Talk Elections

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2012/05/25/romney-spending-cuts-depression-tea-party_n_1545933.html

Newt tried to warn us.

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Looks like Boehner agrees with Romney here.  The spending cuts need to be focused on the long term - which means entitlements.  Too bad so far entitlements are the one thing the Democrats in DC aren't willing to look at.

The only person who wants to cut a trillion dollars is Ron Paul. I don't see how this is news.

So he wants to increase spending and lower taxes? Typical Republican. This budget mess isn't that complicated.

Okay , how would you balance the budget in one year without negatively affecting the economy?

Ending the Bush tax cuts, both on income and capital gains, and the Bush wars would be a huge step.

Don't really think you can call them "Bush wars" or "Bush tax cuts" after Obama's had 4 years to try to end them...

I partially shall concede your points on the tax cuts (though they were originally created by Bush), but Obama has, in fact, ended Iraq and has a clear strategy for ending Afghanistan, neither of which Bush came close to doing.

Although he's ended Iraq, we're still in the Philippines, we're still in the Gulf of Aden/Horn of Africa, still conducting some operations in the Sahara, still a presence in Colombia, still bombing Yemen and the NWFP, and he started Libya. Overall he's been a tad better than Bush but not as good as McCain (cause with McCain the DNC would be howling from the rooftops about how terrible he is, keeping Guantanamo open and bombing Libya and whatnot, but now they're silent).

Yes cutting spending would hurt the economy, that would provide "certainty".  Although I don't see how certainty of economic decline would help the spur economy

I think Memphis is talking about Iraq/Afghanistan.

I've always been amused by the idea that laying off a bunch of people is a good way to reduce unemployment, as many Republicans seem to think.

What benefits do civil servants provide the economy? They don't contribute anything, so firing them will save taxpayers money and increase the number of private sector jobs.

So raising taxes on people who can't afford to pay more, is going to increase, rather than decrease revenues? The Bush cuts have increased, not decreased revenues.

Cut domestic spending back to 2000 levels. The way you do that is shrink the size of the government by laying off public sector workers.

Then you pass pension reform forcing public sector workers to pay 50 percent into their pensions (instead of 3 percent), and then you pass a bill eliminating collective bargaining for public sector unions.

Problem solved. You'll see a surplus in a year.

In what alternate universe would this not be disastrous for our economy? Domestic spending can't be cut back down to 2000 levels at the moment without gutting the safety net and reducing GDP numbers by a non-negligible number.

What would be the purpose of destroying public sector unions besides to hurt Democrats? We need to continue to have a very high level of compensation for federal public workers in order to attract the most qualified workers possible to fill the slots and the sliver of the deficit you'd reduce would be tiny.

This post must be a joke. Pity the billionaire who is at his highest levels of wealth in human history and paying his lowest tax burden in half a century!

Impressive even for moronic nonsense this is in a category of it own. Yes I'm sure 0cops, firemen, soldiers have no positive effect on the economy, it's not like protection from disasters criminals or foreign enemies has any positive contribution to the economy. Just as the road net which civil servants also administrated also have no positive effect either. It's the reason that Somalia which lack all these thing are the most prosperous state in the world, while USA are a third world country.

So a major tax increase on all Americans is going to help economic recovery?

All those civil servants would need to find new jobs, increasing the labor supply and so making it harder for every unemployed person to find a job - at least in the short term.

As opposed to massive, perpetual deficits that will be even more devastating longterm?


That public sector workers pay only 3 percent of their pensions is ridiculous. 50 percent corrects this massive outflow. It will happen.


Hah, pensions and pension reform is by far the largest slice of domestic spending. It will happen - we're going broke as it is with the unsustainable largesse they are currently receiving.

Most of the recipients of the Bush tax cuts are middle class. Raising their taxes is going to reduce, not increase government revenue.

What percentage of public sector workers are cops, firemen or soldiers? Roughly 20 percent. The other 80 percent are none of these. Making this ratio 50 percent would be far better, which would mean laying off some 4 million public sector workers.

What drugs are you on/may I please have some?

Sounds like common sense -we'll see if he has the spine to stick with his position after getting raked over the coals by the Tea Party that wants everything and wants it now!  :P

What's your job, oh fan of schlocky movies?

The Laffer curve is ignored and reviled by the left and abused by the right.  All that the theory says is that there is some tax rate, strictly less than 100%, which maximizes government revenue.  This necessarily implies that sometimes, lowering tax rates will increase revenue (c.f. Great Britain in the 1970s).

However, it is probably not the case that we are on the side of the Laffer curve which allows us to increase revenue by lowering tax rates.  The one study I know of on the topic is this one:
http://www.nber.org/papers/w15343 (http://www.nber.org/papers/w15343)

Say what you will about the Tea Party but they're ahead of the curve considering every single registered voter should be demanding fiscal responsibility now; If the Senate doesn't want to release budgets we shouldn't be re-electing them, If the House doesn't want to compramise we shouldn't be re electing them.Fiscal responsibilty is a common theme that should pass all party barriers.

http://www.theblaze.com/stories/fiscal-cliff-cbo-predicts-recession-in-2013-unless-serious-action-taken/#comments

Quoting from Wikipedia

I would have thought the optimal rate was a little lower.

