Romney is certainly prepared to win Pennsylvania's electoral votes. Many wealthy SEPA individuals in areas like Gladwyne are quaking in fear at the idea of paying so much additional tax.
"Quaking in fear" at the possibility of taking the top two rates of income tax back to Clinton era levels of 36% and 39.6%, on individuals earning >200k and joint-filers earning >250k.
Romney is certainly prepared to win Pennsylvania's electoral votes. Many wealthy SEPA individuals in areas like Gladwyne are quaking in fear at the idea of paying so much additional tax.
"Quaking in fear" at the possibility of taking the top two rates of income tax back to Clinton era levels of 36% and 39.6%, on individuals earning >200k and joint-filers earning >250k
You can laugh (I suppose there is a level on which it is funny, though I don't appreciate the humor), but there are far more people motivated to turn out to stop taxes from returning to Clintonian levels than there are to return them to such a state. As a general rule, tax issues help Republicans.
Would it appease to know that I've never cast a ballot in my life on the promise of tax cuts?
Anyway, more to the point, I'm being serious. At the end of the day, sooner or later, the bills are going to have to be paid. $1.4 trillion defiicts aren't sustainable and yes, it is Bush 43 policies (tax cuts, unfunded wars) and the effects of the Great Recession (fall in revenues) which primarily continue to drive 'em. Obama's primary counter-cyclical response was the conservative, as opposed to radical, $800bn ARRA
I'm not adverse to
some tax cuts as a means of stimulating economic growth, in the event of an economic downturn, on the understanding that a time may come when they need to be raised. Because if the answer was to cut them, keep them at those rates, cut again .... Where would it end?
Did an economic contraction of 0.3% between April and September 2001 really need $3 trillion in tax cuts to get out of? I wouldn't care had they resulted in balanced budgets, millions and millions and millions of new jobs (in other words, not the fewest number of jobs generated by the US economy this side of Herbert Hoover - read that in the WSJ) and reduction in the gross federal debt as % of GDP
Even Reaganites are critical of the contemporary GOP's anti-tax jihadism (Clinton was able to constrain it), with David Stockman calling Grover Norquist - of whom they appear to be scared sh**tless - nothing short of a "fiscal terrorist"; indeed, Stockman called for the Bush 43 tax cuts to expire on the grounds that they are unaffordable
The only thing standing in the way of a 'Grand Bargain' is the GOP's unwillingness to shift an inch on taxes and yes, there are those with the means to be able to afford to pay Clinton rates); indeed, they want $4.6 trillion more
. Its the definition of madness doing the same thing over and over yet expecting different results. As for "austerity" what effect, pray, would that have on unemployment? The public sector has lost more jobs during the 'Great Recession' than it did during the 'Monetarist Recession', with what job growth there is coming from the private sector [and that is not something that could be said for GWB's first-term]
November 2000. It wasn't broke and it sure didn't need George W Bush to fix it
. Where did you guys get him from? The bottom drawer?
