And if we lower those taxes and businesses don't create jobs, choosing instead to funnel those savings to their top executives and investors as they typically do, can we take that money back?
Who's we? The government? Because govt can do better than the free market? This country was built and became a world leader as a free market. If you're referring to Big Business, yes, funds are funneled to execs and investors because that's the structure of a publicly owned company. Businesses want to grow, not become stagnant. They also funnel cash to smaller subsidiary companies who hire workers, thereby growing the economy.
"This country was built and became a world leader as a free market."
you guys are SO DELUDED! Govt spending has always been a huge part of GDP, even more during/after WWII.
At what, creating jobs? Probably not. But if those tax breaks aren't used to create jobs in the private sector, I'm not sure what the point of the tax break is. To fall further into debt?
Govt spending is reallocating tax revenue, not creating new wealth. Personal goods and services is the number one contributor, representing more than half of our GDP. Business investment is #2 but doesn't represent a fifth of what personal spending does."This country was built and became a world leader as a free market."
LOL, this country became a world leader because their factories weren't being bombed to in WWII.
WWII was so great for the US economy there was a massive steel shortage domestically.
And sending soldiers off to die in foreign wars is a great way to reduce unemployment (reduce the surplus population!!!)
But that GDP number was never higher! So there's that!
It was really Star Wars, tbh... when Ronnie said he was building the real thing, everybody else threw their arms in the air and just gave up
bull . the price of oil collapsed, Russia lost a huge source of hard currency while getting bled in Afghanistan, and Russians were getting fed up with losing so many men in Afghanistan. Russia collapsed from within, not from St Ronnie doing or saying anything.
Last edited by boutons_deux; 11-10-2014 at 10:03 PM.
In Control, Republicans See Budget as Way to Push Agenda
Next year, House Republicans will try again
to transform Medicare and Medicaid, (iow, privatize, higher costs to users for less, tier health care)
repeal the Affordable Care Act,
shrink domestic spending and
substantially cut the highest tax rates through the budget process.
Then they will leave it to the new Senate Republican majority to decide how far to press the party’s small-government vision,
“They’re firing with real budget bullets,” said Representative Chris Van Hollen of Maryland, the ranking Democrat on the House Budget Committee. “Real people will get hurt.”
Congressional Republicans intend to present a plan to overhaul Medicare, calling for voucherlike “premium supports” to steer seniors into buying commercial health insurance, and to transform Medicaid, which would be cut and turned into block grants to state governments.
They also intend to set up a new commission to study options on Social Security, (privatize it to Wall St crooks to steal $100Bs of pension funds)
while relying on what one House Republican aide called
“the solid foundation” of the Ryan budget plan.
be largely used to cut taxes for the rich.
In 2012, the House budget ordered six committees to produce policy changes that would save $261 billion over 10 years to avert automatic spending cuts at the Pentagon.
The results would have pushed 1.8 million people off food stamps and cost 280,000 children their school lunch subsidies and 300,000 children their health insurance coverage.
Elimination of the social services block grant to state and local governments would hit child abuse prevention programs, Meals on Wheels and child care.
A quarter of the cuts in the bill would come from programs for the poor. Cuts to Medicaid, food stamps and subsidized insurance premiums under the health care law made up more than a third of the package’s savings.
http://mobile.nytimes.com/2014/11/13...sh-agenda.html
yawn, same old Repug/VRWC/1% strategy of protect/enable/enrich the 1%/BigCorps, screw the 99% and the environment.
10 Things the GOP Doesn't Want You to Know About the Debt
Just two weeks after he seconded Treasury Secretary Tim Geithner's dire warnings about the August 2 deadline to raise the U.S debt ceiling, House Majority Leader Eric Cantor walked out of the budget talks aimed at reaching a bipartisan compromise over deficit reduction. Like Arizona GOP Senator Jon Kyl, Cantor shifted the burden to Speaker John Boehner, Senate Minority Mitch McConnell and President Obama to "get over this impasse on taxes."
