Democrats hated that new pay plan, but GWB implemented it. Obama got rid of it almost immediately and they all went back to the GS pay system.
Gaetz withdraws from AG consideration
- Thread starter dbmhoosier
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You make some fine points. I'll only respond to this one. SS has a cap because the benefits have a cap. Your SS benefits are directly tied to your lifetime earnings. If you remove the cap, you either have to remove the cap on benefits. Or you have to fundamentally change the system and make it pure wealth transfer system from rich to poor. That's never been the underlying structure of the system since it was created nearly a century ago.
You make my point. He did all of that w/o huge amounts spent on influence peddlers, lobbyists, and expensive consultants. Musk even revolutionized and streamlined rent seeking. Maybe we should read isacson’s musk bio for book club. I trad another one published several years ago.
Agreed.
The fundamental problem is lack of kids and the selfish generation of young adults who are too selfish or to afraid to have kids.
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The way musk approached government contracts is as unique as everything else he does.
Lots. For all of his businesses. He'd be a fool not to. And Tesla probably doesn't exist w/o govt. subsidies:
I'm going to bet that you end up being wrong on this. The group (which, as I recall, has had input from Sens. Cassidy, King, Kaine, Rounds) has coalesced around some important frameworks that include the creation of a Sovereign Wealth Fund, raising the retirement age, raising the payroll tax cap, among some other things.
And I honestly don't think anything Musk/Vivek do or don't do will have any bearing on what they're doing and working towards.
If I'm wrong about this, you can feed me crow. But I don't think I will be.
Meh. I don't care about feeding crow. We're all wrong about lots of things and predicting the future is hard to do.
For what it's worth, I hope you're right and we fix this problem in the near future. But I'd lay A LOT of money that it won't be fixed in the next 4 years.
I don’t know about now, but he didn’t when Tesla and Space X were fledgling and just taking off. Yet he knew government contracts/ support were vital, especially for Space x.
IIRC he said he is okay with eliminating EV subsidies. Only Tesla would survive that.
Well, there's a cap on Social Security taxes -- because there's a corresponding cap on Social Security benefits. I honestly don't think it'll ever be in the cards to take the tax cap off while leaving the benefit cap on.
I can see them raising it and steepening the benefit formula. But I seriously doubt they'll ever just remove it altogether. Doing that would cause some seismic shifts in how high-earning people realize their income.
Also, FWIW, there is no tax cap on the Medicare portion of the FICA tax. In fact, Obamacare added a surtax. And I think it's kind of telling that, despite this, Medicare is still not only going broke...but is in a much larger actuarial hole than Social Security is.
The lesson we should take from that is that we shouldn't kid ourselves that we'll be able to raise the tax revenues needed to afford these programs as presently constituted. We've got to get cost out, one way or another.
Musk, an entrepreneur whose business ventures range from electric vehicles to space exploration to implantable neurotechnology, is now heading into the social media sector. His two largest companies, Tesla and SpaceX, are both prolific political spenders — and Musk himself has a history of giving to candidates and causes on both sides of the aisle.
Aerospace company SpaceX reported spending $700,000 on federal lobbying in the first quarter of this year, disclosures filed April 20 show, the most it’s ever spent on lobbying in a single quarter and up from $580,000 in the first quarter of last year.
Last year, SpaceX spent a record amount on lobbying — $2.4 million. The company’s lobbying spending has more than doubled since 2013 and multiplied even more since 2003 when it spent just $36,000.
Overall, the company has spent more than $22 million on federal lobbying since 1998.
So far this cycle, SpaceX’s PAC has given nearly $400,000 to federal candidates and committees, according to the FEC.
Oh, I agree with that. I'm not even predicting that. In fact, I'm on record that I think the bulk of the "fix" will be Congress continuing to ask the Fed to monetize the debt and protect them from having to bear the political brunt of diminishing our standard of living.
I'm just saying that I don't agree that Musk and Vivek, whatever they do or don't do, will have the unintended effect of ending any efforts in Congress to address the impending entitlement catastrophe.
Sounds like you need to work a little harder.
Before you turn us into Soylent Green, how about we cut out studies of the Tsi-Tsi fly's mating habits in Botswana first.
Get rid of the waste and then we can talk about screwing old people out of their promised benefits.
PS. You forgot to mention, the SS system is still in the black.
The working group of Senators is talking about raising the cap (and, I'm sure, changing the benefit formula accordingly), but not removing it.
