State of the Union Speech

[Goddard]

State of the Union Speech was compelling I was wondering what everyone else thought.

[Nova]

highlights
http://www.cnn.com/2010/POLITICS/01/28/ ... index.html

good one indeed. Didn't see all of it, but i think i saw all the major highlights.

some of these tax changes should have been made much sooner

[VampRegen]

The major points seemed in line with what he said a year ago. He did throw in a few new things I'll be interested to see if any of those actually happen (nuclear power, cut in capital gains tax, etc...I'm not holding my breath)

[VampRegen]

I was actually much more impressed with his discussion/response today in the town hall style meeting with republicans - explained himself and his thinking very well vs. the same old talking points he has been giving for a year.

[J.Anderson]

The U.S. might just be ungovernable at this point. It seems to me that Republicans are living in a fantasy world. According to an article in The Economist, "those who are serious about long-term budget sustainability talk about defence, they talk about entitlements, and they talk about revenues." This means that there are really only three ways to get the deficit under control: reductions in defense, reductions in the major entitlement programs, or raising taxes.

We know Republicans would go absolutely insane over any proposals to reduce the defense budget or raise taxes, which pretty much just leaves social security and medicare as the only other options for reducing the budget. Neither party seems the slightest bit interested in reducing entitlements; the Republicans under Bush instituted the largest increase in Medicare in history with "Medicare Part D".

Democrats at least have some sort of message on how to raise revenues: raise taxes on the rich. The Republicans just vaguely talk about "reducing spending," but never elaborate. We know they would never sign off on a cut to our bloated and ridiculous defense budget. So what exactly do they want to reduce? Trimming at the edges will accomplish nothing, as Obama's "spending freeze" demonstrates; it's going to take a lot more than that.

[VampRegen]

The U.S. might just be ungovernable at this point. It seems to me that Republicans are living in a fantasy world. According to an article in The Economist, "those who are serious about long-term budget sustainability talk about defence, they talk about entitlements, and they talk about revenues." This means that there are really only three ways to get the deficit under control: reductions in defense, reductions in the major entitlement programs, or raising taxes.

We know Republicans would go absolutely insane over any proposals to reduce the defense budget or raise taxes, which pretty much just leaves social security and medicare as the only other options for reducing the budget. Neither party seems the slightest bit interested in reducing entitlements; the Republicans under Bush instituted the largest increase in Medicare in history with "Medicare Part D".

Democrats at least have some sort of message on how to raise revenues: raise taxes on the rich. The Republicans just vaguely talk about "reducing spending," but never elaborate. We know they would never sign off on a cut to our bloated and ridiculous defense budget. So what exactly do they want to reduce? Trimming at the edges will accomplish nothing, as Obama's "spending freeze" demonstrates; it's going to take a lot more than that.

I agree completely, republicans sound nice on paper but in reality spend as much as the democrats and just don't try to pay for it. I'm not holding my breath for Social Security or Medicare, long term I don't see any solution beyond cutting these significantly, you can't tax the rich enough to pay for it. Don't really know where the current parties leave a fiscal conservative and moderate on social issues person like me.

[J.Anderson]

I prefer moving to a single-payer health care system (such as the Australian model) to get medicare costs under control, raising taxes on the rich, and drastically slashing the military budget.

[Goddard]

Taxing the rich is the obvious first step. Second step is put major limitations to job outsourcing. Not only would this bring more jobs to America it would also stop the cash flow bleeding. Once we pay people from other countries even if it is 1 or 2 dollars an hour over time and through multiple companies following in the same step our country will have a smaller pot to win any time its there to be won so to speak. Third put money into colleges and small business because these are the major sources of innovation. That is exactly what America needs right now. We need new ideas to sell particularly in new forms of green energy. I personally think electric cars are the future and if we placed a bet on it that would be the go to innovation. I know it probably isn't the most affordable for big business(from a republican stand point maybe) since electricity is way cheaper than oil, but it would remove our dependency on oil from other countries that feed terrorists and other annoyances. It sucks they cut NASA funding as well.

I have been watching a lot of the debates and I am starting to see small shifts in the thinking of many politicians even the republicans. At the very least they are starting to talk and that is a step in the right direction. The Australians did do well during these hard times, but I think they have more unity there. As far as what they did with their banks and jobs over there it was pretty impressive.

[J.Anderson]

To me the most obvious step is cutting the military budget. The U.S. has more weapons than the rest of the world combined. We have enough nukes to vaporize the planet several times over. Nobody is going to invade us. Ron Paul (a man with whom I find very little agreement) was correct when he mused that we could defend the sovereignty of our country with nothing more than a few nuclear subs. This seems accurate to me.

It's true that military R&D spending has led to advancements in technology, and there is no need for such spending to end; it has a utilitarian justification in that it leads to advancements which benefit all of society. What we don't need is to continue building massive amounts of military equipment. We also don't need to maintain a massive standing army; the U.S. did fine in both World Wars—mobilizing quickly—and that was a time before our military spending was through the roof. "Nation building" should be done through the UN, and the U.S. should no longer engage in wars which it must carry out virtually single-handed. It's time for the U.S. to simply let go of its position as de facto leader of NATO, and just become an equal partner. We can no longer afford these wars without ending social programs which are necessary to prevent large-scale misery and suffering.

[Nova]

to get an idea of how huge the military spending is and other spending

this huge nice graphic - the 2009 federal discretionary budget (1,100 some billion dollars)
http://images.google.com/images?as_q=de ... 9&safe=off

really lays it out.

[Goddard]

To me the most obvious step is cutting the military budget. The U.S. has more weapons than the rest of the world combined. We have enough nukes to vaporize the planet several times over. Nobody is going to invade us. Ron Paul (a man with whom I find very little agreement) was correct when he mused that we could defend the sovereignty of our country with nothing more than a few nuclear subs. This seems accurate to me.

It's true that military R&D spending has led to advancements in technology, and there is no need for such spending to end; it has a utilitarian justification in that it leads to advancements which benefit all of society. What we don't need is to continue building massive amounts of military equipment. We also don't need to maintain a massive standing army; the U.S. did fine in both World Wars—mobilizing quickly—and that was a time before our military spending was through the roof. "Nation building" should be done through the UN, and the U.S. should no longer engage in wars which it must carry out virtually single-handed. It's time for the U.S. to simply let go of its position as de facto leader of NATO, and just become an equal partner. We can no longer afford these wars without ending social programs which are necessary to prevent large-scale misery and suffering.

That is a hard one to swallow and I am not sure most Americans could handle that.

Another thing I forgot to mention that would save the country money is watching our borders better. Every year look at how many immigrants go through the system and how big a drain it is when all we could really do is pay a few more people and beef up the security.

Nice picture.