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I don't guess you'd rethink the correlation in light of the growth of Medicare/Medicaid/SS obligations, would you?
We are still in trouble then.
We need a plan to get below the 18% level and start paying down the debt.
I don't guess you'd rethink the correlation in light of the growth of Medicare/Medicaid/SS obligations, would you?
according to Bruce Bartlett, yes (with a caveat)
http://economix.blogs.nytimes.com/20...f-opportunity/But given the propensity of Republicans in the Senate to filibuster anything they don’t like, no matter how trivial, and the fact that virtually all have signed a “taxpayer protection pledge” vowing never to raise taxes for any reason, the likelihood of compromise without severe external pressure is unlikely.
A better idea, in my opinion, is to let the fiscal cliff occur as scheduled and enact a fix retroactively, as soon as possible. This is an idea that the former director of the Office of Management and Budget, Peter Orszag, and the Brookings Ins ution economist William Gale have been promoting for several months.
The virtue of the Orszag-Gale strategy is that it changes the political dynamics. Once taxes have risen on everyone, legislation restoring the status quo ante for all except the wealthy would be scored as a tax cut. While doing this before Dec. 31 would be a violation of the pledge, doing so after Jan. 1 would not.
Similarly, negotiating some alternative to the automatic budget sequestration on the spending side — which everyone agrees is a stupid way to reduce spending — will proceed much more easily, because Republicans will be under intense pressure to negotiate in good faith for a change and avoid filibusters.
It goes without saying that in a world without tax pledges and filibusters, it would be in everyone’s interest to negotiate a sensible alternative to the fiscal cliff in the lame-duck session; indeed, it should have been done before Congress left town.
But we don’t live in such a world. Therefore, extreme and unpleasant tactics may be necessary to do what needs to be done.
My advice to President Obama: have your staff prepare an alternative to the fiscal cliff that can be sent to Congress as soon as it reconvenes this year, prepare for Republicans to reject it and then hope to negotiate something that can be enacted as soon as possible in the next Congress.
Kicking the can down the road is unacceptable and should be rejected out of hand.
Everyone says that the cliff is a horrible idea, will hurt the economy, etc etc. The problem is that when the economy is good, politicians will just spin that as a reason why we don't have to pay down the debt anyways. I'd almost like us to hit the cliff, just to see how "horrible" it is. Somehow I think we'd get by with more taxes on rich people and less spending on defense.
the tax hit would be considerable
So is our debt
http://taxvox.taxpolicycenter.org/20...-likely-go-up/If Congressional gridlock sends the U.S. government tumbling over the fiscal cliff later this year, Americans could face an average tax hike of almost $3,500 in 2013. Nearly 9 of every 10 households would pay higher taxes. Every income group would see their taxes rise by at least 3.5 percent, but high-income households would suffer the biggest hit by far, according to a new Tax Policy Center analysis.
TPC found that if the tax hikes last the entire year—a big ”if”–those in the top 0.1 percent would pay an average $633,000 more than if today’s tax rules were extended. However, even middle income households would take a hit: they’d pay an average of almost $2,000 more, and see their after-tax income fall by more than 4 percent. Such tax hikes would be “unprecedented,” said the paper’s authors, Bob Williams, Eric Toder, Donald Marron, and Hang Nguyen.
true, but there are no political penalties for kicking the can. taxes, otoh . . .So is our debt
I can hope that one day there WILL be political penalties. You know, a tea party that actually was concerned about the debt. I'm not saying to pull the e-brake, but a gentle tap on the brakes would be nice. And given that income inequality has only increased in the last decade or two, I find that richer's claims of being overtaxed requires a few crocodile tears.
I'm not saying the rich don't deserve their money, but anyone who laments only bringing home say 7 million after taxes intead of 5 million isn't really living in the same America that the other 99% are.
"laments only bringing home say 7 million after taxes intead of 5 million isn't really living in the same America that the other 99% are"
of course they aren't, just like the financial sector is a different country from The Real America. And they don't care.
Like Gecko and other govt-hating Repugs, they think it's highly patriotic to avoid and evade taxes themselves, while spewing the euphemism "broadening the tax base", iow, raising taxes on those infamous 47%ers.
http://www.theamericanconservative.c...-conservatism/If this be nihilism, make the most of it. Michael Hirsh defends House conservatives’ opposition to the fiscal cliff bargain. The deal meets the standard for agreement-at-any-price “pragmatism”. On the other hand:
Tuesday’s “no” votes represented a wide variety of views. But many GOP House members were appalled at the failure to cut spending or change traditional ways of doing business, especially what The Washington Post noted was “dozens of rider provisions that had nothing to do with the cliff” (including one that kicked over $12 billion over ten years to the renewable-energy industry; another that will benefit the owners of auto-racing tracks in the amount of $78 million; and a $1 million break for coal-mining operations on Indian lands). The House members opposed to this old way–as naïve as they often sound–make up the core of a legitimate resistance movement in American politics, one that is trying to stop the relentless tendency of U.S. government to grow ever larger and more complex, and one that remains frustrated at the continuing inability of its representatives, both Republican and Democrat, to rein that tendency in.Hirsh makes good points both about the nature of the deal and the sources of opposition. Like the “tea-party rebellion” he defends, however, Hirsh conflates two problems into a single destructive tendency–a misunderstanding that makes it hard to identify politically viable responses.
