Mitt Romney is ‘On the Same Page’ with Rep. Paul Ryan’s Budget Proposal

did anyone catch that he said something to the fact that we need to get medicade recipients into private sector insurance companies?…hummmm……:)) mitt fans:)) i think mitt has more in common than just the economy with ryan:)

go mitt!! 2012!!!

@cj
Haha, great point! That’s exactly what Massachusetts health care did!

Dan and CJ. oops!!!

I can’t support his position on medicare.

And I don’t support changes to social security, unless they want to give me all my money back through tax credits until I get back every single penny that I paid in!

For some reason I am disappointed in Mitt. For some reason I expected him to lead, rather than follow, although I did know the day was coming when he would have to “preach to the base”. What would Reagan do? Personally, I think the Tea Party has been corrupted and that Reagan would not have been for their Big Business agenda.

Mitt and Michelle (Bachmann not Obama) 2012!

Marilyn, why don’t you support small changes in Social Security that don’t start until 2021? You will be able to plan your life when the changes don’t happen for 10 years. We have to make Social Security solvent because the baby boomers are starting to retire in full force very soon.

Otherwise, we will have to raise taxes and kill the economy.

As a college student, I WANT Social Security when I am 65. But the only way that’s going to happen is if we make small adjustments that will NOT HURT SENIORS.

My parents put into the system. We need to keep the word on this for the current crop of seniors. For those under 55 or so, we need to figure out a plan of some kind that won’t break the bank.

Sam, ever hear of the Rule of 7? Ten years is not time enough to make up the difference. Raising taxes would not kill the economy. It did not when Reagan did it and it did not when Clinton did it. We just need a person to lead us that people can trust to use the tax dollars to pay down the debt, instead of using it to increase spending on new or existing programs.

Chris, there is no plan that won’t break the bank.

Back in the day, Reagan saved the social security program by increasing payroll taxes. We need to do that again. After the baby boomers all go through, they can be lowered back down,

Or else our country will go bankrupt and seniors will starve THEN

Ryan’s plan would be a good start, but it does not address the long term problems associated with Social Security. That demographically doomed program cannot survive unless reformed. And the day of reckoning is not when the actuarial tables tell us it in some twenty to thirty years from now. It will be when the IOU’s in the system are cashed and the taxpayers revolt at the punitive taxes needed to pay for the promises with a taxpayer base substantially smaller than what is needed to spread the cost equitably. I give it no more than ten years unless reformed.

Hands off my social security and my medicare. All we need to do is raise the cap on taxable earnings. The money that our government DOES actually have, is in the social security trust fund, and oh, by the way, nobody ever talks about the interest earned on that money. The problem with social security is that our government doesn’t want to give us our money, but wants to spend it for something else. Like two or three stupid wars.
New study out finds that Americans no longer support the so-called “free market” as freely as they once did. I am not surprised.
A new report by GlobeScan, an international opinion research consultancy, suggests that the number of Americans who believe in the strength of the free market economy dropped markedly last year. In fact, according to the survey results, both Brazil and China, on a percentage basis, ranked higher than the U.S. in overall support for free market capitalism.

Get us back to work and get our trade deficit under control and a lot of these so-called “entitlement” problems will be solved.

For those who enjoy reading and are concerned about our sovereign nation, I highly recommend the following books:
Bringing America Home by Tom Pauken (he was in the Reagan administration)
Free Trade Doesn’t Work by Ian Fletcher
The Betrayal of American Prosperity by Clyde Prestowitz
How the Economy was Lost by Paul Craig Roberts (he was in the Reagan administration)

^ If you’ve read Mitt’s book, you will find plenty of examples he has cited that show how Protectionism is one of the key elements that brings down nations. We don’t need tariffs, we need REFORMS.

(1) Reform the tax code so businesses have incentives to do business in America.
Right now, what our global business structure is is basically this: American companies are going overseas and the only money coming home is the salaries of a few executives, who send the money to offshore bank accounts. We need to tax foreign monetary holdings at American rates, so they have more incentive to bring the money home. Mitt talks about this at length in his RJC speech last week.

(2) Reform education.
Let’s face it. The upcoming generations cannot succeed if they are trained to manufacture things that aren’t even manufactured in this country. We need to train them to be skilled professionals. That will only happen if we bust the teacher’s unions and allow schools to fire bad teachers without firing the young ones.

(3) Reform families.
Families are also to blame for poor education. I believe that children are getting involved in trouble because their mothers have to work as well as their fathers. Children home alone get into trouble. Fix this by fixing the economy.

(4) Reform energy and food businesses.
America has some of the largest natural gas reserves. Let’s sell it to other countries as the Russians do. This would help bring money to America.
Why don’t we cut ethanol production and produce more food instead? If food becomes cheaper, life will be a lot easier for American families, and the above problems would be easier to fix.

