Debt Reduction- Advice On Credit Card Debt Reduction, Debt Reduction Services, And Debt Reduction Plans

habitualwriter asked:


I think Rand Paul R-Ky was fantastic. He is one of the few who TRULY GETS WHAT’S WRONG and is looking for a solution, not a deal. This is the kind of leadership that our nation is sorely lacking today.

He issued this statement this morning:

To paraphrase Senator Jim DeMint: When you’re speeding toward the edge of a cliff, you don’t set the cruise control. You stop the car. The current deal to raise the debt ceiling doesn’t stop us from going over the fiscal cliff. At best, it slows us from going over it at 80 mph to going over it at 60 mph.

This plan never balances. The President called for a “balanced approach.” But the American people are calling for a balanced budget.

This deal does nothing to fix the overreaches of both parties over the past few years: Obamacare, TARP, trillion-dollar wars, runaway entitlement spending. They are all cemented into place with this deal, and their legacy will be trillions of dollars in new debt.

The deal that is pending before us now:

Adds at least $7 trillion to our debt over the next 10 years. The deal purports to “cut” $2.1 trillion, but the “cut” is from a baseline that adds $10 trillion to the debt. This deal, even if all targets are met and the Super Committee wields its mandate – results in a BEST case scenario of still adding more than $7 trillion more in debt over the next 10 years. That is sickening.
Never, ever balances.
The Super Committee’s mandate is to add $7 trillion in new debt. Let’s be clear: $2.1 trillion in reductions off a nearly $10 trillion,10-year debt is still more than $7 trillion in debt. The Super Committee limits the constitutional check of the filibuster by expediting passage of bills with a simple majority. The Super Committee is not precluded from any issue, therefore the filibuster could be rendered most. In addition, the plan harms the possible passage of a Balanced Budget Amendment. Since the goal is never to balance, having the BBA as a “trigger” ensures that the committee will simply report its $1.2 trillion deficit reduction plan and never move to a BBA vote.
It cuts too slowly. Even if you believe cutting $2.1 trillion out of $10 trillion is a good compromise, surely we can start cutting quickly, say $200 billion-$300 billion per year, right? Wrong. This plan so badly backloads the alleged savings that the cuts are simply meaningless. Why do we believe that the goal of $2.5 trillion over 10 years (that’s an average of $250 billion per year) will EVER be met if the first two years cuts are $20 billion and $50 billion. There is simply no path in this bill even to the meager savings they are alleging will take place.

Buried in the details of this bill is the automatic debt limit increase proposed a few weeks ago. The second installment of the debt ceiling increase is initiated by the President automatically and can only be stopped by a two-thirds vote of Congress. This shifts the Constitutional check on borrowing from Congress to the President and makes it easier to raise the debt ceiling. Despite claims to the contrary, none of the triggers in this bill include withholding the second limit increase.

Credit rating agencies have clearly stated the type of so-called cuts envisioned in this plan will result in our AAA bond rating being downgraded. Ironically then, the only way to avoid our debt being downgraded and the resulting economic problems that stem from that is for this bill to fail.

This plan does not solve our problem. Not even close. I cannot abide the destruction of our economy, therefore I vigorously oppose this deal and I urge my colleagues and the American people to do the same.

Ludivina Ruyz

. asked:


To all the Libs whining on here about the lack of closing corporate loopholes – you have no one to blame but your OWN GUY, who completely ignored his own debt commission which called for JUST THAT:

“2.2.2 Eliminate all tax expenditures for businesses. Corporate tax reform should eliminate special subsidies for different industries. By eliminating business tax expenditures – currently more than 75 – the corporate tax rate can be significantly reduced while contributing to deficit reduction. A lower overall tax rate will improve American business competitiveness. Abolishing special subsidies will also create an even playing field for all businesses instead of artificially picking winners and losers.”

http://www.fiscalcommission.gov/sites/fiscalcommission.gov/files/documents/TheMomentofTruth12_1_2010.pdf

Sophie Black

Blame me I voted for Bush asked:


Boehner told his Republican caucus on a Sunday night conference call that the deal isn’t done yet. But Boehner said it does not violate GOP principles.
“We got 98 percent of what we wanted,” he said adding that the framework cuts more spending than it raises the debt limit. It also caps future spending to limits in the growth of government.

Read more: http://www.foxnews.com/politics/2011/08/01/congressional-leaders-to-pitch-debt-reduction-compromise-to-caucuses/#ixzz1U5TMGBdE

Alton Gosser

Hale asked:


Why don’t the leaders of both parties send their respective delegations to hash out the deal at the Reagan Library in Simi Valley, CA?

It seems to me that, in that setting, they would be greatly inspired to do the job.

http://news.yahoo.com/reagan-looms-over-debt-debate-inspiring-both-sides-132912790.html

ioerr – So True.

Donn Polhill

Hale asked:


National Commission on Fiscal Responsibility and Reform – “President Obama created the bipartisan National Commission on Fiscal Responsibility and Reform to address our nation’s fiscal challenges”

The Simpson Bowles commission presented Congress with logical, necessary but drastic cuts that should be used as a guideline for the current dilemma.

If congress and the American people haven’t the guts to tackle these proposals why should the American people think that the problem will be solved before we become Greece economically?

