Just so you can see how carefully they narrowed the choices in the AmericaSpeaks town hall meeting yesterday (you were supposed to come up with $1.2 trillion in cuts):
Worksheet
3 thoughts on “Worksheet”
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Just so you can see how carefully they narrowed the choices in the AmericaSpeaks town hall meeting yesterday (you were supposed to come up with $1.2 trillion in cuts):
Comments are closed.
they pulled this trick last year at the mayor’s phony-baloney budget townhalls. you got choices that were the equivalent of “close all the libraries, or close all the fire stations.”
rigged, but what do you expect.
Why wasn’t “dismember GOPers and auction off their body parts” on the list?
Half a trillion, EASY! Why, those brains are hardly used at all, and the zombies (who pay no taxes) would bid them up to the skies.
I attended the Dallas session and must say I didn’t feel any pressure to change my opinions. Maybe it was our coordinator, she worked hard to stay neutral but allow the discussion to flow but it was sometimes hard to keep the group focused on the issues as presented. Our table seemed to be a diversified group. At least one of the ten was a Libertarian and another seemed to have Tea Party leanings. Most seemed moderate in their opinions. Several us were retired. We had one Latino and on high school student. We all agreed that there need to be more real discussions in Washington instead of both sides talking at each other. We also all agreed that now was not the time to cut spending or raise taxes. The recovery needs to be stronger before we can do that. But in the near future, something needs to be done to reduce the deficit. At our table there was strong support for raising the age for Social security full benefits to 69 and and raise the limits on taxable earnings to cover 90% of total earnings. It wasn’t an option but some suggested it should cover 100%. And I do know that the Social Security fund is solvent until 2036 but it is not to early to start working on ways to keep it solvent for our children and grandchildren. Most of us felt that across the board spending cuts on non-defense spending was too open ended but all but two voted for one of the three options. Surprisingly, cutting defense spending by 15% was supported by 7 of the 10 at our table with some saying it should be cut by 50%. On the revenue side, there was strong support for reforming the tax code with the acknowledgement that there just wasn’t enough information provided on how this would be done. The three new tax options also received support. Our table seemed to be representative of the group as a whole in Dallas and with the rest of the country as well. Maybe I’m naive, but I don’t see any bias in the options presented. There were arguments presented for and against for each of them. Please keep in mind that the people on both sides of any issue have good reasons to believe as they do and it is time to start listening to both sides in hopes of finding some middle ground we can agree on. Figures I’ve seen indicate that 20% of us are hard right wingers and another 20% hard left wingers. That leaves 60% of us in the middle and if we can work together, we can over come the extreme views on both the left and right.
Mike Lysell