The Bipartisan Policy Center’s (BPC) Debt Reduction Task Force – a highly diverse group of private individuals – has laid out a comprehensive approach to closing the deficit and slowing the rise in national debt.

They do this through a combination of spending reductions, many though not all of which are excellent and transformational (about 53%) and tax increases, all of which are ill-advised (about 47%). The report’s near silence on Obamacare is noteworthy and unfortunate even to the exclusion of the universally abhorred CLASS Act. Their cuts to defense stand in stark contrast to the first obligation of Government to provide a strong defense of the nation.

The plan they lay out, along with the recently released Bowles-Simpson mark, and Rep. Paul Ryan’s (R-WI) Roadmap, is yet another attempt to change the calamitous course the federal budget is on today. Kudos to the Task Force Members for furthering the discussion through hard choices, a discussion which should take place in Washington and across the nation over how big our federal government should be, what we expect from it and what we want our taxes to look like.

Transformational:

Most noteworthy, the Task Force has a striking proposal for Medicare to transition to a premium support program. This transformative change would empower Medicare patients with control over both dollars and medical decisions and result in more efficient delivery of quality care than the current system. They would also place strong limits on federal health spending ensuring that Medicare will be an affordable and sustainable program.

Good:

Freeze and cap discretionary spending – here they could have gone further with actual cuts, though they include an important enforcement mechanism.

Cut spending on farm subsidies, but again the cuts were too timid.

Their tax plan sharply reduces top income tax rates and moves from six marginal rates to two. They also repeal the Alternative Minimum Tax. They also lower the corporate income tax rate and phase out the exclusion of employer-provided health insurance.

Strong budget controls, including discretionary spending caps and putting entitlements on explicit long-term budgets.

Lost Opportunity

On Social Security, they have very modest reforms to Social Security’s finances such as indexing the retirement age for future changes in longevity, reforming the COLA mechanism, slightly moving to more progressive benefits and strengthening benefits for lower income workers. Except for the COLA change, all of their proposed reforms should go much further. Unfortunately, their changes really come about from raising the amount of income subject to payroll taxes to $180,000, which is neither wise nor necessary. This is lost opportunity for strong reforms to fix and improve the program.

Bad

Like Bowles-Simpson, their tax reform plan is a Trojan horse for large tax hikes through the elimination of nearly all tax expenditures. Moreover, this tax plan contains a large explicit tax hike in the form of a Deficit Reduction Sales Tax at 6.5% that will apply to approximately 75% of personal consumption expenditures including such things as sales of new homes, privately funded healthcare costs, and food. Though the authors of the report take great pains to avoid the term, in reality this is a value added tax, or VAT which, as an additional tax, will not increase national savings or promote stronger growth and be a permanent cash cow for Washington.

Also, like Bowles-Simpson, they propose cuts to the defense budget. This approach asks the wrong question (How can we cut defense?) instead of the right one: What is required to protect the nation? Defense spending should be made as efficient and cost effective as possible, but savings must be reinvested in defense to make-up for a decade-long hiatus in properly modernizing the force. Cuts to defense now will lead to a hollow and humiliated military much like we had after Vietnam—and rebuilding the military would prove even more costly than maintaining it. Instead, the country needs to provide for defense an average of $720 billion per year (to be adjusted for inflation) for each of the next five fiscal years.

Building the conversation

The Domenici-Rivlin report is the kind of big picture radical approach that needs to be discussed with the American people, as must Congressman Paul Ryan’s plan and the left’s big plan – that is whenever they are willing to discuss their long-term agenda with the public.

Automate Your Finances to Spend Less Time Managing Your Accounts

Despite how simple the process can be, most of us are terrible at saving and paying bills. Here's a strategy to effectively automate most of your finances to keep you saving and out of late fee trouble.

Ramit Sethi of I Will Teach You To Be Rich.com has put together a system for managing your personal finances that only takes about an hour of your time each week. The video above fully explains the process in detail, but here's the gist. First, you want to set up your bills and other payments so they're all happening on the day you get your first paycheck of the month (the first of the month for most people). Once you have that in place, you want to set up automatic savings plans (Sethi suggests using Ing Direct) with sub-savings accounts that let you organize your savings into specific categories (vacation, wedding, etc.). You'll also want to send a percentage of your paycheck to your 401k, and have all of this happen immediately so that the money you see when you get paid is the money left when everything has already been saved. From there, you automatically pay as many bills as you can with your credit card (and then pay the credit card bill on pay day). For the bills you can't pay with your credit card (like rent, in most cases), you can use your online banking to automatically issue a check. This will leave a little money leftover in your checking account that you can use to budget for guilt-free spending and cash withdrawals.

