Perhaps you forgot, but during the Clinton era all taxes were higher across the board. If you're advocating a return to the Clinton-era level of taxation for all tax brackets, then you are tacitly supporting my original assertion that having the rich pay for everything isn't going to work. QED.



My statistics say only 40% of taxes are paid by the top 1% (the people that Obama is proposing to raise taxes on). Since the poor do not pay more than a couple of percentage points in taxes, this means almost 60% of tax revenues from the income tax are paid by people who are in the middle class.




Well, when you assume you at least make an ass out of yourself. I'm being a realist here. I think we need to return to the Clinton levels of taxation. Of course, I'm only willing to support that if massive cuts are made to the entitlement programs to ensure long-term viability.




If by "reform" you mean that he is going to make some minor adjustments, then you are being completely unrealistic. As much as I hate using wikipedia as a source, it at least attempts to maintain a non-partisan stance. The statistics are not reassuring:

Medicare faces continuing financial challenges. In its 2008 annual report to Congress, the Medicare Board of Trustees reported that the program's hospital insurance trust fund could run out of money by 2017. The trustees have made such projections in the past, but this one was bleaker than the outlook reported in 2007.

As an example of the problem, according to the Associated Press, the average wage couple jointly earned $89,000 annually in 2010. Upon attaining eligibility for Medicare and retirement in 2011, they would have paid in $114,000 in Medicare payroll taxes total. But their expected average medical services, including prescriptions are expected to cost $355,000, about three times what they paid in. When the last of the Baby Boomers retire in about 2030, 80 million people will be expecting coverage; the ratio of tax payers supporting the system is expected to drop from today's 3.5 for each person, to 2.3.




Wait...what I said was crap "even if [the] factual basis of it maybe [sic] true"? Once again, you're assuming and making a complete and total ass of yourself. There is no way that the skyrocketing cost of Medicare is Obama's fault, since Medicare has been around since the 1960s. Both parties share a responsibility for allowing it to become the monstrosity that it is today, though I will admit that if I had to apportion blame the Democrats would receive more than Republicans.




Once again, you're making an ass of yourself. Fraud is a fact. I don't care if you feel the need to call it "crap" just because you think you need to defend the President. Obama isn't wasting my money here. Congress is. Specifically, the previous Congress, which once again refused to fix the problem last summer. I hope that the bill comes up for another vote in this Congress, but I'm not sure if it will. I also have yet to see that anything in the so-called "ObamaCare" law addresses these gross overpayments by Medicare. In fact, I'm sure that it isn't there, or Congress wouldn't have felt the need to vote on it last summer.




No. I said that fixing fraud and overpayments by itself was insufficient to fix the problem. Medicare and Medicaid are hideously expensive and ballooning in a way that is unsustainable. While letting lots of old people die is a terrible thing to do, we need to figure out some way to mitigate the uncontrollable costs of these programs. Projections show that they may reach 20% of GDP within 50 years, which is larger than the entire Federal budget today. And that's assuming we have no Social Security program, no military, no Federal government.




Yes, yes I am. I'm also disgusted by all the things he has failed to do in other areas.