What Is Obama's Long-Term Plan to Rival the Romney/Ryan Plan?

[Politico]

Obama's plan: Ignore the fact that Medicare is set to go bankrupt in 2024. Continue running $1+ trillion deficits for the next four years. It amounts to kicking the can down the road.

Obamacare takes nearly $700 billion from Medicare in order to provide subsidized coverage to poor people. It amounts to taking from seniors to give to the poor. It is robbing Peter to pay Paul.

This is all just passing problems onto future presidents and generations.

Before health reform, insurance premiums were skyrocketing, and the shared cost of caring for the uninsured added $1,000 to the typical family’s policy. The Affordable Care Act promotes better value through preventive and coordinated care, and eliminates waste and abuses.

The Affordable Care Act also helps keep insurance premiums down. Insurance companies must publicly justify excessive rate hikes and provide rebates if they don’t spend at least 80 percent of premiums on care instead of overhead, marketing, and profits. As many as 9 million consumers are expected to get up to $1.4 billion in rebates because the President passed the Affordable Care Act.

It is duly noted that you believe it is a good idea to steal resources from a program that seniors paid into for decades in order for there to be higher health coverage rates among poor people and students, most of whom have no chance of finding a decent job after they graduate in this economy. It is also duly noted that you do not care about the fact that Medicare is going bankrupt in 2024 if we continue the Obama Doctrine of kicking the can down the road.

[Politico]

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Oh dear, dear. Here is my first six pack of questions for you Politico. Yes, I find posing questions often the best way to go about matters like this. 1. What costs are going to be passed on to the states?

Any and all spending at the federal level that does not meet our obligations towards Social Security, Medicare, national defense, law/order and BASIC infrastructure. We must have a federal government that does what it must do, the aforementioned outline, rather than being a bloated government of broken promises and dismal results.

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States will decide what is worth paying for and what is not. Inefficient, unwanted spending will become a relic of the era of Big Government.

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See the above.

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The world works with far more than 50 countries, so why should experimentation and innovation across 50 states work any differently? Besides, the latter (albeit with fewer states) is largely how America built itself from the ground-up in the early years of the Republic. Essential spending will be taxed and spent at the local/state levels.

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This will increase accountability and efficiency. It is hard to imagine a lot of this spending being more efficient at the federal level compared to the state level. Washington is an out-of-touch bubble.

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People vote with their feet. Those who want Big Government can find it in some states. Those who want government out of the way can find this in other states.

Rather than being a race to the bottom, it will be a race towards efficiency and accountability.

[Politico]

Just how good are you at detecting the weaknesses in your own arguments/assertions?  

I am fully aware of the ultimate consequences of my proposal. You'll just have to face the fact that California is screwed whether we go my way or continue on the current path. Unaffordable promises are eventually broken promises no matter who is making the promises.

The difference between my proposal and the current path: America as a whole continues to be strong in the long-run under my proposal.

[Politico]

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:U.S._Federal_Spending_-_FY_2011.png

http://www.usgovernmentspending.com/state_spend_gdp_population

Just a little though-experiment here.  In the 2011 federal budget, non-military discretionary spending stood at $646 billion.

The special interests-driven federal budget of Barack Obama is of no interest to Americans who care about limited government. It is certainly not a representative baseline. An appropriate, bipartisan baseline would be the 1996 federal budget of Democrat Bill "the era of Big Government is over" Clinton. Non-defense discretionary spending for FY 1996 was approximately $250 billion, which is approximately $370 billion in 2012 dollars. In other words, we have evidence that the 2011 federal budget is approximately $280 billion of junk that can be eliminated overnight without the world coming to an end, even for social programs and the like (1996 conditions were not the Great Depression; if you don't believe me because you are too young to remember, go check out the election results for 1996).

