These budget concerns are ridiculous, and are based on concerns and theories that have been outmoded since Keynes wrote in the 1930s. Democrats bought into these theories during the late 70s and early 80s under the influence of people like Paul Volcker and Alice Rivlin. Them during the 90s they became the party of the balanced budget, caring more about budget balancing than they did about investing in human capital.

The national debt will begin to decrease, once again, if we end the depression, create a growing economy, re-create an income tax system which requires those doing very well to pay their fair share, and reinstitute wealth and reasonable inheritance taxes. In the mean time, if the Blue Dogs, ConservaDems, and Republicans really care so much about deficits, let’s see them raise those taxes on the wealthy, cut expenditures for the wars, and reduce appropriations for the Defense Department. The money they’re worried about can easily be found there. In the end this is a matter of priorities. And what they are really telling us that they think health care for other people apart from themselves is not very important. Well, we know what the answer is to that. It is to defeat them and elect new representatives and Senators who will vote for our priority, and keep doing it until we get the reps and Senators we need. Make health care the only priority until they pass it.

http://www.slate.com/id/2223023/

My personal view is that Pelosi and Rangel stepped all over what should have been the headline, one that would have avoided all the confusion over Pay-Go. Because the following lede is both unambiguous and totally supportable:

“Friday night CBO released new scoring showing that after considering all spending and revenue changes in HR3200 the ten-year cost has been reduced from a previous and partial estimate of $1.048 trillion to $239 billion for a net change of $809 billion”

A nice big number that could have been readily backed up with a link to the Report and a table extracted from it. Which I did for our blog.
http://angrybear.blogspot.com/…..ittee.html
http://2.bp.blogspot.com/_fjW7…..+score.jpg

Then if you liked you could have followed it up with something like this:

“Speaker Pelosi and Chairman Rangel also reported that pending legislation rectifying Medicare scoring will produce additional projected deficit savings of $245 billion over that 10 year time frame for a net change in deficit scoring of -$6 billion, the equivalent of a $6 billion surplus”

As it is people are thinking this is some sort of a cash surplus compared to the status quo, something that just isn’t so.

Deficit neutral? Absolutely, and a very fine and supportable talking point. Produces a surplus? Well kinda, once you qualify a few things and muddy the waters, you get $6 billion out the other end. I am just saying I would have stayed with the clarity.

If only to stick to that Jackass Rep. Tiahrt for his comments implying that Obama’s mother may have aborted him if abortions were free.

Here is a clip if you have not already seen it.

http://progressnotcongress.org/?p=2222

contrary to populist neo con talking points, public programs just about always costs each of us FAR less then the same thing run privately

however, republucans first market how ”wasteful” that ”500 dollar hammer” is, then they take a billion dollar golden parachute which FAR out distances the waste of a 500 dollar hammer

IN ADDITION

those working for the government are payed a living wage, those underlings in private industry have to use public service just to survive

but keep with your talking points, if you are not wealthy then they have convinced you to argue against your own children

proud of yourself?

if you are wealthy then I have to give you credit for trying to talk to us as if we are morons

troll=fed, off to work

I know – Republicans and other nutjobs nearly blow an aneurysm at the thought, but if you consider how much we shell out out-of-pocket now, you can raise my taxes by $1,000 a year or more and I’ll still be coming out ahead if I don’t have to give that money to the big insurance companies.

Then again, if we went to national single-payer we could probably provide more and better care without increasing spending a bit due to the savings from getting the profit motive out of our health care system.