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The Deficit Dog That Didn't Bark: Raising the Retirement Age
By Robert W. Stock - AOL News"You're going to have to raise the retirement age for Social Security," New Jersey Gov. Chris Christie proclaimed in a recent speech to the American Enterprise Institute. "Oh, I just said it and I still am standing here. I did not vaporize into the carpet and I said it." When the report of President Barack Obama's deficit commission emerged last year, one of its major cost-cutting suggestions was just that: an increase in the age for receiving full Social Security benefits to 69 by 2075. Yet in all of the furious deficit debate in Washington of late, the late-retirement proposal so far been a ...
Forget the Obama Budget -- the Real Crisis Ahead Is the Debt Ceiling
By Walter Shapiro - Politics DailyFor all the red-ink rhetoric that engulfed Washington Monday with the release of Barack Obama's $3.7 trillion budget, the partisan talking points ("win the future" versus "spending the future") have far more to do with the 2012 elections than the national debt. The economic document that matters right now is not the line items in the 2012 budget, the ever-shifting House GOP proposals to slash as much as $74 billion in government spending this year, nor even the slash-and-burn report of the president's bipartisan fiscal commission. Far more important for those who worry about America's fiscal ...
Gates Shifts Military Spending: 'Not Every Defense Dollar is Sacred'
By David Wood - Politics DailyA draining war and record-high defense spending financed by borrowing are driving yet another effort to control the military budget. Defense Secretary Robert M. Gates, citing a "grim financial outlook'' but also the "growing peril of the future,'' Thursday announced minor shifts within the defense budget of about $178 billion over five years. "Not every defense dollar is sacred,'' he told reporters at the Pentagon. But, he warned, "We shrink from our global responsibilities at our peril,'' and he said under the current Obama administration plan, the defense budget will continue to rise ...
Deficit Reduction: Democrat Warner, Republican Chambliss Push for Plan
By Tom Diemer - Politics DailyConservative Republican Saxby Chambliss and moderate Democrat Mark Warner are determined to keep hope alive when it comes to shrinking the nation's budget deficit -- and taking a hard look at the controversial recommendations of the president's deficit-cutting panel. "The way you do it is put everything on the table," Chambliss said last week to reporters from the Washington Post and other news outlets. "It is critically important to get a plan in place in the next 12 months." Warner (D-Va.) and Chambliss (R-Ga.) have formed an ad hoc "working group" that includes at least 20 senators, ...
Opinion: Want to Balance the Budget? Get Out the Chainsaw
By not in system - AOL News(Dec. 10) -- In late November, President Barack Obama proposed a two-year wage freeze for federal workers as part of an effort to cut spending and rein in deficits. A week later, he announced a tax deal with Republicans that would, among other things, extend unemployment benefits, adding $56 billion in spending. And then in short order, the Senate announced that it would forgo planned payment cuts to Medicare doctors, adding more than $19 billion in projected federal spending. Anyone wonder why it's so hard to get federal spending under control? The deficit commission appointed by Obama ...
Opinion: Bring on the Gas Tax
By not in system - AOL News(Dec. 9) -- After falling three votes shy of the 14 needed, the deficit reduction commission report won't make it to Congress. And dying on the vine with it is the suggestion of a 15-cent increase in the federal per-gallon gas tax. With gas prices rising this winter and the economy still struggling, any talk of a gas tax increase was likely to rile the public. But we at Edmunds.com believe that a gas tax can be beneficial -- if it's set at a much higher rate than 15 cents per gallon, and only as part of a "grand bargain" that lightens the load for taxpayers in other areas and simplifies the ...
Bowles, Simpson Urge Obama to Act on Deficit Report Next Month
By Tom Kavanagh - Politics DailyThe leaders of the bipartisan commission on deficit reduction called upon President Obama on Thursday to open negotiations with congressional leaders from both parties when Congress returns in January. It is important to take "the critical next step of establishing a serious fiscal responsibility plan to strengthen our economy for the long term," they said. Co-Chairmen Erskine Bowles and Alan Simpson issued the call before meeting with Budget Director Jack Lew and Treasury Secretary Timothy Geithner at the White House. The panel they headed issued its report last week, urging a number of ...
Obama Needs to Call Summit on the Deficit, Top Democrat Says
By Bruce Drake - Politics DailySen. Kent Conrad of North Dakota, a member of President Barack Obama's debt commission and chairman of the Senate Budget Committee, said Sunday that the president needed to follow up the commission's report by calling a summit meeting in which he takes part. "What I think is really necessary now is that there be a summit that involves the president," said Conrad, a Democrat. "You know, when Judd Gregg and I first proposed this notion of a commission three years ago, we designed it so the president's people were at the table. The secretary of the treasury was the chairman of the commission. ...
Debate: A Credible Way Out of Our Fiscal Swamp
By not in system - AOL News
(Dec. 3) -- Many skeptics thought President Barack Obama's fiscal commission was a pointless exercise, doomed to failure on its assignment to develop a plan to rein in the massive federal deficits that are projected for the next decade and beyond. But today a bipartisan majority of that panel proved the skeptics wrong, and the nation owes these commission members a debt of gratitude. The Deficit Commission:Good Idea or Bad? Pro: It's a credible roadmap out of our fiscal swamp, says Robert L. Bixby of the Concord Coalition. Con: It's a needless distraction from our current economic crisis, ...
Debate: Deficit Distraction Disorder
By not in system - AOL News(Dec. 3) -- When the school is on fire and the kids are still in the classrooms, you don't debate the color to paint the cafeteria, unless of course you're a Washington insider. We are experiencing the worst economic crisis since the Great Depression. Almost 15 million people are unemployed, 9 million are working part time because they can't find full-time employment, and millions more have simply given up looking for work altogether. Unemployment climbed to 9.8 percent in November. The Deficit Commission:Good Idea or Bad? Pro: It's a credible roadmap out of our fiscal swamp, says Robert ...
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