I think you missed this part-
and money going to the treasury should mean less need to raise taxes,right? Can you not see that connection?

So if they didn't create the program they somehow would've still gotten all the telecommunication companies to agree to create the same fees to telecommunication customers and just had them ship them to the treasury instead? What would they have called that I wonder?

LOL Wat? They ordered the phone companies to collect the fees knowing full well that the fees would be passed on to the customer. That is nothing but a hidden tax. The government also had to create a bureaucracy to oversee the collections and disbursements of these funds. Who pays those people? I guess we pay them just like all the other people on the government payroll.

In your description about the programs funding it said "affordable phone service", it said nothing about free. I can't believe that you believe that you/me aren't paying for this. You are just in denial. This is just the tip of the iceberg when you start to talk about government waste and throwing our tax dollars away.

But since I knew this guys story, and knew he needed that phone about as much as he needed another stretch in the joint, it just got my anger stirred up about that damn phone. Overreacting? Maybe. But we have to start somewhere if we are going to take our country back.

This isn't throwing our tax dollars away. No tax dollars get spent on it. I still don't know what you wanted to bet on, but prana already provided the link that neatly explains the mechanics of the program. Government makes the telecoms fund these programs and telecoms fund them through a "universal service" fee on people's bills.

If we ended the program the fee goes away, there's no money for the federal government to keep. I mean, the government could pass a new cellphone service tax if they wanted, but the government can always create a new tax if they want.

Regardless, I still don't see what's so objectionable about giving poor people a $10/month break on their cellphone bills. Having a phone is pretty much a necessity, you can't very well ever expect to get a job to get off the dole if you can't fill in a number on job applications.

Re-read my post.How is that not a tax? Who pays the employees who oversee the collections and disbursements? If we ended the program the surcharges doesn't necessarily follow suit. Are you a sheep? Talking to you is like talking to an empty chair.

You originally said that there was no program like this, that it was an e-mail hoax, that was what I wanted to bet on. And now your just acting like you never said any such thing. Yea, lets give the poor cars too, you can't go to work if you don't have wheels. And watches, you can't work if you don't know what time to show up.

Sheesh...

If we ended the program and the surcharges didn't follow the telecoms would just keep that money. You're going to have to try harder to find a program to cut to actually effect the deficit. Because, again, even if this was an unfunded appropriation directly from the general fund, it's nothing. A billion dollars a year helping poor people with their bills? ZOMG government waste. We spent a more than that every week in Iraq. At least the phone thing is helping poor Americans and providing phone companies with more customers.

Have you ever owned a business? If the feds stopped Social security tommorrow, but they didn't stop the withholding taxes for it, do you think they employers would ever try to keep the money? Hell no! They would keep sending it in every quarter just like always, because you don't mess with the government. It would be the same for the phone surcharges. It would just keep rolling in.

And you are right, there needs to be more across the board cuts. Like special retirement funds and medical insurance for Congressmen and Senators. They should have to live by the same standards as me and you.

But for some reason I think what I'm saying is falling on deaf ears.

Congress people don't get special retirement funds or medical insurance, they get the standard federal employee programs. They do have access to like doctors in the Capitol that members of the public don't, but they have to pay for that and I think it's pretty reasonable to keep somebody on staff given the circumstances.

Also there are only 500 of them, plus a few thousand counting retired ones, so even if you were right and we were giving them all sorts of cushy perks, what kind of savings are you going to get from that? Yeah, **** you John Boehner, you pay all of your health insurance premiums from here on out. That will save the government literally hundreds of dollars.

The service is meant for the poor, and you employ this person, so either you pay dirt wages, or under the table cash, how does this person qualify for a subsidized service?

If I recall the article, it was 135% of poverty income, somewhere around $14,000 per year was the cutoff. Now 2-3 days a week is what, 100 to 150 days per year, even at $50 per day that's $5,000 in wages from you. Add that to a disability benefit of say $1,000 per month ($12,000), he appears to be over the allowable limit.

I'd say you should direct your rage to someone you know who is scamming the system. Especially when you are complicit in their endeavor. Or do you want government to perform that duty for you?

How many times do we have to say "at the margin"? Do I also need to go over the difference between income taxes and capital gains again? A 3% increase in income taxes does make a difference. You're right that it likely won't make a huge difference, but if you are trying to create jobs this tax increase is going to affect the people most likely to do that creation.

If you want to reduce the incentive for certain non-productive activities of the rich, then tax specifically those activities. Don't tax income.

If you want to reduce the deficit, then don't raise taxes on productive activities, reduce defense spending and spend the savings on real stimulus or deficit reduction.

Fly gonna fly.

No timex watches either. Everybody has to have the same watch. We wouldn't want to discriminate.

What a joke.

This is definitely true to some degree, though how much I couldn't say. It would still exist if America was more homogenously white, or there was less of a correlation between being African-American or Latino and poor. Conservatives in plenty of other Western states where there are not as significant poor racial minorities speak in the same terms and make the same dumb talking points about welfare queens, single moms, gangs and so on.

I'm not saying it's not racially motivated to a degree in America, and I'm not saying many of the people who say those things don't immediately picture an African-American or Latino person, but I doubt this sort of rhetoric would subside much if the racial thing wasn't an issue at all.

Dude, could you be any less informed? Do you think that you could do any job for a couple of years and retire with full benefits other than a government job?

Please do everyone a favor and read this- http://www.fa-ir.org/alabama/corrupt...20Benefits.htm

He works for me as a cash laborer a couple of days a month. I pay him $10 an hour. So get off of your high horse, this guy is only taking advantage of a program that some social worker told him about. The fault lies with the government for getting into the social services business to start with. If some do gooder is chasing you down trying to throw money at you, how many of us could turn that down if we are in this guys situation?