Is deficit reduction that much more important to you than job creation -which should be our primary area of concern at this point in time, like it is on Main Street USA?  Deficit reduction is an obsession of elitists -not of ordinary voters who are more interested in where they can find a job.  

This statement further demonstrates the fact that Romney would govern in a reasonable way and is fit to be president.

Not a bad strategy for Romney to take what Obama is actually doing and say he'd do that while defining it as the opposite of what Obama is doing.  Because people aren't attentive enough to know the difference and Obama's specific policies are more popular than he is.

This statement also demonstrates the fact that Romney has no spine.

1.  You were asked to show how you would "balance the budget in one year" and you answered "End the Bush Tax Cuts".  If you have an IQ over 82, and I assume you do, then you know that wouldn't make even a small dent in the deficit.  In fact, given how much revenues exploded after the Bush Tax RATE Cuts (not tax cuts), it's likely that you would INCREASE the deficit by raising tax rates to pre-2003 levels.  So, I think we can count this as a "FAIL".

2.  The difference between Bush and Obama in Iraq is that Bush -- as even Obama admited -- "succeeded beyond our wildest dreams" while Obama, again by HIS OWN standards, failed miserably. 

Bush WON not one but TWO wars in Iraq -- first by overthrowing the despised Baathist regime and then by crushing the foreign jihadi-fueled "Al Qaeda in Iraq", killing 70,000 Al Qaeda terrorists and -- incredibly -- bringing Iraqi Sunnis to terms with the Shia-run democratic government.  It is as though FDR/Truman had defeated Hitler, thrown the Soviets back into Russia, and then stopped all the ethnic-cleansing that swept millions of refugees through Eastern Europe after the war.

In the meanwhile, Obama's policy was merely to "withdraw COMBAT units" -- which would be done mostly by renaming the units from "XX Combat Brigade" to "XX Training Brigade" -- and to maintain a force of tens of thousands of U.S. troops ostensibly there simply to "train the Iraqis".  He COULDN'T even manage that!  With 90% of the Iraqi politicians behind the plan, Obama couldn't even manage to negotiate an extension of the SOFA that Bush had negotiated as a lame duck in 2008!  (Imagine if the poor Iraqis had taken Obama's advice at the time and put off the SOFA until HE was president!)  As Iraqis and Republicans have found, you can't negotiate with Obama because, as Boehner put it, "you can't get him to 'yes'".

When people ask if Obama is the worst president ever, you should consider these facts before replying.

1.  At least you admit that the prime reason for keeping public employee unions is to help Democrats -- by using the unions as transmission belts for taxpayer money to the Party. 

Does anyone else think government employees deserve BOTH civil service law protection AND union rules protection?

2.  As anyone (like me) who has worked in D.C. can tell you, federal employees do little work and most of what they do do is harmful to children and other living things.  That's why you do NOT want "attract the most qualified workers possible to fill the slots".  All that does is to make D.C. the richest metropolis in America while impoverishing the rest of the citizenry.  It's much better to have them building their internet porn libraries than to get off their duffs and write rules for the rest of us.  (I recall of one study showing that EVERY federal regulator cost the jobs of 100 workers in the private sector.)

Any sane person wants his nation's "best and brightest" working in the PRODUCTIVE part of society, not with the PARASITICAL part.  Is that you?

1.  It's not a joke:  federal revenues -- tax and other -- skyrocketed after the Bush Tax RATE Cuts.

2.  Are you own of those blind ideologues, like Pres. Obama, who admitted that he would like to raise tax rates EVEN IF it meant a drop in tax REVENUES?

So if you don't want to replay 1931-1932, you lack a spine?


There is nothing here and there is no daylight between Romney and Boehner on this.

1.  You sound like you think that "all jobs are equal", which, of course, they are not.  Some jobs help the society, some hurt it, and some have net neutral effects.  It's hard to take you seriously until it's clear you understand that.

2.  Deficit reduction is not at all important to elitists -- THEY are the ones getting rich on government spending and deficits, not the poor middle-class who has to pay for it all.

NC Yankee: No, I'm not saying that Romney doesn't have a spine for admitting that austerity is bad, I'm saying he doesn't have a spine because he explicitly stated that he would cut spending over and over in the primary, and therefore that he blatantly and repeatedly lied to Republican primary voters.

WhyteRain:
1. Yes, because Bush is known for creating the first budget surplus in decades. Oh, wait.

2. I don't think the average unemployed middle-class person is going to prefer cutting unemployment benefits to getting a job on stimulus money.

3. How does it feel to be on my ignore list?

Did he promise to cut it all in his first year? 

So if you don't want to replay 1931-1932, you lack a spine?


