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Cyrano
Cyrano's Journal
Cyrano's Journal
March 20, 2015
http://www.nytimes.com/2015/03/20/opinion/paul-krugman-trillion-dollar-fraudsters.html?hp&action=click&pgtype=Homepage&module=c-column-top-span-region®ion=c-column-top-span-region&W
Paul Krugman on more GOP dickishness
Republicans just can't seem to find a sewer deep enough. Here's an excerpt from Paul Krugman's column in today's New York Times.
(T)he just-released budgets from the House and Senate majorities break new ground. Each contains not one but two trillion-dollar magic asterisks: one on spending, one on revenue. And thats actually an understatement. If either budget were to become law, it would leave the federal government several trillion dollars deeper in debt than claimed, and thats just in the first decade.
snip
The modern G.O.P.s raw fiscal dishonesty is something new in American politics. And thats telling us something important about what has happened to half of our political spectrum.
snip
(B)oth (budgets) claim drastic reductions in federal spending. Some of those spending reductions are specified: There would be savage cuts in food stamps, similarly savage cuts in Medicaid over and above reversing the recent expansion, and an end to Obamacares health insurance subsidies. Rough estimates suggest that either plan would roughly double the number of Americans without health insurance. But both also claim more than a trillion dollars in further cuts to mandatory spending, which would almost surely have to come out of Medicare or Social Security. What form would these further cuts take? We get no hint.
snip
... Republicans really believe that tax cuts for the rich would generate a huge boom and a surge in revenue, but theyre afraid that the public wont find such claims credible. So magic asterisks are really stand-ins for their belief in the magic of supply-side economics, a belief that remains intact even though proponents in that doctrine have been wrong about everything for decades.
But Im partial to a more cynical explanation. Think about what these budgets would do if you ignore the mysterious trillions in unspecified spending cuts and revenue enhancements. What youre left with is huge transfers of income from the poor and the working class, who would see severe benefit cuts, to the rich, who would see big tax cuts. And the simplest way to understand these budgets is surely to suppose that they are intended to do what they would, in fact, actually do: make the rich richer and ordinary families poorer.
snip
Look, I know that its hard to keep up the outrage after so many years of fiscal fraudulence. But please try. Were looking at an enormous, destructive con job, and you should be very, very angry.
snip
The modern G.O.P.s raw fiscal dishonesty is something new in American politics. And thats telling us something important about what has happened to half of our political spectrum.
snip
(B)oth (budgets) claim drastic reductions in federal spending. Some of those spending reductions are specified: There would be savage cuts in food stamps, similarly savage cuts in Medicaid over and above reversing the recent expansion, and an end to Obamacares health insurance subsidies. Rough estimates suggest that either plan would roughly double the number of Americans without health insurance. But both also claim more than a trillion dollars in further cuts to mandatory spending, which would almost surely have to come out of Medicare or Social Security. What form would these further cuts take? We get no hint.
snip
... Republicans really believe that tax cuts for the rich would generate a huge boom and a surge in revenue, but theyre afraid that the public wont find such claims credible. So magic asterisks are really stand-ins for their belief in the magic of supply-side economics, a belief that remains intact even though proponents in that doctrine have been wrong about everything for decades.
But Im partial to a more cynical explanation. Think about what these budgets would do if you ignore the mysterious trillions in unspecified spending cuts and revenue enhancements. What youre left with is huge transfers of income from the poor and the working class, who would see severe benefit cuts, to the rich, who would see big tax cuts. And the simplest way to understand these budgets is surely to suppose that they are intended to do what they would, in fact, actually do: make the rich richer and ordinary families poorer.
snip
Look, I know that its hard to keep up the outrage after so many years of fiscal fraudulence. But please try. Were looking at an enormous, destructive con job, and you should be very, very angry.
http://www.nytimes.com/2015/03/20/opinion/paul-krugman-trillion-dollar-fraudsters.html?hp&action=click&pgtype=Homepage&module=c-column-top-span-region®ion=c-column-top-span-region&W
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