If the government is going to implement these policies and never try to administrate or police them, then they should just stop. The best way to stop this kind of abuse is to get the government out of the way to start. The best way to kill a snake is to cut off the head.

This is not exactly true. The telecoms don't spend the money themselves. They send the collected USF to an FCC-administered program which is technically an independent non-profit organization. The money doesn't go into the general coffers, though, so basically you're both wrong.

This is true. The money doesn't go into the general fund nor does anything come out of it.

But it is still an effective tax on the population. It's currently used for "welfare phones" but it's also used for wonderful projects like providing telephone service out in the boonies where it's ridiculously expensive and ensuring it costs the same as service in the cities where it's ridiculously cheap to provide. In other words poor inner-city people (note: code words!) are subsidizing Ted Turner's telephone at his ranch in the middle of nowhere, Montana.

Of course, this is variant of a false dichotomy. It's not like if we end waste in one "small" area we can't also end waste in Iraq too. But it is good to see you speaking out in defense of corporate welfare.

As much as the "government is big brother" is the mantra of many in this forum, there is a voluntary system in place. For both reporting ones own revenue, and also for reporting violations. Isn't that the core of a Checks & Balances structure. It nice to take the position of their program, their problem. For that you act like a politician.

What side you choose is your choice, but to whine about abuse, and then do diddly squat about it apathetic. and if that $ 0.25 per month on your bill is so important you should notify the agency.

Would you quit with the bull****? I know it runs through your blood like snakes through a Indiana marsh, but quit trying to throw up red herrings that you know don't make much sense.

Let's get one thing straight, the 15% capital gains rate was gifted from the Bush administration to large businesses. We all know that modern industrialization as we know it, the corporate behemoth as we know it, was not built on a 15% capital gains rate. In fact, the 20% capital gains rate of the Reagan introductory years was considered extreme. I’m glad that Obama is as radical as Reagan.

As much as you'd like to, you cannot distort this argument going around in circles saying well this keeps people from opening businesses, blah blah blah. If your using the money TO RE-INVEST IN MORE CAPITAL, YOU DO NOT REALIZE A GAIN, HENCE NO CAPITAL GAINS TAX! TAX SHELTERS 101!

Will you be more likely to open jobs up with an extra one point three trillion in tax relief, sure, are you just as likely to sit on it and do nothing instead of opening jobs up, yes.
The point is, there is enough money in circulation for rich people to do whatever the hell they want. Generations of wealth did not just disappear overnight. Cutting these people’s taxes because IT MIGHT spur job growth, is just idiotic given THE CURRENT ECONOMY.

It is a free lunch, don’t act like it’s anything else.

There's nothing special or unique to Congress about that, they pay into the standard federal pension system. The SCARY BIG NUMBERS in that link are just because they are calculating those people's pension benefits over their lifetime and those people with the "multi-million dollar pensions" managed to combine long service with leaving Congress while relatively young.


Man those guys are living high off the hog And, again, this is a few hundred people, so even if you were right.
http://usgovinfo.about.com/od/uscong...ongresspay.htm

So, basically, your spending cut suggestions that will prevent us from needing to raise taxes are:

End cell phone program($0 of savings)
End special Congressperson retirement accounts($0 of savings)

Even if we just straight ended the Congress person pension plan that's saving us $21M a year, so let's eyeball that at $250M over the next decade. Letting the Bush tax cuts expire on the highest bracket is going to generate $675 BILLION over the next decade.

Hmm...numbers game really. I don't support cutting congressional pension plan but your argument is just idiotic as usual. So the the hell with a program that would affect 1-2k people cause it just not going to save enough but lets go with a program that would affect 3-6m with about the same effect per person LOLOLOLOLOLOLOLLOLLOLOL

I would be all for letting the Bush tax cuts expire but all the government is going to do is waste that money too.......

Yea, and maybe I should sit out on interstate and write down the license #'s of speeders and turn them in to the highway patrol, and maybe call the cops if I see my neighbor sparking a doob in his backyard and just be a regular hero?

There are people paid to do that job by the government and the more poor saps they can sign up for these programs , the more secure their jobs are going to be. They don't want to hear about abuse because it makes them look bad.

Edit: and Fly, this makes twice now that you said a program that I was griping about didn't exist, and then you make post after post saying that it wouldn't save any money if they cut it anyway. Are you bi-polar?

dumbest thread ever

Also, the "anti-racism" crowd such as Fly have only ignored this question like 5 times, so I can't really assume that they support affirmative action. But yeah, affirmative action is institutionalized racism.

Congress people don't get special retirement/health insurance plans, but even if they did, cutting something like that wouldn't save real money. You are not identifying government waste, you're identifying things that can be dishonestly explained to angry up the blood of Glenn Beck viewers. Free cell phones for lazy poors(not paid for by taxes)! Special benefits for those fat cats in Washington(the standard federal employee programs)!

It's like how random populist politicians will seize on some tiny little research program funded by grants and and center attack ads about how Harry Reid wants to spend YOUR tax dollars to give chimpanzees cocaine. ZOMG!!! I mean, our budget is nearly entirely defense programs that conservatives love and entitlement programs that conservatives are currently drawing from, but TRUST ME THERE'S SO MUCH GOVERNMENT WASTE.

So you've got two strikes, Crudefinder. Save the government some money. Tell me what program you want to cut.

would you actually be satisfied if someone went through the budget and made numerous budget cut suggestions that you disagreed with?

No, of course not, because any single proposed cut is by itself insignificant!