We will get what we deserve.

http://www.fiscalcommission.gov/about

Tameika Papallo

pixie asked:


“The Democrats in the US Congress and the President wanted the decrease in the deficit to be funded by a combination of spending and revenue adjustments. The Republicans held the view that the deficit reduction should be based solely on spending.”

What does this mean?

Emory Puchalski

Hale asked:


Are they included in the debt reduction debate?
Are they gathering dust in a government warehouse?
I have not heard anymore about them.

Edwin Lueschen

. asked:


To all the Libs whining on here about the lack of closing corporate loopholes – you have no one to blame but your OWN GUY, who completely ignored his own debt commission which called for JUST THAT:

2.2.2 Eliminate all tax expenditures for businesses. Corporate tax reform should eliminate special subsidies for different industries. By eliminating business tax expenditures – currently more than 75 – the corporate tax rate can be significantly reduced while contributing to deficit reduction. A lower overall tax rate will improve American business competitiveness. Abolishing special subsidies will also create an even playing field for all businesses instead of artificially picking winners and losers.

http://www.fiscalcommission.gov/sites/fiscalcommission.gov/files/documents/TheMomentofTruth12_1_2010.pdf

Tamica Stobierski

Frothing Neocon Rage asked:


And why?

Weldon Reppell

Roboron 2012 asked:


Cheney Was Right About One Thing: Deficits Don’t Matter

by: Ellen Brown, Truthout

Former Vice President **** Cheney at the Conservative Political Action Conference 2011 in Washington, DC. (Photo: Gage Skidmore)
“Deficit terrorists” are gutting governments and forcing the privatization of public assets, all in the name of “deficit reduction.” But deficits aren’t actually a bad thing. In today’s monetary scheme, in which most money comes from debt, debt and deficits are actually necessary to have a stable money supply. The public debt is the people’s money.

Former Vice President **** Cheney famously said, “Deficits don’t matter.” A staunch Republican, he was arguing against raising taxes on the rich; but today, Republicans seem to have forgotten this maxim. They are bent on stripping social programs, privatizing public assets and gutting unions, all in the name of “deficit reduction.”

Worse, Standard & Poor’s has now taken up the hatchet. Some bloggers are calling it blackmail. This private, for-profit rating agency, with a dubious track record of its own, is dictating government policy, threatening to downgrade the government’s long-held triple AAA credit rating if Congress fails to deal with its deficit in sufficiently draconian fashion. The threat is a real one, as we’ve seen with the devastating effects of downgrades in Greece, Ireland, and other struggling countries. Lowered credit ratings force up interest rates and cripple national budgets.

The biggest threat to the dollar’s credit rating, however, may be the game of chicken being played with the federal debt ceiling. Nearly 70 percent of Americans are said to be in favor of a freeze on May 16, when the ceiling is due to be raised; and Tea Party-oriented politicians could go along with this scheme to please their constituents.

If they get what they wish for, the party could be over for the whole economy. The Chinese are dumping US Treasuries and the Fed is backing off from its “quantitative easing” program, in which it has been buying federal securities with money simply created on its books. When the Fed buys Treasuries, the government gets the money nearly interest-free, since the Fed rebates its profits to the government after deducting its costs. When the Chinese and the Fed quit buying Treasuries, interest rates are liable to shoot up; and with a frozen debt ceiling, the government would have to default, since any interest increase on a $14 trillion debt would be a major expenditure. Today, the Treasury is paying a very low .25 percent on securities of nine months or less, and interest on the whole debt is about 3 percent (a total of $414 billion on a debt of $14 trillion in 2010). Greece is paying 4.5 percent on its debt, and Venezuela is paying 18 percent – six times the 3 percent we’re paying on ours. Interest at 18 percent would add $2 trillion to our tax bill. That would mean paying three times what we’re paying now in personal income taxes (projected to be a total of $956 billion in 2011), just to cover the interest.

There are other alternatives. Congress could cut the military budget – but it probably won’t, since this option is never even discussed. It could raise taxes on the rich, but that probably won’t happen either. A third option is to slash government services. But which services? How about Social Security? Do you really want to see Grandma panhandling? Congress can’t agree on a budget for good reason: there is no good place to cut.

Fortunately, there is a more satisfactory solution. We can sit back, relax and concede that Cheney was right. Deficits aren’t necessarily a bad thing! They don’t matter, so long as they are at very low interest rates; and they can be kept at these very low rates either by maintaining our triple A credit rating or by borrowing from the Fed essentially interest-free.

The Yin and Yang of Money

Under our current monetary scheme, debt and deficits not only don’t matter but are actually necessary in order to maintain a stable money supply. The reason was explained by Marriner Eccles, governor of the Federal Reserve Board, in hearings before the House Committee on Banking and Currency in 1941. Wright Patman asked Eccles how the Federal Reserve got the money to buy government bonds.

“We created it,” Eccles replied.

“Out of what?”

“Out of the right to issue credit money.”

“And there is nothing behind it, is there, except our government’s credit?”

“That is what our money system is,” Eccles replied. “If there were no debts in our money system, there wouldn’t be any money.”

That could explain why the US debt hasn’t been paid off since 1835. It has just continued to grow and the economy has grown and flourished along with it. A debt that is never paid off isn’t really a d

Kathyrn Magro