Here's hoping we can discuss the Obama budget

That is spectacular.

 

And like most of the rest of their agenda, it's illusory: The federal subsidy for the Corporation for Public Broadcasting provides a very small percentage of the budget for both NPR and PBS, so "defunding" either isn't going to make them go away ...

But it makes a nice, low-hanging target for the Sarah Palins of the world and the Dittoheads who are too lazy to turn off the radio and do a little homework.

 

Yawn. Wake me up when we begin discussing the defense budget. I think the Tea Party will gladly join with liberal and moderate Democrats to do the right thing, right?

 

The simple answer to FairTax being regressive is the prebate. It provides a stipend to cover necessities. And since poorer people can't spend as much as richer folks, this puts regressive in check.

Have you even read the FairTax stuff?

 

I've read every word of it, and I don't believe it. It's whack-a-mole logic where they have a single answer to every critic, but the sum of their answers don't add up together.

Again, simple question: Where is the extra money coming from, if not from the poor, and why is the support for the idea almost universally coming from people who would like to see taxes on the rich lowered?

 

This. Until EVERYTHING is on the table, neither party is serious about the budget deficit. This "we're at war, so defense is off-limits" is so much bullshit.

If we all go down the tubes economically, no war is really "protecting" us from anything worse than what we face from our own problems.

 

It's still wildly regressive, even if you shield the first $50,000 or wherever their bullshit "prebate" cutoff line is drawn.

 

Well of course Bush and his spiritual godfather Reagan were the only presidents to submit balanced budgets in the last 50 years.

I hear it on teevee all the time.

 

I find it wildly hilarious that the Secretary of Defense is calling for cuts in his own budget and even that's not enough to convince Congressional Republicans.

 

Nothing in FairTax is income based.

 

I am not one to compare the federal budget to managing one's own checkbook, because there isn't a whole lot of macroeconomics and social policy involved in my personal decision to carry interest-bearing debt ... but every time the budget comes up for debate it always tickles me that supposedly intelligent politicians can express the belief that we can rein in spending without touching any of our biggest expenditures.

 

Which is precisely the point.