The dirty little secret everyone in Washington knows

This is ridiculous because the target for saving money is once again to take away social security and take away Medicaid...target the poor to fix the problem that was created by the fiscal irresponsibility of people who can't even
define what it means to be middle class.

We don't have the money to pay these benefits because Bush & co. are squandering trillions in their war machinations. People have spent a lifetime paying into social security, and if you are one of those people who gets a paycheck (the wealthy do not live on paychecks), take a look at the amount of money that comes out of your paycheck for social security. We can't afford to pay these benefits to illegal aliens, but Congress says we should...isn't that fiscal irresponsibility?

I'm sorry, but I am not buying what Walker is dishing...you might be able to eliminate the Pentagon and still not keep pace with the growing needs of the baby boomers, but that little twist says nothing about the private government contractors who are saddled up to the trough slurping down taxpayer money.

Do we just overlook the fact that the wealthiest Americans have more money than they know what to do with, and call the source of this problem social security and Medicaid? How about reigning in the drug companies that overcharge for every medicine on the market? How about addressing the growing healthcare crisis with something besides a proliferation of drugs? This is the same argument the Republicans used to get us where we are now...follow the money and that will tell you where the real problem lies...social security and Medicaid recipients are not getting wealthy on the benefits they and their parents paid for....but we have a lot of people out there who are getting wealthy, obscenely so, and these are not the people who get a paycheck every two weeks with an obscene amount of their hard earned dollars being taken out for social security benefits that we are now being told can't be paid out. Bullsh_t....same old BS. Follow the money and you will find the real fiscal irresponsibility.

The documentary(I.O.U.S.A.) he's in was recently shown at Sundance, it's very informative.

An interview with director, Patrick Creadon, at sundance.

http://video.sundance.org/?fr_story=bc1d92e6eed80caf587...

Site

http://www.agorafinancial.com/iousa.html

Paychecks are being illegally taxed and it is unconstitutional to tax labor.

The only tax that is permitted by the Constitution is a profit tax. PERIOD.

The rich should be paying all the taxes in this country for the privilege of being in charge.

i can't believe all these people crying about what they can't get from the goverment and crying about all the rich people, who by the way own the companies that give us our paychecks, that always was the american dream but now this country is filled with cry babies and lazy do-nothings who would rather have a socialist goverment to take care of them

But Cheney told us that deficit didn't matter. Why would he lie to us?

You know what, screw that. I think the government needs to clear up all these B.S. tax loopholes so corporations, billionaires, and millionaires pay cents on the dollar. See how fast the debt gap closes then.

It appears to me that Walker speaks the truth. Americans have become enamored with wealth and consumption. The fastest track to excess wealth in the U.S.A. is a congressional earmark which gives a congressional buddy a gommerment contract or a gommerment guarantee to the public trust ie: oil, coal, lumber, drugs, medicare etc. As is well understood we have the best gommerment money can buy. Fortunately I am of an age that my demise and that of the U.S.A. will likely occur at nearly the same time (20-30 years). Unfortunately todays youth are likely to be around for the collapse of society Earth wide, thanks to the gimmy gimmy I want mentality of the wealthy movers and shakers. Dynamic equilibrium is a term used to describe living critters, the Earth survives when a similar approach is applied to it. Unfortunately, man, the self appointed most intelligent critter on Earth does not appear intelligent enough to recognize this. What intelligent critter constrained to a single planet would consider an ever expanding economy via an ever expanding population rational? Me thinks the Earth is about to shed itself of it's worst parasite.

I've been told this ....since ever. There is no ONE way out. And politicians just talk and talk without any plans to change this dire situation.

Do politicians avoid the truth because they don't want to talk about it or because they can't? Who wants to send a message of gloom and doom when the current fad is "hope"?

I have no doubt that our government's ability to pay will be far below our national income. It's like a water shortage. It does not really matter whether 'the fat cats' have taken the water, or misused it, or mis-allocated it. That kind of thinking will distract us from finding a real solution.

What does matter is 'what to do now,' That is, how to re-allocate what we do have, and how to get more income, and soon.

We must hopefully do that without plundering the rest of the world's economies, in the form of mineral rights which merely shift their riches to our needs. Nor should we enslave their workers to buttress our shrinking buying power.

We need to figure out how WE can be more valuable to each other and the world. Our factories, workers, hi-tech, recycling and other natural and human resources need to be nurtured. So that in-sourcing will be a better alternative than out-sourcing.

If you run about looking for retribution or merely stealing the wealth from some, then it can quickly become deadly. This is serious, but not deadly. That's what bankruptcy is all about.

