Flap’s Links and Comments for April 13th on 12:20

These are my links for April 13th from 12:20 to 12:52:

• How Congress could cut the deficit to zero in eight years by literally doing nothing? – So how does doing nothing actually return the budget to health? The answer is that doing nothing allows all kinds of fiscal changes that politicians generally abhor to take effect automatically. First, doing nothing means the Bush tax cuts would expire, as scheduled, at the end of next year. That would cause a moderately progressive tax hike, and one that hits most families, including the middle class. The top marginal rate would rise from 35 percent to 39.6 percent, and some tax benefits for investment income would disappear. Additionally, a patch to keep the alternative minimum tax from hitting 20 million or so families would end. Second, the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act, Obama's health care law, would proceed without getting repealed or defunded. The CBO believes that the plan would bend health care's cost curve downward, wrestling the rate of health care inflation back toward the general rate of inflation. Third, doing nothing would mean that Medicare starts paying doctors low, low rates. Congress would not pass anymore of the regular "doc fixes" that keep reimbursements high. Nothing else happens. Almost magically, everything evens out.

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  Sorry but this is a joke.

  ObamaCare will do nothing of the kind in reducing the deficit and how will you replace all of the physicians after they quit practicing medicine.

  This is a stupid left-wing exercise.

• GOP Senators: Raise retirement age to 70 and Cut Benefits for Wealthy – Three Republican senators on Wednesday will propose a Social Security reform package that would raise the retirement age to 70 and cut benefits for the wealthy.

  Sens. Lindsey Graham (S.C.), Rand Paul (Ky.) and Mike Lee (Utah) previewed their proposal on Fox News, saying that it will put the entitlement program on a long-term path to solvency without raising taxes.

  The senators said that their plan would gradually raise the retirement age from 67 to 70 and would not affect individuals age 56 or older. Graham said that the proposal uses the same formula Congress used to raise the retirement age from 65 to 67, so that people born in 1970 would become the first group to have a retirement age of 70.

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  Makes the most sense…….

• Obama’s solution to deficit: spending, ObamaCare, and tax hikes – If it was possible to fail to meet the already-low expectations set for this speech beforehand, Obama managed to do it.  Not only did Obama fail to resurrect his own deficit commission’s plan, he offered nothing specific in response to the specifics Paul Ryan and the GOP have already laid on the table.  It’s almost impossible to present a substantive criticism of the proposal because it contains nothing substantive, an impression that more and more people have of this White House.

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  Nothing substantive is correct. It isn't even a fair debate between Obama and Paul Ryan.