The House today passed a bill to force President Obama to estimate when the federal budget will be balanced and detail steps he would take accomplish this.
The Require a PLAN Act passed on a mostly party-line vote, 253-167. Most of Nevada’s delegation voted aye, even Democrat Dina Titus, except Steven Horsford, who voted no.
The Hill noted, “Republicans have roundly criticized Obama for submitting late budgets that don’t balance, and the Senate for failing to produce any budget plan at all in nearly four years.”
Only 26 Democrats went against the leadership and voted for the bill.
Horsford is feeling his way, he knows vacillation worked for Harry Reid, better to be in the rear in frowning contemplation than at the front facing controversy until you are fully established.
Predictable. He’s a horses a,,
Balancing the budget is a terrible idea. Why should he have voted for it?
What did you expect; responsible action from the looney left?
I did not say he should have, just that he didn’t.
nyp, have you forgotten Bill Clinton’s braggadocio about the wonderful economic outlook he left, was George Bush’s increased spending a good thing for you? Why does it always have to be Obama’s profligacy that you approve?
Maintaining government spending at sustainable levels is a good thing.
Arbitrary “balanced budgets” are not. That is why, for example, the Paul Ryan budget proposal did not project a single balanced annual budget for the next thirty years. Not that I liked his proposals – but even Ryan recognized that “mindless budget balancing is a terrible idea.
This bill is not an “Arbitrary balanced budgets” bill. It’s only requiring some kind of direction from the president! Horsford is an A$$
Compare individuals and businesses with government and explain why they can’t balance their budgets arbitrarily or mindlessly? Why can’t governments live by the rules they impose on us? It would be like me deciding to start a new business and predict ever increasing millions to spend on possibility, a little “read’m and weep” action??
B/c a national government is not an individual and a national government is not a business. The macroeconomics are completely different. If a national government savegely cuts spending on things like road construction, school teachers, military aircraft manufacture, etc. during a period of economic weakness the economy gets even weaker because the recipients of those expenditures have less money in their pocket to spend. If you want to see what sharp, arbitrary governmental budget-cutting does to a national economy in the midst of an economic slowdown, look at Europe. After five years of harsh austerity they haven’t recovered from the recession. In contrast, the US has been in a slow and steady, albeit fragile recovery ever since TARP and the stimulus. The current statistics make clear that the recovery will continue, unless the Republican sequester screws it up.
Another way to look at that is allowing the national government to become the largest spender in the first place allows it to become the driver of the whole thing. The national government should never have been allowed to get this big in the first place.
Then we would have to get rid of our armed forces, Medicare, and Social Security. The federal government is basically an insurance company with an army attached.
By the way – when the federal government really was a small part of GDP (in the 19th century) we had recurring boom & bust cycles because there was neither a monetary nor a fiscal means of regulating economic growth.
Exactly. Our constitution does not give the federal government responsibility for “insuring” the public, we are supposed to have a large militia instead of a large standing military. The military is supposed to specialize and not be the world police either.
As for the boom and bust cycles, those have not been stopped. As we recently experienced to clearly and have been living with for my lifetime as far back as I can remember the early 1960′s.
So congratulations on a successful effort to defend our current federal government structure since its working so well.
We’ve had more booms and busts since the federal reserve was created than before.
That is wrong, especially for the period after the maturation of fiscal and monetary economics in the later 1930s
Please Nyp, my whole life its been boom bust cycles as the only constant. Boom bust is the only thing I CAN count on. I am waiting for the US treasury bust to come, its the next on the list.
Actually, it isn’t
Cato Institute:
“Available research does not support the view that the Federal Reserve System has lived up to its original promise. Early in its career, it presided over both the most severe inflation and the most severe (demand-induced) deflations in post-Civil War U.S. history. Since then, it has tended to err on the side of inflation, allowing the purchasing power of the U.S. dollar to deteriorate considerably. That deterioration has not been compensated for, to any substantial degree, by enhanced stability of real output. Although some early studies suggested otherwise, recent work suggests that there has been no substantial overall improvement in the volatility of real output since the end of World War II compared to before World War I. Although a genuine improvement did occur during the sub-period known as the ―Great Moderation,‖ that improvement, besides having been temporary, appears to have been due mainly to factors other than improved monetary policy. Finally, the Fed cannot be credited with having reduced the frequency of banking panics or with having wielded its last-resort lending powers responsibly. In short, the Federal Reserve System, as presently constituted, is no more worthy of being regarded as the last word in monetary management than the National Currency System it replaced almost a century ago.”
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From Seeking Alpha.
“Marc Faber, fund manager and publisher of the widely read monthly investment newsletter, The Gloom Boom & Doom Report, shares with us his views on the global crisis, the US Dollar, stocks, commodities and US Treasury bonds.”