To be honest, I'm suspicious of this in every way.

He looks a Ripusoffican. He works in a Ripusoffican government.

He is an alarmist - seeking to perpetuate and substantiate a Ripusoffican agenda - and further manipulation - using elements of truth.

Come on you Ripusoffican pigs, you've got to be smarter than that with your elitist Ivory league edjamication.

Remove the three $TRILLION dollar war from the backs of the American people; either nationalize the oil companies or get them to pay their fair share of taxes when they loot our national treasure in oil; stop tax breaks for billionaires and tax credits to offshore tax thieves like KBR and Halliburton...but NOOOOO...squeeze the old people and the poor and the sick. They're the easy targets for these bean counters and even though Social Security if left to its own devices and not raided by government thieves would be a perfectly healthy entity on into the future, right now they are looking to loot it to pay Bush's war bill and the bills for all of the returning wounded and mentally scarred service people.

The problem here is not 'entitlement' programs that save millions of people from living on the streets; the problem is not the baby boom. It is the asteroid that struck America in 2000--George W. Bush. And people like millionaire John McCain who gets $22,000 a year in Social Security benefits. (You can read that startling figure from his newly-released income tax records.)

Yes, HIFlyer, It IS the asteroid that hit the nation in 2000. And yes, the poster child of that asteroid is GWB.

But the asteroid is bigger, sadder, and darker. How is it that GWB even got 10% of the vote in 2000???, much less 49% + 1 Supreme Court decision. GWB has always talked like an idiot, and a smug and smarmy one at that.

I figure that some 39% of the electorate was 'out of their minds' in 2000. That figure shifted to a larger number after 911, and is still alarmingly high. Although now that number has shifted to support another messianic figure. Like a pendulum, the popular voice is shifting to the 'other side' but is that also another form of popular insanity? And, duh, it will just shift back again in a few years, continuing an unstable cycle that seems inevitable.

But what to do about it now? Yes, clean house. Yes, vote the rascals out. But also realize that those rascals are 100% patriotic americans and actually want the 'best' for the country. I don't think that's enough, myself, I want not only the best for the country, I want the best for the world -- and for a long time to come.

Is there a way to slow the pendulum down and get some real problem solvers to work on the situation? I hope so. (Geez, two posts on this thread for me already... I must have too much time on my hands! Ciao, my friends!)

8 years of bush almost destroyed this country, and im really starting to fear there is too much to fix, and all to do now is hope for some kind of miracle, or a mass citizen uprising to change politics all together, it was not only bush who destroyed the country it is all politicians with any real power, we need a complete system overhaul, and the only way it would ever happen is if society as a whole made it happen.

I appreciate Walker's moral leadership. It takes courage to pound out the pavement and say what others don't want to hear.

I don't think it's an issue of Medicare and Social Security vs. the Defense Budget. (I say this in relation to an earlier comment) It is a matter of fiscal responsibility, sharpening up our programs, bringing in universal SINGLE-PAYER health care, closing tax loopholes, ending the wars, reducing the pentagon budget, and everything else the fine current.com users have said.

I have to say it is very refreshing to come onto Current.com and enjoy the breadth of thinking and intelligence that everyone uses. Thank you!

I agree aburk72.

The fiscal stability of the US isn't limited to a single problem, yet that is often all we hear from the politicans.

"If we just get rid of Social Security then everything will be fine!"

The truth of the matter is that we do need to close offshore tax loopholes to increase revenue (I think Exxon and Wal-mart will muddle through somehow). We do need to stop wasting billions of dollars paying insurance company middle men who serve no real purpose. We need to get out of Iraq and stop wasting trillions of dollars (and thousands of lives). And most critically we need to cancel the blank checks we've issued our politicans (mostly Republicans) in terms of Defense spending!

One Senator is told that magic beans will "protect" us from terrorists -- he hands over a check for $500 billion.

Another Senator hears rumours on Perez Hilton's website that he might be gay so, by God, he hands over another $750 billion to a Defense Contractor to prove that he's tough and straight and a real man's man!

sigh.

It's going to take a combination of techniques to correct our national cash flow problems -- but for my money the single biggest problem has got to be Defense spending. If we can somehow assure the Republicans that a) everyone thinks they're "real men" and b) no one thinks they're gay than I believe we'll be able to get them to freaking calm down on their hysterical, out-of-control Defense spending. Failing that we may just have to wrestle these son's-o-bitches to the ground and take the Taxpayer's Debit Card away from them -- and then committ them (involuntarily if need be) to Debtors Anonymous.

