What you didn't explain is how his tax increases, whether you
call them accelerations or not, did increase social security
I guess if you ignore the fact that a bipartisan commission
recommended it, and Congress passed it, and the increases
You can get almost anything labeled 'bipartisan',
Only to someone like you, who uses words as weapons rather
than as descriptors. You would just as quickly call them
Rostenkowski's tax increases or Tip O'Neil's tax increases,
if you thought it would serve your purposes of the moment.
Presidents Clinton and Reagan, unlike Obama, could
negotiate and get things done. At the time, Reagan was
Carter had left Social Security in a mess. A bipartisan
Commission made recommendations, Reagan and O'Neil accepted
them, and both houses of Congress passed them. The result,
in the words of one US News article: "Students of Reagan
have offered praise for this agreement. Reagan biographer
Lou Cannon praised Reagan's Social Security commission as
an example of "a compromise that did some things the
Democrats wanted and some things the Republicans wanted,"
while even the former president's critics including author
Will Bunch cited the Social Security deal as a "practical"
and bipartisan reform that had a "lasting positive impact"
on government and public policy."
So, yeah, YOU can call something anything you want to.
Doesn't change the facts.
I guess if you ignore the fact that a bipartisan commission
recommended it, and Congress passed it, and the increases
doesn't change
the fact that it put more money into the pot for the government
to spend.
To spend on Social Security. You still aren't getting this
simple fact.
Somehow the idea that moving increases up from 2030 to current
years doesn't increase government revenue to be spent now is a
bit absurd.
Your attempt to twist the facts is what is "absurd." The
law did not jump the 1984 tax rate up to the 2030 rate. It
slightly accelerated Carter's tax increases. Specifically,
the 1985 rate increase got moved up to 1984, the
already-passed increases for 1985-87 remained the same,
part of the already-passed 1990 increase got moved up to
1988, and the already-passed increases from 1990 to 2030
remained the same.
Look at your story. Look at the facts. Do you see the
vast difference? Anyone else would.
So, as far as the increased tax rates, leaving out the
other provisions of the law, taxpayers paid a little more
(and the SS trust fund got a little more) in 1984 than
would have been the case if the changes had not passed. In
1985, 86, and 87, they payed THE SAME RATE as they would
The increases were already scheduled to take place.
Taxpayers paid a little more in 1988 and 89 than they would
Is that simple enough for you to understand YET?
An exactly balanced budget would have exactly the effect of
paying off only mature bonds.
An "exactly balanced" budget would be able to pay off
mature bonds by issuing new ones, thus keeping the debt the
Since paying off maturing bonds are part of the govt fiscal
policy, no further change than exacly balancing spending and
revenue is necessary to pay off the debt by the time the current
bonds all mature.
Paying off matured bonds without issuing new bonds to
replace them would require running a surplus, not a
balance. At an exact balance, the total indebtedness would
remain the same. Less aggregate indebtedness would mean a
surplus. All of which has nothing to do with Greenspan's
point about the disruption that would come from buying
NON-mature bonds back prematurely.
Hey Earl, you are an economist, would you try to explain to
Richardson how he got this completely wrong.
Hey Bob, you aren't.
If he has any questions he wants to direct to me, he can do
so. Or he could ask you. Or he could ask a brick wall.
But I repeat myself....
Explain to him how social security was set up that way from the
begining.
You were embarrassed on this subject not long ago.
The "actual question" in this case was your desire to call
them Reagan's tax increases, thus ignoring the fact that a
bipartisan recommended them, a bipartisan majority in both
houses of Congress passed them, and they were simply a
slight acceleration of Carter's already-in-place tax
increases.
They may well have. Doesn't change the fact that it did not
solve the problems, we are facing them again.
That was thirty years ago. Once again your "response" is
meaningless and empty, as well as wandering off the point.
all it really did was
give the federal government more money to spend today without
raising taxes other than social security taxes, which apply to
the workers, not investors.
It gave the government more money to spend ON SOCIAL
SECURITY PAYMENTS, thus avoiding going into the red. You
keep repeating this mistake, without showing any sign that
you know what you are talking about.
it put more money into the pot for the government
to spend.
To spend on Social Security. You still aren't getting this
simple fact.
To spend on other things at that time, with a promise it would
be there 20 or 30 or 40 years in the future.
You are contending that in 1983 the federal government
could take money from the SS trust fund and spend it on
"other things." You really don't have a clue.
IOW, you dispute details you did not give the first time around,
but you ignore the original point.
To recap, you claimed that the 1983 social security changes
constituted a huge tax increase. I pointed out that it
broadened the tax BASE in several ways, and increased the
tax rates by slightly accelerating CARTER's
already-in-place rate increases, resulting in people paying
slightly more in 1984, 1988, and 1989 and THE SAME in the
remaining thirty-three years, compared to what they would
have paid in the ABSENCE of the 1983 changes. I did not
dispute the details, I supplied the details that you were
ignorant of. And you did not dispute the details. You
just ignore them.
As I went into once before, the budget is not what we are really
talking about, that's just a convenient term. What we are
talking about is actual spending. Since maturing bonds are paid
off, whether by tax money or borrowed money, your point is
lacking accuracy.
If we pay off the mature bonds out of revenue, then that
requires balance, not surplus.
It is sometimes difficult to know when you are pretending
to be ignorant and when you really are ignorant on a given
subject. If current spending and current revenue remain in
exact balance for the next fifty years, the amount of debt
will remain the same for the next fifty years. If you are
ten thousand dollars in debt, and you spend your whole
paycheck every month, you will remain ten thousand dollars
in debt. You have to make more or spend less to pay down
the debt.
