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Well, it doesn't look good for America's economic future. At least it didn't until a new blueprint was unveiled by a congressman from Wisconsin, the same state that has given us such dramatic inspiration for budgetary discipline of late.Rep. Paul Ryan's grand plan to dig America out of its fiscal hole is a bold exercise in small government by brute force. This Wisconsin Republican's genuinely visionary plan boldly goes where Ronald Reagan and Newt Gingrich never did by simply terminating the entitlement status of Medicare and Medicaid. Ryan makes dramatic Medicare cuts for those under 55, turning the program into a modern voucher system, which would then be used to purchase private health insurance. He slashes Medicaid, the health care plan for deadbeats, by giving states block grants that grow slowly in order to force them to cut expenses or simply reduce Medicaid enrollment. The plan takes funding from Pell Grants, food stamps, and a host of other domestic programs. And, as an added bonus, it also repeals the Dodd-Frank financial regulatory reform law.And even though his budget committee isn't responsible for taxes, Ryan includes the boldest tax reform proposal since the 1980s, proposing to lower top individual and corporate rates to 25 percent and end deductions. While he's at it, Ryan caps domestic spending, repeals health care reform, slashes farm subsidies, and much more.Liberals are certain to claim negative effects from Ryan's proposed cuts on future retirees, working families, and the poor. Another favorite liberal hobbyhorse – defense spending – is also wisely ignored by the Ryan plan. And the market response has been favorable: the Standard and Poor’s 500 Aerospace & Defense index fell less than 1 percent when the plan was made public.Of course, there's no need to even contemplate changes to the most well-financed military machine in history just because of social-program deficit. As we all know, the long-term budget deficit is actually driven by Medicare, which subsidizes the health-care costs of those who are no longer contributing to economic growth. In order to move us to budget surpluses, Ryan's budget proposes reforms that are nothing short of audacious. Medicare will be privatized, and seniors get a voucher to buy private insurance. In order to control costs, the voucher's growth is far slower than the expected growth of health-care costs. Medicaid also gets privatized.Liberals are sure to make political hay by pointing out that the privatization itself actually costs money, so it's important to understand how Ryan's budget saves money: not through privatization, though everything does get privatized. It's through firm, federal cost controls.This proposal would cleverly shift risk exposure from the federal government to the seniors themselves. The money seniors would get to buy their own policies would grow more slowly than their health-care costs, and more slowly than their expected Medicare benefits, which means that they'd need to either cut back on how comprehensive their insurance is or how much health-care they purchase. Seniors would re-enter the health care world the rest of us live in, with co-payments, deductibles and managed care. OK, eventually these cost controls would require some tough decisions about end-of-life care and the rationing of high-tech treatments. Welcome back to the real world, seniors.The Ryan budget would also deal with another problem associated with today's system: Medicare currently pays providers less and works more efficiently than private insurers, thereby subverting the profit motive of our beloved free-market system. Under the Ryan budget plan, seniors trying to purchase a plan equivalent to Medicare would pay more for it on the free market, thus returning capital to the private health-insurance industry where it belongs.Liberals always ask who should be paying to set America on a safe fiscal path? Paul Ryan boldly makes the case that the answer is the poor, disabled, and elderly, from the "hammock" of their safety net, to use his innovative terminology.

Programs under the “Social Security” net are not welfare programs but entitlement programs and eligibility is based on work history and payroll tax contributions.Old-Age, Survivors, and Disability InsuranceUnemployment InsuranceWorkers' CompensationTemporary Disability InsuranceLooking at a consolidated budget you could see that, “golly” there are a lot of money being spent. These are mandated programs and the actual expenditures are based on the number of participants receiving payments of those who have paid into the system via payroll tax deductions.Assistance “welfare" programs are needs based tested.TANF is the Temporary Assistance for Needy Families program. Most people refer to this program as welfare. TANF provided income to 1.2 million families in June 2018. It benefited 835,655 adults and 2.4 million children.In 2016, TANF assisted only 23 percent of the families living in poverty. On average, a three-person family received $447 a month. Despite this help, they still lived below the poverty line.Medicaid paid for health care for 64.9 million low-income adults in 2014. The largest share, which was 50 percent, went to 29.5 million children. Next, it covered 19.2 million adults, mostly parents of these children. It pays for 40 percent of all U.S. births.Medicaid also paid health expenses for 9.8 million blind and disabled people. The smallest category was 5.4 million low-income seniors. It paid for any health costs that Medicare didn't cover for eligible recipients.Child's Health Insurance Program. In addition to Medicaid, 6 million children received additional benefits from CHIP. It covers hospital care, medical supplies, and tests. It also provides preventive care, such as eye exams, dental care, and regular check-ups.The Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program is more commonly called food stamps. It gave food vouchers to 42.6 million people in 2017. The average individual received $126 a month. The total federal cost for SNAP in fiscal year 2017 was about $70 billion. Of that, 93 percent was spent on food and the rest on administrative costs. It requires recipients without children to work after three months. It waives the requirement for those who live in areas with high unemployment.Supplemental Security Program provides cash to help the aged, blind, and disabled to buy food, clothing, and shelter. As of 2018, roughly 8.2 million people received an average $551 per month. Of those, 7.3 million are blind or disabled.Earned Income Tax Credit is a tax credit for families with at least one child. For tax year 2018, a family of four, in which couples are married and filing jointly, must earn less than $51,492 a year to qualify. In tax year 2017, over 27 million received credits totaling $65 billion for an average $2,455 per taxpayer. EITC lifted approximately 9.4 million people out of poverty, half of whom were children. It costs just 1 percent of the amount paid out to administer it. Unfortunately, almost one-fourth of the payments are in error.An unknown amount is fraudulent.Housing Assistance is provided by 1.2 million units of public housing. The Housing Choice Voucher Program gives rent certificates for approved units. The subsidy allows recipients to pay no more than 30 percent of their income. Local agencies administer it to 2.2 million renters. This is the old Section 8 program. The Public Housing Agency allows​ some families to use the voucher to purchase a modest home.Looking at discretionary spending, we are currently spending about 20 percent of the federal discretionary spending.Do we not help the widowed and orphaned, aged and infirmed, down trodden or do we just let them eat cake.P.S.I tried to include some pie chart images of a consolidated and a discretionary budget, but alas my fingers were having nothing to with it, I apologize up front about that, it is a no picture day.

