The GOP has absolutely no interest in cutting the deficit

[NNN0LHI]

http://blogs.ajc.com/jay-bookman-blog/2011/11/01/the-gop-has-absolutely-no-interest-in-cutting-the-deficit/

8:37 am November 1, 2011, by Jay

Let’s be honest. Today’s Republican Party has little to no interest in reducing the deficit or the debt. Its real goals are elsewhere.

The case is self-evident: Anyone truly concerned about reducing the debt will acknowledge that tax hikes have to be part of the solution. No, they’re not the only solution; they’re not even the primary solution. The proper mix of tax hikes and spending cuts is a legitimate issue for debate.

But if you’re going to get serious about addressing a $14 trillion debt, tax increases have to be part of it. Simple arithmetic gives you no other choice.

And yet Republicans say no, over and over and over again. snip

Milton Friedman, the conservative economist and icon widely regarded as the originator of modern Republican economic theory, was even more blunt. Friedman despised both Social Security and Medicare, considering them an insult to his notions of individual responsibility. In a 2003 column published in the Wall Street Journal, Friedman laid out his conservative strategy for reducing the role of those programs and other government programs in American life, using deficits as a bludgeon.

[dkf]

1. If the Bush tax cuts are rescinded that should do it for revenue. Then it's all spending.

[Jackpine Radical]

3. Why not push it a little above the pre-Bush levels

on high-end incomes? This country has greatly benefited the rich, and they aren't pulling their load. There MUST BE an injection of money at the base of the pyramid. Universal healthcare, public works programs, you know the litany. Only by these means will we get ourselves out of the hole. Unfortunately, there are many powerful forces who have no interest in the welfare of the commoners. Or of the species or of the planet, for that matter.

[dkf]

5. That would bring us to historical norms and it proved adequate in the Clinton years.

Getting rid of loopholes will raise more income from the top end anyway. If they've figured out a way to not have their money taxed, then raising the rates at the top end will still miss the target.

It beats me why people don't get this.

[Jackpine Radical]

6. I don't much care about the specific mechanisms

by which the rich are compelled to pay their fair share, but the pre-Bush levels are probably not adequate now, after we've pissed away so much on our wars and bailouts of the top end. Clinton didn't have a Depression to contend with (a function of the times more than of his policies), but we do now, and the only humane answers to our current problems demand quite an influx of resources.

[dkf]

8. All the new spending is going to social security and Medicare.

That will eat more and more of our GDP as far as the eye can see.

It will squeeze out everything else.

[Jackpine Radical]

9. I guess I'm just not as disturbed about money going to serve human needs

as I am about blowing it on wars & bailouts of high-level criminals.

Anyway, if we really wanted to save money, a universal national health plan has the potential of reducing health care costs from 18% of GDP to maybe 10%. Of course, it would leave those psychopathic criminal poor, deserving insurance companies out in the cold.

[dkf]

10. Yup. Complete health care overhaul is the only solution.

Fighting to keep Medicare as is is such a fruitless argument.

[county worker]

2. This is not news. Remember "drown it in a bathtub?"

The idea was to bankrupt the government so that a case for cutting social programs made sense. The deficit was created during Bush's administration. He was given a surplus and he handed Obama a deficit. It is not by accident that there is a deficit.

The idea of cutting spending to reduce the deficit means that money that would have gone to social programs goes instead to paying off the debt. The problem with this is that we are already paying off the debt. It is a normal course of business to pay principal and interest thus reducing debt.

Cutting spending is a long term solution to a short term problem. That's because the cuts in social programs are not intended to be short term but permanent. The deficit is a short term problem, never intended to be permanent. That is what is so unfair about cutting spending to reduce the defect and shows the lie in what the repukes are saying.

Whether we use money to pay off debt or fund social programs, it still leaves the treasury. The two are not opposites sides of the same coin. They are not opposing ideas as the right portrays them as.

The right wants to pay down the debt by taxing the middle class and the poor while the benefits that accrued from the spending which created the deficit went to the top 1%. At the same time they want to remove the safety net from the poor and middle class.

These concepts are clear yet too hard for the tea party to understand.

[aint_no_life_nowhere]

4. It can't just be about reducing the debt and increasing tax rates

It's got to involve putting people back to work to put money in their hands, increase demand, and thus raise company profits (and therefore tax revenues raised therefrom). And it's got to involve better and fairer trade policy that doesn't ship jobs overseas and further degrade the U. S. tax base. And it's got to involve cheaper and fairer delivery of healthcare and education to improve the financial standing of the middle class to further strengthen the tax base.

A healthy economy that works for all will require this kind of fine tuning. And it's clear that Republicans aren't interested in a healthy economy for all. A new gilded age isn't healthy and it isn't something that works for all.

[Jackpine Radical]

7. That's pretty much the view I've been trying to articulate here.

[lib2DaBone]

11. Remember Cheney.."Deficits Don't Matter"?

This entire cost-cutting-austerity thing is designed to make the economy fail ...so the Repukes will be elected in 2012.

It is SO obvious.. however Mr. Obama can not see it.

[Johonny]

12. Their hero is Ronald Reagan

nuf said on their true interest in cutting deficit.