For his part, McConnell promised that no deal to end the GOP's hostage taking of the U.S. economy will include tax hikes. But while McConnell boasted that "If they couldn't raise taxes when they owned the government, you know they can't get it done now," left unsaid was the inconvenient truth that the nation's mounting debt is largely attributable to wars, a recession and tax policies put in place under his party's watch.
Here, then, are 10 things the GOP doesn't want you to know about the debt:
- Republican Leaders Agree U.S. Default Would Be a "Financial Disaster"
- Ronald Reagan Tripled the National Debt
- George W. Bush Doubled the National Debt
- Republicans Voted Seven Times to Raise Debt Ceiling for President Bush
- Federal Taxes Are Now at a 60 Year Low
- Bush Tax Cuts Didn't Pay for Themselves or Spur "Job Creators"
- Ryan Budget Delivers Another Tax Cut Windfall for Wealthy
- Ryan Budget Will Require Raising Debt Ceiling - Repeatedly
- Tax Cuts Drive the Next Decade of Debt
- $3 Trillion Tab for Unfunded Wars Remains Unpaid
1. Republican Leaders Agree U.S. Default Would Be a "Financial Disaster"
Senator Pat Toomey (R-PA), Rep. Michele Bachmann (R-MN) and White House hopeful Tim Pawlenty are among the GOP luminaries who have joined the ranks of what Dana Milbank called the "default deniers." But you don't have to take Treasury Secretary Timothy Geithner's word for it "that if Congress doesn't agree to an increase in the debt limit by August 2, the United States will be forced to default on its debt, potentially spreading panic and collapse across the globe." As it turns out, Republican leaders (and their big business backers) have said the same thing.
In their few moments of candor, Republican leaders expressed agreement with Tim Geithner's assessment that default by the U.S. "would have a catastrophic economic impact that would be felt by every American." The specter of a global financial cataclysm has been described as resulting in "severe harm" (McCain economic adviser Mark Zandi), "financial collapse and calamity throughout the world" (Senator Lindsey Graham) and "you can't not raise the debt ceiling" (House Budget Committee Chairman Paul Ryan). In January, even Speaker John Boehner acknowledged as much:
"That would be a financial disaster, not only for our country but for the worldwide economy. Remember, the American people on election day said, 'we want to cut spending and we want to create jobs.' And you can't create jobs if you default on the federal debt."
2. Ronald Reagan Tripled the National Debt
Among the Republicans who prophesied the default doomsday scenario was none other than conservative patron saint, Ronald Reagan. As he warned Congress in November 1983:
"The full consequences of a default -- or even the serious prospect of default -- by the United States are impossible to predict and awesome to contemplate. Denigration of the full faith and credit of the United States would have substantial effects on the domestic financial markets and the value of the dollar."
Reagan knew what he was talking about. After all, the hemorrhage of red ink at the U.S. Treasury was his doing.
As most analysts predicted, Reagan's massive $749 billion supply-side tax cuts in 1981 quickly produced even more massive annual budget deficits. Combined with his rapid increase in defense spending, Reagan delivered not the balanced budgets he promised, but record-setting debt. Even his OMB alchemist David Stockman could not obscure the disaster with his famous "rosy scenarios."
Forced to raise taxes eleven times to avert financial catastrophe, the Gipper nonetheless presided over a tripling of the American national debt to nearly $3 trillion. By the time he left office in 1989, Ronald Reagan more than equaled the entire debt burden produced by the previous 200 years of American history. It's no wonder Stockman lamented last year:
"[The] debt explosion has resulted not from big spending by the Democrats, but instead the Republican Party's embrace, about three decades ago, of the insidious doctrine that deficits don't matter if they result from tax cuts."
It's no wonder the Gipper cited the skyrocketing deficits he bequeathed to America as his greatest regret.
3. George W. Bush Doubled the National Debt
Following in Reagan's footsteps, George W. Bush buried the myth of Republican fiscal discipline.