The President of the United States, current or past, is not the “Leader of the United States”. Nor is he the ruler or dictator. By Constitutional definition, he is the head of the Executive Branch of the Federal Government, charge with carrying out the laws passed by Congress. He is also the Commander in Chief of the Armed Forces.The purpose of saying this is to state that the United States is not headed by anyone. No one can tell you how to lead your life, or what you can believe, or say, or write about, or with whom you can associate (as long as you do so peacefully).So your question, “Why do people think the US is in a downward spiral when less than 40% follow/agree with Trump?”, implies that a President can cause the United States to spiral down. But he can’t. Only we Americans can cause the United States to spiral down.One fault of Americans is that we have allowed Congress (and the Supreme Court) to do that which is outside of their Constitutional mandates. For instance, welfare, Social Security, Medicare, and many other programs make up huge portions of federal spending. And don’t forget the “War on Drugs”. Yet none of these are permissible according to the Constitutional. (Yes, the various Supreme Courts have rules them Constitutional, but they could not have read the same Constitution that I’ve read).The result of our various welfare programs is that they have created generational welfare, and implicitly sanctioned single women to have children out of wedlock. No rational person would help the poor the way the government does.Social Security is basically a Ponzi Scheme. Retirees receive payments, not from interest on their own investments, but directly from inflows from current workers...meaning if you don't get enough participants in the future (like having more people retiring than there are people working) the system would need to raise taxes on young workers or reduce the benefits for retirees, benefits that are already miserable.Over the last hundred years or so, Americans have become increasingly dependent on government to do many things for them. That dependency has caused a tear in the moral fabric of America (and many other countries). Children, of course, are dependent on their parents for their food, clothing, housing, education, etc. Now, adults in America are treated like children, instead of ‘growing up’ and being responsible for their own lives.(Certainly, there will always be adults who are unable, for various reasons, to take care of themselves. We should be willing to assist such individuals through our charities).Furthermore, our public schools can no longer teach the common morality that we Americans have shared. The Founders of our country disagreed about the particulars of religion. But Benjamin Franklin summarized what many called ‘The religion of America”. In 1790, Franklin wrote the following to Erza Stiles, the President of Yale University:"Here is my Creed. I believe in one God, Creator of the Universe. That He governs it by His Providence. That he ought to be worshiped. That the most acceptable Service we render to him, is doing Good to his other Children. That the Soul of Man is immortal, and will be treated with Justice in another Life respecting its Conduct in this one.”I attended public schools from K-12. When Apollo 11 headed for the Moon our entire class said a prayer for their safe landing and return of the astronauts.Soon a Supreme Court would rule this to be unconstitutional, even though the Constitution prohibits government from interfering with religious practice. (It does prevent Congress from establishing a formal national religion, such as England had - but school prayer is not ‘Congress establishing a religion’).There is really no hope for public education now because of such Supreme Court rulings. But there is a good solution: provide educational vouchers to all parents, equal to the amount spent on public school students. In Texas, this is about $10,000 per student per year.This would be especially helpful to poor parents who do not have the money to choose the best school for their children.You would not believe how many so-called ‘liberals’ and ‘progressives’ there are that fight against giving parents a choice as to how to educate their children. No one can, in good conscience, call themselves a ‘liberal’ and be illiberal enough to be against parents choosing how to educate their children.Even the government’s licensing of marriage was a bad idea. Marriage has existed in every culture that we know of, and in every country that exists now. Marriage was always between a man and a woman, or a man and women. Of course, this was because it takes a man and woman to have children.Only in the last 100 to 150 years did States start licensing marriage. And now, this licensing of marriage has become our de facto definition of marriage. Thus, we have the Supreme Court deciding what marriage is. Really? Is that who should be defining marriage? No, marriage is very personal and should have nothing to do with government.The downward spiral you are referring to is partially the result of the secularization of America and the West: It’s OK to have children while not being married. It’s not OK to acknowledge God in a public school. It’s OK for women to sell their bodies. It’s not OK to teach girls that this is a bad idea. Etc.And finally, critical thinking skills and scientific knowledge are woeful.It is common to use terms like “undocumented immigrants”, “mansplaining”, “underrepresented minorities”, “discriminatory”, “climate deniers”, “fat-shaming”, and many other terms that are meaningless unless they are further defined.Did you know that there is no such thing as the “Theory of Evolution”? Biologists are working on version of theories about the origin of species. The names for these are “Neo-Darwinism” or the “Modern Synthesis”.A proper question would be, “Do you think the Modern Synthesis is a good theory?”Simply put, this is asking whether life has changed or evolved over time as a result of natural selection operating only upon random or other natural processes. Given this, one can have an interesting discussion.The point is that you can’t even have a rational argument about such things unless you are clear about the meaning of the terms being used.It’s not my fault that I wrote more than I expected. Now, I’m going to stop before everyone stops reading….