Budget talks: This is getting nasty

Obama has put entitlement cuts on the table for both SSI and medicaid/medicare. What has the GOP offered? So far, just to raise the debt ceiling.

 

The President's offer, assuming it has been reported correctly, involved a willingness to consider entitlement cuts "in principle" but tax increases that take effect almost immediately. And if you do away with a widely used deduction/credit -- e.g., mortgage interest, child credit, etc. -- without lowering rates accordingly, you've raised taxes. I don't blame the President for trying that tack, but I don't blame the Republicans for concluding that's not much of a compromise.

 

Show us all your cards, and then we'll decide whether to ante!

 

No one believes the president will cut SS and/or Medicare. Especially his supporters. It's a great PR ploy, if it gets to the GOP to acquiesce, but it's political suicide in reality.

 

I don't think the child credit's on the table (could be wrong though). Mortgage deduction is on the table because the argument is it artificially inflates price and, in effect, provides little to no break at all. I'm not sure how that works, that's just the argument I've seen made. I don't know if I buy it or not.

 

It would appear some GOP leaders are finally beginning to realize that Fox News and talk radio can't control interest rates and bond markets like they do daily revisionist history lessons.

 

Tough situation. With the Dems, the public's being asked by buy a pig in a poke. Of course,
given that the bulk of the representatives of the nation's exploitive pigs (and their willing minions) are on the other side, it's an easy choice as to whom to root for.

 

Ben, you would root for the dems even if they were roaming the countryside stabbing puppies and kittens in the head.

 

The dems aren't the ones threatening to crash the economy of the whole world if they don't get 100.000000 percent of everything they want.

That's the teabag imbeciles.

 

I wouldn't mind seeing mortgage interest deduction apply to first-time homebuyers only.

In theory, it shouldn't be that big of a deal. You get a deduction that declines every year for 6 or so years, and then for the final 24 years of your mortgage the interest is not even enough to justify itemizing. It's used once, helps the young, first-time homebuyer, and isn't needed again.

In practice, everybody moves every three years, selling homes with no equity in them and starting all over again with bigger homes and bigger mortgages with payments in which 90 percent goes to interest.

 

What a horrible concept for government - cutting costs of an overbloated budget, finding ways to do things more efficiently and cheaply and putting together a budget that makes sense based on our current economic state.

I didn't think it was possible that we'd elect a bigger jackass than the last guy, but this guy is actually dumber than GWB, he just uses bigger words.

 

Britain phased out the mortgage interest deduction over a 15-year span, and although there were cries that it would ruin the economy, it all rectified itself soon enough. The first-time homebuyer idea is a good middle ground.