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Paulson: Officials need 12-step program to slow spending
Addicted to government
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More from Opinion ColumnistsHi, my name is Bill, and I'm a governmentaholic!"
After listening to Barack Obama's economic plan, you can expect the number of addicted Americans to grow. He calls for substantial government subsidies for healthcare, college, foreclosure relief, pension plans and alternative energies. He favors tax cuts for middle-class workers and tax increases for top earners and businesses. Those tax increases will need to be very high to pay for his massive increases in spending and his proposed takeover of healthcare. But, like any addiction, the costs keep going up the more citizens are addicted.
Too many Americans have a need for a 12-step program to help break their addiction to government assistance. Unfortunately, some Americans don't even realize Democrats are selling a dangerous addiction that further undermines personal responsibility and freedom while creating more government dependence and out-of-control spending.
Sen. John McCain rightly blames both parties for the wasteful spending: "Congress and this administration have failed to meet their responsibilities . Government has grown by 60 percent in the last eight years. That is simply inexcusable." McCain's economic plan doesn't create new entitlements; it gives Americans more freedom by allowing them to manage their own lives.
In addition to promising a simplified tax code, McCain pledges to cut taxes on all and raise them on none. In addition to eliminating government waste, he wants government to shrink, not grow. He wants to cut the waste and end earmark abuse on pet programs.
To McCain, Americans don't need renegotiated trade agreements or protection from competition; they just need freedom to compete in a free-trade, global economy. His plan for healthcare takes the responsibility and choices away from the government and employers and gives it to every American, adding portable policies, tax credits and savings-account options.
Obama's message of hope doesn't depend on our citizens achieving their own American dream. His hope resides in government's ability to create more programs and more dependent Americans.
Nearly 9 million Americans are asking for federal help because they made bad decisions about loans they could not afford. They risked and lost in the housing market. Are taxpayers responsible for everyone's bad decisions? What about the people who played by the rules and waited until they could afford to buy? Are they to pay more taxes to help those who were reckless?
When politicians try to fix economies, look out. In 1929, the stock market crashed and the politicians made it worse. In 1987, President Reagan faced a stock market crash that fell by almost the same amount. What followed was not another depression, but 20 years of prosperity, low inflation and low unemployment. What was the difference? To the dismay of the media and many politicians, Reagan did nothing. He knew that the economy goes through cycles and would recover on its own.
In the past, we've tried spending our way to being a very compassionate country. Our government invested $5.4 trillion on means-tested welfare payments in the "War on Poverty." The investment would have been worth it, if it had worked. In fact, the results of this type of compassion have been devastating. We've ruined families, making it more profitable to be a single-parent family than to have husbands in the home.
With the cost of Medicare, Social Security and existing entitlements skyrocketing, and federal and state governments having to cut budgets, much of America is in denial. They want more from government, and they want others to fund their addiction.
In November, a vote for the Republican team is not a vote to end compassion. It's a vote for caring enough to assist without creating more dependency. Make sure a safety net doesn't become a lifelong hammock. In fact, the push out of the hammock may be the most caring thing we can do to help more citizens gain confidence in their own ability to overcome life's obstacles.
— Terry Paulson of Agoura is a psychologist, speaker, author and host to the politicaltalk.org blog. Contact him at terry@terrypaulson.com.
Posted by mikeb6804 on July 21, 2008 at 12:31 a.m. (Suggest removal)
Come on libs, jump all over him. But Paulson is right on target with this one.
Posted by cslaurie on July 21, 2008 at 7:07 a.m. (Suggest removal)
Obama sounds more and more like Johnson. An unfunded war in Vietnam and the launch of the Great War on Poverty at the same time. Also unfunded. Give the great unwashed bread and circus - they will vote for you.
Posted by cassandra2 on July 21, 2008 at 7:17 a.m. (Suggest removal)
The Repugs need a 12 Step Program to wean their corporate cronies off the taxpayers' dole.
Posted by shaver_one on July 21, 2008 at 7:22 a.m. (Suggest removal)
The 'Free-Market' policies supported by Bush/Cheney, Paulson, and McSame haven't helped We The People Of The United States in dealing with the Banking crisis, the Mortgage collapse, the Healthcare fiasco, or Big Oil ...except by making the CEOs of those industries obscenely rich...off the backs of the middle-class.
Mikeb6804. Paulson may be 'right' (as in Neocon), but he is NOT correct. He is way off target.
