[Gullit]

In 2013, when President Mitch Daniels, former Indiana governor, is counting his blessings, at the top of his list will be the name of his vice president: Paul Ryan. The former congressman from Wisconsin will have come to office with ideas for steering the federal government to solvency.

Not that Daniels has ever been bereft of ideas. Under him, Indiana property taxes have been cut 30 percent, and for the first time Standard & Poor's has raised the state's credit rating to AAA. But in January 2010, Ryan released an updated version of his "Roadmap for America's Future," a cure for the most completely predictable major problem that has ever afflicted America.

Some calamities -- the 1929 stock market crash, Pearl Harbor, Sept. 11 -- have come like summer lightning, as bolts from the blue. The looming crisis of America's Ponzi entitlement structure is different. Driven by the demographics of an aging population, its causes, timing and scope are known.

Funding entitlements -- especially medical care and pensions for the elderly -- requires reinvigorating the economy. Ryan's map connects three destinations: economic vitality, diminished public debt, and health and retirement security.

To make the economy -- on which all else hinges -- hum, Ryan proposes tax reform. Masochists would be permitted to continue paying income taxes under the current system. Others could use a radically simplified code, filing a form that fits on a postcard. It would have just two rates: 10 percent on incomes up to $100,000 for joint filers and $50,000 for single filers; 25 percent on higher incomes. There would be no deductions, credits or exclusions, other than the health-care tax credit (see below).





Today's tax system was shaped by sadists who were trying to be nice: Every wrinkle in the code was put there to benefit this or that interest. Since the 1986 tax simplification, the code has been recomplicated more than 14,000 times -- more than once a day.

At the 2004 Republican convention, thunderous applause greeted George W. Bush's statement that the code is "a complicated mess" and a "drag on our economy" and his promise to "reform and simplify" it. But his next paragraphs proposed more complications to incentivize this and that behavior for the greater good.

Ryan would eliminate taxes on interest, capital gains, dividends and death. The corporate income tax, the world's second-highest, would be replaced by an 8.5 percent business consumption tax. Because this would be about half the average tax burden that other nations place on corporations, U.S. companies would instantly become more competitive -- and more able and eager to hire.

Medicare and Social Security would be preserved for those currently receiving benefits or becoming eligible in the next 10 years (those 55 and older today). Both programs would be made permanently solvent.

Universal access to affordable health care would be guaranteed by refundable tax credits ($2,300 for individuals, $5,700 for families) for purchasing portable coverage in any state. As persons younger than 55 became Medicare-eligible, they would receive payments averaging $11,000 a year, indexed to inflation and pegged to income, with low-income people receiving more support.

Ryan's plan would fund medical savings accounts from which low-income people would pay minor out-of-pocket expenses. All Americans, regardless of income, would be allowed to establish MSAs -- tax-preferred accounts for paying such expenses.

Ryan's plan would allow workers younger than 55 the choice of investing more than one-third of their current Social Security taxes in personal retirement accounts similar to the Thrift Savings Plan long available to, and immensely popular with, federal employees. This investment would be inheritable property, guaranteeing that individuals will never lose the ability to dispose of every dollar they put into these accounts.

Ryan would raise the retirement age. If, when Congress created Social Security in 1935, it had indexed the retirement age (then 65) to life expectancy, today the age would be in the mid-70s. The system was never intended to do what it is doing -- subsidizing retirements that extend from one-third to one-half of retirees' adult lives.

Compare Ryan's lucid map to the Democrats' impenetrable labyrinth of health-care legislation. Republicans are frequently criticized as "the party of no." But because most new ideas are injurious, rejection is an important function in politics. It is, however, insufficient. Fortunately, Ryan, assisted by Republican Reps. Devin Nunes of California and Jeb Hensarling of Texas, has become a think tank, refuting the idea that Republicans lack ideas.





http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/conte...opinion/columns

[Pigdog]

He's got to get elected first...

[Gullit]

He's got to get elected first...

Hey, there is nothing stopping the democrats from taking the ideas and running with them except there own feigned stupidity. They can figure out that cutting taxes on the purchase of an automobile spurs the auto industry, but they can't figure out that cutting taxes on business will spur business!

