Debt and Deficits: No Deal Is Better Tahn a Bad Deal

I will go further than the title: No "grand deal" is better than ANY conceibable "grand deal". In other words, ANY "grand deal" will be a diaster, because it will be a sham and a fraud. The rspective positions of the parties are too far apart for anything else. Further, a "ten year plan" is ABSURD--a regression to the old central planning days of the Soviet Union. We need to worry about the spending for NEXT YEAR--the only year we can fully control.


And we need SEPARATE bills on Sccial Secu Secruity, Medicaid, Medicare, welfare, food stamps, and everything else. These are SEPARATE problems. Oh, and we need to repeal ObamaCare, which a study says is simply a LIE (in terms of its costs, whiich you alrready know anyway--as the CBO was TOLD how to "socre" the bill so as to avoid counting costs likely to be incurred). Nope. Social Secruity is NOT part of the gneral deficit problem. FDR contgemplated Social Secruity being SELF-FINANCING, and that is what it sjhould be. The same is essentiall true of Medicare. We need to structure Medicare, APART FROM ANY OTHER SPENDING CUTS and fiinancing measures, so that it is "solvent". Yep. I AM saying that we should structure Medicare so that NO "general" revenue is used to finance it (admittely difficult, since 50% and more of the cost of Medicare is now coming from general revenue).


Tax reform should be a SEPARATE bill--not part of some "grand" deal to "solve" all of our problems. I don't even understand the urge for a "comprehensive" deal purporting to dictate spending and taxes over ten years. Talk about INSANITY. There is no chance at all for such a bil to be REAL. We do NOT have one problem. We have multiple problems. We have "unfunded liabilities" because Social Security and Medicare are not financially sound in their present form. This is NOT a matter of treating Social Security as a simple Big Government program, to be handled as a general spending problem. Social Security should be "solved" separately, as should Medicare and several of our other "problems". Trying to do anything else merely results in a FRAUD and a SHAM.


You should be able to see how this has to work. We "solve" the funding of Social Security and Medicare. I would suggest simply turning Medicaid ove r to the STATES (with perhaps a subsidy). But finding the way to finance Medicaid is a problem in itself. Welfare is a separate problem. But what you have to do is separate Social Security, Medicare and Medicaid out as separate problems to control, and then figriring out how to control the rest of Federal spending. How do you do this? You FIRST determine the revenue you are going to have--remember, Social Secuirty, Medicare and Medicaid are really gong to have to be "solved" separately--and then figure out how you can finance the rest of the Federl Government on that revenue. If you have to cut Federal SALARIES, you cut Federal salaries. If we hage to eliminate FEDERAL education "spending", then we do that. If we have to elminate MEDICAID as a "comprehensive" Federal program, then we have to do that. "But, Skip, you HAVE to proide medical care to tthe poor." Wrong. The Federal Government does NOT hagvve to rpovide meidcal care to the poor. In my lifetime, it died not. We COULD rely on states, localities, Wareen Buffet and his foundation, Bill Gates and his fundation (in other words, private charity), and "pro bono" care by hospital s and doctors.


I am, of course, getting away from the point--although in an effort to let you know the SCOPE of a problem that is beyod any possible "grand deal" putting everything off into the far futre. The point is that the mainstream meida--sharing the title of "The Stupidest People on Earth with the people of Wall Street--is asserting that the American people want ANY DEAL. The assumption here is that any deal--at least any deal with a supposed "long term" deficit reduction of 4 trilliong dollars--is a GOODDEAL (or at lleast a LOT better than no deal). FALSE, and this is not even a matter of opinion. As stated above, I believe ANY "grand deal" will be worse than no deal. But it is transparently obvious that MANY deals will be worse than no deal at all. Wehn the media seems to assume otherwise, and when politicians assert that the American peole just expect some sort of "deal" witht he right bottom line number (no matter how much of a SHAM it is), then such people are merely showing themselves to be STUPID (that is, the people who seem to be asserting that the American people just want a deal---any deal).


Oh. By the way, that is FALSE.


Hacker Boy (hacking into this disgraceful blog in the interest of the public, and still denying any connection with Rupert Murdoch): "Skip, you keep using words like 'false', and that is waay too strong."


Skip: "Ah, Hacker Boy. I have missed you. No, it is not wrong. It is a fact. Look at the "deal" already "agreed" to "settle' the debt ceiling debate. We were told that the American people INSISTED that Congress avoid default, at basically any cost. But polls--evil as polls are--IMMEDIATELY (within days) showed that the American people DISAPPROVED of the actual deal. I, myself, have promised to WALK away FOREVER fro the Repubican Party if ANY kind of "grand deal" (a fradulent one, as I believe it will have to be) is arrived at. However, you do not have to go so far as to assume many people are like me. The actual deal will be "praised" when it is first announed, and then it will be (likely accurately) PICKED APART. It is absurd to say that the American people do not care what the actual deal is: that all they want is for politicians to come together in some kind of deal that gets to a proper bottome line number. That is a media FANTASY. It is simplly unture. In fact, the hypocrites int he media are tyring to DICTATE the kind of deal THEY want--far fromt he kind of deal I want.


No. To paper over real differences with a SHAM deal is the worst of all possible worlds. It is much worse than no deal at all. This blog has already shown that tehe most HONEST thing for Republicans to do was to ANNOUNCE that they are gong to pursue their own "ten year plan", starting with THIS NEXT YEAR, although they are willing to work together with Democarats to tryt o "save" Social Secuirty and Medicare separately . They should also have said that they wanted to have tax REFORM as a separate, reveenue neutral, bill. Ype. The Republicans should have ANNOUNCED that they are simply gong to IMPLEMENT "cut, cap and balance", to the extent they can, and work toward it to the maximum extent tha they can. That would have been better than ANY deal. I have previously described ow Republicans should have simply keyed the debt ceiling to SPENDING, with the debt ceiling to be adjusted AFTER the spending bills requiring it to be increased have been passed (eliminating the games.



Don't like my "plan"? Doesn' matter. I am right about the "deal" likely to come out of this absrud process assuming that we can "plan" fr the next ten years of spending in some sort of binding way. That kid of deal IS going to be worse than no deal at all. There is not even any doubt about it. Obama wants Repubilcans to ADD to the deficit this next year beyond even the already buiit in increase, and Obama may well get part of what he wants (the unemployment insurance extentin and the fraudulent "payroll tax cut"). That would be FAR worse than no deal at all, and is one of the things that will cause me to abandon the Republican Party forever. You CANNOT cut the long term deficit by ADDING to the current defict. It just does nto work that way, anyomore than a baskeball team can come from 20 poinsts behind without first cutting the deficit to 18 lpoints--and then 16, and so on. You CANNOT "taper off" from heroin by PROMISING to do it TEN YERS FROM NOW> It is absurd.


Enough said. It is absurd to suggest, as the media is doing, that all the American public wants is a deal. It is even more absurd to suggest, as the media is suggesting, that all lpoliticians have to so to "solve" our problems is to "come together". Not true. they may "come together", as sual, with a FRAUD that angers the ublic even more.


P.S. No proofreading or spell checking (bad eyesight), which becomes more and more of a problem as I become tired. What can I say? I am on a ROLL. You may disagree with that, but who says I listen to you?