So...the Super Committee has failed to come up with a plan. If you consider that...

instead of working til the last minute to reach a deal, they are now taking a full 3-4 days to figure out how to "properly" announce the failure then you can see exactly what the problem is: they have no real interest in working out an agreement, only in finding a way to pass of the failure as "the other guy's fault".

I think the whole thing was a ruse, set up with the intent to fail. Obama and the Democrats outspent every previous administration in the history of the United States COMBINED within the first 6 months of office...I'm sorry, but I'm not really all that upset that the GOP "obstructed" even more spending by them!

There are no "Bush tax cuts"....there are the Obama tax cuts. There are no "Bush-era tax cuts"...there are Obama era tax cuts. This nonsense that the GOP is obstructing the repeal of Bush's tax cuts on the rich is pure bullsh!t pandered to the feeble-minded. The Democrats want more spending...this is no secret. Having outspent every administration combined is not enough for them...they're just flat INSANE.

Deficits do not happen from lack of revenue....they happen because you spend more than you have. It is a fallacy, both logically and economically, that a deficit occurs from "not raising taxes". Maybe Obama and Congress need to take a friggin' high school home economics class....because we teach kids to NOT SPEND MORE THAN THEY HAVE!!!

OZ, it's the same here in UK, The taxes in the treasury are a piggy bank for ANY hairbrained idea that springs out from that wee hole in the skirting board!

EVERY prime minister in this country has left a mess (a legecy) for the next incumbent of No 10 to sort out.

When one side is trying their darnest to bring this President down and in the process bring this country to it's knees what did anyone expect? That is not specualtion that is fact. If one googles it I am sure they will find the ones who said that was their goal. This does not surprise me in the least.

The current Republican stance is accurately described by the phrase, throwing the baby out with the bathwater.

There are no "Bush tax cuts"....there are the Obama tax cuts. There are no "Bush-era tax cuts"...there are Obama era tax cuts. This nonsense that the GOP is obstructing the repeal of Bush's tax cuts on the rich is pure bullsh!t pandered to the feeble-minded. The Democrats want more spending...this is no secret. Having outspent every administration combined is not enough for them...they're just flat INSANE.

Heh yeah, Obama spent, and he spent the money on the rich. Remember how much of that money went to CEO bonuses? Not to mention the wealthy folks who owned and operate those banks from the highest echelons. So, Obama wanted to repeal the Bush-era tax cuts for the rich. Hmmm, the rich paying their own way! What nice symmetry! But of course the rich made a stink and the tax cuts remained, and now they are costing the US hundreds of billions of dollars at a time when, boy, we could sure use the money. Republicans should be dancing in the streets in celebration of Obama for extending them, but since Obama is a Democrat, it was necessary to find the cloud in that silver lining. Without those tax cuts, the government may not even have to make as many budget cuts, but the cuts will come - and you can bet that it will be in the form of decreased social programs. This, at a time when the Republicans want to start taxing the poor in addition to this. So, once again, at the end of the day, the rich benefit and the poor will lose even more of what little they have. That is imperfect symmetry.

The purpose of the federal government is to administer the nation and provide infrastructure and a military for defense. "Social programs" were never, EVER intended to be a role of the federal government.

I'd like to see our military recalled to our own soil, shrunk and put toward defending our borders from the onslaught of illegal aliens....as they are, without a doubt, the only real danger we face on our soil. However, that is not really pragmatic...as we have allies and interests around the globe. We could probably shrink our military by half and STILL be the largest military power on the planet. The problem with our military is not its capabilities but the civilians we put in charge of it.

I hear a lot of complaining about the top 3% who Democrats think should pay more...but I never hear any complaining about the 50% who pay nothing. If you had 150 million people pay $1000/year, you could raise 150 BILLION dollars a year to offset the deficit...THAT'S a lot of lost revenue. For someone making 30k/yr, paying $1000/yr is less than 4% of their income....not really a Draconian tax rate.

People whine about the revenue lost from "the rich" by the Obama tax cuts but never, ever mention the revenue lost from everyone who don't pay a single cent in taxes. "The Poor" receive a ridiculous return on every tax dollar they have to ship to Washington....they get all the benefits of living in the United States without having to pay for any of it. IMO, "the poor" who pay no taxes aren't much better than illegal immigrants.

"The Poor" could be recycled as candles. Or did Hitler think of that already?

The purpose of the federal government is to administer the nation and provide infrastructure and a military for defense. "Social programs" were never, EVER intended to be a role of the federal government

The US Constitution grants the federal government to "provide for the general welfare" of the nation. You can interpret that in a thousand different ways, but fortunately we have decided to interpret it as the government providing social programs. And without them, we would be having a revolution rather than an election every four years. There isn't a single wealthy, stable, and advanced nation on EARTH that does not provide social programs. And America's program is one of the worst. Nations that have taken off the gloves and truly applied social programs for its people are topping the charts in every measurable way. In America, though, we've always been prevented from doing that because we always have to pander to the "I got mine, screw you" crowd. So we have inefficient, bloated, and expensive social programs because they're always implemented half-assed ... because the other half of the ass is always omitted for the sake of the whining conservatives.

We could probably shrink our military by half and STILL be the largest military power on the planet. The problem with our military is not its capabilities but the civilians we put in charge of it.

Who would you suggest we put in charge of the military? The military? Isn't that called a "military junta?"

By the way, America spends more on its armed forces than the next 13 nations combined.

but I never hear any complaining about the 50% who pay nothing.

