Warren Buffet says he can end the deficit in 5 minutes!

Warren Buffett, in a recent interview with CNBC, offers one of the best quotes about the debt ceiling:

"I could end the deficit in 5 minutes," he told CNBC. "You just pass a law that says that anytime there is a deficit of more than 3% of GDP, all sitting members of Congress are ineligible for re-election.

The 26th amendment (granting the right to vote for 18 year-olds took only 3 months & 8 days to be ratified! Why? Simple! The people demanded it. That was in 1971 - before computers, e-mail, cell phones, etc.

Of the 27 amendments to the Constitution, seven (7) took one (1) year or less to become the law of the land - all because of public pressure.

Congressional Reform Act of 2012

1. No Tenure / No Pension.

A Congressman/woman collects a salary while in office and receives no pay when they're out of office.

2. Congress (past, present & future) participates in Social Security.

All funds in the Congressional retirement fund move to the Social Security system immediately. All future funds flow into the Social Security system, and Congress participates with the American people. It may not be used for any other purpose.

3. Congress can purchase their own retirement plan, just as all Americans do.

4. Congress will no longer vote themselves a pay raise. Congressional pay will rise by the lower of CPI or 3%.

5. Congress loses their current health care system and participates in the same health care system as the American people.

6. Congress must equally abide by all laws they impose on the American people.

7. All contracts with past and present Congressmen/women are void effective 12/1/12. The American people did not make this contract with Congressmen/women.

Congress made all these contracts for themselves. Serving in Congress is an honor, not a career. The Founding Fathers envisioned citizen legislators, so ours should serve their term(s), then go home and back to work.

THIS IS HOW YOU FIX CONGRESS!

Buffet Interview

nice post. i agree with everything mentioned in here! the same should apply to any position in government. if you dont do your job correctly, youre ineligible for re-election. i like the sound of that.

And the odds of any of that happening: 0

Sounds great, but it is coming from one of the guys who structured the bailouts and made a killing.

Sounds good to me, but I can think of 535 reasons this won't happen in 2012..

Now if we were to replace those with folks who support such a change, maybe 2013?

This is like 8+ months old. Nothing recent about this at all.

Warren Buffet is doing this to benefit himself in one way or another, he doesn't care that the deficit hurts people, he just wants to make money. It may seem he's doing something good, but he's doing it for the wrong reasons.

Ookay.... Well, the new new Buffet plan (How many hair brained ideas has he coughed up now?) would certainly be entertaining. Of course, he's lying through his teeth and as sincere as a water moccasin, but hey....he's part of the world power structure. Did we expect honesty or something??

Now.. Gee.... 16 trillion is what we owe... We bring in a small fraction of that and ..I believe we're at something like 50% of what we're actually spending each year. You can fire congress all you like, they won't make the cuts that would take for instant fix because the unelected Congressman (their voters would never give them a vote as a joke after 75% of every benefit program outside SS retirement was slashed) would then be lynched by the infuriated masses in full riot back in the districts.

Buffet isn't stupid and he knows these figures better than us all put together. He lives this...it's his whole life. There is no way he's spouting this nonsense with the innocent ignorance of a Senator or other Politician. He's stirring the pot and keeping people pissed......not cool.

* By the way folks... HuffPo has that interview originally posted with a date of 07/08/2010. So it;s a bit over 2 years old if they are accurate on the datelines and time stamps to their articles over there. Buffet it still a Goober and one of the "Elite" everyone like to bash so much...we'd listen to or care what he thinks..why?

This can work if we as a country refuse to vote for the idiots who are currently in office.
But that means we have to wake up as a country.

reply to post by WeRpeons


Well now, when Ron Paul passes away, I will be writing in Warren Buffett for POTUS! Ha, if he doesn't go first.

Originally posted by Bone75
Sounds great, but it is coming from one of the guys who structured the bailouts and made a killing.

So does that make his points wrong? I think they are valid and would be very effective.

I know nobody wants to hear it because it has been said before. But I'll still say it anyway.

There's a pot with finite money in it. This pot of currency is our world economy. If shared evenly then we would all have some. But that's not how it works. It's not even shared fairly. The problem we're experiencing boils down to somebody having so much of the money in the pot that it's not being spread around or even taxed fairly. We as a society have decided that it's ok if some people make 100x or 500x or 5000x or 50,000x more than somebody else. And, yes, it goes even further than 50,000x. Some people don't earn any money so somebody who does can earn millions of times more than them in a given year. The point of this is that even middle-income people are being being trumped by people making 1000's of times more than them. And there's a lot of hidden money.

People will invent numbers to argue against this. But it's still true. It was always true. See, this was going on 1000's of years ago. This is a trait in the human psyche that humans like to deny.

It's true that we're unequal. People should not make the same amount of money. True. If a bum doesn't work then that bum should only receive what society has deemed fair them. It's called a safety net. But it's really just people knowing that a bum is unsightly and nobody wants to see a dying person outside their window. But more than all that, people who actually do contribute should be compensate appropriately. But when or where do we go from understanding that people contribute different amounts to accepting somebody making 1,000x more than a hard working husband with 2 kids who is lower-middle income? What is that person doing that makes them worth 1,000x more?

HA!

One cannot create debt slaves without debt.

How many election cycles does everyone think it would take to pay off $175 Trillion?

Not only would the 535 never sign away their golden ticket, the debt cannot and will not ever be repaid.

reply to post by jonnywhite


I didn't think about it before but if all the money in existance were in circulation, would everyone be a little wealthier? I wonder how much money is actually idling in banks, under box springs and in safety deposit boxes. Would be interesting to know.

reply to post by METACOMET


So can a country file bankruptcy??? I mean 175 trillion today, 800 trillion tomorrow? Something at some point has gotta give.

reply to post by WeRpeons


Couldn't agree more. Accountability for some reason is lost in government. You can make decisions that end the lives of thousands and it has no consequence.

All pre election promises should be held to account. If elected, and no progress on all promises is made in 12 months then you get stood down. This could introduce instability, but you'll get people of their word in the right place.

Most of us have kpi's in our jobs, we should demand our leaders do to.

Australia's govt is killing avg Aussies daily and yet here the are in for another day to make yet another bad decision and a lifetime pension for it.

Elfin sick of it.

reply to post by Gridrebel


It's not meant to be repaid. It's simply being held hostage to fulfill a sinister purpose.

The US debt is a result of a cabal of private banks that print federal reserve notes and call it money. The American people are then required to pay interest on these federal reserve notes, whether they physically exist or not.

It is well enough that people of the nation do not understand our banking and monetary system, for if they did, I believe there would be a revolution before tomorrow morning. – Henry Ford

In other words, the notes are a debt instrument. We Americans are indebted to a private banking cartel because they print notes out of nothing, call it money, and then sell it back to us, with interest!

They are freaking brilliant, though. The fed has a 100 year charter. That charter expires in a few months. Now that this cabal has accumulated most of the wealth of the world what do you think they are going to do with it?

I sure any one of us could have come up with these simple but worthwhile ideas.

They haven't been put into place yet, though. Why? The same reasons they won't be put into place now.

This amounts to making Buffet look like a good guy instead of a hoarding rich guy who supports the elite way of life, but will it do anything? I won't be holding my breath, because it's not up to him; it's up the the Am. people, who will fail us until we run out of time.

interesting thanks for sharing

People have still been voting for the same senator and congressman who served last time? Ha. See what it got ya.

reply to post by WeRpeons


Warren just needs to stop teasing us and do it. Silly man!