Gloom And Doom Hits Home.

[Feathers and Fins]

85 billion in cuts and then turn around and give 60 million to Syria. If we had one old fashion reporter left I bet they could add up a trillion in spending give aways our goverment has done in the last few months alone. This goverment body is pathetic.

[Al Agnew]

Giving money to foreigners always rankles when we are running these kinds of deficits, but keep in mind that the 65 million is less than 1/1000th of the 85 billion in cuts. If there are strategic reasons for supporting the anti-government factions in Syria, it might be money well spent.

Cutting some money to the Ozark National Scenic Riverways might be necessary, but it's about 1/1,000,000th of the cuts.

We don't get to anything close to a balanced budget without MAJOR cuts to the military and entitlements. Major cuts to welfare, Medicaid, etc. Most of us picture all those welfare and entitlement programs as benefiting a bunch of inner city people unwilling to work. But did you know that in most Ozark counties, anywhere from 25-60% of the population is receiving some kind of welfare?

And there will always be unintended consequences of those kinds of cuts. Think about it. These people are getting welfare because either they can't get good jobs or there are no good jobs to be had in their area. It isn't very easy for somebody who has a family and is at the poverty level, has a poor education and few job skills, to move somewhere where there ARE jobs available. What happens when their welfare gets cut to the bone (which is what would be necessary to achieve anything close to a balanced budget through cuts)? I would suggest that quite a few of these people, needing to obtain necessities instead of just keeping themselves in beer and cigarettes, turn to crime. Cut welfare programs as deeply as you need to, and crime shoots up considerably. Heck, we already saw rural crime rise significantly when the recession hit.

We can rail against Congress constantly for spending like drunken sailors. And there are deep cuts that can and should be made. But every program has a voting constituency, or valid reasons to exist. This mess is here because there are simply too many people for the jobs available, and too many people who don't have the skills and the gumption to get good jobs. Again, you can gripe about the discretionary government spending, but it's a small part, less than 20% if I'm not mistaken, of the federal budget, and it includes all those national parks and highway projects and foreign aid along with a myriad of other stuff, much of which we all benefit from.

And then there's the whole effect on the economy. Sequestration will definitely mean jobs lost. How many remains to be seen, but there will be job losses. And there's a good chance we'll slide back into some kind of recession instead of slowly, very slowly, climbing back out of it. And the thing is, you can't cut your way to a balanced budget, nor can you tax your way to it. What has to happen, what happened in the 1990s, is that your economy has to GROW enough to provide enough tax revenue to get yourself out of a deficit. And cutting government spending means doing just the opposite in the short term.

Some economist said something a while back that I thought was smart. He said that the time to cut spending is when the economy is booming, but no Congress critter has ever been able to do that. Cut spending when there are plenty of jobs available in the private sector, and the impacts of the cuts will be much less. And then you can run a surplus with the cuts, and have a cushion for when the next recession hits. But cut spending when you're already in bad economic shape, and it just makes things worse.

We all think that the government should be run like your own household...don't spend money you don't have, you can never borrow your way to being out of debt, etc. But the government is actually more like a business, but a business who's economic goal is not profit, but just solvency. And businesses CAN borrow their way to solvency and even profitability. They do it all the time. If a business has a growing market for their products, but doesn't have the infrastructure to produce enough of the product to meet the demand, they borrow money to build more manufacturing capacity and hire more workers in order to meet the demand and MAKE MORE MONEY. Making more money, they pay off the debt WHEN THEY ARE BOOMING.

The question with government is, will borrowing money cause the economy to boom and more revenue to come in? And, are there areas where it makes sense to spend, and others where it makes sense to cut? Of course. You spend money intelligently, and cut budgets intelligently. THAT'S what Congress doesn't seem to be able to do.

[Justin Spencer]

Great thoughts Al. I fully agree that cutting out welfare would cause an increase in crime and we would see homeless kids and tent cities and lots of stuff we consider our country too good for, I also think that we should not give extra money for more than 2 kids as some recipients mistakenly see extra kids as a raise in pay. Welfare is neccesary, but needs some reform which will not be easy. Better technology has been great in many ways, but for the non-skilled laborer we will continue to see less jobs available as technological advances decrease the need for these positions, and those that need a human touch are outsourced to cheap foreign labor.

