Forum Post: boehner wants to give war savings to the banks!
Posted 13 years ago on Nov. 19, 2011, 7:37 p.m. EST by gestopomillyy
(1695)
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"I've made it pretty clear that those savings that are coming to us as a result of the wind-down of the war in Iraq and the war in Afghanistan should be banked, should not be used to offset other spending," said House Speaker John Boehner, R-Ohio. He did not address whether war savings could be used to extend expiring tax cuts.
http://news.yahoo.com/deficit-deal-failure-pose-crummy-choice-165703856.html
While the title above is misleading, so is the Republican's current push. The point that they wanted to make on CNN just now is that winding down the war in Afghanistan should not be counted as a budget savings. This is logically the converse of the Republican notion that starting a new war is not a form of government spending! If winding down wars isn't counted as a savings, then there's no political capital to be gained by doing it. Costs for keeping troops overseas, private contractors, lifetime medical benefits for the soldiers ... these are just acts of God for which the government can scarcely be responsible. The budget deficit must be the fault of welfare recipients!
that would be funny if it wasnt true
Just to be clear, the Dems are the ones who want to count future savings from NOT fighting the current wars. Regardless of your affiliation, it's another example of the BS counting of "savings" and "cuts" done all the time by Congress on both sides. You might fool some of the public with things like that but you definitely won't fool the bond markets which will make us pay dearly for not making serious progess toward better fiscal managment.
To be clear, I think that if you stop spending on a war, that counts as a reduction in spending! Of course, I'd like to see some more reductions in spending along that line - like, I'd like to know just what exactly the point is supposed to be of still having troops in Germany and Japan, as if the Soviet Union were still poised to invade.
It is money that you won't be spending. It does not count as an offset to other future costs financed by debt which is the issue here and which was the point of Bohner's comment re "banking it" versus spending it.
As a more simple example, if a company borrows $50 million over N years to build a new plant, no business would be permitted to count the money NOT spent once the plant is completed to offset other costs going out for the next 10 years. Furthermore, since it was financed with debt, they still borrowed the money and they still have to pay it back.
sorry.. but we have crisis going on here.. that money has to be used to cover today.. not tomorrow..if he were worried about tomorrow.. he would put the corporations in check and get the jobs back
Sorry, but we're broke. Worse than broke we're +$15 trillion in the hole with another +$10 trillion on the way. That's about the biggest crisis we have. We don't have any money "to cover today" or tomorrow.for that matter. Anything that we spend we have to borrow. At this point we either reduce it, or we'll pay more for it. Which means that rather than spending the same money on useful things, we'll be spending it on higher interest on debt. It's already caused the value of our currency to be worth about 30% less which affects everyone, rich and poor (and disproportionaly affecting the latter).
But none of that affects that it's just smoke and mirrors regardless how you want to spend this magic "savings."
It's not smoke and mirrors. If we had John McCain in office, we might be paying for a brand new war in Iran. Indeed, as he wanted to admit Georgia to NATO, placing U.S. troops "defending" a South Ossetia inhabited by 90% Russians, we might have found out just how expensive war can become.
Anyway, a $15 trillion debt that increases at $1 trillion a year is not increasing at all in real terms if you have a 6% inflation rate. The moment this economy starts to recover, I think we're going to have at least that much inflation, and if it rises into the double digits, it wouldn't be the first time. Of course, this will be priced into the interest rates on new debt, but there will be a lot of 30-year bonds out at very low interest rates on the old debt.
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That would be John Boner, of Ohio.
Lets get the name right, shall we?
; D
He meant bank it as in not use it for further spending which would maintain the current debt. The purpose of the super committee is to reduce the deficit addressing these issues.
He didn't literally mean give it to banks. You can't give something away you don't have although politicians seem to be refuting that law.