Inheriting a federal budget in the black and CBO forecast for a $5.6 trillion surplus over 10 years, President George W. Bush quickly set about dismantling the progress made under Bill Clinton. Bush's $1.4 trillion tax cut in 2001, followed by a $550 billion second round in 2003, accounted for the bulk of the yawning budget deficits he produced. (It is more than a little ironic that Paul Ryan ten years ago called the tax cuts "too small" because he believed the estimated surplus Bush eviscerated would be even larger.)
Like Reagan and Stockman before him, Bush resorted to the rosy scenario to claim he would halve the budget deficit by 2009. Before the financial system meltdown last fall, Bush's deficit already reached $490 billion. (And even before the passage of the Wall Street bailout, Bush had presided over a $4 trillion increase in the national debt, a staggering 71% jump.) By January 2009, the mind-numbing deficit figure reached $1.2 trillion, forcing President Bush to raise the debt ceiling to $11.3 trillion.
4. Republicans Voted Seven Times to Raise Debt Ceiling for President Bush
"Reagan," Vice President Cheney famously declared in 2002, "proved deficits don't matter." Not, that is, unless a Democrat is in the White House.
As Donny Shaw do ented in January 2010, Republican intransigence on the debt ceiling only began in earnest when Bush left the White House for good.
The Republicans haven't always been against increasing the federal debt ceiling. This is the first time in recent history (the past decade or so) that no Republican has voted for the increase. In fact, on most of the ten other votes to increase the federal debt limit that the Senate has taken since 1997, the Republicans provided the majority of the votes in favor.
As it turns out, Republican majorities voted to raise the U.S. debt ceiling seven times while George W. Bush sat in the Oval Office. (It should be noted, as Ezra Klein did, that party-line votes on debt ceiling increases tied to other legislation is not solely the province of the GOP.) As ThinkProgress pointed out, during the Bush presidency, the current GOP leadership team voted 19 times to increase debt limit. During his tenure, the U.S. national debt doubled, fueled by the Bush tax cuts of 2001 and 2003, the Medicare prescription drug plan and the unfunded wars in Iraq and Afghanistan. And Mitch McConnell and John Boehner voted for all of it and the debt which ensued because, as Orrin Hatch later explained:
"It was standard practice not to pay for things."
5. Federal Taxes Now at a 60 Year Low
Even as Vice President Biden leads bipartisan negotiations to trim at least $1 trillion from the national debt, Republican leaders faithfully regurgitate the refrain that tax increases are "off the table." In one form or another, Mitch McConnell, Eric Cantor and just about every other conservative mouthpiece parroted Speaker John Boehner's line that:
"Medicare, Medicaid - everything should be on the table, except raising taxes."
Which purely by the numbers (if not ideology) is an odd position to take. After all, as a percentage of the U.S. economy, the total federal tax bite hasn't been this low in 60 years.
As the chart representing President Obama's 2012 budget proposal above reflects, the American tax burden hasn't been this low in generations. Thanks to the combination of the Bush Recession and the latest Obama tax cuts, the AP reported, "as a share of the nation's economy, Uncle Sam's take this year will be the lowest since 1950, when the Korean War was just getting under way." In January, the Congressional Budget Office (CBO) explained that "revenues would be just under 15 percent of GDP; levels that low have not been seen since 1950." That finding echoed an earlier analysis from the Bureau of Economic Analysis. Last April, the Center on Budget and Policy Priorities concluded, "Middle-income Americans are now paying federal taxes at or near historically low levels, according to the latest available data." As USA Today reported last May, the BEA data debunked yet another right-wing myth:
Federal, state and local taxes -- including income, property, sales and other taxes -- consumed 9.2% of all personal income in 2009, the lowest rate since 1950, the Bureau of Economic Analysis reports. That rate is far below the historic average of 12% for the last half-century. The overall tax burden hit bottom in December at 8.8% of income before rising slightly in the first three months of 2010."The idea that taxes are high right now is pretty much nuts," says Michael Ettlinger, head of economic policy at the liberal Center for American Progress.
