send all the jobs overseas, all of a sudden Americans turned “lazy”, and wanted a “handout”.
An example I’ve used before: When you can’t even buy Pepsi by the case and re-sell it by the can in the US, you have no economic freedom in America, whatsoever.
If a person did go out and start hawking goods on the side of the street to feed his/her family, the cops would be there within 15 minutes, in your “free country”.
No matter what you propagandists say.
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Boyd, what the he** are you talking about. People go to Sams Club and buy pop, candy bars and a lot of other things in large quantities for the purpose of resale. Nobody is stopping them from buying smart and then turning a profit on their purchases by reselling. Get your facts straight and quit lying.
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The way I understand RCIH and WEALTHY
1. Rich – you have one source of income or one main place your money is coming from and if it is taken away you have nothing. (Like winning a lottery, job, house, etc-simplified definition.
2. Wealthy- you have assests- which if one or any are taken away you still can continue on to whatever degeree. A job, and investments, and/or multi-properties, Again simplified.
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Rich: Adrian Peterson
Wealthy: The guy who signs Adrian Peterson’s paycheck.
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You want to tax the rich?
How about General Electric?
They are rich, right?
They are also very, very tight with the Obama administration.
So of course they are more than happy to pay their “fair share” of taxes, right?
WRONG!
General Electric made over 14 billion dollars in profits last year but did not pay a single penny of that to the U.S. Treasury.
The ultra-rich simply are not going to be taxed into oblivion. They will do whatever it takes to avoid high tax rates.
In fact, it is estimated that a third of all the wealth in the world is now held in “offshore” tax havens.
The TRUTH is that our tax system is completely and totally broken.
Raising or lowering tax rates is not going to make much of a difference at all to the ultra-wealthy and the largest corporations.
But raising taxes on the “wealthy” will absolutely hammer small businesses in the United States.
And small businesses provide the vast majority of the new jobs.
Small businesses don’t have the resources to set up shell companies in the Cayman Islands or in Switzerland. Small businesses cannot afford to pay hundreds of thousands of dollars in legal fees to tax lawyers.
So when you raise taxes on the rich, the ultra-wealthy and the largest corporations are generally not affected but you absolutely crush small businesses.
When you crush small businesses you crush job growth in this country.
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FYI: The “loopholes” you’re referring to concerning General Electric are primarily due to green energy tax credits.
Even so, as of 2010 the United States THE HIGHEST CORPORATE TAX RATE in the industrialized world at 40%. Link:
http://www.cato-at-liberty.org/u-s-corporate-tax-rate-the-highest/
For those of you that have claimed Europe as a current example of economic success while levying high taxes: Germany has cut its corporate tax rate by over 25% to less than 30.0%. The Scandinavian countries are all below 28.0%. Even Japan, in the throes of a massive debt crisis, has lowered its corporate rate by 5.0%.
And you wonder why corporations offshore their profits…..it’s because we’re fleecing them.
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Dems speak, dems lie !!!!
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People in America have paid in for years expecting to have something at the end and now the govt is saying sorry thanks for your money however it won’t be there! All this while our great people in Washington have no fear because they get a free tax funded retirement after 5 years all while making 6 figures for doing nothing! Make them show some skin other than a simple pay freeze for 2 years which has little affect on their pensions which are based on their highest grossing 3 years in office. Does Congress really need to spend over a million a month for travel? bottled water? Do they need all the frivolous benefits? Its time the people take back this country from the bureaucrats from all parties in Washington and say enough is enough! How many people will be able to afford healthcare in their retirement when it eats up all their monthly income? That’s right people those retired people will be you and your kids!
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Question for those that believe lowering taxes will create jobs/lower unemployment.
In my lifetime, I’ve seen the top tax rate go from 87% down to 33%.
That sounds like a good thing and I totally understand how the whole tax/jobs thing is supposed to work….in theory.
The problem is, I don’t think I’ve actually witnessed it in reality.
This is what I’ve seen happen:
In 1963, the corporate/top tax rate was 87%. Very few if any American companies were having their goods made overseas and unemployment was at 5.5%.
Here’s a record of the tax rates and corresponding unemployment rates in my lifetime.
During John F. Kennedy’s presidency (1961-1963), the tax rate was 87 percent.
Unemployment Rate: Dec-1963 5.5%
Lyndon B. Johnson’s presidency in 1964 it was 75 percent and then lower in 1965 to 70 percent. Unemployment Rate Dec-1965 4%
The Carter years (1977-1981) the tax rate started at 69 percent in 1977-1978 and went down to 68 percent in 1979
Unemployment Rate: Dec-1979 6%
During Reagan’s presidency, the tax rate started in 1981 at 68 percent for people filing jointly making $200,000 or more.
