The Blue Board

Considering the Republican base has been declining/dying off at a rate of around ~2M per election through the last 3 elections, it'll be absolute chaos. Delicious, delicious chaos.

Hillary also couldn't have asked for a better setup for 2016 - Republican politicians lost their seats across the country this year for anti-women actions and comments. If Republicans think the Hispanic and African-American swings for Obama were bad, wait'll you add in the female vote.

It's easier to repeat talking points from the "news" network that asked for and got a ruling from a federal judge that they are allowed to lie even when "reporting the news" under the First Amendment.

I went to a tax seminar today. The morning session focused on the tax changes if no action is taken by the govt. Among those are:

Income rates go back to the pre Bush tax rates
Tuition and fees deduction goes away
american opportunity tuition tax credits decrease
SE tax increases/medicare tax increases
standard deduction for MFJ decreases
$250 deduction for out of pocket expenses by teachers goes away
child tax credit decreases
student loan interest deduction will be limited to 60 months per loan
no bonus depreciation for business purchases of capital assets
179 expensing limit decreases to 25k
EIC changes its calculation which will effect decrease the credit
Capital gains tax rates increase
qualified dividends rates increase
Estate tax increases while the credit decreases - you could save millions by dying before the end of the year

There are many more changes that will increase pretty much everyone's tax bill. Get ready to have the government take more of your money. It was pretty scary hearing all of this. If nothing is done, people are going to have some serious sticker shock when filing in 2014. Spending MUST be cut drastically. We need to get back to sound principles.

Gonna have to defer to someone else. I didn't even file a return in those years.

Nah, I'm good.

You left out that anything that does pass, if at all, will be nothing more than a short term 1-2 year patch, that way we can have the fight all over again before the next election.

Raising taxes isn't going to be helpful for the economy either. From what you have written it seems as though you want the tax increases without the spending cuts. That accomplishes nothing.

IMO we should raise taxes, and cut spending to equal the increase in tax revenue over ten years. That's how you balance a budget.

The economy can't rely on government spending forever. The cord has to be cut at some point. And raising taxes alone will do nothing but increase Uncle Sams cash flow. It won't hardly make a dent in the deficit.

This isn't the time to balance the budget though. As I stated the best thing we can do is recover from the recession, then balance the budget. How we recover from the recession has to be to increase spending on projects that have proven to have a high multiplier effect, such as infrastructure, education, etc. which will provide tons of jobs and economic growth. The federal deficit isn't something that should be dictating our policies right now.

As for an increase on taxes, it has been proven that increasing taxes on the wealthy doesn't stunt economic growth, or create jobs whatsoever.

Your plan, which was tried in europe by the way, is to slash everything, thinking that is the path to economic prosperity. Obviously the evidence in europe speaks for itself.

The problem in Europe is the PIIGS and uncertainty over the future of the the Euro. All of which was create by runaway spending.

Also if now is not the time to balance the budget, why raise taxes?

We have a serious problem here, we have an economy that largely relies on federal spending and bailouts to function, but the Feds are so far in debt that the interest payments they make on their debt are already %10 of expenditures and growing meaning meaning they will have to borrow ever increasing sums of money to pay the countries bills, support an anemic economy, and pay the damn interest.

We can't do this forever, at some point we are going to hear crickets chirping at a US bond auction.

And here we are trying to figure out how to just lower the damn deficit, and no matter the plan in ten years time we still won't have a balanced budget...we are screwed, simple as that. IDK how high this thing can go, but I am sure things will get pretty tense around the $25 trillion mark.

It's like watching a trainwreck, then you all look at each other wondering : WTF JUST HAPPENED?