----

salmon2007 wrote "I can't believe all these people crying about what they can't get from the goverment and crying about all the rich people, who by the way own the companies that give us our paychecks, that always was the american dream but now this country is filled with cry babies and lazy do-nothings who would rather have a socialist goverment to take care of them."

(applause) I'm assuming that was intended to be a satirical spoof on how Republicans talk. Bravo! That was spot on! To make the Republican mocking even sharper I would have added something about how "those damn Mexicans is stealing all r jobs!"

Thanks for all of your great comments. You've all made some really good points. JT247, I'm definitely checking out that documentary!

I just wanted to add that Mr. Walker has recently resigned his post at the Government Accountability Office five years early so he can devote all of his time to spreading this message.

"In his perch as head of the non-partisan GAO, a job with a 15-year term, Mr. Walker's personal politics were irrelevant since his clarion calls for fiscal responsibility -- and his critiques of spending favored on each side of the political aisle -- were ignored by elected Republicans and Democrats alike." -- Evan Cooper, Investment News

"I love my job. I love GAO. But I love my country more ... I'm really concerned about the future of the country." -- David Walker, former comptroller general of the United States, in The Washington Post

I am not disputing Walker's sincerity, but there is a real slight of hand to what you see in this video clip. To admit a portion of the problem--in order to refocus the solution--is a well-honed political maneuver, one that the infamous Karl Rove nearly perfected. This is where my defense budget versus social security and Medicaid objections come in.

Yes, it is true, the government is guilty of gross fiscal abuses, but keep your eye on both hands here, because the problem is not, and has never been, either the baby boomers or SS and Medicaid, and that is where I stand up and scream LIAR! There are lots of "I love my country" Republican voting imbeciles out there, and I don't give a flying f_ck what any of them love,
it does NOT undo the facts.

I understand that anger is not a popular stance to take in this very public arena, but Americans need to be angry. Their country has been hijacked, right under their very own eyes.

crob...hilarious summation of what it will take to assure the Republicans...LOL!!!

I can agree with many of the assessments and criticisms put forth on this thread however, I feel that we have already gone down the rabbit hole too far and that we aren't going to be able to pull out of this one.

Since we don't have any control of the money situation, what with the Federal Reserve milking our Treasury on a daily basis, and there is the alarmingly high debt to China.

It is funny to me when I hear people on this website talking about us and them, as if the ones writing the statements are the ones making the decisions about how the money is used or not used.

We don't have a say, we don't have any power. We have only the illusion of a voice and an illusion of Democracy. The reality is Corporate Oligarchy and Mass Media Manipulation to keep the Oligarchy in power, whichever way the political pendulum swings, left or right. They control both sides of the spectrum; the Corporate Oligarchy.

The best we can hope for is to whether the coming collapse and the major deflation that is going to occur with the American Dollar. Our currency is already 1/10th of the value it had since Nixon was president. Our currency has been sliding steadily since GW and by the time it is all said and done it will be 1/10th of the 1/10th or to put it another way. If the value of the dollar was a dollar in 1970, by 2012 the value of that same dollar will be $.01. While this is happening and crisis erupts to the point where we have martial law and riots for food shortages, and millions of homeless living in card board boxes like it was back in the depression of the 1930's, the Federal Reserve will introduce a new currency to "Save the Day".

But in the process the middle class in this country will be obliterated. What will be left? Only three classes, the ultra rich, the professional managerial class, and the ultra poor who work for slave wages and pay all the interest the US pays to the Federal Reserve.

The American Dream will have for all intents and purposes have become the American Nightmare.

Excellent point Marcozarco!

so jubal...are you suggesting we simply resign ourselves to the inevitable?

and where the hell did current hide this discussion...it seems to have just completely disappeared off the radar screen...why is that?

Walker has the potential to do for economics what Al Gore did for climate change. Walker just needs a better power point!

al gore is a con man turning food crops into fuel crops is the craziest thing i have ever seen -does anybody see what turning from food production to fuel production on our farms will do!we have started importing wheat-the bread basket of the world importing wheat!we have tons of fossil fuel in our own country start using it u cannot suddenly turn our whole economy mid stream upside down this is just another money grabbing ruse.u can't eat carbon credits

hey crob: it doesn't have anything to do with rep. or dem. u have bought into their game. they are all the same. do u actually believe these little puppets elected to office run the show or call the shots?its a diversion so we don't look behind them to see the real boggy man behind the curtain. think about it. its just a ruse every 4 or 8 years to keep us fighting about health care or national defense. look at who give money to these people dems. or rep. its the same people. why do u think they all want a global economy?

Thanks George Bush!