Tag: debt

White House Takes Dim View of Boehner Debt Plan

3:55 pm

No surprise here: The White House takes a dim view of Boehner’s speech yesterday.

So my question here is there: Who is more serious about controlling spending, Obama and the Democrats or the Republicans in the House? Though it is very easy to find lots of reasons to criticize the various Republican proposals, at the moment they are the only proposals that are willing, even on a tiny level, to consider entitlement reform.

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“Without significant spending cuts and reforms to reduce our debt, there will be no debt-limit increase.”

10:57 pm

I like the sound of this: “Without significant spending cuts and reforms to reduce our debt, there will be no debt-limit increase.”

Also this: “We should be talking about cuts of trillions, not just billions. They should be actual cuts and program reforms, not broad deficit or debt targets that punt the tough questions to the future.”

And this: “And to those who contend that the economy is too weak to take on the challenge of entitlement reform — I would simply say, you’ve got it backwards. The truth is that making fundamental reforms to these programs would be good for the economy — and good for the next generation.”

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Are astronomers finally going to push for a replacement for Hubble?

2:52 pm

Astronomers are considering the merger two space missions to create a new optical/ultraviolet space telescope. The mission would be designed to do both deep cosmology and exoplanet observations.

The two communities would both like to see a 4–8-metre telescope in space that would cost in excess of $5 billion. “Our interests are basically aligned,” says [Jim Kasting, a planetary scientist at Pennsylvania State University]. Such a mission would compete for top billing in the next decadal survey of astronomy by the US National Academy of Sciences, due in 2020.

This story is big news, as it indicates two things. First, the 2010 Decadal Survey, released in August 2010, is almost certainly a bust. The budget problems at NASA as well as a general lack of enthusiasm among astronomers and the public for its recommendations mean that the big space missions it proposed will almost certainly not be built.
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NASA Awards Next Set Of Commercial Crew Development Agreements

11:59 pm

NASA has awarded the next set of commercial crew development agreements, giving contracts worth from $22 to $92 million to four companies, Blue Origin, Sierra Nevada, SpaceX, and Boeing. More here and here.

The amounts that NASA is giving these companies is minuscule, compared the monies spent on the program-formerly-called-Constellation. Yet I bet they all get their rockets/capsules launched and in operation, supplying cargos and crews to low Earth orbit, before NASA even test fires its heavy-lift rocket.

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No deal

12:48 am

No deal. Key quote:

If Democrats are not going to do even minor surgery on Medicare and Medicaid and Republicans are not going to raise taxes, there is no hope of big budget deal to cut a deficit now running at 11 percent of gross domestic product.

And that raises another question. How long can the Federal Reserve continue financing these deficits? China, choking on U.S. debt, is reportedly beginning to divest itself of U.S. bonds. Japan will need to sell U.S. bonds to get hard currency to repair the damage from the earthquake and tsunami. And the Fed is about to end its QE2 monthly purchases of $100 billion in U.S. bonds. Where is the Fed going to borrow the $125 billion a month to finance this year’s deficit of $1.65 trillion, and another of comparable size in 2012? Bill Gross’ Pimco, the world’s largest bond fund, has sold all his U.S. bonds and begun to short U.S. debt. Pimco is betting that the value of U.S. Treasury bonds will begin to fall.

We may be about to enter a maelstrom.

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Taxing the rich will not solve the problem

12:54 pm

Because it is often claimed that we can solve our federal budget problems by closing loopholes and increasing taxes on the wealthy, I thought I’d share this video from Bill Whittle, dramatizing this Iowahawk essay.

We can argue all day about whether we should increase taxes on the wealthy, but that is not going to solve our debt problem. Even if we confiscated every penny of profit from every person or corporation earning more than million dollars a year, we would still not make the slightest dent in the federal deficit.

Our federal government is simply spending money it doesn’t have. We need to cut spending, and cut spending drastically, in order to gain some control over this problem.

Unfortunately, it doesn’t appear to me the American people or Congress are yet willing to face this fact.

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