“All the money in the system led to consumption and imports from China which led to stronger commodities demand from commodity producing countries and higher commodity and oil prices. Because of this, there was a rare bubble in almost everything including real estate, stocks, commodities and bonds. The only bubble that has yet to burst is that of US Treasury bonds…”
Looks like other people disagree with Nyp, actually it is next on the list.
The Gold Bugs speak!
That would make Nyp a Greenbacker. Certainly not a Silverite.
It is interesting the same amount of gold as would buy a suit 200 years ago is still the same amount that would buy an equivalent suit in today’s market.
Sorry, I’m not getting into a gold discussion. Too wierd.
ah, I can’t help myself. Two point in this post, and a third in a subsequent post:
1. Take the amount of money you would have needed to purchase a suit two hundred years ago. Assume the Dow Jones Industrial average existed back then, Then assume that two hundred years ago instead of purchasing a business suit’s worth of gold, you instead purchased a fund that tracked the Dow Jones. Which would be worth more today?
2. If you have been among those credulous souls purchasing from Goldline after listening to Mark Levin or Glenn Beck hawk their wares, take a look at what has happened to the price of gold as the economy has recovered from the Great Recession.
[One more in the next post]
3. Finally, I have to give you that great, great passage from Warren Buffet’s 2011 annual report:
“Today the world’s gold stock is about 170,000 metric tons. If all of this gold were melded together, it would form a cube of about 68 feet per side. (Picture it fitting comfortably within a baseball infield.) At
$1,750 per ounce – gold’s price as I write this – its value would be $9.6 trillion. Call this cube pile A. Let’s now create a pile B costing an equal amount. For that, we could buy all U.S. cropland (400 million acres with output of about $200 billion annually), plus 16 Exxon Mobils (the world’s most profitable company, one earning more than $40 billion annually). After these purchases, we would have about $1 trillion left over for walking-around money (no sense feeling strapped after this buying binge). Can you imagine an investor with $9.6 trillion selecting pile A over pile B?
“Beyond the staggering valuation given the existing stock of gold, current prices make today’s annual production of gold command about $160 billion. Buyers – whether jewelry and industrial users,
frightened individuals, or speculators – must continually absorb this additional supply to merely maintain an equilibrium at present prices.
A century from now the 400 million acres of farmland will have produced staggering amounts of corn, wheat, cotton, and other crops – and will continue to produce that valuable bounty, whatever the
currency may be. Exxon Mobil will probably have delivered trillions of dollars in dividends to its owners and will also hold assets worth many more trillions (and, remember, you get 16 Exxons). The 170,000 tons of gold will be unchanged in size and still incapable of producing anything. You can fondle the cube, but it will not respond.
“Admittedly, when people a century from now are fearful, it’s likely many will still rush to gold. I’m confident, however, that the $9.6 trillion current valuation of pile A will compound over the century at a rate far inferior to that achieved by pile B.”
The 1913 dollar — when the Fed began — is now worth three cents.
Point 1 is nothing but theory, as such irrelevant since we cannot go back in time to create the Dow Jones and one would not be alive to benefit from a two hundred year old investment anyway. What is this? A reverse keynesianism?
Point 2 is also moot as I cannot truly own or trade for goods and services with Gold and I will be alive to benefit from Greenback investments, so that would be a bad move to buy gold at those prices. Selling my old jewelry at the peak of that bubble would have been ok if I was of a mind to let it go. (Not the case we like our stuff)
Point 3 is only a really wordy way of saying invest in the system you have cause you are not powerful enough to force change.
I only say gold would still buy the same today as would buy back then, gold is stable, greenbacks are not and our boom bust cycles began anew when we got off the gold standard.
We didn’t have boom & bust cycles when the US and the world economy were on the gold standard???
Perhaps a better word would have been
Increased
in place of
Began
That was the only thing you have a problem with my response… cool.
No, it was simply the easiest to pick up on.
Really, even if you don’t believe me, you ought to take Warren Buffet seriously. He knows a bit about money and investing.
I feel special, I challenge Nyp.
I am old enough to remember the end of the 32 dollar gold standard. My father and his friends predicted it would be bad and it appears to have come true. Most of us are not living better than our parents did.
Huh? The US economy is much bigger in real terms than it was when we went off the gold standard. Middle-class standard of living may be more precarious (that’s in dispute) but the overall economy is bigger and stronger. The economic pressures you feel are products of economic maldistribution, as well as of the inevitable creative destructions of capitalism.
And, of course, the world economy is light-years better than it used to be.
Since everything just coming up roses I guess all those people complaining about wealth inequity are just blowing it out their posteriors.
Nyp is here to set all you blowhards straight, he says everything is coming up roses.
