Plain and simple.

[Tennessee Gal]

Republicans want to win the White House and will do anything they can to obtain this goal. They have a better chance at beating Obama if the recovery stalls and unemployment spikes. They want to stop any recovery and since public spending has been the engine, cutting the budget under the pretense of fiscal responsibility is only a lie that covers their real motives.

If they really were worried about deficit spending, why did they line up behind Bush with his tax cuts once he got us into unfunded wars?

The tax giveaways to the rich have had 30 years to work, since Reagan tried it. This huge fraud by the GOP shows who they work for and it is not the working class of this country. They have their orders and if they have to shut down the economy to preserve special benefits for the rich, they will do it. Those guys have enough money to survive another great depression and be comfortable, unlike the vast majority of the American people.

For the past decade corporations and wealthy individuals have been enjoying historically low tax rates, yet the economy shed 15 million jobs. Why did those tax cuts fail to spur growth in jobs and revenue? Self interest, hoarding and greed. During the 1993 recession, Clinton administration passed tax hikes on the wealthy without a single GOP vote. Then the GOP argued that tax hikes will drive the economy into depression, a standard GOP fear mongering tactic. Data shows that the 1994-2000 period experienced the biggest expansion in the U.S. economy, creating over 22 million jobs and helping to wipe out the Reagan-Bush era budget deficits.

The "trickle down" lunacy does not work. Tax cuts have never helped this nation create jobs or grow out of deficits.

And just where are the Republican jobs bills? How many have been offered? How many have become law?

How about they create jobs and THEN receive tax cuts? How about they extend the opportunity for tax cuts contingent upon companies adding new jobs for a defined period of time?

[DJ13]

1. The "trickle down" lunacy does not work.

Correct.


"Republicans want to win the White House and will do anything they can to obtain this goal."

Also correct, so why is Obama playing the GOP's game?

[Tennessee Gal]

2. Since nothing has been agreed upon,

there is no evidence to say that he is.

[DJ13]

4. Nothing has been agreed to about the defict

But he's played the GOP game since he was sworn in, even his HCR was mostly a GOP plan from the early 90's.

Then there was the deal to continue the Bush tax cuts, and giving the GOP a victory, with the end date for those continued tax cuts right in the middle of the general election in 2012.

All Im saying is, if its obvious what the GOP are doing, what their goal is, why try to continually compromise with them?

[Tennessee Gal]

7. Do I need to list the many, many Obama accomplishments?

I can.

[DJ13]

14. Are they real accomplishments, or propaganda designed to sell compromise?

I've seen 'the list', theres not much in it that improves the daily lives of people.

[Tennessee Gal]

17. Oh, you have seen the list. Sure.

I won't waste my time. You have your mind made up.

[pnorman]

3. But Obama is in their pocket!

I know that for a fact! I read it right here on DU!

[Tennessee Gal]

5. Many here seem to believe that. I would have never thought so.

It is a shame.

[lunatica]

6. "trickle down" works great for them

Always has.

What we need to grasp once and for all is the fact that we are nothing more than an inconvenience to them at best. The rich can ride out any economic disaster easily in their gated and guarded communities. They don't care about the Constitution which to them is really just an aging quaint dusty document whose value is no more than historic. And once you don't care about a 'stupid piece of paper' then you don't have to care about anything on it.

Republicans don't want to govern. They want to rule. They want to privatize everything so we have to pay them. Our taxes will go straight to their pockets. They want the good life that wealth brings.

[Tennessee Gal]

8. Exactly.

You said it well.

[lunatica]

12. They're very good at saying the patriotic things

But if you notice it's always to use it to get their way. It's 'the American people want, or don't want' crap to make it look like they have to do what they do because we, the American people, are forcing them to cut our social benefits or force fiscal responsibility even when we're out of jobs and homeless.

They rig elections and make it as difficult as they can for minorities to vote. They do everything they can to bust unions and privatize everything and they demand rights over women's bodies and they're attempting to make us all fearful so they can just put out a terror alert to control us.

They know exactly what they're doing and they've come too close to give up any power now. To hell with the country or what it used to be. All they need is their wealth and the military to go to war to make them more wealthy.

[blkmusclmachine]

10. +1

Well said.

[Kablooie]

9. For three decades, "trickle down" proponents told skeptics “just watch and see what will happen!”

Okay, we’ve watched.
And absolutely every large-scale forecast made by promoters of Supply Side Economics failed—diametrically—without major exception.


Quotes from:

A Primer on Supply-Side vs Demand-Side Economics

http://ieet.org/index.php/IEET/more/brin20100220

[Tennessee Gal]

15. Good link. Thanks.

I like this part:

Supply Side is a monotone. “Give money to the rich under ALL circumstances, at all times and conditions, no matter what.