There is a lot more to say, but Romney is on top of his game, and he understands these ideas FULL WELL.

Sam, RE: We need to tax foreign monetary holdings at American rates, so they have more incentive to bring the money home.

Please tell me that Mitt has NOT promised Grover Norquist not to raise taxes. I understand that G.N. is also against closing any and all tax loopholes.

Closing loopholes is not raising taxes if overall rates are cut to make the tax changes revenue-neutral.

Look, raising taxes will not be necessary to cut the deficit. Most people are unaware that the tax revenues are way down because people are out of work and are not paying taxes.

We need to grow the economy to pay off the debt, not raise taxes. And raising taxes will not put people back to work.

We need to close anti-competitive loopholes, and Romney said those “types of things have merit”

Sam, RE: Reform education.

This will help, yes, but it is not the panacea that politicians tend to make it out to be. I’m in a position to know since I have a Bachelor’s degree in Business and Computer Information Systems, an MBA and a Master of Arts in Computer Resources and Information Management.

I’m in a position to know that the job market out there, especially for those who are well educated, have loads of experience and just happen to be 45 or older is very bad. People don’t want to hire you after you turn 45, because you expect more in wages, and people don’t want to hire you if you’re straight out of college. They want the perfect person who is between the ages of 25 and 35 with 3 to 5 years of experience. Jobs for the most part in information technology today are project to project, often with no benefits whatsoever, and lasting only three to six months. If you are lucky, you can find a 12 month contract.

We need tariffs on imports in order to bring manufacturing back to the USA. It’s not protectionism, it’s survival.

I agree with you that most people don’t recognize that revenues are down because people are out of work and are not paying taxes. I do recognize this.

“Revenue neutral”. Is that going to mean that all individual tax payer deductions are going to be eliminated? They give with one hand and take away with another and you end up worse off.

Just how is taxation of foreign monetary holdings at American rates going to get manufacturing to come back to this country? Mitt was right back in 2008 when he slipped up and said that the USA needs an industrial policy. He backed down because of the outcry from the free traders, but he was right then and he’d be even more right now.

He has the integrity to say No Apology for his HCR, can he stand up to the free traders? Obama and Hillary both just flat lied about it.

Couple of things: many people fear that imposing tariffs on China would lead to a protectionist trade war. This sort of thing happened in the Great Depression, and the world was a lot worse off because of it.

There are better ways to reform trade than to impose tariffs. Romney certainly knows what he is doing.

As far as “revenue neutral” I was talking about ending loopholes for corporations, but lowering the overall tax rate. This sort of thing would hurt companies that ship jobs overseas, while helping Capitalism thrive in the WAY IT WAS SUPPOSED TO WORK, allowing free and fair competition for low prices and high wages.

Romney can stand up against free traders. But he doesn’t have to in the sense you want him to. Tariffs are not the answer. Tax reform and pro-growth regulations are. I trust Governor Romney. He isn’t in it for big business. He stands up for what he believes in. If he were such a waffler as some claim, why would he continue to stand by his unpopular faith? Why would he talk about ending corn subsidies in Iowa? Why would he oppose the bailouts?

Romney is rich and powerful, but he does not stick up for the ruling class. He sticks up for America.

Raising Social Security taxes will hurt those seeking jobs. Companies pay those taxes for every employee, and if those taxes are higher, companies will continue to try to get along with fewer employees.

Social Security was a Ponzi scheme from the beginning, and this country will suffer greatly getting out of this mess. Putting the burden only on those currently working isn’t fair. Most of the deficit that we have has been the result of baby boomer policies. The representatives that we’ve had in Congress for the past twenty to thirty years have been baby boomers. That their generation will go through this situation without having to share the suffering would be wrong.

As long as China cheats on copyright/patent protection and currency value, we need to consider tariffs as punishment. If we end up in a trade war with China, so what? They aren’t importing enough of our goods that we’d be hurt. They have the most to lose, and we shouldn’t be afraid to make them pay for access to our markets. On this issue, I disagree strongly with Mr. Romney.

It is NOT a Ponzi Scheme and if the problem is with the baby boomers, it’s with the leading edge of the baby boomers and not the trailing end that I am part of. The money is there and it won’t hurt businesses that much to raise the cap on earnings but leave their rate as it is, or raise it .15. Heck, raise the rates for only the remainder of the baby boomers and nobody else. You could give me a tax credit every working year until you pay me back everything that I paid in. If you do that, don’t plan on my investing it on Wall Street. They can all drop dead. They don’t invest in the USA anymore, it’s all about emerging markets.

