Thank You Tea Party

[Jim in CT]

Originally Posted by JohnR

Sorta kinda a shame to need to hold the Congress responsible to actually, you know, cut costs & spending.

We are UP to $47,000 per person (not taxpayer) in this country for our country's debt. In 2011. If things don't change, where will be in 2015? 2020?

How much is the right amount to pass on to our kids?

JohnR, the $14 trillion in "operating debt", which as you said works out to $47,000 per person, IS THE GOOD NEWS.

The bad news is, that doesn't count projected deficits for social security and medicare. Here's a link from MSNBC (I chose MSNBC so Spence can't claim I get all my data from the Tea Party newsletter)

Medicare's deficit 7 times Social Security's - politics - msnbc.com

According to MSNBC, the projected shortfall for social security and medicare is 31.5 trillion (3.7T for SS, 27.8T for medicare).

That adds an additional $105,000 in debt for every living American, to John's $47,000. So now we're at $152,000, or, $760,000 for my family of 5. Isn't that a fine kettle of fish! And that ignores state and local debts! Great!!

Here's what is amazing to me. NOBODY can refute these numbers. Yet when someone like Paul Ryan comes along and has the courage to say "gee, I think we need to fix this", THE VERY NEXT DAY, liberals make commercials showing Ryan pushing old ladies off a cliff. The very next day, liberals (including Obama) claim that conservatives hate old people and poor people! So according to the liberal wing of the Democratic party, unless you are fine with passing this debt to our kids, then you hate old people.

So, we have 14 trillion in operating debt, and 31.5 trillion in entitlement debt. That's a total of 45.5 trillion in extra revenue we need (unless we cut spending). How do we get this money? Liberals seem to think we can get it by increasing taxes a bit.

Let's examine that. Here is a link...

2011 United States federal budget - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

According to this link, 2011 spending might be about $3.8 trillion, compared to tax revenue of $2.2 trillion.

So. Let's assume that we double tax revenue (which we cannot), and assume that we don't pay any interest on that debt (which we do). Even in that rosy scenario, revenues increase to $4.4 trillion, so after we spend $3.8 trillion, we have $600 billion to pay down that debt. If we pay it down by $600 billion a year, it would take 76 years to accumulate the 45.5 trillion we need. Anyone here want to DOUBLE tax rates for 76 years?

Of coursem we cannot even come close to doubling tax revenue. Frequently I hear liberals say that the Bush tax cuts for the wealthy are driving all of this. Let's examine that. The highest estimate I have ever seen, of what we'd get if we eliminated tax cuts on those making over $250k, is $90 billion a year. Fine, let's assume we do that. Know how long it takes to get $45.5 trillion at $90 billion a year? Only 505 years, ignoring interest. What does this mean? It means that anyone who suggests that tax hikes will amount to anything, is wrong.

What does this mean? It means that we cannot BEGIN to tax our way out of this. It means we need massive spending cuts. If any liberals here think we can tax our way out of this, please show me the data to show how. I'm a math guy...I'm rational, and I am easily persuaded by valid data. All the data I see, tells me that spending cuts, not tax hikes, are the fix.

We have a spending problem, not a revenue problem.

Good to be back! I have a 10 week old boy who is very collicky...