Or as former Reagan Treasury official Bruce Bartlett explained it this week the New York Times:
In short, by the broadest measure of the tax rate, the current level is unusually low and has been for some time. Revenues were 14.9 percent of G.D.P. in both 2009 and 2010. Yet if one listens to Republicans, one would think that taxes have never been higher, that an excessive tax burden is the most important constraint holding back economic growth and that a big tax cut is exactly what the economy needs to get growing again.
6. Bush Tax Cuts Didn't Pay for Themselves or Spur "Job Creators"
That Republican intransigence persists despite the complete debunking of two of the GOP's favorite myths.
The first tried and untrue Republican talking point is that "tax cuts pay for themselves." Sadly, that right-wing mythmaking is belied by the massive Bush deficits, half of which (as the CBPP chart in section 3 above shows} were the result of the Bush tax cuts themselves. As a percentage of the American economy, tax revenues peaked in 2000; that is, before the Bush tax cuts of 2001 and 2003. Despite President Bush's bogus claim that "You cut taxes and the tax revenues increase," Uncle Sam's cash flow from individual income taxes did not return to its pre-dot com bust level until 2006.
The second GOP fairy tale, as expressed by Speaker Boehner, is that "The top one percent of wage earners in the United States...pay forty percent of the income taxes...The people he's {President Obama] is talking about taxing are the very people that we expect to reinvest in our economy."
If so, the Republican's so-called "Job Creators" failed to meet those expectations under George W. Bush. After all, the last time the top tax rate was 39.6% during the Clinton administration, the United States enjoyed rising incomes, 23 million new jobs and budget surpluses. Under Bush? Not so much.
On January 9, 2009, the Republican-friendly Wall Street Journal summed it up with an article led simply, "Bush on Jobs: the Worst Track Record on Record." (The Journal's interactive table quantifies his staggering failure relative to every post-World War II president.) The dismal 3 million jobs created under President Bush didn't merely pale in comparison to the 23 million produced during Bill Clinton's tenure. In September 2009, theCongressional Joint Economic Committee charted Bush's job creation disaster, the worst since Hoover:
As David Leonhardt of the New York Times aptly concluded last year:7
Those tax cuts passed in 2001 amid big promises about what they would do for the economy. What followed? The decade with the slowest average annual growth since World War II. Amazingly, that statement is true even if you forget about the Great Recession and simply look at 2001-7.
. Ryan Budget Delivers Another Tax Cut Windfall for Wealthy
Looking at that dismal performance, Leonhardt rightly asked, "Why should we believe that extending the Bush tax cuts will provide a big lift to growth?" At a time of record income inequality which saw the incomes of therichest 400 Americans taxpayers double even as their tax rates were halved, that's a fair question to say the least.
For Paul Ryan and the Republican Party, the answer is simple: because we said so.
As Ezra Klein, Paul Krugman and Steve Benen among others noted, the House Republicans "Plan for America's Job Creators" is simply a repackaging of years of previous proposals and GOP bromides. (As Klein pointed out, the10 page do ent "looks like the staffer in charge forgot the assignment was due on Thursday rather than Friday, and so cranked the font up to 24 and began dumping clip art to pad out the plan.") At the center of it is thesame plan from the Ryan House budget passed in April to cut the top individual and corporate tax rates to 25%.
The price tag for the Republican proposal is a jaw-dropping $4.2 trillion. And as Matthew Yglesias explained, earlier analyses of similar proposals in Ryan's Roadmap reveal that working Americans would have to pick up the tab left unpaid by upper-income households:
This is an important element of Ryan's original "roadmap" plan that's never gotten the attention it deserves. But according to a Center for Tax Justice analysis (PDF), even though Ryan features large aggregate tax cuts, ninety percent of Americans would actually pay higher taxes under his plan.In other words, it wasn't just cuts in middle class benefits in order to cut taxes on the rich. It was cuts in middle class benefits and middle class tax hikes in order to cut taxes on the rich. It'll be interesting to see if the House Republicans formally introduce such a plan and if so how many people will vote for it.