And, really, the problem isn't just the prospect of turning Social Security into a pure welfare plan. The problem is that removing that cap altogether would almost certainly have the effect of high earners using more tax avoidance schemes...which would not only impact OASDI revenues, but would also harm general fund revenues.
I know a lot of people hope for rich people to bail us out of this mess. But that's a pipe dream.
Again, you keep changing the argument to try to prove a point.
I'm not arguing the quality of either, although Gaetz's supposed transgressions are far less serious than destroying over 30,000 subpoena'd records.
Gaetz is just as 'qualified' for AG as Hillary was for SoS.
I don't think Gaetz is a stupid dick. He's actually a pretty smart guy. But, as you say, he's a child, immature, and gums up the works of a Republican Party with a razor thin majority.Two rich guys with big egos put in charge of a fake department to start inputting efficiencies over agencies they don't understand with an arbitrary end date in the middle of 2026.
Here is an A to Z index of every government agency:
A-Z index of U.S. government departments and agencies | USAGov
Get contact information for U.S. federal government agencies, departments, corporations, instrumentalities, and government-sponsored enterprises. Find websites, email, phone numbers, addresses, and more.www.usa.gov
They are giving themselves a year and a half to go through and make recommendations about increasing efficiency. That is maybe an couple days per agency to learn systems needs and what each agency does. What kind of quality do you think we are going to get out of those recommendations? If it is going to be large sweeping declarations (cut regulations and decrease staff) then job is already done. I don't see how they are going to be able to go through and increase efficiency through robotics and systems, that is already occurring but happens at a slow pace because of funding.
They got their name by making an acronym out of Elon's bitcoin, they set an impossibly small timeline for real reform, and one of the principal partners has taken to posting memes on his platform to get the attention he craves. Ramaswamy appears to be taking it somewhat seriously but his partner isn't so far. Frankly I could save them all time, cut the regulatory authority Vivek has mentioned, make it easier to let underperforming employees go, and dust off Simpson-Bowles. There is your start and it didn't take two rich dudes and a made up new department to do it.
@DANC to answer your question on Gaetz it is the same thing. Burning political capital to what? Troll? You don't like the pick either because Gaetz has shown to be a child who will cut off his nose to spite his face and undermine everyone he has to work with in one swoop to boost his ego. His own party hates him. That wouldn't necessarily be a bad thing if the dislike was related to him being able to force through unpopular positions that people that voted for Trump think we need. That isn't it though. They dislike him because he is a stupid dick. I don't want a stupid dick trying to clean up DOJ. You are likely to get a shitty job out of that. That is if he even makes it that far. How much political capital will Trump spend with his own party to try and get a stupid dick elected to a position he is likely to be no good at? Trump is a lame duck from day one. He has a 4 year expiration date and then his movement likely dies. I see all this Don Jr. talk and there is no way I am voting to turn this into a monarchy in 2028. Trump's first administration was bogged down because he couldn't get people to work with him. This seems like shooting himself in the foot and I don't think it was some kind of 4D chess to get Gaetz out of the house.
There is a chance to do something worthwhile here and I don't like the early returns.
I don't actually think Trump is playing 4D chess. I think he has good instincts, sometimes, about things and, realistically, knows Gaetz's chances of confirmation are slim to none. He also knows he is a pita in the House for Republicans. Taken together, it's not difficult to see an ulterior motive in the selection.
The Don Jr talk is just trolling to piss off the left. No one seriously thinks he's going to run for President.
More dangerous than going after political rivals? More dangerous than going after parents who speak up at school board meetings? More dangerous than going after religious groups for 'terrorism'?
You are changing the goalposts again. Your original question was you wonder how much Musk is getting paid. Now it’s something different. Musk isn’t getting paid. Either is Vivek. They will cut an enormous amount fat from government expenditures. It’s insane that people are arguing against this. Stupid actually.
lmao You obviously do care.
Yes, there are people who do this as a full time job. And they obviously suck at it.
There are smart people out there who can figure it out. Raise/change the benefit cap. Do it. Do something. Everybody just sits around and moans about it. The parallel to IU football is striking. Oh, woe is us, we can’t get a good coach - it will cost too much and what good coach would ever come here - so we’ll do the same ol’, same ol’ and hope some low-paid assistant can produce a miracle. Then we went out and brought in a winner and now we’ll pay him a substantial compensation package for substantial results.
So, figure out the tax/benefits caps so the program is funded. Make the benefits less straight-line if need be and progressive if that’s what it’ll take. Or, just let it go bankrupt in a decade or so. That’s a great solution.
