America’s Debt Problem Is Not Caused By Social Programs

By: Ray Medeiros

April 18, 2011--In a previous post I used some information that has since been corrected on the original site, Business Insider due to in-depth research into the actual OECD numbers by myself and others. It turns out that the United States spends 16.2% of our GDP on social programs, NOT 7.2%. But as I investigated further into the actual OECD numbers itself, I have found something even more disturbing.

The United States spends 16.2% of our GDP on social programs and Canada spends 16.9% on theirs and an even closer comparison, Australia spends 16%. These two countries spend the same amount of their GDP to ensure a comfortable standard of living for their citizens as the United States does, yet we do not have the same outcome.

For instance, America does not have a single payer health insurance system that covers everyone, our single payer only covers the elderly and even that program is under assault [see Paul Ryan's voucher system proposal]. Both Australia and Canada have single payer that covers every single citizen in their country.

Another difference is America’s unemployment insurance, we normally give the unemployed 26 weeks of benefits, unless we are in a deep recession as we are now. In Australia unemployment benefits are unlimited. Being unlimited in Australia there are more requirements to be met by the citizen, such as employment search programs and educational programs to increase your employment opportunities.

The current debate in Washington D.C. about austerity measures takes direct aim at our social contract. The conservatives are blaming our so-called broad safety net as the reason for our debt. If that is an argument they would like to have, great, I am all for it. Let’s take a look at Canada’s and Australia’s national debt and percentage of GDP.

According to a conservative group’s numbers in Canada, their public debt is 561 billion dollars. The current GDP of Canada is 1.3 trillion dollars, so their debt is only 50% of GDP. In Australia, their GDP is approximately 1.2 Trillion, and their national debt is, 22.4% of GDP or approximately 264 billion in public debt.

Here in the United States, our national debt is 14 trillion dollars and our GDP is about the same. We are running close to 100% of our GDP. If the social safety net is the problem, why aren’t our closest statistical neighbors feeling the same budget pressures.

Both of these countries spend the same percentage of GDP on their programs as the United States, yet the national debt is less and they get more under their programs. Something is wrong with our system. It’s not that our safety net is too broad or over-bearing as the conservative would like you to believe.

Something else is skewed, maybe these countries don’t spend as much subsidizing multi-national corporations, worth hundreds of billions of dollars, they also have a smaller military budget. But to blame the safety net of the United States as the problem is purely ideological, and not realistic at all.

Fact checking for thee, but not for me

By Greg Sargent

August 28, 2012--The Romney campaign’s position is now that the Obama camp should pull its ads when fact checkers call them out as false—but that Romney and his advisers should feel no such constraint.

Huh?

This is not an exaggeration. This is really the Romney campaign’s position.

As Buzzfeed reports this morning, top Romney advisers say their most effective ads are the ones attacking Obama over welfare, and that they will not allow their widespread denunciation by fact checkers as false slow down their campaign one little bit.

Do they mean they’re not gonna let facts get in their way? No Colbert truthiness squad?

“Our most effective ad is our welfare* ad,” a top television advertising strategist for Romney, Ashley O’Connor said at a forum Tuesday hosted by ABCNews and Yahoo! News. “It’s new information.”...

Well, sure it’s new information...it’s hot off the lyin’ machine.

The Washington Post’s “Fact Checker” awarded Romney’s ad “four Pinocchios,” a measure Romney pollster Neil Newhouse dismissed.

“Fact checkers come to this with their own sets of thoughts and beliefs, and we’re not going to let our campaign be dictated by fact checkers,” he said.

Well, we can certainly understand that...facts tend to be bothersome...especially if they start throwing in their own thought and beliefs! 

That’s a very interesting admission. But it gets better. Reading this brought to mind Romney’s own remarks about fact-checking and political advertising not long ago.

Needless to say, he has a different standard for the Obama campaign.

“In the past when people pointed out that something was inaccurate, campaigns pulled the ad,” Romney said on the radio. “They were embarrassed.

Today, they just blast ahead. The various fact checkers look at some of these charges in the Obama ads and they say that they’re wrong, and inaccurate, and yet he just keeps on running them.”

The upshot is that Romney doesn’t have an intellectual objection to fact checking’s limitations in a general sense, at least when it’s applied to the Obama campaign.

In that case, fact checking is a legitimate exercise Obama should heed. But at the same time, the Romney campaign explicitly says it doesn’t see it as legitimate or constraining when it’s applied to him.

By the way, this isn’t the first time the Romney camp has insisted that it is not beholden to the standards it expects the Obama campaign to follow.

For the better part of a year, Romney has hammered Obama over the “net” jobs lost on his watch, to paint him as a job destroyer, a metric that factors the hundreds and hundreds of thousands of jobs lost at the start of Obama’s term, before his policies took effect.

Yet Romney advisers have argued with no apparent sense of irony, that his own record should not be judged by one net jobs number.