And this would actually address issues that TRULY need to be addresses. Not health care, not fake science like global warming, not punishing banks.....things like SS, medicare, and the tax code.

[Pigdog]

Hey, there is nothing stopping the democrats from taking the ideas and running with them except there own feigned stupidity. They can figure out that cutting taxes on the purchase of an automobile spurs the auto industry, but they can't figure out that cutting taxes on business will spur business!

And this would actually address issues that TRULY need to be addresses. Not health care, not fake science like global warming, not punishing banks.....things like SS, medicare, and the tax code.

Something needs to be done to jump start things.
Things aren't going well because not enough people have the funds to fulfill the demand side of things.
The government can't keep reaching into the pie for a bigger piece and expect the private sector to expand on what's left.
I mean if a farmer cuts the feed to the chickens, he will get fewer eggs, not more!

[sean]

Something needs to be done to jump start things.
Things aren't going well because not enough people have the funds to fulfill the demand side of things.
The government can't keep reaching into the pie for a bigger piece and expect the private sector to expand on what's left.
I mean if a farmer cuts the feed to the chickens, he will get fewer eggs, not more!

Are you really saying that it is the expansion of government that is responsible for the lack of discretionary income? That is really your position?

[Pigdog]

Are you really saying that it is the expansion of government that is responsible for the lack of discretionary income? That is really your position?

Are you saying it isn't the expansion of government, taxes and all their associated regulations?
Imagine you being a small business with the current atmosphere hanging over your head!
Sitting tight would be smart right now...

[Gullit]

Are you saying it isn't the expansion of government, taxes and all their associated regulations?
Imagine you being a small business with the current atmosphere hanging over your head!
Sitting tight would be smart right now...

It's an unstable business environment. Democrats still control congress and the presidency, there are multitudes of taxes and regulations pending, and Uhbama continues to talk about piling on more. It's no wonder they are taking a 'wait and see' posture.

[Gullit]

(IMG:style_emoticons/default/lol6bz.gif)

And it doesn't take a genius to figure this out....even the idiots at the NY times get it...a little bit...finally. These guys were even scared to be identified for fear of reprisal from the white house. Feel like a free country to you?

WASHINGTON — If the Democratic Party has a stronghold on Wall Street, it is JPMorgan Chase.

Its chief executive, Jamie Dimon, is a friend of President Obama’s from Chicago, a frequent White House guest and a big Democratic donor. Its vice chairman, William M. Daley, a former Clinton administration cabinet official and Obama transition adviser, comes from Chicago’s Democratic dynasty.

But this year Chase’s political action committee is sending the Democrats a pointed message. While it has contributed to some individual Democrats and state organizations, it has rebuffed solicitations from the national Democratic House and Senate campaign committees. Instead, it gave $30,000 to their Republican counterparts.

The shift reflects the hard political edge to the industry’s campaign to thwart Mr. Obama’s proposals for tighter financial regulations.

Just two years after Mr. Obama helped his party pull in record Wall Street contributions — $89 million from the securities and investment business, according to the nonpartisan Center for Responsive Politics — some of his biggest supporters, like Mr. Dimon, have become the industry’s chief lobbyists against his regulatory agenda.

Republicans are rushing to capitalize on what they call Wall Street’s “buyer’s remorse” with the Democrats. And industry executives and lobbyists are warning Democrats that if Mr. Obama keeps attacking Wall Street “fat cats,” they may fight back by withholding their cash.

“If the president doesn’t become a little more balanced and centrist in his approach, then he will likely lose that support,” said Kelly S. King, the chairman and chief executive of BB&T. Mr. King is a board member of the Financial Services Roundtable, which lobbies for the biggest banks, and last month he helped represent the industry at a private dinner at the Treasury Department.

“I understand the public outcry,” he continued. “We have a 17 percent real unemployment rate, people are hurting, and they want to see punishment. But the political rhetoric just incites more animosity and gets people riled up.”

A spokesman for JPMorgan Chase declined to comment on its political action committee’s contributions or relations with the Democrats. But many Wall Street lobbyists and executives said they, too, were rethinking their giving.

