March 21st, 2013
11:38 AM ET
10 years ago
Congress avoids shutdown, bickers over 2014 budget
Washington (CNN) - Lawmakers in the House of Representatives approved legislation Thursday funding the government through the end of September and avoiding a partial federal shutdown, while also softening the blow of $85 billion in forced spending cuts.
The measure, which passed the House in a 318-109 vote, cleared the Senate on Wednesday. It now goes to President Barack Obama to be signed into law.
I'd like to see posters start listing common sense things our broken Congress could do to help the economy. If we could each add one or two ideas that aren't attached to some social or political sound-bite we might end up with a list the gutless cowards could copy. I'll try to list something obvious things to start...
1. Remove the cap on Social Security contributions – have people pay on every dollar they earn including captical gains, deferred income and dividends.
2. Significantly increase the Medicare co-pay for those who smoke and for people who refuse to work towards preventive measures like weight control, blood pressure and cholesterol.
3. End subsidies on oil companies makinjg huge profits.
I agree 100% Larry L
Stop taking money for Social Security and Medicare out of my pay check. How is the time to dismantle these programs and balance the federal budget.
SOCIALISM IS JUST WRONG.
Let's cut taxes for the weathy so that we can increase the amount of deficit spending we already have.
Seriously, though. Let's fix our infrastructure: our roads, rails and bridges; our electrical grid; our gas distribution pipelines; and let's not forget about investing in the next generation's education.
Listing ideas, will fall on deaf ears.........that's how we got into this mess in the first place.
Tea Party Thomas;
please move to Somalia, they don't have that, and the climat is great!
Both parties created this huge debt, but Obama has done nothing to stimulate our economy his entire presidency, and has only added more to the deficit. The republicans are holding themselves accountable, and are trying to do the responsible thing for the citizens of the country – keep the government running, while working toward a more fiscally conservative alternative. The democrats refuse to be accountable for anything – and in fact – this president wants the American people to suffer – just to get his socialist way. He is a destructive force in the White House and in our country. And while we're at it – Pelosi and Reid should live by the laws they force on us. Like flying on commercial jets and standing in long TSA lines. And the Obama family needs to curtail their extravagant vacations, until the president presents a balanced budget – which is the law.
And regarding Obamacare, every elected official, including the Supreme Court Justices, should have to live by the laws they make – they should live under the same mandates they place on every citizen in America.
Congress did something? Wow. There is a first.
freedom
@Rudy NYC
You must not have been paying attention during Obama's first term, or your are fully brainwashed. Until people are accountable for their decisions – or held accountable, nothing will be solved
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The solution is simple and the Ryan Plan 3.0 ain't it. His tax cuts would cost $5 trillion. We would need to create, not cremate, 100,000,000 jobs paying $50,000 per year to raise enough tax revenue to pay for it. That works out to more than 800,000 well payinng jobs, not mininum wage, would need to be created each and every month just to pay down his tax cut, much less pay down the debt.
It's called simple math. Try it sometime.
@Rudy NYC
Try holding your elected officials accountable sometime – you (and they) would have more credibility.
"The solution is simple and the Ryan Plan 3.0 ain't it. His tax cuts would cost $5 trillion. We would need to create, not cremate, 100,000,000 jobs paying $50,000 per year to raise enough tax revenue to pay for it. That works out to more than 800,000 well payinng jobs, not mininum wage, would need to be created each and every month just to pay down his tax cut, much less pay down the debt. "
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I just realized that there is a major error in my estimate. My calculation assumes that those 100 million new jobs existed on day one, and were actually contributing revenue from day one for the next ten years. If we were start out at zero jobs on day one, then we would need to create more than 400 million of those jobs over the next decade, which is far more than the population of the United States today.
Tea Party Thomas
Stop taking money for Social Security and Medicare out of my pay check. How is the time to dismantle these programs and balance the federal budget.
SOCIALISM IS JUST WRONG.
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I'm all for getting rid of both Social Security and Medicare, but first you have to do something about the forces that drove their creation in the first place. Social Security was created because no banking regulations existed that stopped banks from gambling away people's money in the markets, losing it, and forcing them to pay back customers. Medicare was created because people would reach a certain age and health insurers would drop them, despite the fact that they had been paying premiums for decades.
Getting rid of the driving forces that created Medicare and Social Security in the first place is a must before you get rid of them. You cannot simply rip the heart out of them without replacing them, or ignoring the problems they sought to cure.
freedom wrote:
@Rudy NYC – Try holding your elected officials accountable sometime – you (and they) would have more credibility.
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Practice what you preach, sir. You are arguing against some pretty simple math that any 5th grader could probably do. The jobs growth required by the Ryan Plan to balance itself is so unrealistic that it is greater than the population of the entire United States.
Freedom, the republicans are not holding themselves responsible. How many republicans cried about the evils of the stimulus, only to take the money on the low? How many have been screaming about cuts, only to increase spending for their own projects?
Your guys talk a good game, but fail to produce. Tell me one solution they have proposed that is not politically motivated? Repealing the AHA is not there is no consensus on the results. Keystone? They said 20,000 jobs at 1st...now it's like 4000 and all of those aren't permanent.
OK, I can actually help you out here. Tom Coburn had a bill that had merit. But it included revenue increases and the republicans trashed their own teammates plan.
Rick McDaniel
Listing ideas, will fall on deaf ears.........that's how we got into this mess in the first place.
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Right on Rick – congress needs to get off the stick and stop obfuscating!
@Rudy NYC
As I said, the republicans are publicly holding each other accountable for their decisions past and present – the democrats don't do this. They only blame someone else. Why are you not holding this president accountable for not presenting a budget at all – instead of complaining about one that Ryan has on the table??
Require the defense department to successfully undergo an audit within 24 months (there has not been a successful audit conducted for many years.) Congress and the Pentagon should use the audit to weed out waste, fraud and outright theft in the defense budget.
Make all federal pensions, including those of Congress, the VP and the Pres 401ks like the rest of us now have. Also make all federal employees, even the elected ones, participate in SS and Medicare. Other groups of employees also are outside SS and Medicare and need to be brought into those systems to make the more financially viable.
Tea Party Thomas
Stop taking money for Social Security and Medicare out of my pay check. How is the time to dismantle these programs and balance the federal budget.
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Fine with me as long as congress cuts my husband & me a check for every dime they have taken from our paychecks for the last 35 years! He's eligible for full bennies in another 11 years, and I'm eligible in 15. Considering we and our employers on our behalf have contributed upwards of $300k over the last 35 years there's no way we could HOPE to save enough to make up the difference.
@ghostriter
I already stated both parties are to blame. It's time to fix this mess – and I don't see Obama doing that, or even trying to. He wants to change our freedoms into socialism. I have a real problem with that – as do many in this country. And an example of a new republican on the scene who is proposing legislation based on constitutional grounds over political ones is Ted Cruz.