Today's Situation Room:
Wolf Blitzer delivers the most important breaking news and political, international, and national security stories of the day. Tune to The Situation Room weekdays 5-7pm ET on CNN.
Wolf Blitzer delivers the most important breaking news and political, international, and national security stories of the day. Tune to The Situation Room weekdays 5-7pm ET on CNN.
December 11th, 2012
10:47 AM ET
Visualize the fiscal cliff
CNN's Tom Foreman provides a visual breakdown of our country's spending and why budget deals have stalled.
RELATED STORY: Obama, Boehner try to talk their way down from fiscal cliff
About this Show
The Situation Room with Wolf Blitzer is the command center for breaking news, politics and extraordinary reports from around the world. Tune in weeknights from 5-7pm ET on CNN.
Why does CNN, as is true will all other news sources, continue to show Social Security as a part of the fiscal problem? By showing it as a part of the spending problem, you complicate the equation, unnecessarily. Social Security is not part of the National debt and is not part of the federal budget deficit. By law, Social Security cannot be included as as a budget item nor as part of the National debt. It is a separate account, paid for by separate taxes. Fixes to Social Security are done separately from any other budgetary issues. Social Security has been successfully operated for 80 years without fail. It is 100% solvent for at least 20 more years and 75% solvent until about 2087! It has no part in the 15 trillion dollar National debt, nor in the 1.5 trillion dollar annual deficit. Instead, the Federal Government has borrowed 2 trillion dollars from the Social Security fund. The Federal Government is dragging down Social Security, a tax we pay separately to fund our own future needs. PLEASE TELL ALL YOUR LISTENERS THE TRUTH ABOUT SOCIAL SECURITY, EVERY TIME YOU DO A PIECE ABOUT THE DEFICIT, DEBT AND FISCAL CLIFF. DO NOT LEAVE FALSE IMPRESSIONS, WHICH ARE THEN CAPITALIZED UPON, BY MISLEADING POLITICAL ADS AND SPEECH. CNN must educate the public and present truth in the news, not just repeat talking points and scare misinformation. Thank you.
Hope these Leaders will show their abilities and lead us in a correct path.
Our government is all totally screwed up as the only entidy they have not talked about is all the big pay wages they keep giving themselves,all theit vacations the take and us taxpayers get the bill,and their total retirement benefits they are getting and we the taxpayer is stuck with the bill.Lets take their overly great big waste of our money away from them and lets see how they like getting screwed.Medicare,Social Security, and all of the military stuff needs to stay.Quit supporting the countries that hate us and keep shooting at us and get out of the U.N. then lets see what happens.Jim Thomas Phx.Az.
This is an excellent illustration of the budget in context.
But, I'm really disappointed that you didn't keep the scale when you showed the results of spending cuts in the fiscal cliff. You showed nearly half when shading the departments, when in reality the cuts would be less than 10%. I can't think of anything other than fearmongering as to why you would magnify the effects. Very sad after a great start.
How about showing the growth of the defense department since 9/11 and how we haven't returned to any kind of baseline budget after ending wars and reducing troop levels?
The fiscal cliff is already here. The debt is 16 Trillion and projected to go up to 26 Trillion in 10yrs Obama/Boehner are talking about a 4 Trillion reduction over 10yrs. and the media is buying into this do nothing solution Obama wants to settle this so called fiscal cliff and not be bothered for the next 4 years. When obama leaves office the debt will be around 20 Trillion even with the 4 Trillion compromise. It is time for media to smoke out the politicians and make them actually do something about the debt. The dems voted for the clinton tax rates now they are telling everyone with the help of the media that the world will end if we go back to the clinton tax rates.