I'm glad you, mike, can afford $4.50/gallon for gasoline and $7,500/year deductible for healthcare with $1000/month premiums. I'm glad the 'Trickle-Down' economics, that Bush 41 called "Voodoo" economics, has served you well. It has not served most of America well. I'm glad that you feel $10 billion/month spent on the unnecessary war in Iraq is worth the cost of borrowing from China.
But, you, Bush/Cheney, Paulson, and "100 Years" McCain are in the minority.
I'm not an Obama supporter. The American majority, however, cannot afford another four years of the Bush/Cheney policy in the guise of John McCentury.
Posted by cslaurie on July 21, 2008 at 7:44 a.m. (Suggest removal)
I forgot Johnson's greatest act of leadership along with Teddy "We'll cross that bridge when we come to it" Kennedy.
The Immigration and Nationality Act of 1965 (Hart-Celler Act, INS Act of 1965, Pub.L. 89-236) abolished the national-origin quotas that had been in place in the United States since the Immigration Act of 1924. It was proposed by Emanuel Celler, cosponsored by Philip Hart and heavily supported by United States Senator Ted Kennedy.
An annual limitation of 170,000 visas was established for immigrants from Eastern Hemisphere countries with no more than 20,000 per country. By 1968, the annual limitation from the Western Hemisphere was set at 120,000 immigrants, with visas available on a first-come, first-served basis. However, the number of family reunification visas was unlimited, and it is only now that there are any country-origin quotas for spouses of US citizens, and numerical quotas for other relatives of US citizens.
In the Congress, the House of Representatives voted 326 to 69 (82.5%) in favor of the act while the Senate passed the bill by a vote of 76 to 18. Opposition mainly came from Southern delegates. In 1965, President Lyndon B. Johnson signed the legislation into law.
During debate on the Senate floor, Senator Kennedy, speaking of the effects of the act, said, "First, our cities will not be flooded with a million immigrants annually. Under the proposed bill, the present level of immigration remains substantially the same.... Secondly, the ethnic mix of this country will not be upset.... Contrary to the charges in some quarters, [the bill] will not inundate America with immigrants from any one country or area, or the most populated and deprived nations of Africa and Asia.... In the final analysis, the ethnic pattern of immigration under the proposed measure is not expected to change as sharply as the critics seem to think.... The bill will not flood our cities with immigrants. It will not upset the ethnic mix of our society. It will not relax the standards of admission. It will not cause American workers to lose their jobs." (U.S. Senate, Subcommittee on Immigration and Naturalization of the Committee on the Judiciary, Washington, D.C., Feb. 10, 1965. pp. 1-3.) The act's supporters not only claimed the law would not change America's ethnic makeup, but that such a change was not desirable.
The Immigration Act of 1965 shifted the focus of immigration law from non-European countries to countries that were considered to be Third World. Presidents Johnson and Kennedy hoped that by reforming immigration law, they would not only improve relations with non-European nations, but they would reaffirm America's principles of freedom and equality.
The Immigration and Nationality Act of 1965 became law on July 1, 1968. Along with the act of 1952, it serves as one of the parts of the United States Code until this day.
Posted by mikeb6804 on July 21, 2008 at 7:54 a.m. (Suggest removal)
Shaver and jw --it's funny how you can forget 40+ years of welfare, quotas, and giveaways which have only resulted in generations being on the dole and going nowhere.
Cassie--the corporate cronies of which you speak are cronies of Congress on both sides of the aisle.
Posted by cassandra2 on July 21, 2008 at 8:06 a.m. (Suggest removal)
Regarding the entitlements--trust funds are separate from the general expenditures, meant to be paid for by the eventual beneficiaries. SS is still solvent, although in danger, but Medicare needs subsidies.
But why? It's the extra cost of including private insurances in the program. Direct Medicare has 3% administrative costs. Those mediated by private insurances run many, many times more administrative costs.
This makes sense. Private insurance has its own bureaucracy to support and there is the cost of promoting their own plans. Anyone enrolled in any part of Medicare is periodically inundated with scads of slick promotional material in one's mailbox. These don't come cheap.
Finally there is the profit motive. The CEO of the largest health insurance corporation took away an annual compensation package of over 6 billion--it's not a typo. I really meant billion.
Some other countries with good health care involve private sector entities in the mix but they are not allowed to make a profit, only to meet their own expenses with a fair compensation for their people. (See PBS special on healthcare throughout the world).
Then there is Halliburton with its unbid contracts, ties to the VP and constant streams of billing scandals and of course Blackwater, the mercenary army, far more expensive than our guys in uniform and totally lawless to boot. And so on.
Privatization of public functions is stealing money from the taxpayers big time.
