Federal Hatcheries Closing?

[dave potts]

Al is spot on. I'm always amazed how many people think the debt can be erased by cutting this and that and stop wasting money. But just mention cutting entitlements and they go crazy yet that is where the big money goes along with defense spending.

[dennis boatman]

No

[moguy1973]

Wait until they say, "OK, we'll keep your hatcheries open, but your yearly trout stamps are going to be $30, and your yearly fishing licenses are $75"

They'll pass the buck somewhere.

[Jerry Rapp]

Al nailed it. It is a spending problem. And cutting a million here, or a million there doesn't mean squat.

You can't spend more than you take in. We are taxed to death, while 50% of the population is not taxed at all, and get benies from us. We spend billions, trillions, overseas in "aid". Somewhere along the line somone has to say the buck stops here. Use our own resources, defend our borders, and protect our allies overseass.

[Quillback]

Al isn't quite right, we have cut military spending, it's part of the discretionary budget that has been cut. However he is right in that entitlement spending is where the big bucks lie.

[Mitch f]

Cutting military spending is very difficult to do correctly. Some of the programs take 10 years or more to come to fruition and just cutting them would be equivalent to throwing away all the work and hardware/manpower up to that point.

[Jerry Rapp]

ok, 17 Trillion in debt we are, where would you cut? A trillion is a bunch of money, google it. Then multiply it by 17. I think we will never get out of debt.

[Wayne SW/MO]

If you're referring to me Al, I didn't say anything about the national debt, but did say that mitigation hatcheries are a debt owned to those whose lives were changed by the dams built for many people who only have positive experience from them. Didn't say we should stop foreign aid either, just that "If they can send money out of the country and fund every little piss ant grant, they (can) fund their mitigation debts."

[Quillback]

Here's a pie chart showing federal spending. Note the trends.

Pension spending - Increasing

Health care spending - Increasing

Defense spending - decreasing

In these three areas lies approximately 70% of our spending.

http://www.usgovernmentspending.com/budget_pie_gs.php

[Al Agnew]

No, Wayne, wasn't talking to you but to the idea stated by somebody above that we need to cut foreign aid and Congressional pay, as if that would do a lot to solve the problem. It isn't even the place to start. Nor is the military, really, although we need to get smarter about how we spend the military bucks. It's all in those entitlements where the big money is.

And the thing is, a lot of this discretionary spending, including the military spending, results in jobs and demand for products.

The last time we came close to a balanced budget, it was not because of huge cuts in spending but mainly because of a booming economy, due to burgeoning developments in computer/electronic/.com industries and in the housing industry. There were cuts in military spending but not much in entitlements. And that's the biggest thing that will give us any kind of chance to ever cut into the debt again...the development of new industries. The old ones have all gone defunct or moved out of the country. Just cutting spending, while it needs to be done, will result in at best an economy staggering along no better and probably worse than it is now. Meaning not enough tax revenue coming in.

Somebody said something I heard a few years ago that I thought was really smart...our biggest mistake in this country is that we don't cut spending when the economy is booming and can take it. Instead, we spend more then because we got it, and then when the economy tanks as it always does, we start screaming that we need to stop spending, but if we really did the economy would probably tank worse.

But, food for thought...this country has never been out of debt since sometime in the 1800s. We aren't going to get out of debt no matter what we do. We can't. But we are going to have to start cutting it down some instead of growing it.