Sit down some actuaries, doctors and accountants under Mitch and don’t come out of the room until a ten-year plan is in place to rein in healthcare costs. No reason for my two knee replacements in 2023 to cost over a combined $90,000. I paid a very small percentage of that, MediCare paid some and “denied” some so Christ Hospital charged some other poor schmuck more to make up for their super-charged costs. We get some of this crap under some kind of sanity and a lot of our financial problems can finally be addressed.
But we don’t get anywhere until we start. Money talks; bullshit walks - true as it’s ever been. We got out of the way and let Cignetti power through. Let’s let Elon and Vivek, and others eminently capable - Mitch, Mitch, Mitch - power through and kick some ass.
POTFB (Boilers AND Buckeyes)
Well social security is quite easy to balance mathematically. It's a defined benefit plan. Any actuary could come up with the correct set of taxes/benefits.
Medicare not as simple in that it's basically an open ended commitment to pay for medical services. Like an all you can eat buffet. And with people living longer and longer, utilizing more advanced treatments
We absolutely know what a wrecking ball can do when placed in the wrong hands.
We paid attention to the last 4 years of lawfare on political opponents and woke politics and have seen how it's divided the country.
The Government Accountability Office already does a good job of investigating issues and making recommendations. The only people that can do something about what they found are in Congress and leadership in the Executive Branch. The problem is they don't often do anything to fix the issues that are found. Musk and Ramaswamy will be duplicating efforts and if nothing is done about anything they find, there will be no change.
What GAO Does
Learn about GAO's processes for reports, testimonies, and legal opinions; how we serve Congress; and our role as an audit institution.
The four “ lobbyists” listed are all Space x employees tasked with marketing Space x services in the government, military and civilian world. When your customer list includes the U.S. government, I guess selling meets some definition of lobbying.
I'll go to my grave saying that we missed a golden opportunity to not only repair its finances, but vastly improve it as a public pension system, in 2005. Making it into a hybrid DB/DC plan seemed pretty obvious to me as the best way forward.
But here's where we get back again to Sen. Moynihan's quote about why Democrats are so staunchly opposed to adding a wealth component to go along with the income component to Social Security:
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Of course things aren't going to change overnight. But the head of an agency can set in motion changes that will gradually take effect.
The media in this country used to be much more conservative. Then the j-schools started turning out skulls full of mush and now the NTY is the equivalent of Pravda.
Assigning prosecutors and the selection of cases to prosecute play huge parts in the US justice system.
The Government Accountability Office already does a good job of investigating issues and making recommendations. The only people that can do something about what they found are in Congress and leadership in the Executive Branch. The problem is they don't often do anything to fix the issues that are found. Musk and Ramaswamy will be duplicating efforts and if nothing is done about anything they find, there will be no change.
What GAO Does
Learn about GAO's processes for reports, testimonies, and legal opinions; how we serve Congress; and our role as an audit institution.www.gao.gov
Nobody cares about reading GAO reports. But Musk will probably dust some off and rebrand them.
Sounds like they are going to be more or less an advisory role to OMB. Someone mentioned Mitch Daniels in this thread... Well, Daniels already had this job before as director of OMB 20+years ago.
Some funny quotes from Holtz-Eaken
“There’s the executive branch that might be in their way. The Congress might be in their way. The Constitution is a bit of an obstacle,” said Douglas Holtz-Eakin, president of American Action Forum.
“Other than that, clear sailing,” he told The Hill
...
“It sounds to me like an outside commission that will give OMB recommendations on what they think should be done to improve government efficiency, and as such its powers are entirely advisory,” Holtz-Eakin said.
“They don’t have any authority to do anything other than say, ‘We think this will be good,’” he said. “Evidently, Mr. Musk has a lot of free time, and if he wants to waste it, that’s fine.”
All automakers have gotten sweetheart loans and subsidies from the government. All of them.
Which one has actually increased efficiency as much as Musk has with those deals?
So the be clear, Trump did nothing to contribute to a divided country?
To be clear, Trump was not in office the last 4 years.
The legacy media are the main culprits for the divide in the America. Spewing absolute trash (lies) to the masses about how evil Trump is at every turn. They are the lowest of the low and deserve everyone’s animosity, imo.
I don’t get this reasoning.
It’s like saying “Hey, let’s hire Mike Woodson. He’s not as bad as Archie Miller. “
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