We now know the answer: 235 House Republicans and 40 GOP Senators.
8. Ryan Budget Will Require Raising Debt Ceiling - Repeatedly
Largely overlooked in the media coverage of the Republican debt ceiling hostage drama is this: those 235 House Republicans and 40 GOP Senators who supported Paul Ryan's 2012 budget bill voted to add $6 trillion to the U.S. national debt over the next decade. And that means, as Speaker John Boehner acknowledged, Republicans now and in the future would have to increase the debt ceiling - repeatedly.
Of course, you'd never know that based on the incendiary rhetoric from the leading lights of the Republican Party and their right-wing echo chamber. Senator Rand Paul (R-KY) said his vote to bump up the debt ceiling would come at the cost of a balanced budget amendment to the Cons ution, "the last time we're doing it." His South Carolina colleague Jim Demint threatened to filibuster the increase, even if it meant the GOP's "Waterloo." The number two House Republican Eric Cantor (R-VA) regurgitated that line, telling Democrats the GOP "will not grant their request for a debt limit increase" without major spending cuts or budget process reforms." For his part, House Budget Committee Chairman Paul Ryan insisted, "We won't raise, just simply raise, the debt limit," adding, "We will vote to have spending cuts and controls in conjunction with the debt limit increase." As giddy right-wing bloggers like Patterico described the right-wing's scorched earth strategy:
If Republicans are going to vote to raise the debt ceiling -- and not to do so will indeed cause financial chaos -- they have to extract concessions sufficient that they can credibly say: this is the last such vote we will ever have to have.
Sadly, as Ezra Klein of the Washington Post explained last month, "Republicans can't meet their own deficit and spending targets." The Ryan plan to privatize Medicare, slash and convert Medicaid into block grants, and deliver another tax-cut windfall for the wealthy nevertheless "blows through both their spending and debt caps":
House Republicans voted to make the Ryan budget law. But the Ryan budget includes $6 trillion in new debt over the next 10 years, which means that to become law, the Ryan budget would require a substantial increase in the debt ceiling. But before the Republicans agree to increase the debt ceiling so that the budget they passed can become law, Republicans are demanding the passage of either a balanced budget amendment that would make the Ryan budget uncons utional or a spending cap that the Ryan budget would, in certain years (and if you're using more realistic numbers, in all years), exceed.
It's no wonder Klein's Washington Post colleague Matt Miller deemed the Republican budgetary horror story "The Shining - National Debt Edition" before concluding that Boehner's "awe-inspiring hypocrisy on the debt limit" is one of those moments of "political behavior that can only be dubbed Super-Duper Hypocrisy So Brazen They Must Really Think We're Idiots."
9. Tax Cuts Drive the Next Decade of Debt
"President Obama's agenda, ambitious as it may be, is responsible for only a sliver of the deficits, despite what many of his Republican critics are saying," the New York Times' David Leonhardt explained in 2009, adding, "The economic growth under George W. Bush did not generate nearly enough tax revenue to pay for his agenda, which included tax cuts, the Iraq war, and Medicare prescription drug coverage." That fall, former Reagan Treasury official Bruce Bartlett offered just that kind of honesty to the born again deficit virgins of his Republican Party. Noting that the FY2009 deficit of $1.4 trillion was solely due to lower tax revenues and not increased spending, Bartlett concluded:
"I think there are grounds on which to criticize the Obama administration's anti-recession actions. But spending too much is not one of them. Indeed, based on this analysis, it is pretty obvious that spending - real spending on things like public works - has been grossly inadequate. The idea that Reagan-style tax cuts would have done anything is just nuts."