“The expectation in Washington is that ‘We can kick you around, and you are still going to give us money,’ ” said a top official at a major Wall Street firm, speaking on the condition of anonymity for fear of alienating the White House. “We are not going to play that game anymore.”

Wall Street fund-raisers for the Democrats say they are feeling under attack from all sides. The president is lashing out at their “arrogance and greed.” Republican friends are saying “I told you so.” And contributors are wishing they had their money back.

“I am a big fan of the president,” said Thomas R. Nides, a prominent Democrat who is also a Morgan Stanley executive and chairman of a major Wall Street trade group, the Securities and Financial Markets Association. “But even if you are a big fan, when you are the piñata at the party, it doesn’t really feel good.”

Roger C. Altman, a former Clinton administration Treasury official who founded the Wall Street boutique Evercore Partners, called the Wall Street backlash against Mr. Obama “a constant topic of conversation.” Many bankers, he said, failed to appreciate the “white hot anger” at Wall Street for the financial crisis. (Mr. Altman said he personally supported “the substance” of the president’s recent proposals, though he questioned their feasibility and declined to comment at all on what he called “the rhetoric.”)

Mr. Obama’s fight with Wall Street began last year with his proposals for greater oversight of compensation and a consumer financial protection commission. It escalated with verbal attacks this year on what he called Wall Street’s “obscene bonuses.” And it reached a new level in his calls for policies Wall Street finds even more infuriating: a “financial crisis responsibility” tax aimed only at the biggest banks, and a restriction on “proprietary trading” that banks do with their own money for their own profit.

“If the president wanted to turn every Democrat on Wall Street into a Republican,” one industry lobbyist said, “he is doing everything right.”

Though Wall Street has long been a major source of Democratic campaign money (alongside Hollywood and Silicon Valley), Mr. Obama built unusually direct ties to his contributors there. He is the first president since Richard M. Nixon whose campaign relied solely on private donations, not public financing.

Wall Street lobbyists say the financial industry’s big Democratic donors help ensure that their arguments reach the ears of the president and Congress. White House visitors’ logs show dozens of meetings with big Wall Street fund-raisers, including Gary D. Cohn, a president of Goldman Sachs; Mr. Dimon of JPMorgan Chase; and Robert Wolf, the chief of the American division of the Swiss bank UBS, who has also played golf, had lunch and watched July 4 fireworks with the president.

Lobbyists say they routinely brief top executives on policy talking points before they meet with the president or others in the administration. Mr. Wolf, in particular, also serves on the Presidential Economic Recovery Advisory Board led by the former Federal Reserve Chairman Paul A. Volcker.

Mr. Wolf was the only Wall Street executive on the panel and became the board’s leading opponent of what became known as the Volcker rule against so-called proprietary trading, according to participants. Such trading did nothing to cause the crisis, Mr. Wolf argued, as the industry lobbyists do now. (The panel concluded that the crisis established a precedent for government rescue that could enable big banks to speculate for their own gain while taxpayers took the biggest risks.)

Mr. Wolf and Mr. Dimon, who was in Washington last week for meetings on Capitol Hill and lunch with the president, have both pressed the industry’s arguments against other proposed regulations and the bank tax as well — saying the rules could cramp needed lending and send business abroad, according to lobbyists.

Both men are said to remain personally supportive of the president. But UBS’s political action committee has shifted its contributions, according to the Center for Responsive Politics. After dividing its money evenly between the parties for 2008, it has given about 56 percent to Republicans this cycle.

Most of its biggest contributions, of $10,000 each, went to five Republican opponents of Mr. Obama’s regulatory proposals, including Senator Richard C. Shelby of Alabama, the ranking minority member of the Banking Committee.

The Democratic campaign committees declined to comment on Wall Street money. But their Republican rivals are actively courting it.

Senator John Cornyn of Texas, chairman of the National Republican Senatorial Committee, said he visited New York about twice a month to try to tap into Wall Street’s “buyers’ remorse.”