As someone who's often fallen victim to the faults of automatic payments systems (despite frequently using them), definitely do not forget to stay on top of your bills nonetheless. Make sure you set some time aside at least once a month to do a little maintenance and make sure there are no bugs causing your automated finance system to break down. Sethi isn't suggesting a set-it-and-forget-it automated finance system by any means, but as someone who hates paying bills I know how easy it can be to procrastinate and ignore the task. If you set up a good automated system like this one, you'll be at a point where all you have to do is watch and fix the occasional problem as the most important things are being taken care of for you.

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Sea Ice News #31 | Watts Up With That?

38 Responses to Sea Ice News #31. beesaman says: December 5, 2010 at 6:38 pm. I commented on this a bit a while back too! Odd how the NSIDC graph has caught up since some folk started talking about it, or rather, odd how the ice has ...

Congo Siasa: News we missed last week

News I failed to blog on last week: The newly ordained cardinal of Kinshasa, Laurent Monsegwo, arrived in Kinshasa from Rome on Wednesday to huge acclaim. Monsengwo is usually considered to be opposed to Kabila, but rarely takes public ...

Facebook Profile Changes: More Media Play Than News?

Facebook sure has arrived when it comes to the traditional media set as it used 60 Minutes (in more ways ...

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Sea Ice News #31 | Watts Up With That?

Congo Siasa: News we missed last week

Facebook Profile Changes: More Media Play Than News?

Facebook sure has arrived when it comes to the traditional media set as it used 60 Minutes (in more ways ...

bench craft company rip off

Sea Ice News #31 | Watts Up With That?

Congo Siasa: News we missed last week

Facebook Profile Changes: More Media Play Than News?

Facebook sure has arrived when it comes to the traditional media set as it used 60 Minutes (in more ways ...

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Del hielo marino Noticias # 31 | Watts Up With That 38 Respuestas a las noticias del hielo marino # 31?. beesaman dice: 5 de diciembre de 2010 a las 18:38. Hice un comentario sobre esto un poco hace un tiempo también! Extraño que ha cogido el gráfico de arriba, ya que algunos NSIDC gente empezó a hablar de ella, o más bien, extraño que el hielo se ha ...

Congo Siasa: Noticias que nos perdimos weekNews último que no blog la semana pasada: El recién ordenado cardenal de Kinshasa, Laurent Monsegwo, llegó a Kinshasa desde Roma el miércoles con gran éxito enorme. Monsengwo es generalmente considerado como oposición a Kabila, pero rara vez se toma pública ...

Cambios en Facebook Perfil: Más medios de comunicación de jugar que Noticias Facebook que ha llegado la hora de establecer los medios de comunicación tradicionales, ya que utiliza 60 minutos (de manera más ...

?
bench craft company rip off

Sea Ice News #31 | Watts Up With That?

Congo Siasa: News we missed last week

Facebook Profile Changes: More Media Play Than News?

Facebook sure has arrived when it comes to the traditional media set as it used 60 Minutes (in more ways ...

bench craft company rip off

Transformational:

Good:

Freeze and cap discretionary spending – here they could have gone further with actual cuts, though they include an important enforcement mechanism.

Cut spending on farm subsidies, but again the cuts were too timid.

Their tax plan sharply reduces top income tax rates and moves from six marginal rates to two. They also repeal the Alternative Minimum Tax. They also lower the corporate income tax rate and phase out the exclusion of employer-provided health insurance.

Strong budget controls, including discretionary spending caps and putting entitlements on explicit long-term budgets.

Lost Opportunity

On Social Security, they have very modest reforms to Social Security’s finances such as indexing the retirement age for future changes in longevity, reforming the COLA mechanism, slightly moving to more progressive benefits and strengthening benefits for lower income workers. Except for the COLA change, all of their proposed reforms should go much further. Unfortunately, their changes really come about from raising the amount of income subject to payroll taxes to $180,000, which is neither wise nor necessary. This is lost opportunity for strong reforms to fix and improve the program.

Bad

Like Bowles-Simpson, their tax reform plan is a Trojan horse for large tax hikes through the elimination of nearly all tax expenditures. Moreover, this tax plan contains a large explicit tax hike in the form of a Deficit Reduction Sales Tax at 6.5% that will apply to approximately 75% of personal consumption expenditures including such things as sales of new homes, privately funded healthcare costs, and food. Though the authors of the report take great pains to avoid the term, in reality this is a value added tax, or VAT which, as an additional tax, will not increase national savings or promote stronger growth and be a permanent cash cow for Washington.

