Peter Suderman on Discusses Fake Budget Cuts on Freedom Watch

Reason Associate Editor Peter Suderman appeared on Freedom Watch to discuss the how the government has pretended to cut spending by including non-existent war spending and excluding entitlement obligations. Air date: 7/26/2011.

Approximately 4.51 minutes.

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[Vegemighty]

Instead of a debt ceiling, can we have a spending ceiling instead?

[TheStrazy]

"Funny math" the act of counting money that isnt there as "savings", Also Spending money that you have to borrow and moving it into the Plus column.

[Terje1337]

@MooseOfReason Read the first comment. This one was a parody

[VIVANOVACHICAGO]

Take churches OFF WELFARE

[Loathomar]

@PissedFechtmeister And when you add the fact that the top 400 richest pay 17.5% taxes, where the bottom 50% pay 3% federal, on average, and 12.3% to FICA it comes out the the richest 400 american's pay a whole of 2.2% higher taxes on there 10s or 100s of millions then those earning 40k a year. Really, the people that pay the highest rates are not those earning millions but those earn $150k-200k, as they are still earn most of there money from wages and pay almost full FICA.

[Loathomar]

@curtisls87 2010 Federal Budget; $3.553T. SS - $695, medicare - $453B, Medicaid - $290B. Total - $1.438T. $1.438T/$3.553T = 0.405 or 40.5%. Math is hard... right? FICA is a tax that pays for "entitlement' services now and has money left over which goes to the SS trust fund. A fund worth $2.6 trillion. This has been build up since 1987, the last time SS was really changed. It averages out the SS has ran a $100B surplus for the last 23 years where are the general government ran a $400B lose.

[curtisls87]

@Loathomar

Please consider being a bit more polite in your responses. It would, appreciated. Having said that, please note that FICA is a tax, whether we call it that or not. The courts have clearly said that there is no compulsion on the the government to actually pay SS benefits to anyone (it can refuse to pay SS). Additionally, when we pay FICA now, it is used immediately to pay benefits now. Additionally, the cost of these three programs is approximately 60% of the total federal budget.

[MooseOfReason]

@Terje1337 Some of those bills aren't worth paying. John Stossel pointed out that we can cut $475 billion from military spending and still provide a strong national defense.

[Itugen88]

Paul/Napolitano 2012!!!

[Terje1337]

@Vegemighty In the future: If we dont raise the spending ceiling we cant pay our bills!

[Loathomar]

@Harbinger631 Oh, right cause talking about pensions even slightly relevant to the raising of the national debt ceiling... If this was a discussion about state budgets, it would be an issue, but its not and they two subject are unrelated. Medicare is still fully funded by it's FICA taxes and will be for the next ten years. This can not be said about the other, non-entitlement sections of government. If entitlements where run like the rest of government they would be trillions in debt already.

[Harbinger631]

@Loathomar Where in my post did I mention anything about Social Security? My post was about entitlements as a whole, specifically Medicare, Medicaid, and pensions. You said that it is BC to think that entitlements are the problem, when the reality is that the three things I mentioned eat the majority of state and federal budgets.