Beavis found all the RNC's talking points and posted them into a single post. Nicely done!!

It's pretty obvious Barack isn't perfect on the lobbyist issue. But he's bringing it up and moving on it. I support that and I'm hoping for the best moving forward. I think McCain getting on the "campaign finance reform" concept was a good idea too.

.....

NVG:

I had a thread quite a while ago challenging Republicans to tell me what spending they were going to cut in order to make possible a sustained lower level of taxes. I got exactly zero responses that addressed my question. Let me issue the challenge again.

The current annual budget deficit is $410 billion. How would you fix that?

Notes:

The deficit will increase significantly if the Bush tax cuts are not allowed to expire as schedule, but no doubt like all Republicans NVG will describe allowing that to happen as a 'tax increase.'

The deficit will also increase significantly if there is a permanent fix passed for the AMT (Alternative Minimum Tax).

But let's pretend the deficit is "only" $410 billion going forward.

Basic facts (wikipedia)

# The national debt equates to $30,400 per person U.S. population, or $60,100 per head of the U.S. working population,[52] as of February 2008.

# In 2003 $318 billion was spent on interest payments servicing the debt, out of a total tax revenue of $1.95 trillion.

So we're in debt and every year we go farther into debt. Every year, we pay $300 billion in interest on our debt, which is $1,000 for every man woman and child in the United States. Or in other words, if we didn't have the debt, we would have had to pay $1,000 less this year, per person.

So we have two choices:

(1) raise taxes;
(2) cut spending.

You are against raising taxes. Please specify $410 billion worth of annual spending cuts you would propose.

Thanks!

The proposed taxes are for increased spending, not debt reduction. And your point about cutting spending... Yes, it is difficult to cut programs once you start them no matter how wasteful or useless which is why I am against increasing taxes; it just creates more wasteful programs that will never go away. But we do seem to have agreement that Obama's plan is basically to raise taxes.

If the deficit and debt are really that much of a problem do you honestly believe we are going to tax ourselves to prosperity?
If we can't find spending cuts, at some point higher and higher taxes for the latest "crisis" will have a serious negative economic impact.

NVG,

Every Democrats plan is to raise taxes. Obama is no different.

K3nt,

You say Im the employer and hes the applicant? Fine, if he wants the job (IE: my vote) he better sell himself to me. Otherwise I wont hire him. If the other guy doesnt sell himself either, I wont be hiring either of them.

Dont get me wrong, I have nothing against Obama. I like him much better than any other Democratic candidate that I can remember since I was old enough to know or care about any of this stuff. Im just saying that he needs to start getting more detailed on exactly what he stands for and getting that message to the undecideds. Putting "Vote for Obama" signs everywhere and saying "We need CHANGE!" isnt going to cut it in the general election. People want details ( at least the ones naive enough to think he can actually change any of the serious issues).

Beavis, my comment was not intended to be taken seriously, hence the smiley face; hope I didn't offend you.

RE: NVG's responses to my question (and thanks for those!), I don't disagree with the idea of "the government is inefficient" etc. Though I don't completely agree either: the government is good at some things, and can be made better. (The old joke goes, Republicans argue that government is massively inefficient and wasteful, and then they get elected and prove it.)

But really, I would have no problem seeing smaller budgets. I just haven't seen a Republican propose one yet. What they have done instead is run up massive deficits: they keep the spending and cut the taxes. Then the Democrats get into office and just to keep the country from going bankrupt, they have to raise taxes.

Perhaps a more honest way of thinking about things would be this. Every spending increase should be called a tax increase.

So unless you're planning on dying in the next couple of years, George Bush has increased your taxes, not cut them. They called it a "tax cut," but spending went up dramatically, and we're going to pay for those spending increases sooner or later. Your future taxes will be higher than they would otherwise have been ... or in other words, your total tax burden over your lifetime will be higher than it would have been had he not increased spending so dramatically.

By this way of thinking, George Bush actually raised your taxes much more than Bill Clinton did. And Ronald Reagan also raised your taxes much more than Clinton did. In fact, as far as I know, there hasn't been a Republican who actually cut taxes (= cut spending) in my lifetime. (Anybody got any reason to think I'm wrong about that?)

So yes, Obama will probably raise your taxes. But so did Bush, and so will McCain.

Sounds completely insane. Yikes.

more than you know....I actually wrote a letter regarding this issue to Hillary last year..she did not respond..lol

Ice,

GO to barackobama dot com.
Click on "healthcare." There's a page with a bunch to read.
At the bottom of the page it says "read entire plan," which directs you to an 15-page pdf document.

Read it and see what it says.

Is that enough info for you to find out what you want to know about Obama's healthcare ideas? Or do I need to download the pdf for you and email it to you?

And yes I'm trying to provoke you to actually go read this. Hope I don't piss you off too much.