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It sounds as though you've bought the Far-Left narrative that "Hoover cut spending in response to the 1929 Wall Street Crash".  The opposite is true.  Hoover, a firm Keynesian, exploded government spending -- to such an extent that FDR ran against him in 1932 promising to slash Hoover's huge deficit (which he did in 1993) and FDR's own Vice-Presidential candidate said on the campaign trail that Hoover was "putting us on the road to Socialism".

I show how the Bush Tax RATE Cuts increased federal revenues -- though admittedly not as fast as voracious D.C. spending -- and that Bush succeeded in his Iraq goals while Obama failed in his and Northeast Representative puts me on "ignore" -- the equivalent of putting his fingers in his ears and shouting NAH-NAH-NAH!  Okay ... that makes sense given what we know about Democrats.

Btw, I have accidentally put someone else on "ignore".  Can someone tell me how I can "un-ignore" them?  (I don't want to "ignore" anyone.)

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WhyteRain, your argument simply shows that politicians have being using socialism fearmonger as a cheap political attack for the past century, but in the end when rhetoric disappates Keynesian economics, even by a different name, is always what is applied.

First, thanks "a Person" for the advice on how to "unignore" someone.  I guess the person I "ignored" just hasn't re-posted lately.  Anyway, I was afraid if his/her posts were "ignored", I simply wouldn't see ANYTHING from that person anymore.  Now I see that I'll at least see the comment title and can "unignore" him/her then.

King, actually, what my comment shows is the incredible success of the far-Left in falsely portraying Hoover's response to the 1929 Crash.  Far from being conservative, Hoover was so liberal that even FDR ran against him from the Right.  Hoover's response to the Crash was classic welfare-state liberalism:  "If the government will just spend lots and lots of money -- on nearly anything and everything -- the economy must get better!"

History shows that America tried this "demandside economics" in the 1930s, the 1970s, and now, in the 2010s -- with miserable results every time.  My question:  Is this just something we are doomed to re-learn every 40 years?

Btw, Romney sucks.  I won't be voting for him.  If I wanted a Wall Street puppet, why not vote for Obama?

If you think the Democrats or anyone who's a part of the two-party system is far-left, you're wrong.

Bernie Sanders?

Well, he's an independent, so even though he caucuses with the Democrats, he's not actually one. They tend to let him do his own thing anyway, and his philosophy is further to the left than any Democrat.

It's called the Laffer curve.

Catholic school teacher.

High deficits followed by tax increases are going to lead to tremendous number of job losses. Getting the fiscal house in order is going to salvage jobs that would otherwise be lost longterm. Short term pain for longterm gain. 

Speaking as a middle class person, yes, I would prefer cutting unemployment benefits to getting a job on stimulus money.

Do you consider Communists "far-Left"?  If not, I guess your comment makes sense.

The Communist-Democratic alliance goes back decades, from top Democratic Administration officials who spied for the USSR in the 1940s right down to today.

Democrats, Union Workers, and Communists Rally Together in Washington

http://www.lookingattheleft.com/2010/10/democrats-union-workers-and-communists-rally-together-in-washington/

Video: Communists And Democrats March Together In Occupy Wall Street Protest
http://www.westernjournalism.com/communists-and-democrats-march-together-in-occupy-wall-street-protest/

“There is room for all of us. Religious leftists, people who think peace is the answer, those who think that wholesome food is what we really need, ecologists and old-fashioned Democrats,  Democratic Socialists, Socialists and Communists.” -- Frances Fox Piven, Left Forum 2012

Elected Democrats Address a Communist Rally, Atlanta GA 2 of 2
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kvBsZtLIblw

We could go on and on and on....

Democrats who get tired of being closely associated with Communists ought to stop blaming the people who merely notice the association.

Instead, why don't you force them away from you.  If we catch you embracing them every time -- as we constantly do, we're going to start thinking that you like them.

People are still legitimately terrified of communists in this day and age?? The Cold War ended 20 years ago.

People are legitimately afraid of communists for the same reasons they're legitimately afraid of cancerous tumors -- there's that long and extensive connect with communism and unspeakable barbarity, human misery, and death to every living thing with which it comes in contact.

Or do you really want to try to make the case that the Democrats' new Communist friends aren't really like any of the bestial Communists of old?  If so, we're all ears.

I like how, even if you have the correct information, all three of your sources are completely biased towards the far right.

As for your claims... Which top Democratic officials are you talking about? And what source do you have for that?

The same is true of pretty much every political ideology that attains the status of a metanarrative.

Ah, metanarratives: can't live with em; can't live without em.

That's the kind of utter know-nothing hackery one would expect from Wormyguy or Krazy, Ben. I'm genuinely disappointed that an at least superficially thoughtful guy like you would turn out to believe such utter ideological claptrap devoid of reality. :(

Slashing tax revenue is as much a sign of "fiscal responsibility" as a meal regimen of double cheeseburgers is "dieting".

He's named himself for a character in Star Wars, so...

Based on your recent screeds, I doubt that view is widely reciprocated.

You, sir, are simply precious! :D

Yeah, but a perceptive and wise character.

Alas, the comparison stops there.