Quote:
Originally posted by Seahawk
The interesting point to be made here is that there is no such thing as a zero sum analysis where the federal budget is concerned. Discretionary spending is, including defences spending, less that 8% of the total budget! The rest is law: Social security, Medicare, etc. In addition, each of those spending lines is indexed for inflation, often well above the inflation rate.
Congress passes laws...it is the entire budgetary mechanism that has become an absolute sham, and knows no political boundaries.
No one wants to take on Social Security and Medicare, which is akin to policical suicide. And they all have their snout in the trough.
It is not just Bush, folks, or the Republicans.
I think this whole country needs an f'ing civics class.
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True, true. Most people are not aware that we could bail out on the entire non-defense discretionary budget and most years we would still be in debt. Entitlements must be held in check.
At some point, the US gov't ability to borrow will drop to the point that capital will not be available to fund these entitlement programs. I think this will happen in less than 10 years if the entitlement laws don't change. IMHO long-term the gov't will default.