Which is exactly right. Thanks to the steep recession, as the Congressional Budget Office (CBO) and others have do ented time and again, the overall federal tax burden as a percentage of GDP is now down to levels not seen since Harry Truman was in the White House. (The two-year tax cut compromise in December didn't help any, adding $400 billion to the deficit this year and next.) But is the Bush tax cuts themselves, which Republicans want to make permanent and then (as the Ryan budget mandates) lower further, which account for much of the revenue drain into the future.
As a recent analysis by the Center on Budget and Policy Priorities showed, over the next decade the Bush tax cuts account for more of the nation's debt than Iraq, Afghanistan, TARP, the stimulus, and revenue lost to the recession combined:
10. $3 Trillion Tab for Unfunded Wars Remains Unpaid
Over the next ten years, the costs of America's wars in Iraq and Afghanistan will decline as the U.S. commitments there come to an end. But almost ten years, 6,000 U.S. dead and over a trillion dollars after the attacks of September 11, it's time to pay for our wars.
In May, the National Journal estimated that the total cost to the U.S. economy of the war against Al Qaeda will reach $3 trillion. In 2008, Nobel Prize-winning economist Joseph Stiglitz put the price of the Iraq conflict alone at $3 trillion.
But by 2020 and beyond, the direct cost to U.S. taxpayers could reach $3 trillion. In March, the Congressional Research Service put the total cost of the wars at $1.28 trillion, including $806 billion for Iraq and $444 billion for Afghanistan. For the 2012 fiscal year which begins on October 1, President Obama asked for $117 billion more. (That war-fighting funding is over and above Secretary Gates' $553 billion Pentagon budget request for next year.)
But in addition to the roughly $1.5 trillion tally for both conflicts through the theoretical 2014 American draw down date in Afghanistan, the U.S. faces staggering bills for veterans' health care and disability benefits. Last May,an analysis by the Center for American Progress estimated the total projected total cost of Iraq and Afghanistan veterans' health care and disability could reach between $422 billion to $717 billion. Reconstruction aid and other development assistance represent tens of billions more, as does the additional interest on the national debt. And none of the above counts the expanded funding for the new Department of Homeland Security.
But that two-plus trillion dollar tab doesn't account for the expansion of the United States military since the start of the "global war on terror." As a percentage of the American economy, defense spending jumped from 3.1% in 2001 to 4.8% last year. While ThinkProgress noted that the Pentagon's FY 2012 ask is "the largest request ever since World War II," McClatchy explained:
Such a boost would mark the 14th year in a row that Pentagon spending has increased, despite the waning U.S. presence in Iraq. In dollars, Pentagon spending has more than doubled in 10 years. Even adjusted for inflation, the Defense Department budget has risen 65% in the past decade.
Even as the World Trade Center site was still smoldering, Republicans insisted Al Qaeda represented an existential threat to the United States. President Bush repeatedly compared 9/11 to Pearl Harbor and his war on terror to World War II. But he never asked Americans to join the military or sacrifice at home. Instead, Bush told us to go shopping and "get down to Disney World."
http://www.perrspectives.com/blog/archives/002215.htm
Uncertainty in Washington Poses Long List of Economic Perils
On March 28, unless lawmakers act, physician reimbursements from Medicare drop off a cliff.
On May 31, the highway trust fund runs out of money.
In June, the Export-Import Bank, which helps finance overseas purchases of American exports, might shut in the face of conservative opposition to its mission.
Then on Sept. 30, the entire Children’s Health Insurance Program faces its expiration.
A few days later, across-the-board spending cuts loom once again.
“I see a lot of potential for Republicans to use all these fiscal speed bumps as leverage points,” said Joel Prakken, a co-founder of Macroeconomic Advisers, a forecasting firm that calculated that previous fiscal fights, combined with tighter budgets, shaved as much as 1 percentage point off economic growth, a big sum considering that growth has averaged an annual rate of 2.15 percent since Republicans took control of the House in 2011.
