Want to make cuts?

[Saltie]

The 2% temporary payroll tax cut was ended by the President, so why can't the government take the same 2% cut to their overspending? Here's one way we can start to make cuts. Why are we giving Egypt, run by a member of the Muslim Brotherhood, 4 F-16's and 200 Abrams tanks? Ask yourself this, is it worth borrowing 46 cents of every dollar from the Chinese to give the Egypt government  this amount of money in foreign aid?

 

http://www.cbn.com/cbnnews/world/2013/January/US-Gives-F-16-Jets-to...

[LoveLife&Laughter]

I don't get it either, but we always have...

[exedir]

Keep your friends close, and your enemies closer, and also bribe them when possible.  

We have used arms as a tool to get governments, or more particularly military leaders to favor us and what we would like since WWII.  And it has worked, sorta.  What it has done is sustained the industrial/military complex with more domestic jobs and given American based companies influence in the sale of arms throughout the world.  

As to Egypt, we have been supporting their military beginning as a reward for recognizing Israel, to diminish  Soviet influence and as an insurance policy for the Suez Canal.  Until Mubarak was replaced, the Egypt republic has been a military appendage from Nasser and the colonels' revolution against Farouk in 1952 until last year.  And it was the Islamic Brotherhood that assassinated Sadat in 1981.  So, the Egyptian military has no love for the Brotherhood and still has a great fondness for American and its arms both those that they can embrace, they can carry and they can use to influence and if necessary replace the civilian government. 

[Merry]

Do they still torture people for us??

[exedir]

Part of the subcontracting deal.....you do the mess, we do the reimbursement....

[Dennis Barsten]

Question:  What does this 2% have to do with the article...?

[ProblemAgain]

bogus...per usual...

"The 2% temporary payroll tax cut was ended by the President, so why can't the government take the same 2% cut to their overspending"

you really need to begin looking outside your blinders...and by the way, those two things have NOTHING to do with each other...except in really demented forwarded emails....i suggest a course in logic or perhaps evidentiary thinking at your local community college

and that being said, how do you reconcile dick cheney saying our LACK of support for egypt has led to the growth of islamic fundamentalists and al queda across northern africa with your quest to cut off foreign and military aid?

[exedir]

Actually it expired...just like the Bush tax cuts....which was the point of the fiscal cliff...now, long in the rear view mirror of forgotten politics....

The most immediate effect of the payroll tax holiday expiration was Walmart and the Dollar franchises loss in business in this quarter...

[ProblemAgain]

meaning that it was congress that let it expire as well...the sequester was congresses as well and was to be the club to cause them to actually do their work...yet somehow it becomes obama's...silly people

[Saltie]

Let's make it simple so even Problem can try and understand. The sequestration amounts to at most a 2% reduction in spending to a planned increase. The 2% payroll tax holiday was ended by Obama. Here's where it gets tricky problem. They are both 2%. Logic says that if we can take a 2% hit why can't the government take a 2% hit without telling us children will starve, airport towers will close, and the elderly will suffer from massive cuts. Remember again This is a reduction to the amount of overspending. NOT a cut in base line budgeting. So in fact these do have everything to do with each other.

[ProblemAgain]

read the answer from lifesighs.....social security.....not income tax...and as usual you toss small isolated and unrelated facts in a blender and get some kind of stew...nice to know you haven't changed in all these years...

[exedir]

Ah, it expired....which was the point of the fiscal cliff, other then being a geological formation.

The payroll tax holiday was a "stimulus" that did more to support than to stimulate as did much of the actual stimulus of 2009, support, mostly ongoing expenses.  As to the shovel ready projects not much really happened that sped up the actual number of projects that were not already in late stages of planning and implementation.  

The end of the payroll tax holiday has impacted Walmart and the Dollar store franchises as those were the people spending the additional money, which was also impacted by the rise in fuel costs that actually took most of the money in the first place and did little "stimulus" as a result. 

[Lifesighs]

The 2% was cut from what people put into Social Security, it just means by putting it back in place workers are now contributing the same percentage that I contributed all my working life.

That wasn't an income tax that goes into a general fund it was a specific tax for a specific purpose.