Also, like Bowles-Simpson, they propose cuts to the defense budget. This approach asks the wrong question (How can we cut defense?) instead of the right one: What is required to protect the nation? Defense spending should be made as efficient and cost effective as possible, but savings must be reinvested in defense to make-up for a decade-long hiatus in properly modernizing the force. Cuts to defense now will lead to a hollow and humiliated military much like we had after Vietnam—and rebuilding the military would prove even more costly than maintaining it. Instead, the country needs to provide for defense an average of $720 billion per year (to be adjusted for inflation) for each of the next five fiscal years.

Building the conversation

Automate Your Finances to Spend Less Time Managing Your Accounts

bench craft company rip off

Sea Ice News #31 | Watts Up With That?

Congo Siasa: News we missed last week

Facebook Profile Changes: More Media Play Than News?

Facebook sure has arrived when it comes to the traditional media set as it used 60 Minutes (in more ways ...

bench craft company rip off

Sea Ice News #31 | Watts Up With That?

Congo Siasa: News we missed last week

Facebook Profile Changes: More Media Play Than News?

Facebook sure has arrived when it comes to the traditional media set as it used 60 Minutes (in more ways ...

bench craft company rip off

Sea Ice News #31 | Watts Up With That?

Congo Siasa: News we missed last week

Facebook Profile Changes: More Media Play Than News?

Facebook sure has arrived when it comes to the traditional media set as it used 60 Minutes (in more ways ...

bench craft company rip off

Sea Ice News #31 | Watts Up With That?

Congo Siasa: News we missed last week

Facebook Profile Changes: More Media Play Than News?

Facebook sure has arrived when it comes to the traditional media set as it used 60 Minutes (in more ways ...

bench craft company rip off

Sea Ice News #31 | Watts Up With That?

Congo Siasa: News we missed last week

Facebook Profile Changes: More Media Play Than News?

Facebook sure has arrived when it comes to the traditional media set as it used 60 Minutes (in more ways ...

bench craft company rip off

Sea Ice News #31 | Watts Up With That?

Congo Siasa: News we missed last week

Facebook Profile Changes: More Media Play Than News?

Facebook sure has arrived when it comes to the traditional media set as it used 60 Minutes (in more ways ...

bench craft company rip off

Transformational:

Good:

Freeze and cap discretionary spending – here they could have gone further with actual cuts, though they include an important enforcement mechanism.

Cut spending on farm subsidies, but again the cuts were too timid.

Their tax plan sharply reduces top income tax rates and moves from six marginal rates to two. They also repeal the Alternative Minimum Tax. They also lower the corporate income tax rate and phase out the exclusion of employer-provided health insurance.

Strong budget controls, including discretionary spending caps and putting entitlements on explicit long-term budgets.

Lost Opportunity

On Social Security, they have very modest reforms to Social Security’s finances such as indexing the retirement age for future changes in longevity, reforming the COLA mechanism, slightly moving to more progressive benefits and strengthening benefits for lower income workers. Except for the COLA change, all of their proposed reforms should go much further. Unfortunately, their changes really come about from raising the amount of income subject to payroll taxes to $180,000, which is neither wise nor necessary. This is lost opportunity for strong reforms to fix and improve the program.

Bad

Like Bowles-Simpson, their tax reform plan is a Trojan horse for large tax hikes through the elimination of nearly all tax expenditures. Moreover, this tax plan contains a large explicit tax hike in the form of a Deficit Reduction Sales Tax at 6.5% that will apply to approximately 75% of personal consumption expenditures including such things as sales of new homes, privately funded healthcare costs, and food. Though the authors of the report take great pains to avoid the term, in reality this is a value added tax, or VAT which, as an additional tax, will not increase national savings or promote stronger growth and be a permanent cash cow for Washington.

Also, like Bowles-Simpson, they propose cuts to the defense budget. This approach asks the wrong question (How can we cut defense?) instead of the right one: What is required to protect the nation? Defense spending should be made as efficient and cost effective as possible, but savings must be reinvested in defense to make-up for a decade-long hiatus in properly modernizing the force. Cuts to defense now will lead to a hollow and humiliated military much like we had after Vietnam—and rebuilding the military would prove even more costly than maintaining it. Instead, the country needs to provide for defense an average of $720 billion per year (to be adjusted for inflation) for each of the next five fiscal years.

Building the conversation

Automate Your Finances to Spend Less Time Managing Your Accounts

bench craft company rip off

Monday, December 6, 2010

how to budget personal finances

Automate Your Finances to Spend Less Time Managing Your Accounts

Automate Your Finances to Spend Less Time Managing Your Accounts

Automate Your Finances to Spend Less Time Managing Your Accounts

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