Repugs like to distance themselves from the obviously incompetent Bush
Administration but his operating theory is not different from Reagan's, just conservative economics on steroids. The result has been devastating to the middle class with more and more slipping into poverty and the poor faring even worse. I'm not making this up. Look at the statistics.
Finally regarding the trust funds, they are shown in neat little pie charts to be part of the budget despite being mostly separate. Why? In part to disguise the overwhelming proportion of our taxpayers' money going to the military, much of it equally hidden i.e. nuclear weapons in the Energy budget.
And you can bet our troops aren't getting rich. They are getting screwed with inadequate pay for the risk, flawed equipment and with the peaceniks having to fight for their benefits!
Posted by marketrealist on July 21, 2008 at 10:22 a.m. (Suggest removal)
Paulson is at it again.... He complains about "healthcare, college, foreclosure relief, pension plans and alternative energies".
So what about the military budget at $600 billion? Or on the local level, the criminal-justice-prision budget at over half of local government budget. He simply glosses over the fact that the Feds have bailed out banks and investment houses to the tune of over $500 billion and that is this year alone. That that mony doesn't count cause they go to his favorite causes - keeping the rich, rich.
Its the same old Paulson, please bail out the rich and squeeze the middle class. FYI, the month before Lehman was bailed out, the CEO sold his $25 million condo in New York. You can be sure he did not loose a cent. However, give someone college tution for his child and Paulson will howl its welfare.
Mike6804, I am still waiting to hear what news sources your consider balanced.
Posted by Formosa on July 21, 2008 at 11:17 a.m. (Suggest removal)
EXCELLENT ARTICLE!!!!! More like this and I will renew my subsription to The Star!
Posted by cassandra2 on July 21, 2008 at 11:20 a.m. (Suggest removal)
I hesitated to post this Matt Taibbi (of Rolling Stone) article because the language is so salty, but the information is so apropos I couldn't resist. However if language per se offends you, don't open the link.
Posted by sslocal on July 21, 2008 at 12:42 p.m. (Suggest removal)
Liberalism is not progressive, it is regressive. It promotes a dependency on government that is unhealthy. It allows criminals to be set free to violate innocent peoples right to life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness everyday. Liberalism is twisted, it calls good evil,
and evil good. It works the producers, and steals their earnings through taxes to give to the non producer. It tells the innocent to stand unarmed while the criminals rape, rob, and murder them. How is this progress? It is not, it is chaos. The more power the liberals have, the more chaos they create. If the liberals pack the courts as they are bragging they
will do, we will all be in a world of hurt, I can only hope enough people realize the magnitude of damage that will be done to our society.
Posted by cassandra2 on July 21, 2008 at 12:58 p.m. (Suggest removal)
Thank you, SS for your daily blast of substanceless posturing.
Posted by sslocal on July 21, 2008 at 2:11 p.m. (Suggest removal)
As if posting articles from some rag called the smirking chimp had any basis in logic.
Posted by cassandra2 on July 21, 2008 at 2:43 p.m. (Suggest removal)
One could call it Alphonse for all of that. The points the author makes are that the military is the Behemoth of the budget not social welfare and that private contractors are overwhelmingly the leeches on the taxpayer, not the fictitious Bill of Paulson's column.
And the dude provides the numbers. All you do, all Paulson does is parade the attitude.
Posted by sslocal on July 21, 2008 at 2:48 p.m. (Suggest removal)
Hmmm, I though I made some valid points. I guess if your a liberal they simply offend your oh so high and mighty ideals.
Posted by mikeb6804 on July 21, 2008 at 3:13 p.m. (Suggest removal)
ss--by now you should know the liberals and far left indoctrinees are right about everything. If you have any doubts, just ask them. The Republican Congress takes a lot of hits as well they should for overspending, but the Democrats could have stopped the legislation. They didn't.
Do a little reading about two of the leading Dems (Hillary and Dianne Feinstein), both women, if you want to see a couple crooks in action. I have yet to see these two mentioned by Cassie.
Posted by cassandra2 on July 21, 2008 at 4:56 p.m. (Suggest removal)
Gentlemen:
Tsk tsk. You are changing the subject.
I repeat, contrary to Poulson, the behemoth of the budget is the military-- wars and preparation for same, not social welfare.
The real leeches on the taxpayers are private contractors not poor fictitious Bill and all the grannies and granpas on Social Security.
Posted by sslocal on July 21, 2008 at 6:13 p.m. (Suggest removal)
I would sooner pay the military than some of the folks on welfare. At least we get something for our money when we support the military.