[OzarksRiverman]

Cutting some money to the Ozark National Scenic Riverways might be necessary, but it's about 1/1,000,000th of the cuts.

We can rail against Congress constantly for spending like drunken sailors. And there are deep cuts that can and should be made. But every program has a voting constituency, or valid reasons to exist. This mess is here because there are simply too many people for the jobs available, and too many people who don't have the skills and the gumption to get good jobs. Again, you can gripe about the discretionary government spending, but it's a small part, less than 20% if I'm not mistaken, of the federal budget, and it includes all those national parks and highway projects and foreign aid along with a myriad of other stuff, much of which we all benefit from.

The question with government is, will borrowing money cause the economy to boom and more revenue to come in? And, are there areas where it makes sense to spend, and others where it makes sense to cut? Of course. You spend money intelligently, and cut budgets intelligently. THAT'S what Congress doesn't seem to be able to do.

If the two occupation wars, the Bush-era tax cuts, and the remnants of the reinvestment act were gone, our deficit would be declining. The decline could even be described as rapid. This is without any other cuts--defense or discretionary, and no new taxes.

[Quillback]

We're closing in on $17 trillion in debt, to hope that the economy will boom if we just spend more govt. money is nuts, look what we got from the last stimulus package. If govt spending was the key to economic growth, Greece would have the strongest economy on the planet. We're very lucky right now that we're only paying a percent or two interest on govt. bonds, that won't last forever, when rates jump the money we'll spend on servicing the debt will eat up any tax increases or spending cuts we make now. I guess people can't grasp the magnitude of this debt we have, to hope and pray that an economic boom will magically solve this issue ain't going to do it. We have to get a handle on this debt now, we can't wait for miracles, and we can't make it worse by spending more. The cutbacks we're seeing now are nothing compared to what could happen if people lose faith in the ability of the US governement to pay back it's debt.

[jeb]

I agree about unintended consequences being an issue here, but I have a different take on it. I look at things like overly generous benefits and overly long (or lifetime) ability to collect them as something that causes people not to take jobs that they might deem "beneath" them, or not look as hard to find a job that might involve a hardship like relocating, etc. And things even as simple as raising the minimum wage, or as big as giving away the store on health care, as causing jobs to continue to flow overseas. The road to Hell is paved with good intentions.

As far as comparing the govt debt to a business, please! The business makes something that has a chance of being profitable. If they don't make a profit, sooner or later, they go out of business. If the govt was held to that standard, they'd have been closed down years ago. As Quillback says, when folks start to get a little less willing to borrow us money for nothing and the interest/inflation starts to spike, as it must sooner or later, the ultimate bubble is going to burst. Seems better to try and start taking on some of that pain now rather than all of it later.

[ness]

We don't get to anything close to a balanced budget without MAJOR cuts to the military and entitlements. Major cuts to welfare, Medicaid, etc. Most of us picture all those welfare and entitlement programs as benefiting a bunch of inner city people unwilling to work. But did you know that in most Ozark counties, anywhere from 25-60% of the population is receiving some kind of welfare?

Think about it. These people are getting welfare because either they can't get good jobs or there are no good jobs to be had in their area. It isn't very easy for somebody who has a family and is at the poverty level, has a poor education and few job skills, to move somewhere where there ARE jobs available. What happens when their welfare gets cut to the bone (which is what would be necessary to achieve anything close to a balanced budget through cuts)? I would suggest that quite a few of these people, needing to obtain necessities instead of just keeping themselves in beer and cigarettes, turn to crime. Cut welfare programs as deeply as you need to, and crime shoots up considerably. Heck, we already saw rural crime rise significantly when the recession hit.

