barry and joe and the libs keep saying..

[chefdennis]

that we need to keep spending to get the nation back on its feet...seems barrys "Debt Commission" heads don't agree...

Obama Panel Warns Governors: Debt Will Destroy US Like a Cancer

Monday, 12 Jul 2010 07:09 AM
Obama Panel Warns Governors: Debt Will Destroy US Like a Cancer

The heads of President Barack Obama's national debt commission painted a gloomy picture as the United States struggles to get its spending under control.

Republican Alan Simpson and Democrat Erskine Bowles told a meeting of the National Governors Association that everything needs to be considered — including curtailing popular tax breaks, such as the home mortgage deduction, and instituting a financial trigger mechanism for gaining Medicare coverage.

The nation's total federal debt next year is expected to exceed $14 trillion — about $47,000 for every U.S. resident.

"This debt is like a cancer," Bowles said Sunday in a sober presentation nonetheless lightened by humorous asides between him and Simpson. "It is truly going to destroy the country from within."

Simpson said the entirety of the nation's current discretionary spending is consumed by the Medicare, Medicaid and Social Security programs.

"The rest of the federal government, including fighting two wars, homeland security, education, art, culture, you name it, veterans, the whole rest of the discretionary budget, is being financed by China and other countries," said Simpson. China alone currently holds $920 billion in U.S. IOUs.

Bowles said if the U.S. makes no changes it will be spending $2 trillion by 2020 just for interest on the national debt.

"Just think about that: All that money, going somewhere else, to create jobs and opportunity somewhere else," he said.

Simpson, the former Republican senator from Wyoming, and Bowles, the former White House chief of staff under Democratic President Bill Clinton, head an 18-member commission. It's charged with coming up with a plan by Dec. 1 to reduce the government's annual deficits to 3 percent of the national economy by 2015.

Bowles led successful 1997 talks with Republicans on a balanced budget bill that produced government surpluses the last three years Clinton was in office and the first year of Republican George W. Bush's presidency. Simpson, as the Senate's GOP whip in 1990, helped round up votes for a budget bill in which President George H.W. Bush broke his "read my lips" pledge not to raise taxes.

Despite their backgrounds, both Simpson and Bowles said they were not 100 percent confident of success this time around.

Simpson labeled the commission members "good people of deep, deep difference, knowing the possibility of the odds of success are rather harrowing to say the least."

Bowles also said Congress had to be ready to accept the commission's findings.

"What we do is not so hard to figure out; it's the political consequences of doing it that makes it really tough," he said.

The states need to tell the fed to stick it and quit funding this BS..quit spending tax dollars collected by the states to Washington and keep it in state..screw the Fed until they clean up and get rid of the ENTITLEMENT FEEL GOOD FIX IT FOR THE POOR PROGRAMS.....

If the people had a backbone they would quit paying income taxes and keep their money and simply file and not pay..and forget those "quarterly estimate' payments...you have got to be kidding me..making estimates and letting the fed play with your money...insane...Bankrupt this corrupt government and start over...