Krauthammer Challenges Shields: Where Is Democrat Budget? What's Their Plan (Shields Sputters)

NewsBusters ^ | July 3, 2011 | Noel Sheppard

[PJ-Comix]

As he normally does on "Inside Washington," PBS's Mark Shields Friday was waxing moronic about Republican plans to balance the budget.

Not pleased by the fictional account on display, syndicated columnist Charles Krauthammer challenged his fellow panelist saying, "Democrats have not even produced a budget for 2012. What’s their budget?" (video follows with transcript and commentary):

Read more: http://newsbusters.org/blogs/noel-sheppard/2011/07/03/krauthammer-challenges-shields-where-democrat-budget-whats-their-plan#ixzz1R98RVLOf

[NTHockey]

>>103 House Republicans have already gone on record as saying they will not vote to raise the debt ceiling unless there is a cap of eighteen percent of government spending, federal spending, which is seven percent below what we’re spending right now. In addition to that, they insist on a constitutional amendment and to cut spending by half, the deficit by half next year, all of which are impossible.<<

NOT impossible; actually it is quite easy. Cap all federal employess, elected or not, at $100K, no pensions, no benefits. Eliminate Departments of Energy, Education, HHS. Across the board reductions of 25% in DC employees. Repeal DeathCare. Close the borders, by force if necessary. No foreign aid to ANYBODY.

How’s that for starters?

[NTHockey]

And add in Treasury gets all campaign contributions over and above expenditures.

[Forward the Light Brigade]

The Kraut did good! Others in the GOP should be following his lead and pressing Obama’s minions for their Plan. Would that Trump was running—he would have exploited this weakness. I don’t always agree with the Hammer on things—but he hit that on the head this time.

[SuziQ]

The Repubs. in Congress keep talking about needing a Constitutional Amendment, but who is holding the purse strings? The House of Representatives is where all funding measures are proposed, so create a budget that assumes all those spending cuts. Don't budget for it, if we don't have the money to spend on it. Then, when the Democrats demand more, ask them how they are going to pay for it. If all they can say is 'more taxes', ask them from whom all that money is going to come. When they say 'the rich', ask them how 'the rich' are going to create jobs if they are having to send their money to the government.

The logic is incontrovertible, too bad the Repubs. in the Senate won't have the guts to carry it to it's conclusion.

[Palin_Rubio2012]

Awesome.
Although i like Charles most of the time he does come across as he elitist sometimes which makes me very skeptical of his politics.

[Texan]

Krauthammer is a RINO and a Crypto-obamanist!

Oh please.... a RINO here, a RINO there, everywhere a RINO RINO, Eee Iii Eee Iii Ohh

How about something more original. For instance, "I can't stand, hate, disagree with, Krauthammer because he said, dot, dot, dot."

And exactly what is a "Crypto-obamanist"?

Put some "meat" in your post please.

[abb]

Mark Shields? I thought he was dead.

[tal hajus]

You’re not holding your breath are you?

[itsahoot]

Lot of (R) candidates are really (d) candidates, but they just all try to get along. The notion that every elected official is some how automatically loyal to the Constitution, is insane.

The Fact that we have a Black Democratic Socialist Caucus should begin line one of every Republican candidate’s campaign speech, but it won’t.

[itsahoot]

Maybe not, but can certainly be a collaborator. Traitor in any case.

[muawiyah]

For starters that is a mere pittance.

First off 1/3 of your federal workforce are postal employees. 1/3 of them work for Department of Defense or our various intelligence and national security agencies. Another 1/3 do stuff like operate ports, etc.

So, you get rid of the USPS and you get what? You have any idea what percent of total federal outlays that entire agency with 1/3 of the federal workforce accounts for?

It's about 3%.

You'd need to get rid of 33X the number of federal workers.

Since USPS pay is less than half that found in other government agencies, per person, you'd probably need to get rid of 66X the number of federal workers.

You can get rid of Energy, Interior, Labor, Commerce, Education and several other marginally useful federal agencies and that still won't do it.

About NO RETIREMENTS, they've paid for their retirements. The federal government is not like your township trustee who draws a retirement based on nothing other than his service time. In the federal government the way it works is the employees have traditionally ended up funding their own retirements.

I'd need to live to be over 200 years of age before needing any assistance of any kind from the taxpayers (just for one example).

If you want to STEAL MY STUFF you will face heady resistance ~ I have a personal Castle Doctrine ~ so don't even try it.

[skimbell]

Spends some time listening to your hero Chales.

Sorry that you have some difficulty in detecting RINO activity when it as obvious as Krauthammer makes it.

Chales has spent too much time inside the beltway. He, Fred Barnes and William Kristol-all Fox all-star panelists-like to pretend that they're conservatives but they ALL go weak in the knees over 0.

If you can't see it, you're not looking at it very hard.

[NTHockey]

First off, you completely misread my post. I said get rid of 25% of Washington, DC staff. That means the fat a$$es in Versailles on the Potomac who do nothing but suck us dry and would rollback some of the hiring of the last two years. Second, I’m not taking any workers retirement away. That part refers to the parasites in Congress.

Secondly, I read your post as advocating doing nothing. THAT IS NOT AN OPTION. A bankrupt government owes nobody, nothing - federal workers, the elderly and welfare recipients, included.

Finally, everyone is going to be hurt. Seniors are already without a COLA for two years, despite doubling of gas prices, hikes in food costs and paying taxes on money stolen from our paychecks. How about somebody else paying some? How about a minimum income tax of say $1000 for the 50% who pay ZERO income tax?

[muawiyah]

After saying "cap all D.C. employees" you clearly posted "Across the board reductions of 25% in DC employees."

There are probably 100,000 or so people who work in DC, public and private.

You didn't tell us which.

So what are you talking about?

I'll give you a chance to rework this ~ frequently federal employees themselves differentiate between "Headquarters and Regional employees" and "field employees". Then you have organizations like the FBI who have the greater part of their Headquarters folks working in West Virginia. It's pretty much the same with Homeland Defense ~ they don't work here ~ just a handful of people.

When it comes to appointees you typically have the 11 federal reserve cities with their operational headquarters stacked to the ceilings with appointees.

What you need to do is study the structure of the federal bureaucracies and see whose in DC, whose in the near in suburbs (Arlington, Montgomery County, Fairfax, etc.), where are the military commands situated, what about the difference between the Pentagon and some other federal facility when it comes to involvement in directing operations, or doing political bidding, etc.

Not all the people who cause you the problems you think you have are located in DC. Fur shur your letter carrier and the defense analysts at the Pentagon (which is not really in DC anyway) aren't creating those problems.

BTW, most of the folks bothering you the most would take those jobs FREE OF CHARGE. Capping their salaries, or their knees, wouldn't keep them away!