“I just don’t know how long you can expect people to contribute money to a political party whose main plank of their platform is to punish you,” Mr. Cornyn said.




http://www.nytimes.com/2010/02/08/us/polit...08lobby.html?hp

[sean]

Are you saying it isn't the expansion of government, taxes and all their associated regulations?
Imagine you being a small business with the current atmosphere hanging over your head!
Sitting tight would be smart right now...

Yes that is what I am saying. Regulations are a nessistiy because corporations are more concerned with their bottom line than with consumer safety. Always have been always will be. Small business' are not the problem. Too big to fail is the issue. However I doubt you will ever learn that lesson.

[Pigdog]

Yes that is what I am saying. Regulations are a nessistiy because corporations are more concerned with their bottom line than with consumer safety. Always have been always will be. Small business' are not the problem. Too big to fail is the issue. However I doubt you will ever learn that lesson.

Bullshit again!
Small business have the same regulations as the BIG boys. That's why the big corps get bigger while the little guys can't compete.
No thanks to your friends in DC, right?
Who do you think your dem friends are getting their payoffs from?
Damn sure isn't mom and pop!

[sean]

Bullshit again!
Small business have the same regulations as the BIG boys. That's why the big corps get bigger while the little guys can't compete.

Bullshit, but I am interested in seeing how you think this is true.

No thanks to your friends in DC, right?
Who do you think your dem friends are getting their payoffs from?
Damn sure isn't mom and pop!

Payoffs on both sides. The Republicans are just more brazen about it. Right.

[Gullit]

Yes that is what I am saying. Regulations are a nessistiy because corporations are more concerned with their bottom line than with consumer safety. Always have been always will be. Small business' are not the problem. Too big to fail is the issue. However I doubt you will ever learn that lesson.

A corporation that makes something unsafe ain't gonna last very long. It doesn't matter if the government approves of it or not. That doesn't make me feel any safer.

Too big to fail is a bunch of bologna. That implies that once you get big enough, screw fiscal solvency, the government will bail you out. There shouldn't be a safety net for large corporations, and that is exactly what this is. It is unfair to smaller businesses looking to break into that market, and it is unfair to the taxpayer.

I watched Volcker on C-SPAN yesterday saying the same retarded shit. It is fascinating how all of these anti-business liberals are all for corporate welfare.

[Pigdog]

Bullshit, but I am interested in seeing how you think this is true.



Payoffs on both sides. The Republicans are just more brazen about it. Right.

Really large corps don't mind regulation, especially if they can control it.
Use the dairy industry for an example.
Just try going into that business without a few million in capital. (keeps the riff raff out)
The big boy corps don't want you in business so they want it as difficult as they can make it for you.

Your Obama making those dumbass statements about spurring that entrepreneur spirit of folks going out in their garages on a shoestring and idea and creating the next boom is really showing just how out of touch he is. Hell, there's probably some kind of license or fee or zoning approval, regulation of equipment etc., that would need to be paid or obtained or adhered too to even think of it!
The big corps love that sort of bullshit! Keeps out the competition!
The dems are NOT the little man's friend! Never have been...
Never will be either so long as they have fools like you supporting them!

I witnessed the entire meat industry shrink up to only a hand full of Giant Packers due to regulation.
Now quality for you is what those few mega corp meat packers say it is.

Hell, guess who is pushing that bullshit NAIS onto small farmers and who is obliging them?

I can't even legally sell you a cup of fresh goat's milk without a million dollars in start up costs thanks to government regulation!
Who do you think is behind that bullshit?

Wake up sean and see just what the hell is going on around you for crying out loud!

[Pigdog]

A corporation that makes something unsafe ain't gonna last very long. It doesn't matter if the government approves of it or not. That doesn't make me feel any safer.

Too big to fail is a bunch of bologna. That implies that once you get big enough, screw fiscal solvency, the government will bail you out. There shouldn't be a safety net for large corporations, and that is exactly what this is. It is unfair to smaller businesses looking to break into that market, and it is unfair to the taxpayer.

I watched Volcker on C-SPAN yesterday saying the same retarded shit. It is fascinating how all of these anti-business liberals are all for corporate welfare.

Businesses are too big to fail when politicians would miss those huge contributions!