Not picking on you Al -- you make some good points here. Just wanna add my take on them:

True -- military and entitlements are huge expenditures, but I can't help but think there's plenty of room for improvement in the way those funds are spent. It's viewed as almost sacrilegious to say we should cut military spending, because we've been trained to believe that means you don't 'support the troops'. What I don't support is reckless spending on military equipment and endeavors. I'd like to see us be a lot more prudent about the money we spend and which foreign causes we feel a need to pony up for. We should rethink being the world's police force. We simply can't afford it.

As far as the high rate of assistance in the Ozarks: The government essentially provides an incentive for people to remain in economically depressed areas. I wouldn't advocate pulling the rug out, but I think we ought to get out of the business of helping people who won't help themselves. I can accept a little spillage, but I don't believe we're putting enough effort into helping just the helpless. No doubt a lot of folks simply find it's more convenient to suck at the government teet. We should rooting those deadbeats out. For the rest, who are able, we should be making them get to work filling potholes, picking up trash, whatever.

We can rail against Congress constantly for spending like drunken sailors. And there are deep cuts that can and should be made. But every program has a voting constituency, or valid reasons to exist. This mess is here because there are simply too many people for the jobs available, and too many people who don't have the skills and the gumption to get good jobs. Again, you can gripe about the discretionary government spending, but it's a small part, less than 20% if I'm not mistaken, of the federal budget, and it includes all those national parks and highway projects and foreign aid along with a myriad of other stuff, much of which we all benefit from.

I guess I'm more skeptical than you about the need or validity of every program.

As far as too many people for too few jobs: It should work itself out through good old supply and demand for the most part. But, we have a minimum wage and essentially incent some people not to work through unemployment benefits...so it gets a little more complicated. You can be sure that's a large part of why we ended up with 12 million illegal immigrants doing the jobs we feel are beneath us or don't pay enough to get us off the couch. When we insert these non-economic elements into the equation, in ever increasing amounts, we create our own problems. It seems like a good idea at the time, and all people/voters like more money, but we're just borrowing from the prosperity of our future.

And then there's the whole effect on the economy. Sequestration will definitely mean jobs lost. How many remains to be seen, but there will be job losses. And there's a good chance we'll slide back into some kind of recession instead of slowly, very slowly, climbing back out of it. And the thing is, you can't cut your way to a balanced budget, nor can you tax your way to it. What has to happen, what happened in the 1990s, is that your economy has to GROW enough to provide enough tax revenue to get yourself out of a deficit. And cutting government spending means doing just the opposite in the short term.

Part of what I find discouraging, even maddening, is the exaggeration of these points by so many, including our President. I thinks it's poor leadership, irresponsible and pandering to tell tales of kids without food, teachers fired, air traffic controllers furloughed, long(er) lines at airports for flights that will be less safe. It's just another example of politicians boiling a complex issue down to a few sentences that make it all sound sooo obvious and the opponents soooo bad. What really sucks though is that this is a result of our legislators -- all of them -- not being able to rise above the petty, personal BS and work for the American people. In the grand scheme, these cuts are minuscule -- approximately 2 percent of annual expenditures. Any enterprise that can't withstand a 2% hiccup needs to freaking rethink things. Correcting the situation will certainly cause some pain, but it's just payback for all the excesses we've been enjoying.

We're at the point where we have made promises we can't possibly keep. We've assumed the burden of insuring everyone is comfortable and has healthcare when we can't possibly know what those costs will be in the future, much less create a self-sufficient program for it all in the present. Social Security, Medicare/Medicaid, other welfare total around 60% of expenditures. Defense is around 20%. We've become largely dependent on foreign capital for the normal operation of our country. About 1/3 of the national debt is owned by foreign entities. Another 1/3 is held in trust for entitlements. (That's kinda like taking out a loan to pay your bills).The debt and deficit need to be corrected -- quickly and permanently.

Throughout our 200+ years we've been through ups and downs and have emerged as the wealthiest nation on earth, ever. Lot's of folks will say we'll make it through -- because we always do. Well, I'm not Chicken Little, but I will say -- it isn't a sure thing. It never is.

