Comments on: Ron Paul

By: Brian H.

Brian H. — Mon, 26 Nov 2007 09:18:41 +0000

I don’t think it’s good that Ron Paul is against Social Security and Medicare/Medicade cause theres always people out there that just can’t work or can’t take a job, or can’t take someone yelling at you, or someone thats needs to improve their relationship/marriage, or a daddy that needs to stay home more so their kids don’t hate their dad in the future.
Ron Paul you need to be for less work, more can be stay at home dads and moms cause I hate it when parents have to work and use a babysitter.
Children need their parents until they are old enough to fly, like example the birds.
We Need Social Security and Unemployment.

By: Gregory Travis

Gregory Travis — Sat, 19 May 2007 11:59:58 +0000

Done. The entire Department of Education is gone, and you’ve cut the federal budget by 4%.
Also gone are student loans for college, special education, student aid for disadvantaged americans, grants to disadvantaged schools, and other things that add nothing to the value of education.
What’s not gone is, ohh, the Iraq war for whom the money you saved by eliminating the Department of Education will fund for eight months out of every year.

By: Alan K. Henderson

Alan K. Henderson — Sat, 19 May 2007 06:29:26 +0000

When it comes to budget-cutting, the first officially-on-budget item that comes to mind is the Department of Education. The agency adds nothing to the value of education, and it constitutes Fed overreach.

By: Gregory Travis

Gregory Travis — Thu, 17 May 2007 15:49:30 +0000

You are correct that I should have simply pointed out that the income tax does not fund medicare or OASDI (Social Security) and I regretted not making that, simple, point as soon as I hit the post button.
But I disagree that the distinction between “on budget” and “off budget” is mere sophistry for exactly the reason you mention: there is an entirely separate tax, from the income tax, that funds Medicare/OASDI — FICA.
Henderson would have us believe that the budget deficit, that is the deficit between what is collected in “income taxes” and what the federal government spends is largely or entirely due to Medicare/Social Security.
Which just isn’t true. Because, as you point out, Social Security isn’t paid for from the income tax.
Assume we decided to end Medicare and OASDI tomorrow. We’d, morally, have to stop collecting FICA then as well, unless Henderson is suggesting that we simply stop Medicare/OASDI payments but still continue to collect FICA — presumably applying that (massive) revenue stream to “on-budget” items.
That would pretty much take care of the deficit, sure. But I bet people would be pretty ticked off to be paying “social security” taxes while not a single person in the country got social security benefits.
The deficit, and the resulting debt, are an on-budget phenomena. They have nothing to do with Medicare or Social Security and, as I tried to point out, if FICA and the entire social security apparatus were ended tomorrow, the budget deficit wouldn’t change by a penny.
We would still be paying more than 50 cents of every income tax dollar on the military and service on the national debt.
Alan’s third bete noire, medicade, is on-budget. However, at a “mere” $200 million a year, it’s less than ten cents of every income tax dollar.

By: Karl

Karl — Thu, 17 May 2007 15:12:04 +0000

Greg, the simplest and most correct response that you could have made early on would have been to point out that the largest social programs are not funded by the income tax at all, and that the income tax consequently could not be making that social spending easier. You seem to be making this point indirectly anyway, and it would have been more relevant of a response to Alan K. Henderson’s second comment from May 12 (which also does not concern the deficit) if it had been made directly. The on-budget/off-budget point that you have been trying to make just invites us to get philosophical in discussing what a budget is. Even though certain large spending items on the federal level are treated differently and are not considered a part of the budget, they are still a part of federal spending, and Congress still has the power to make adjustments to the tax or the expenditure to get the outcome it wants. If Alan K. Henderson’s second comment from May 12 was using the word “budget” in place of “federal spending” to make a point about excessive spending, I think that use of the term was reasonable.

By: Gregory Travis

Gregory Travis — Wed, 16 May 2007 05:53:27 +0000

The point is, which you evidently can’t understand, that we could stop collecting FICA taxes tomorrow, and stop paying medicare and social security, and it wouldn’t change the budget deficit by one single penny.
The deficit is in federal on-budget spending, of which military expenditures and debt service constitute over 50%, and of which your bete noire “domestic programs,” by which I assume you mean social services and not things like the justice system, or interstate commerce, are a fraction.

By: Alan K. Henderson

Alan K. Henderson — Tue, 15 May 2007 22:56:31 +0000

To say that certain parts of the budget are off-budget because for now (until the majority of Boomers hit 65) non-FICA revenues aren’t paying for them is accounting sleight-of-hand.
Anyway, even by your numbers domestic spending (which is responsible for the majority of that interest expense) is still a huge portion of the budget, and you’d think Paul woudl have something to say about an issue that’s a libertarian high priority.

By: Gregory Travis

Gregory Travis — Mon, 14 May 2007 21:21:53 +0000

Medicare and Social Security don’t “eat up” any of the budget, because they’re not even paid for out of the budget, because they’re not part of the budget. They’re paid for out of FICA.
And FICA runs a surplus.

By: Alan K. Henderson

Alan K. Henderson — Mon, 14 May 2007 21:20:07 +0000

Yes, I know Paul is against those programs. But he doesn’t have the guts to say it when presented a golden opportunity. Probably because he knows it will lose him votes – too many people rely on those programs as “income” (especially the bureaucrats who work for the relevant agencies).

By: Alan K. Henderson

Alan K. Henderson — Mon, 14 May 2007 21:16:38 +0000

Medicare, Medicaid, Social Security, and other wealth redistribution programs.
http://www.neolibertarian.net/articles/cc_20060215.aspx