In this sense, the Romney campaign continues to pose a test to the news media and our political system.

What happens when one campaign has decided there is literally no set of boundaries that it needs to follow when it comes to the veracity of its assertions?

The Romney campaign is betting that the press simply won’t be able to keep voters informed about the disputes that are central to the campaign, in the face of the sheer scope and volume of dishonesty it uncorks daily.

Paul Krugman’s question continues to remain relevant: “Has there ever been a candidacy this cynical?”

Greg Sargent writes The Plum Line blog, a reported opinion blog with a liberal slant.
******
The false ads are inspired by a man with a long history of minimizing the struggles of the poor.

By Andy Kroll

Sept. 13, 2012 In recent weeks, a Mitt Romney campaign ad has flashed across television screens blasting President Obama on the issue of welfare.

The ad claims Obama "gutted" the requirement in the 1996 welfare reform law that recipients look for work in exchange for government support. Media fact-checkers quickly debunked Romney's attack—PolitiFact rated it "Pants on Fire"—and Obama's campaign lashed back with a TV ad of its own.

Yet Romney stuck with the welfare attack on the stump, and Romney aide Ashley O'Connor said the ad was the campaign's most potent of 2012.

Fact checking for thee, but not for me

By Greg Sargent

August 28, 2012--The Romney campaign’s position is now that the Obama camp should pull its ads when fact checkers call them out as false—but that Romney and his advisers should feel no such constraint.

Huh?

This is not an exaggeration. This is really the Romney campaign’s position.

As Buzzfeed reports this morning, top Romney advisers say their most effective ads are the ones attacking Obama over welfare, and that they will not allow their widespread denunciation by fact checkers as false slow down their campaign one little bit.

Do they mean they’re not gonna let facts get in their way?
No Colbert truthiness squad?

“Our most effective ad is our welfare* ad,” a top television advertising strategist for Romney, Ashley O’Connor said at a forum Tuesday hosted by ABCNews and Yahoo! News. “It’s new information.”...

Well, sure it’s new information...it’s hot off the lyin’ machine.

The Washington Post’s “Fact Checker” awarded Romney’s ad “four Pinocchios,” a measure Romney pollster Neil Newhouse dismissed.

“Fact checkers come to this with their own sets of thoughts and beliefs, and we’re not going to let our campaign be dictated by fact checkers,” he said.

Well, we can certainly understand that...facts tend to be bothersome...especially if they start throwing in their own thought and beliefs! 

That’s a very interesting admission. But it gets better. Reading this brought to mind Romney’s own remarks about fact-checking and political advertising not long ago. Needless to say, he has a different standard for the Obama campaign.

“In the past when people pointed out that something was inaccurate, campaigns pulled the ad,” Romney said on the radio. “They were embarrassed.

Today, they just blast ahead. The various fact checkers look at some of these charges in the Obama ads and they say that they’re wrong, and inaccurate, and yet he just keeps on running them.”

The upshot is that Romney doesn’t have an intellectual objection to fact checking limitations in a general sense, at least when it’s applied to the Obama campaign.

In that case, fact checking is a legitimate exercise Obama should heed. But at the same time, the Romney campaign explicitly says it doesn’t see it as legitimate or constraining when it’s applied to him.

By the way, this isn’t the first time the Romney camp has insisted that it is not beholden to the standards it expects the Obama campaign to follow.

For the better part of a year, Romney has hammered Obama over the “net” jobs lost on his watch, to paint him as a job destroyer, a metric that factors the hundreds and hundreds of thousands of jobs lost at the start of Obama’s term, before his policies took effect.

Yet Romney advisers have argued with no apparent sense of irony, that his own record should not be judged by one net jobs number.

In this sense, the Romney campaign continues to pose a test to the news media and our political system.

What happens when one campaign has decided there is literally no set of boundaries that it needs to follow when it comes to the veracity of its assertions?

The Romney campaign is betting that the press simply won’t be able to keep voters informed about the disputes that are central to the campaign, in the face of the sheer scope and volume of dishonesty it uncorks daily.

Paul Krugman’s question continues to remain relevant: “Has there ever been a candidacy this cynical?”

Greg Sargent writes The Plum Line blog, a reported opinion blog with a liberal slant.
******
The false ads are inspired by a man with a
long history of minimizing the struggles of the poor.

By Andy Kroll

Sept. 13, 2012 In recent weeks, a Mitt Romney campaign ad has flashed across television screens blasting President Obama on the issue of welfare.

The ad claims Obama "gutted" the requirement in the 1996 welfare reform law that recipients look for work in exchange for government support. Media fact-checkers quickly debunked Romney's attack—PolitiFact rated it "Pants on Fire"—and Obama's campaign lashed back with a TV ad of its own.

Yet Romney stuck with the welfare attack on the stump, and Romney aide Ashley O'Connor said the ad was the campaign's most potent of 2012.