Balancing the books
Interesting. A couple of weeks ago Paul Ryan was saying ooh we need to cut the deficit, need to reduce all this spending on health care.
House Speaker Paul D. Ryan (R-Wis.) said Wednesday that congressional Republicans will aim next year to reduce spending on both federal health care and anti-poverty programs, citing the need to reduce America’s deficit.
“We’re going to have to get back next year at entitlement reform, which is how you tackle the debt and the deficit,” Ryan said during an appearance on Ross Kaminsky’s talk radio show. “… Frankly, it’s the health care entitlements that are the big drivers of our debt, so we spend more time on the health care entitlements — because that’s really where the problem lies, fiscally speaking.”
But a huge tax cut for the rich that is predicted to add a trillion dollars to Our Debt over the next decade…that is somehow not where the problem lies, fiscally speaking.
Ryan’s remarks add to the growing signs that top Republicans aim to cut government spending next year. Republicans are close to passing a tax bill nonpartisan analysts say would increase the deficit by at least $1 trillion over a decade. Trump recently called on Congress to move to cut welfare spending after the tax bill, and Senate Republicans have cited the need to reduce the national deficit while growing the economy.
It’s all rather stark, isn’t it.
My brother and his wife both stopped talking to me because I called them crazy; they thought Hillary Clinton was a figurehead of the Illuminati, that she would enslave them, that Sandy Hook was a set piece to take away guns, and that Donald Trump would save them. They’ve both spent the last several years on welfare and food stamps, for them and their two children.
I warned them that Republicans would take that away and that Alex Jones was a con man. I told them they’d be worse off in four years. They blocked me for these things and I haven’t spoken with them in more than a year now.
Sad. Bad. Mad. Are they free now?
But you can only lead a horse to water, it has to want to drink. They won’t thank you for your concern and advice.
Perhaps they will try to reconnect when they get desperate.
Not to mention that it isn’t really health care entitlements that drive the bulk of our debt; military spending is the biggest budget item. But what they are saying is that health care entitlement is the biggest driver of debt that helps people who are not rich, and that is all they care about.
Also, all the various entitlements for corporations and corporate agriculture and grazing public lands for next to nothing, tax breaks for Wal-Mart that often involve Wal-Mart getting back more than they pay in, etc etc etc….
The way to cut the health care spending is to revisit the ACA and include some provisions that allow a cap on charges; the fact that USA pays so much more for equivalent care to other countries is a disgrace, and that whole free-market mentality allows that to happen, so the health care system is cumbersome and expensive. And a substantial percentage of the corporate windfall (at least in pharmacy) goes to advertising direct to the consumers, so the consumers can go in and badger their doctor until their doctor gives in and gives them the medicine they saw on TV, even if it isn’t the best medicine for them.