It went down during his presidency — 50 percent during 1982-1986, down to 38.5 percent in 1987 and down to 33 percent by the end of his presidency in 1989.
Unemployment Rate Dec-1989 5.4%
(Note: at this point, the tax rate had gone from 87% down to 33% and unemployment was relatively the same)
During George H.W. Bush’s presidency 1989–1993, the tax rate was at 33 percent.
Unemployment Rate: Dec-1993 6.5%
During the Clinton years, the income tax was 36 percent — and we had a balanced budget (1993-2000). Unemployment Rate: Dec-2000 3.9%
During the Bush II years 2001 to 2008, the 35% rate went to 33%, and the top marginal tax rate went from 39.6% to 35%.
Unemployment Rate: Dec-2008 7.3%
Historical unemployment rates
http://www.data360.org/dsg.aspx?Data_Set_Group_Id=248&count=all
The current income tax on people filing jointly making $200,000 or more in 2011 is 33 percent.
The income tax on people filing jointly making $200,000 or more has been at 33 percent since 2003.
WHERE ARE ALL THE JOBS THOSE LOWER TAX RATES SHOULD BE PROVIDING?
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Where are all those jobs? They’re overseas. Trickle down doesn’t work. The rich have gotten richer, and the poor have gotten poorer, ever since the Reagan “revolution”.
Hot debate. What do you think?
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I seriously don’t understand it. I keep hearing the mantra…we have to lower taxes in order to create jobs but, we’ve been lowering taxes by leaps and bounds for 50 years and we’re hemorrhaging jobs.
And why do people seem to forget that during Reagan’s tax cutting frenzy, America went from being the world’s largest lender, to being the world’s largest borrower?
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No answers to your questions, just thumbs-down. Come on, you jokers, where ARE the jobs that these tax cuts are supposed to create???
…………. crickets …………
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Answer: As of 2010, a net gain of 38,900,000 jobs have been created in the United States since Reagan was elected in 1980. Link:
http://www.nidataplus.com/lfeus1.htm
Hey Lloyd and Katy……how many jobs have been created by raising taxes?
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Katy,
your simplistic comparison fails to hold water. There’s more to it than just high tax rates. There’s gov’t spending. Imagine how many jobs Obama has “created” that don’t add any value to our economy and only raise the debt. Yet they count againt the unemployment rate. We could tax ourselves to death….ooooops, my bad, we already are doing that. But we could raise taxes and use that money to “create” more gov’t jobs and eliminate unemployment altogether, but the economy would be built like a house of cards because gov’t doesn’t create wealth, it takes it. You can’t sustain a national economy without manufacturing and the creation of wealth. Therefore it goes to reason that if gov’t, by definition, cannot create wealth, we should strive to have the smallest, least expensive, most efficient gov’t possible, and let the private sector do what it does best, create jobs and create wealth. There isn’t a single case where a marxist/socialist gov’t has been able to sustain its self over the long term. They eventually all run out of money. Thinking you can tax yourself into prosperity is folly. It’s akin to thinking you can stand in a bucket and raise yourself by pulling up on the handle. But then again, liberals never were very bright.
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Lower taxes can’t and won’t produced jobs as long as the congress continues to spend like drunken sailors. You can’t grow an economy by raising its debt to a level that is equal to its annual GDP. DUH! When are the dems going to finally wake up and realize their chickens have come home to roost? WE ARE BROKE! The longer we put off the inevitable, the more painful the corrective action will be. I sincerely believe that Obama want’s to destroy our economy so that he can create a permanent economic underclass wholly dependent upon big brother for their every need. Thus providing the left with a permanent power base. As I posted earlier, Non-income tax payers should not be allowed to vote themselves increases in benefits. Benefits that are paid for with money extorted from the tax paying voters who they now out number. A revolution is coming. I only hope it’s non-violent.
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To say its only the democrats spending is completely moronic! How about we blame the republicans for not spending when they should have when the cost would have been lower instead of letting things like bridges and highways go to potholes until they are unusable and then blame the democrats when they have to approve the money to completely rebuild instead of repair. Its kind of like saying don’t put any money into preventative maintenance on a car like oil changes and whine when you get the bill for a new motor!
Hugh your comments about IQ’s only reflect your own, have you taken an IQ test lately? When you rant like a typical one sided republicant about spending your should do some research about how much of the money loaned during the Obama administration compared to the Bush administration was actually paid back! Also include the Bush Tax cuts to companies like big oil and the companies that do nothing for America by outsourcing jobs overseas!
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I wonder how many hours each week the people on this blog spend watching Fox News and listening to conservative hate radio. All I am reading is propaganda.
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So you’ve been listening to Ed Schultz hate radio Merv? I knew somebody had to have told you what to write.
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