I agree with you about China. It remains to be seen what Mr. Romney really thinks about trade with China, vs what the thinks he needs to say about it to get nominated.

Check out this article: Toxic Dollars: Why nobody seems to want U.S. currencies.
http://www.cnbc.com/id/42479791

Our jobs problem is because we’ve given all the jobs away to other countries. We’re going the way of Rome if we don’t stop it, or at least slow it down.

“…former Federal Reserve board member and Princeton professor Alan Blinder…has forecast that as many as 29 percent of all jobs [service jobs] could be off-shored over the next few years.

That’s why we need to start mining and drilling for our own resources. That will create jobs, tax revenue, and reduce our trade deficit. NAFTA needs to be reworked. CAFTA needs to be reworked. Tax loopholes need to be closed. Tax rates need to go down. All of this will create American jobs and reduce the deficit as a result.

I don’t think it was a wise move for Romney to associate himself with any current member of congress. Americans, especially our military members and their families, are furious for being used as pawns with the budget fiasco. All involved lost my vote, regardless of party affiliation. Personally I would like to see them all out of a job, from the president and down to every last member of congress! I’m all for an American revolution to get them out! If he’s smart, Romney will move fast to distance himself from the fiasco and accept that all involved caused massive strife in our economy and lost the faith of the public in our government.

We all want to get back every dime that we paid in, but that’s the problem. Those dimes are all gone. They were spent on other people and other things. For you to get back every dime that you paid means that someone else will be paying dimes that will never be returned. That’s not fair to them either.

Social Security is exactly a Ponzi scheme. They started taking money from new people in the scheme to pay off the old people in the scheme. Every time they get more people needing money, they take that money from new people joining the workforce. That’s how a Ponzi scheme works.

Raising the tax even just a little bit will have a negative effect on employment. Right now, the jobs situation is bad enough. Raising the cost of workers only further drives jobs overseas.

Social Security is a mess, and everyone should accept some of the hardship in getting out of this mess. Plenty of people insist that they don’t want to take any loss on Social Security, but if they are spared completely, then someone else just takes a bigger loss. That’s not right either.

Christine, Romney supported Paul Ryan’s 2012 budget, and I am not aware of his position on the one that just passed for the 2011 year.

You may be mixing them up.

Marilyn, with all due respect you need to become more informed as to the problems facing Social Security. You have your head buried in the sand and have accepted the talking point of Harry Reid. The baby boomers (of which I am one on the leading edge also) will stress the system severely. When the trust fund is required to turn to the American taxpayers to pay back the money that past congresses and presidents have gleefully squandered on year to year expenditures, there are nothing but unpleasant consequences. BTW, this coming train wreck has been predicted for many decades. When I first got a permanent job out of college in the late 70′s, the problems were apparent then. Tip O’Neill and Reagan’s raising the Social Security taxes in the early 80″s simply pushed the day of reckoning out to where we are now.

In terms of competitiveness, tariffs are as bad an idea that is possible to have. Our tax code is the principal problem. If we were to close all corporate tax loopholes, reduce the corporate rate to match Ireland’s 12%, and provide tax incentives for products produced in America, we could easily turn the economy and job situation around. And what is the probability of that occurring? Sadly, somewhere between null and O.

Again, why provide a “tax incentive” for something made in America when a tariff does the same thing with much less bureaucracy? I’m not talking about a high tariff designed to keep things out of the country. I’m talking about a moderate, revenue producing tariff that would allow us to reduce other taxes. Trying to incorporate a “tax incentive” into the code means more complications. We’ll fight over how much and how to qualify. Companies producing here will have to keep all kinds of records to show to the government in order to get their incentives. We generate more red tape and more bureaucracy. A tariff is much simpler and accomplishes the same thing. The tariff confines the power of the tax man to the end of the dock. Somewhere along the line, we’ve allowed “free trade” to become some kind of idol that too many conservatives worship.

Bill, with all due respect, the problem with jobs going overseas is NOT solely due to wages. On social security, if we don’t have the money for that, to meet those I.O.U.s then we don’t have the money to meet any of our I.O.U.s. Social security is not an entitlement and it is not a Ponzi scheme and if it is, then we need to immediately outlaw every and all insurance. Actually, insurance is socialism. And if many people paying in every year to pay for those already in, is the description of a Ponzi Scheme, then insurance is a Ponzi scheme. Ronald Reagan saw social security as being worth saving by increasing payroll taxes. We should do the same now and leave them at higher rates until the baby boomers make it through.

See this article here:
Pay Back the Money Borrowed From Social Security
Sen. Don Riegle and Lori Hansen Riegle
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/sen-don-riegle/post_1901_b_845106.html