One issue is the size of government, as indicated by government spending per capita, government spending as a share of GDP, or other broad measures. The other is the complexity of government, as measured by the proliferation of the tax code and regulations, subsidies for particular industries, or other specific policies. Size and complexity often go together: the labyrinth of the defense budget is a good example. But they need not do so: although Social Security is fiscally gargantuan, it is a rather simple program.
Conservative critiques tend to identify gargantuan size as the main problem with modern administrative state. This argument, however, usually fails to connect with ordinary citizens, who generally like big government provided that it is delivered in a predictable and relatively transparent way. Social Security, again, is a case in point. According to this poll, for example, 53% of American prefer raising taxes to changing the retirement age or lowering benefits.
What Americans do not like are complex programs that require expert assistance to navigate, and therefore confer disproportionate benefits on those who can afford the assistance of lawyers, accountants, and lobbyists. Although it is hard to make out from polls, I suspect that this consideration is the basis of continuing disapproval for Obamacare. The issue here is not simply that providing universal health coverage would be expensive. It’s that the Administration’s plan for doing so is a Rube Goldberg contraption that threatens to make unintelligible the already confusing insurance system.
Dan McCarthy recently counseled conservatives to understand the struggle against big government as a long-term project rather than a unitary problem to be resolved by dramatic votes like that on the fiscal cliff or debt ceiling. The place to start might be to accept, at least temporarily, bigness in government while attacking complexity wherever possible. This strategy would allow conservatives to stake out a position against unnecessary regulation, expensive subsidies, and potentially criminal cronyism while reconciling them to the reality that Americans like their basic en lements and are reluctant to change them. And that would be far from nihilism.
And how many seats in Congress does The American Conservative readership have?
Probably about as many as thinkprogress.borg.
WTF does that have to do with anything said in the article?
I think my mutual fund should allow random non-members (i.e. people with no skin in the game) to elect the fund manager. Working out great for our govt.
Wonderful, amusing for these abstract, academic journals to run their mouths about pure conservative theory and politics, but if they can't get anybody elected, they're only jerking themselves off.
The conservative movement is still an elaborate moneymaking venture
The conservative media movement exists primarily as a moneymaking venture. As Rick Perlstein explained in the Baffler, some of the largest conservative media organs are essentially massive email lists of suckers rented to snake oil salesmen. The con isn’t limited to a couple of newsletters and websites: The most prominent conservative organizations in the nation are primarily dedicated to separating conservatives from their money.
FreedomWorks, which is funded primarily by very rich people, solicits donations from non-rich conservative people. More than 80,000 people donated money to FreedomWorks in 2012, and it seems likely that only a small minority of those people were hedge fund millionaires. And what are people who donate to this grass-roots conservative organization funded mostly by a few very rich people getting for their hard-earned money? In addition to paying Armey $400,000 a year for 20 years to stay away, FreedomWorks also apparently spent more than a million dollars paying Glenn Beck and Rush Limbaugh to say nice things about FreedomWorks, in order to convince listeners to send FreedomWorks money that FreedomWorks would then give to Limbaugh and Beck. It’s a pretty simple con. Beck, meanwhile, also has a subscriber-based media operation, in which people pay his company money for access to programs where Beck expresses opinions that he was paid to hold. He also spent years telling everyone to buy gold from a company that pays him and defrauds consumers.
As Armey admitted to Media Matters, FreedomWorks at this point essentially raises money for the sake of raising money. It exists to bilk “activists.” Armey at least has the courtesy to be embarrassed by this:
“If Limbaugh and Beck, if we were using those resources to recruit activists and inform activists and to encourage and enthuse activists, that’s one thing,” Armey explained. “If we are using these things to raise money; one, it’s a damned expensive way to raise money; and two, it makes raising money an end on to itself not an instrumental activity to support the foundation work that our organization does.”
Armey also said the relationship with Beck expanded to include rallies that were co-sponsored by Beck and FreedomWorks, and included appearances by FreedomWorks President and CEO Matt Kibbe.
Armey said he objected to these events, dubbed FreePACs, because they often charged admission to FreedomWorks activists.
A review of promotional information for the events found $20 was a standard donation requested at some of the locations, while a Dallas, TX., FreePAC last summer charged prices as high as $971.
Tthe business of money-making, for consultants and media personalities and Herman Cains, is at this point getting in the way of the business of advancing conservative causes. The groups exert massive influence, and they only ever push the Republican Party to get more extreme. Apocalyptic hysteria is much more effective at getting people to open their wallets than reasonable commentary. There are a lot of people whose livelihoods depend on keeping lots of conservatives terrified and ill-informed. The groups that exist to raise funds raise more funds when they endorse the crazier candidate.
http://www.salon.com/2013/01/07/the_...aking_venture/
Follow the money. It's only "value" in politics.
Last edited by boutons_deux; 01-07-2013 at 02:11 PM.
The conservative media movement exists primarily as a moneymaking venture.
lol . le fail.
TBtalking le trash
boutons
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