You're aptly named then because the only place where anyone but the scroogiest conservatives would support a measure that would take from the poor and give to the rich would be in Oz. You go right ahead and start demanding taxes from the poor. Once you do, I'll hand you a bullet. You'll need it after you finish shooting yourself in the foot. The more you take from the poor, the more of them will go on the dole. You'd only be exacerbating the problem, which is a problem for conservative mindsets. They compartmentalize everything and fail to see how a solution to one problem only makes another problem worse.

In addition to that, no one is complaining about the 50% who pay nothing because the top 300,000 Americans (that dreaded 1%) already have more wealth than those bottom 50% combined. I think it takes the worst kind of soul to actually go after the poorest among us for taxes when so much wealth is concentrated in the hands of a few. I've said it before and I'll say it again: If you want fair taxes, then you can engineer a system with fair wealth distribution - and I'm not talking about total equality, I'm talking about something a little less ridiculous than the top 1% having more wealth than the bottom 50%. What I think is worse is how average people like you have been duped into championing the aristocracy - and they couldn't give half a damn about you.

For someone making 30k/yr, paying $1000/yr is less than 4% of their income....not really a Draconian tax rate.

No, it's not ... unless you're making $12,000 or $15,000 a year. Then losing that extra $1000 comes with a very high sacrifice ... far greater than any sacrifices being made by the wealthy, that's for certain. In fact, WHAT sacrifices? If taxes go up on their holdings, they just increase the price of everything they sell. The poor get screwed no matter what the government does.

they get all the benefits of living in the United States without having to pay for any of it. IMO, "the poor" who pay no taxes aren't much better than illegal immigrants.

LOL! Okay, that's just stupid and I'm going to leave it at that - except to say that the poor have exactly what the rich want: to pay no taxes. I guess this is one of the few things the "have nots" have that the rich covet, and just in true greedy form, the conservatives are now gunning for even that small concession.

It never fails to amaze me how liberals can't grasp that their vision for taxation and social programs virtually guarantees a welfare caste.

And, I'm sorry, but if you don't contribute and all you do is "take" then you're a leech and a parasite. "The Poor" and their ever increasing entitlements manufacture an ever growning parasitic population...which anyone with even half a brain knows that if enough blood gets sucked out of any living thing, it can't survive. The way you get "the poor" motivated to do something to increase their lot in life is cut the apron strings, throw them in the pool and say "sink or swim" and let Darwin take its course. Otherwise, the inevitable end is they will draw us ALL down.

Greece is a prime example of "social programs" and entitlement run amock....it's the welfare leech of the E.U.

It never fails to amaze me how liberals can't grasp that their vision for taxation and social programs virtually guarantees a welfare caste.

It never fails to amaze me how the right-wingers find all the evils within a welfare system despite the fact that every other Western - and many Eastern - nations have the same system. In fact, just about every nation has a better one than ours. Every statistic under the sun shows that nations with strong social programs are doing well; they are the ones with the highest standard of living, highest life expectancy, highest literacy rates, highest education rates, lowest crime rates, lowest infant mortality rates, highest happiness ratings, on and on and on. Thanks to the dogged efforts of conservatives, America has been lagging behind the rest of the world, and we are losing that which made us a great country. Of course, that began under Reagan when his economists insisted upon changing over to a service economy, but that's another story.

This is NOT 1955! The conservatives need to wake up and realize the world is not what it was half a century ago. Clinging to this outmoded "all for me, and me for me" attitude just doesn't cut it any more. The stupid thing is, Oz, with our current system, I almost agree with you. But our welfare system sucks because, as I said, we have to do everything half-assed in this country because of the damned conservatives. They want welfare to be a "leg up," but if they see that leg so much as quiver in that direction, they start screaming about why the poor have this and why they have that - just look at a conservative go ballistic when they see a poor person with a damned cell phone. Not only does the complicated application process - deliberately designed to be frustrating in order to weed people out - encourage "gaming the system" which increases fraud exponentially, it also doesn't allow welfare to be used as an interim way to put aside cash to, say, move to a better location or to attend school. The only thing a person can do on it is exist, not get a "leg up," and that's because the conservatives are hellbent on making sure people on welfare suffer as much as possible. The welfare office will even come after your bloody life insurance policies to make sure you don't have any "extra cash" lying around, not that life insurance pays the bills, and you can thank conservatives for that.

If we could have a truly progressive welfare system not hamstrung by conservative stupidity and paranoia, we would have true welfare-to-work programs. We would be putting these people through college, trade school, or apprenticeship programs so they could earn a real living instead of finding them jobs picking up litter for minimum wage. The welfare programs would work in conjunction with businesses who give a shit to match up jobs with ex-welfare recipients who have completed the program so these people actually get hired. All you want to do is pull the carpet out from under them and then expect people with little or no work experience to compete in the global marketplace. What a delusional outlook on reality!

A major problem is that the conservatives look at these people in just the way you describe - parasites and leeches. It reminds me of how the Nazis compared Jews to rats. The moment you begin dehumanizing the poor, you begin excusing yourself of having to treat them like humans. That crap needs to stop because it hinders any attempts at providing real help - not just a check every month. If conservatives want good social programs, then they need to get the hell out of the way and stop fretting over how the poor might actually possess something more than two pots and a pair of underwear.

I have a wild idea! What if the amount of people put out of work by big business was formulated and then the big businesses paid into a fund providing the welfare for everyone? I am sure in america that the powers that be would be putting a lot of people out of work, and that at this stage there is room for 'full employment', not fulfilled because of big business. Think of, for example, walmart? They sell everything under one roof, so, if for every three items they employed another person, they would need to pay a lot to the fund...