Budget deficit and Mr. Biden's aim

[Marvin Barley]

http://beta.news.yahoo.com/biden-con...212414728.html

I have made a comment on Yahoo, but editors censored it. It had no
insulting remarks. I will try to restore comment from memory, since I
haven't saved my intellectual property.

+++

WASHINGTON (AP) — Even as Vice President Joe Biden gave his most
optimistic assessment yet of budget talks he's leading, President
Barack Obama's Democratic allies in the Senate signaled Tuesday a
harder line on Medicare. That stance is complicating any effort to
produce a deal to cut the deficit by $2 trillion or more over the
coming decade or so.

Biden said that he's confident that the talks will produce an
agreement on cutting the deficit "well beyond" $1 trillion over 10 to
12 years. The talks are aimed at finding spending cuts to accompany
must-do legislation allowing the government to continue to borrow to
finance its operations and avoid defaulting on U.S. bonds.

Senate Democrats promised that any Medicare cuts in the measure would
come from health care providers rather than cutting back benefits. The
hard line came even as Republicans showed at least some willingness to
kill special interest tax breaks this year with a vote on ending the
annual $5 billion ethanol tax subsidy.

Leaving the Capitol after the group's seventh negotiating session,
Biden said he's convinced that the group can come up with an agreement
that increases the so-called debt limit and makes significant headway
on Obama's promise to cut the deficit by $4 trillion over the next
decade or so.

Republicans insist that increasing the nation's $14.3 trillion debt
limit be matched with a commensurate level of spending cuts. But they
also want the legislation to provide enough borrowing room so that
there would only need to be one vote on the politically toxic topic
before next year's elections.

However, it would take cuts in the $2.5 trillion range to meet both
the GOP requirements and even Biden's rosy update seems to leave the
group short of the goal.

The task wasn't made any easier with Tuesday's vow by top Senate
Democrats that any deal this summer to cut the deficit won't cut
benefits for people enrolled in Medicare.

"We will not allow cuts to seniors' benefits," said Sen. Chuck
Schumer, D-N.Y.

Republicans are pressing for savings from the rapidly growing Medicare
program, but Democrats stand adamantly against proposals to raise the
eligibility age for the program, require wealthier seniors to pay more
for Medicare or boosting copayments for visits to doctors and
hospitals.

While Democrats are holding firm on Medicare cuts, Republicans
maintain that tax increases are also "off the table." Unless either
side shows flexibility, that makes it difficult, to say the least, to
come up with deficit savings in the $2 trillion-plus range.

Ironically, the firmer Medicare stance came as Senate GOP
conservatives rallied behind a move to cut off the $5 billion-a-year
subsidy for ethanol blenders. The 45-cent-per-gallon subsidy comes in
the form of a tax break, even though it's considered by budget gurus
as a direct subsidy.

Tuesday's ethanol vote came on a failed attempt by Sen. Tom Coburn, R-
Okla., to kill the subsidy for blenders of the fuel, which is mixed
with gasoline. Coburn wants to use the money for deficit reduction, a
view not shared by Republicans who say any savings from the ethanol
cuts should be used to offset lowered tax rates.

While the vote fell well short of the 60 needed to break a filibuster,
Coburn and 33 other Republicans took a position consistent with
killing the ethanol subsidy, which is disliked by many policymakers
but kept in place by farm state lawmakers. Democrats opposed Coburn
because of the manner in which he sprung a forced vote on Senate
leaders. But Majority Leader Harry Reid, D-Nev., said that he'll
schedule votes next week.

"It is a waste of taxpayer money. It drives up the price of
agricultural commodities needlessly. It does nothing constructive on
the energy front," said tea party-backed GOP freshman Sen. Pat Toomey
of Pennsylvania. "So by any measure it's a bad policy."

Democrats were encouraged by the Senate vote.

"A realistic conversation about deficit reduction must include both
cuts and revenues," said Rep. Chris Van Hollen of Maryland, who's
representing House Democrats in the talks. Coburn's willingness "to
cut special interest tax breaks for the purpose of deficit reduction
is encouraging."

Van Hollen said Tuesday's session focused on the amount of money
available for the annual round of appropriations bills. One question
at issue is how much savings to claim from the drawdown of troops from
Iraq and Afghanistan.

Biden has scheduled a steady series of meetings this month in hopes of
producing a blueprint that would then be fleshed out further by Obama
and House Speaker John Boehner, R-Ohio, and translated into actual
legislation.

"I think we we're going to be in a position, hopefully by the end of
the month, by the Fourth of July recess, we have something to take to
the leaders and actually begin to get down to the implementation piece
of the kind of legislation," Biden said. "That's the goal."

Added Biden: "We're down to the tough stuff."

+++

COMMENT

Mr. Vicepresident Biden is again right. Budget deficit is bad thing,
because it is the money spent and not earned. Medicare cuts would be
best aimed if they do not target desperate groups of people facing
death from illness, but GO M.D.s who prescribe antibiotics for every
cold and for Big Pharma pencils.

The welfare cuts could be feasible if people are empowered with a sort
of "job fu", to learn skills to find and keep job, a skill which many
could not learn from their parents. Also important is "personal
finances foo", a skill of managing money so it is not spent before
it's earned and avoid debt slavery and foreclosures. The problem is
that on many foreclosures property ended up sold for less than
original owner cut pay if given debt relief! And even so, it goes
poorly, so the real harvesters of profit are home scavengers, who
leave banks with value of less than $0.00 - demolished homes that
demand expensive repairs or condemnation.

If they rented apartments instead, they would have suffered lower
loss, for people take care about their living place more than
scavengers I saw on TV filmed by journalists.

I am however pleasantly surprised that Mr. Obama's trillion to Big
Insurance and Big Money was covered with U.S. Bonds. This is some
coverage compared to money that is printed without coverage so it
generates inflation, but basic life sustenance prices seem to have
doubled, from what I see on sites that provide for the poor. So, in
the end, Mr. Obama's salvation plan again goes over back of the poor
to save rich and finance orgies, like Superhick cartoon.

I am sure this is not what Mr. Obama intended to do. So, if we can
give welfare to billionaires, it is obvious that Medicare to the poor
has to be cut.

In the end, righteous government should empower the poor to become
self-sustaining, but the trend is opposite. More subliminal messages
program people to buy, buy and buy what they don't have money for and
what they do not need. Corporate greed hasn't learned, so in lack of a
Roosevelt, we might expect another world crisis like 1928-33 and
another Hitler who will remedy the problems the way he sees fit.

In Jehovah All-Seeing, God of Knowledge, Christ Jesus of Nazareth and
Holy Spirit of God.
Amen.

[Marvin Barley]

To add to this, food is converted to ethanol mixed with gasoline,
which
drastically increased price of all food and had stricken less
fortunate.
When they first proposed biofuel, they said they will let bio waste to
ferment and produce biogas and ethanol, but then they started burning
life substance into internal combustion machines. This is just one of
dirty tricks Big Money has pulled that show how corporate greed is
poor
master of the planet.

In Christ Jesus holy name
Amen

[Marvin Barley]

Authority:

Jeremiah 29:7
21st Century King James Version (KJ21)

7 And seek the peace of the city whither I have caused you to be
carried away captives, and pray unto the LORD for it; for in the peace
thereof shall ye have peace.

In nomine Christi
Amen