[Al Agnew]

Lots of stuff to discuss here. I'll start with one of what I think are myths about government assistance, and that is that the government assistance itself keeps people on the dole, permitting them to not work and just live "comfortably" on the government benefits. Did you ever try to live "comfortably" on government benefits? Especially if you are in a place like much of America, where you see the "other half" living REALLY comfortably. People are in a welfare "way of life" not because welfare allowed them to do so, but because they come from family and community situations where they are simply not equipped to do anything else. There was poverty long before FDR and the New Deal, and LBJ and the Great Society, and people living VERY uncomfortably. The descendants of those people are STILL living in poverty, but now they are getting some government assistance to help. If you cut off the government assistance, do you think they are magically going to go out and get a job? Are they physically or mentally or economically equipped to go out and get one of the few good jobs available? Heck, they aren't even equipped to move from Podunk, Missouri, to southern California and take a job picking lettuce away from an illegal Mexican.

Now personally, I'm okay with cutting the lazy people off welfare. But how do you pick which ones are lazy, and which ones are just not able to get and keep any kind of living wage job? And even with the lazy ones, what do you then do about their kids, who by no fault of their own are stuck with lazy and disfunctional parents? And what do you do with the ones who, once cut off, simply can't get and keep a job? Let them starve or else steal to eat?

Now, about government not being like a business...Nope, government is NOT like a business. Nor is it like a family. You can't use either economic model for government. Government doesn't produce goods for profit, government produces services to benefit the citizenry. To do so, it relies on tax money from you and me. When we feel like we are getting our money's worth, we grudgingly agree to pay those taxes without much complaint. So while government isn't a business, like a business, it is giving the consumer something they want. And don't kid yourself that government spending isn't a VERY necessary part of the economy. Cut the military by 20%, and you probably lose 20% of the jobs of private companies that are working under government contracts. And all those laid off people then go into the private job market, which is already saturated for good paying jobs like they had before. And when they can't get a job, they don't spend money. And when they don't spend money, the companies that used to provide them goods and services when they had money have to lay off workers.

When a country like Greece spends vast amounts of money just to keep its citizens in truly comfortable circumstances, it does nothing to stimulate the economy, it only attempts to keep things from sliding further downhill, with poor results. But spending money to actually keep too big to fail companies from failing, while really aggravating to those of us who don't want to see companies benefiting from their own stupid mistakes and corruption, keeps the economy from really going down the tubes. And spending money to develop new technologies, to improve education, to give American companies a leg up on foreign competition, actually has a good chance of growing the economy. That's what I meant by intelligent spending. You don't just throw money everywhere willy nilly, which is what both parties are good at with all the pork barrel spending, you carefully target where you're going to spend and where you're going to cut, always looking at costs and benefits, and what will best get the economy moving. There are plenty of smart people capable of making those decisions, but apparently Congress doesn't ever listen to them.

[Justin Spencer]

I think we need to increase the tariffs on imports so that we become more competitive in the manufacturing of clothing and other cheap products. Year after year we run a huge trade deficit stemming primarily (other than oil) from cheap clothing and products from China. The downfall of this is that prices of these goods would go up. I don't really know the history of many of the trade agreements we have made, but if we could keep these jobs at home it theoretically keep the money at home growing OUR economy and allowing for lower taxes. I'm sure there are many problems with doing this, like upsetting China which owns us, but the only way to tackle the unemployment problem is to keep jobs at home. These won't be high paying jobs, but would ease the burden on the welfare, and unemployment programs. I grew up in Fort Scott Kansas where Key Industries is headquartered. We took field trips to the factory where they made overalls and other clothing. They also had factories in several towns in Missouri, Buffalo comes to mind. After being entirely in the US for decades they moved their factories to Mexico I believe. Not sure if this was before or after NAFTA, but this could have been the reason. They still have a big distribution center in Fort Scott, but no longer have the other factories that used to be big employers in small towns. I'm sure this story has been repeated over and over in cities all over the US in the past two decades.

[bfishn]

And while us have-a-littles argue the fate of the have-nothings, the have-a-lots are taking it to the bank. 210 new billionaires in the last 12 months (Forbes).

Personally, I'd rather help a dozen people that need it than one that doesn't.