In contrast, Keynesians have proved that their policy is adaptable and variable, un-dogmatic and contingent upon circumstance. They spend lavishly in order to get out of recession, because that is what Keynesians do. (Right-wing rants and rails against the current governing party acting consistently with its own economic theory is simply hypocritical. You had your turn, now it is theirs.)

But the 1990s prove that Democrats have credibility for being situationally flexible. When a recession ends, they spend more cautiously, remove the largesse, and start building up savings. In fact, had Bush continued the Clintonian policy of debt buy-down in good times, a considerable reserve fund would have been available to help us ride out the present crisis.

[Tennessee Gal]

18. Everyone should read Kablooie's link. It is common sense!

~snip~

Government should outspend its revenues in recession, directing high-velocity stimulus toward the middle class. Then, in good times, it should use adequate revenues to build up reserves. The Pharoahs knew this. It is even in the Biblical story of Joseph. It is common sense.

What does not make sense is to hold fast to an alternative “voodoo” theory—Supply Side Economics—that has always and universally failed in every major prediction, after being tried repeatedly for three decades.

[great white snark]

11. Calling out the GOP? On DU? What a novel idea!

To quote a great singer and staunch Obama supporter: I like it, I love it and want some more of it.

Great post.

[Kind of Blue]

13. +1000! Love Tennessee Gal's focus too.

KnR for OP and your response.

[Tennessee Gal]

16. Thanks. The focus of DU should be calling out the GOP.

It used to be that way.

[muffin1]

26. The focus of DU still IS calling out the GOP.

It's not our fault that Obama has decided to fight for them instead of us. I'm sure most of us would be THRILLED to have him doing what he promised. He has continually capitulated and caved to their demands. He puts us down as being the crazy ones, while saying the repukes are acting "in good faith" and somehow still thinks they "will do what's right for the country". By now, if Obama doesn't get the fact that the repukes have no interest in putting the country first, he never will.

[Tennessee Gal]

27. Obama is fighting for the GOP?

Really? I don't think so, but you go right ahead with that belief for what it gets you.

[Tennessee Gal]

28. And your post is not about calling out the GOP.

It is entirely negative towards Obama.

[muffin1]

29. I'll try again. I HATE the GOP with every fiber of my being.

But it disturbs me even more that Obama cares more about pleasing them than he cares about doing the right things for those who elected him. He has been moving steadily to the right ever since taking office.

I still believe in the things I believed in between 2000 and 2008. MY principles haven't changed. I seem to remember a time when most ALL of us were against things like pointless wars, holding people without charges, Gitmo, tax-cuts for the rich, and screwing around with Social Security and Medicare. Now that Obama is President, lots of people here have NO PROBLEM with those things.

[Tennessee Gal]

30. I am not going to argue with you.

Do I agree with everything Obama has done? No. But I will not bash him on DU.

[Bluerthanblue]

21. agree this is a great

post.

k&r

[Tennessee Gal]

19. Here is another good link.

Aughts were a lost decade for U.S. economy, workers

~snip~

There has been zero net job creation since December 1999. No previous decade going back to the 1940s had job growth of less than 20 percent. Economic output rose at its slowest rate of any decade since the 1930s as well.

Middle-income households made less in 2008, when adjusted for inflation, than they did in 1999 -- and the number is sure to have declined further during a difficult 2009. The Aughts were the first decade of falling median incomes since figures were first compiled in the 1960s.

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2010/01/01/AR2010010101196.html

[Tennessee Gal]

20. What Republicans don't say:

Remember that Republicans like to say that 50% of Americans pay no taxes. What they don't say is that every American has income that is not taxed. Rich people have MORE income that is not taxed than low or middle income earners.

[lunatica]

22. kick'd and rec'd

[jwirr]

23. The last time when rr sold us that trickle down bull the middle class

did not think they would have to wait for their's to trickle down to them. They thought the rich were only going to use it on the "welfare queens". If they buy it this time they have not been paying attention. Their jobs trickled all the way down to foreign workers. They cannot be stupid enough to fall for it again, can they?

[Tennessee Gal]

24. Yes, they can.

Their talking heads spout this nonsense every day.

[Tennessee Gal]

25. Boehner's walking out on the negotiations is further evidence .....

of their true motivations. They won't give an inch on anything regarding taxation that would impact the wealthy and their corporate supporters.

Tax cuts do not create jobs.

Boehner, why don't you do some real work and draft legislation to create jobs? You haven't because you don't care about hard working middle class Americans.