Not to mention the fact that I happen to like the military.
As for the welfare people, if it wasn't for them the Dims wouldn't win any elections due to them being the their largest voting block. (why vote against someone that is paying your rent?)
Posted by mikeb6804 on July 21, 2008 at 6:28 p.m. (Suggest removal)
Cassie---why don't you go out and fight for free? See how far you get.
Posted by opns on July 21, 2008 at 7:38 p.m. (Suggest removal)
A 12-step program needs to start at the top. All parties, the american people have been forced to downsize into these steps, by loosing our jobs, oops, getting sick and having debts, high cost in everything. The people that need the 12-step program is government heads, why do we have so many assistants to assist in politics, big dollars going into lobbying, and the list goes on. I think we should not stray from the truth, lets start from the top and work down, just like loosing my job due to downsizing, and our jobs going to other countires.
For goodness sakes. Take this 12-step to the politicians.
Posted by mikeb6804 on July 21, 2008 at 8:53 p.m. (Suggest removal)
opns--your point is well taken.
Posted by marketrealist on July 22, 2008 at 10:26 a.m. (Suggest removal)
Mike6804, You had mentioned you don't trust LA Times, NY Times, PBS, ABC, CBS, etc. I am still waiting to hear what news sources your consider balanced. I watched a clip of Ann Coulter last night. Is she one of your role models?
Posted by sslocal on July 22, 2008 at 10:35 a.m. (Suggest removal)
Ann Coulter is entertainment. Nothing else. She does make a valid point now and again but even a blind hog finds and acorn once in awhile.
Posted by ReadMyLipsNoNewTaxes on July 22, 2008 at 11:41 a.m. (Suggest removal)
cassandra2
Can you please site a reference for this?
"Finally there is the profit motive. The CEO of the largest health insurance corporation took away an annual compensation package of over 6 billion--it's not a typo. I really meant billion."
Posted by johnnybonzo on July 22, 2008 at 4:36 p.m. (Suggest removal)
This is the point that Mr. Paulson is trying to make (I think): Democrats are deficit spenders and Republicans are not. Obama is a Democrat, so he would spend more of your money than a Republican President.
The problem with this argument is that it is demonstrably incorrect. When Carter left office, the total National Debt was a shade over $1 trillion.During the Reagan/Bush Administrations, the debt tripled. In fact, Reagan was the biggest peacetime deficit spender of all time. Clinton, who I believe was (is) a Democrat, actually left the federal budget in better shape than he found it. Now, under the Bush II Administration, the debt has taken off again and currently stands at about $9.5 trillion. The vast majority of the National Debt was racked up under Republican Administrations.
Paulson's analysis completely ignores the facts and is nothing more than empty, tedious rhetoric. Can't the Star find someone who can articulate the right-wing point of view with a little more credibility?
Posted by Fred on July 22, 2008 at 5:07 p.m. (Suggest removal)
Bush cannot comment on fiscal responsibility - I agree with johnnybonzo
Posted by marketrealist on July 23, 2008 at 9:15 a.m. (Suggest removal)
The facts are so unfortunate to Paulson's article. He must think we are uninformed. The deficits have been highest under both Bush and Reagan. I really cannot see how anyone can call the Republicans more fiscally responsible than the Democrats.
Posted by shaver_one on July 27, 2008 at 12:38 p.m. (Suggest removal)
To mikeb6804:
You keep mentioning the past 40 years. Please remember:
1969 thru 1976 = 8 years
1981 thru 1992 = 12 years
2001 thru 2008 = 8 years
For 28 of those 40 years, America has had a GOPer Administration. Whereas it is true that Congress sets the budget, The President is the one who signs it.
14 years out of the past 18 years have seen the GOPers in control of Congress. 6 years out of the past 8 years have seen GOPers in control of both the Congress AND the Presidency.
Don't blame the Democrats for what we have now. It ALL falls on the shoulders of the Republicans.
And, it was two GOPer Presidents who defied the US Constitution and placed themselves above the law. Nixon was forced to resign in disgrace. Bush will be allowed to continue his illegal activities until January 20, 2009.
That allowance, and ONLY that allowance can be blamed on the spineless Democrats.
But, history will show Bush '43 for what he is...a meglomaniacal egotist.
IF there is a God, she surely will relogate George W Bush to the Gates of Hell...along with Richard B Cheney.
Obama might not be my first choice (and he is not), but he is a damn site better than John "100 Years" McCain.
To Everyone:
Pease remember to vote on November 4, 2008.
The Government we get is up to us.
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