PS: I didn’t say I am feeling economic pressures, I said many of us are. Latest estimates about 20% of the public. You need to get out of your condo in Morningside Heights and go to Queens for a while. Since those people would be rather hard on one of your stature, I would suggest taking a gun for self protection but,,,, its NYC and we all know that would be against the law. And we wouldn’t want to make the muggers and thieves jobs any more difficult would we?
No need for a gun in NYC. It’s the safest big city in America.
Yup, sure.
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/eli-b-silverman/low-crime-rates-nypd-eli-b-silverman-john-a-eterno_b_1772489.html
Keep on cookin’ Mayor B!
Oh, I see. Homicides are at such historic low rates in NYC because they are being classified red light violations.
Its only the Huff Post, one of your liberal bastions of truth.
OH I get it now. Its all APPLE’s fault.
http://www.latimes.com/business/technology/la-fi-tn-apple-thefts-new-york-city-20121228,0,1389993.story
Nyp is correct. In the 40 or so years since we went off the gold standard, the national and global economies have expanded dramatically, although that does not prove that it was the correct decision. Wealth inequity is a completely different issue. There’s plenty of money to go around. As nyp said, maldistribution is the problem. The top 20% are doing great at the expense of the rest.
Both of you do the same thing.
“Everything is great but only the top 20% are doing well.”
Let me alter your phraseology a little, Steve. The U.S. economy is among the strongest and most resilient in the world, but is imperfect. One of the greatest imperfections is the recent shrinking of the middle class. The fruits of our economic growth in the last 30 years have gone almost exclusively to the upper classes, which is detrimental to the economic health of our country.
“The U.S. economy is among the strongest and most resilient in the world …
IBD today:
“A January 2011 Moody’s report noted that the ratio of national debt to national tax revenue in the United States is the worst of all the AAA-rated countries in the world.
“While the European debt crisis got more news coverage than the one brewing at home in the last three years, the U.S. fiscal condition has deteriorated to the point where its debt to revenue ratio is nearly three times higher than the AAA median, and more than twice that of Germany, the U.K., the Netherlands, Switzerland and Canada.
“Later in 2011 Moody’s and Fitch hedged their AAA ratings of U.S. Government debt — issuing negative outlooks. But it was S&P that took the heat in August of that year, being first to actually cut the nation’s rating to AA+.” Read More At IBD: http://news.investors.com/ibd-editorials-perspective/021113-643969-suit-against-standard-and-poors-looks-like-a-political-diversion.htm#ixzz2Kil3krwA
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You just used different words to say exactly the same thing Rincon. Every thing is graet and the upper 20% are the only ones feeling it! ??? The two cannot coexist.
As stated, the U.S. economy is very strong and resilient. Government debt is but a tiny percentage of total production. You’re only looking at only one corner in the picture, Thomas. And it’s obvious why our ratio of taxes to debt is Godawful – many of our leaders took an oath to not raise taxes, but never took a similar oath to not spend more! Most other countries tax at higher rates. Our failure to tax adequately has nothing to do with how well our economy produces. And, once again, your statement entirely neglects the private enterprise side of the equation.
If you check out our GDP, it continues to rise rapidly with this recession representing a small dip within an extremely positive performance starting before most of us were born. By GDP, we’re doing just fine. http://www.google.com.au/publicdata/explore?ds=d5bncppjof8f9_&met_y=ny_gdp_mktp_cd&idim=country:USA&dl=en&hl=en&q=gross%20domestic%20product%20united%20states.
Funny that in 1965, we produced far less, but we felt richer. Today, we produce much more, but we sing the blues because of a couple of down years.
As for your statement, Steve, the answer is obvious. An economy can produce greatly, but if only a small group benefits, that does not negate the fact that the economy is producing greatly.
Rise rapidly, Rincon, the GDP growth is the worst of any recovery since WWII.
You still try to spin it to everything is good but still bad. Adding more syllables to gloss it over only makes it longer and windier but the message remains clear.
So we produce greatly and earn less.Yup everything is just ….. great. Lets tax the upper class out of existence so the middle class no longer has anything to reach for huh? That will clear up the distributional problem. By making everyone the same, except the poor….
Rincon, as a vet, you probably have your own practice or know someone who does. It should be clear to you the really wealthy get that way by working harder and longer hours than most. They do provide a real thing to reach for. If you have your own practice you are on that same road, but you are actually saying the government should take what you built and use it to “level the playing field” ? C’mon what should be done is to show others just what it really takes to build what you (most likely) have.
The wealthy often deserve their rewards, Steve, but either the rich are working a lot harder today than they did 30 years ago, or their reward is disproportionally greater than it was then. I don’t believe it possible that they are working that much harder, so I question whether their rewards were way too small 30 years ago or way too great today. Which is it?
You are right that a practice owner often works harder than his employees, at least in the beginning, but it is easy to pay low wages and charge high prices in this profession. Some of us resist that temptation and others do not, but when I say it is easy, I do not exaggerate. I assume the same to be true in other industries.