$370 billion is a hefty amount of money, but it is only about 2.5% of GDP. Surely by shifting this spending back to the state level some states will choose to raise taxes to pay for this spending while others will not. For example, California will surely continue funding the Single Room Occupancy program while Wyoming will probably decide not to, to give an obvious example. In the process, California will do a better job of providing for this program than currently because there is greater accountability when funding comes at the state and local levels as opposed to the federal level. Similarly, the people of Wyoming will no longer be subsidizing a program that they feel they do not need. We cut the middle man out of the picture (i.e., the out-of-touch Washington bureaucrats are reassigned or return to the real world). States that want certain programs they are willing to pay for get what they want and ensure efficiency and a lack of waste. States that just want government out of the way also get what they want. Ultimately, the nation is better off on the whole. Accountability and efficiency are increased on the whole. The nation's fiscal health is restored, since states must balance their budget, and the federal government is able to indefinitely meet its obligations towards Medicare, Social Security, law/order, defense and basic infrastructure after engaging in further restructuring.

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The fact of the matter is that most of the non-defense discretionary spending at the federal level is unwanted by the smaller states. For example, the Dakotas are well-off right now and government intervention has nothing to do with it. They will be voting Republican because they are in favor of limited government, not Obama's special interests.

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California would have to adopt a more realistic property tax scheme, or stop voting for out-of-touch liberals. That's California's problem, not the 49 other states. I would bank on California reverting back towards the way it used to be before the economic liberals ran amok.

 

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Go tell the people of Utah, South Dakota, etc. that the Big Government Way of California is going to lead to prosperity, and watch them laugh in your face. Go tell them that the only reason they can even afford a Greyhound ticket is because of bureaucrats in Washington, DC. There's a reason why most small states vote Republican.

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At least I am offering an alternative to kicking the can down the road. Surely I am not the only one who recognizes that unaffordable promises eventually become broken promises. Unaffordable is unaffordable, and all of the borrowing and accounting gimmicks in the world cannot prevent an unaffordable house of cards from eventually collapsing.

Yes, we need to assist people in need who want to help themselves but are unable to do so at the present for whatever reason(s). Most of our fellow citizens are decent people who will help those in need if we start to see a rise in poverty (either through increased state spending/taxation or charitable activities). But good, decent, hard-working people are not interested in subsidizing those who do not want to help themselves. The free ride is over.

I am extremely confident that this proposal will not lead to an increase in misery. It will produce greater economic freedom, and a stronger degree of accountability and responsibility both at the micro and macro level. No longer will true despair be shrugged off as "the federal government's job," and the level of feigned despair will decline.

[Politico]

David Stockman, former Reagan-era director of the OMB, says what I've been saying about the Ryan "plan":

The Ryan Plan boils down to a fetish for cutting the top marginal income-tax rate for “job creators” — i.e. the superwealthy — to 25 percent and paying for it with an as-yet-undisclosed plan to broaden the tax base. Of the $1 trillion in so-called tax expenditures that the plan would attack, the vast majority would come from slashing popular tax breaks for employer-provided health insurance, mortgage interest, 401(k) accounts, state and local taxes, charitable giving and the like, not to mention low rates on capital gains and dividends. The crony capitalists of K Street already own more than enough Republican votes to stop that train before it leaves the station.

In short, Mr. Ryan’s plan is devoid of credible math or hard policy choices.

http://www.nytimes.com/2012/08/14/opinion/paul-ryans-fairy-tale-budget-plan.html?_r=3

Romney's vision is a federal government that does not overstep its bounds. Romney is in favor of a fundamental restructuring of the federal government. He favors a government committed to meeting obligations towards Social Security, Medicare, national defense, law/order and some basic infrastructure. In other words, Romney will end the era of Big Government. Clinton promised the end of Big Government; Romney will deliver it.

[Politico]

Eliminating No Child Left Behind is key in those particular instances. It is a worthless Kennedy/Bush experiment that does far more harm than good.

 There is no doubt that federal discretionary spending is like a bad drug habit, especially the past decade. Eventually you kick your habit or it kicks you.