Paying off some mature bonds from revenue rather than borrowing
reduces the debt at a slower rate that paying them all out of
revenue, but it does reduce the debt.
To do that requires a surplus of revenue over spending.
What part of this are you pretending to not understand?
He calls it "Reagan's" tax increase, ignoring the fact that
it was proposed by a bipartisan commission and passed by a
bipartisan majority in Congress before being signed by
Reagan. But Bob considers those facts "meaningless" to the
question of whose tax increases they were! Meaningless!
The commission was headed by Alan Greenspan, and served the
purposes of the Reagan administration.
I even specified WHICH YEARS actually saw the accelerated
tax increases. Specifically, the 1985 rate increase got
moved up to 1984, the already-passed increases for 1985-87
remained the same, part of the already-passed 1990 increase
got moved up to 1988, and the already-passed increases from
1990 to 2030 remained the same. There were only three
years that saw higher rates than if the act had not been
passed.
As I pointed out, the accelerated tax increases accounted for,
by the Greenspan commission's own report, only about 25% of the
increased revenue.
That is why, if one looks up budget data, they don't just
find "wish list" data. They also find out what actually
happened. From Obama's 2014 Budget: "Historical Tables,
Budget of the United States Government, Fiscal Year 2014
provides data on budget receipts, outlays, surpluses or
deficits, Federal debt, and Federal employment over an
extended time period, generally from 1940 or earlier to
2014 or 2018."
Yep. The * Historical Tables* report the results.
None of this relates, however, to your belief that going
into debt counts as "income" while paying that debt down or
off is "spending."
First, I did not say income, I said revenue. Second, look at the
records. The trust funds are counted in the revenue columns.
The revenue that people pay in through the payroll tax IS
REVENUE! What is it that you still need help with here?
Perhaps the fact that you used the word "income" above, yet I
used revenue consistently.
Then explain why the social security trust funds are counted as
revenue and debt.
He calls it "Reagan's" tax increase, ignoring the fact that
it was proposed by a bipartisan commission and passed by a
bipartisan majority in Congress before being signed by
Reagan. But Bob considers those facts "meaningless" to the
question of whose tax increases they were! Meaningless!
The commission was headed by Alan Greenspan, and served the
purposes of the Reagan administration.
Finally you say something about the bipartisan commission (while
still ignoring the bipartisan support in both houses of Congress),
but really you say nothing.
Greenspan was one of the fifteen members. He didn't make the EC>recommendations.
The commission made the recommendations. That includes several
Democrats including Claude Pepper, and an assistant secretary of HHS ED>under Carter, and a former head of the SSA, and the head of the
AFL-CIO! It was bipartisan, which is one of the many words you just EC>don't understand.
That is why, if one looks up budget data, they don't just
find "wish list" data. They also find out what actually
happened. From Obama's 2014 Budget: "Historical Tables,
Budget of the United States Government, Fiscal Year 2014
provides data on budget receipts, outlays, surpluses or
deficits, Federal debt, and Federal employment over an
extended time period, generally from 1940 or earlier to
2014 or 2018."
Yep. The * Historical Tables* report the results.
You stopped too soon. It reports the actual budget receipts, the
actual budget outlays, and the actual resulting surplus or deficit.
Not just the budget REQUEST.
That is why, if one looks up budget data, they don't just
find "wish list" data. They also find out what actually
happened. From Obama's 2014 Budget: "Historical Tables,
Budget of the United States Government, Fiscal Year 2014
provides data on budget receipts, outlays, surpluses or
deficits, Federal debt, and Federal employment over an
extended time period, generally from 1940 or earlier to
2014 or 2018."
Yep. The * Historical Tables* report the results.
You stopped too soon. It reports the actual budget
receipts, the actual budget outlays, and the actual
resulting surplus or deficit. Not just the budget REQUEST.
--- BBBS/Li6 v4.10 Dada-1
* Origin: Prism bbs (1:261/38)
None of this relates, however, to your belief that going
into debt counts as "income" while paying that debt down or
off is "spending."
First, I did not say income, I said revenue. Second, look at the
records. The trust funds are counted in the revenue columns.
The revenue that people pay in through the payroll tax IS
REVENUE! What is it that you still need help with here?
Perhaps the fact that you used the word "income" above, yet I
used revenue consistently.
You persist in your completely absurd belief that going
into debt is income and that paying off debt is spending.
Your first response is to pretend that you do not know what
two simple English words MEAN. Your second was to ask an
irrelevant question. I answered the irrelevant question.
Revenue is "counted" as revenue because revenue IS revenue.
Yes, your question really WAS that dumb.
Then explain why the social security trust funds are counted as
revenue and debt.
Jeff already did. I already did. That is why your
response is so funny.
--- BBBS/Li6 v4.10 Dada-1
* Origin: Prism bbs (1:261/38)
Every committee/commission in Congress is by definition
"bipartisan". All that is needed is for one member of
another party to be on that committee/commission to make it
bipartisan. See how that works? Golly gee. I'm sooooo
smart. :)
Scrap the cap. Problem solved.
When it comes to taxation, some folks advocate a national
sales tax, or values added tax, as a replacement for the
federal income tax.
to conservatives). And yet, those same conservatives cry
foul when it comes to removing the cap on social security.
But now you have been taught that the tax increase was only
a part of that supposed "165 billion." I even explained
exactly what years saw a tax increase from the 1983 law,
and what years saw NO increase over the 1977 Carter tax
increases that were already slated to go into effect. If
you had just paid attention, you would have learned
something.
Now you are playing a word game, pretending a tax increase today
doesn't count if it was already schedualed for 5 years from now.
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