“From a businessman’s standpoint, uncertainty in general just has a huge impact in how you think of the future, how you plan for capital investment and how you plan for hiring,” said Randall L. Stephenson, chairman of AT&T and of the Business Roundtable. “Just go down the long list. There’s a wide range of possible outcomes on policy, so you have to come to a more conservative approach to planning.”
http://mobile.nytimes.com/2014/12/03...rils.html?_r=0
Repugs claim they want to show The American People that Repugs can govern!
and one of y'alls Repug ASSHOLES wants to defund, ground Air Force One! Repugs can govern!
Last edited by boutons_deux; 12-03-2014 at 02:26 PM.
Boehner And Republicans Plan To Reverse Growth Numbers and Kill Jobs
now that Republicans will have control of both houses of Congress, they will start, immediately, passing legislation to revert back to Bush-era economics and undo the economic progress of the past six years.Republicans campaigned on, and have lied perpetually about their storied “40 bills” on job creation such as opening up our world leading oil production for American jobs, building Canadian corporation TransCanada’s Keystone pipeline, reducing tax rates for the rich and corporations, balancing the budget, and abolishing environmental regulations. Boehner and Paul Ryan have complained bitterly “that all 40 jobs bills are dying over there in the United States Senate.”
The problem for Americans is that beginning in January the 40 jobs bills, all gifts to corporations, will be brought to life and instead of creating jobs, will create more wealth for the one-percent at the expense of the poor, the middle class, Americans’ health, and of course jobs; typical Republican economics.None of the House jobs bills were designed to create even one job. It is difficult, indeed, to imagine any American believes that abolishing overtime pay, giving tax breaks and credits to corporations outsourcing Americans’ jobs, or providing tax incentives for the rich and corporations to conceal their wealth offshore will create jobs; but many are stupid enough to believe lying Republicans and probably think they did pass 46 jobs bills.
But for any American capable of a 6-year old’s cognitive ability, or noted economic experts, the GOP’s jobs bills are a joke.
According to five noted economists who reviewed the storied jobs bills, three decades of trickle-down economics, current economic disasters in Republican states, and current economic successes in blue Democratic states, not one of the Republicans’ so-called “jobs bills” will have any measurable impact on job growth.
In fact, as history proves, and Republicans intend, the bills serve to kill jobs and economic growth while promoting the Koch, Wall Street, and Republicans’ agenda; enrich the oil industry and corporations at the middle class and poor’s expense.
Some of the more absurd “jobs bills” are worth noting including four of Boehner’s so-called education bills purported to be monumental job creators. According to Cecilia Rouse, the dean of the Woodrow Wilson School of Public and International Affairs at Princeton University, “not one of them would affect job growth like Republicans claim.” Two of the bills require colleges to offer loan counseling and push the Department of Education to provide information for potential college attendees.
Rouse said all colleges already have dedicated loan or financial aid counselors, and like the second bill, will not create any jobs.
http://www.politicususa.com/2014/12/06/boehner-republicans-plan-reverse-job-growth-numbers.html?utm_source=feedburner&utm_medium=feed &utm_campaign=Feed%3A+politicususa%2FfJAl+%28Polit icus+USA+%29
Arizona And Florida Declare War On The Sun
Why on earth would Arizona and Florida, a couple of states with near-constant sunshine, take steps to actively discourage people from making use of all that abundant solar energy?
If you guessed that lobbying from energy companies — and of course, the Koch brothers — might have something to do with it, you win Will Shortz’s voice on your answering machine.
In fact, just before Thanksgiving, Florida regulators quietly gutted requirements for utilities to conserve energy, and also to eliminate solar rebates for homeowners at the end of 2015 in a deal that the Tampa Bay Times says “[gave] the investor-owned utilities virtually everything they wanted.”
As of now, two of the sunniest states in the country are officially against solar energy.
Read more at http://wonkette.com/567979/morning-m...hzswhjvxOqB.99
Repugs up everything they touch, to the benefit of their paymasters.
Rich People Cheer As Republicans Cut IRS Budget (AGAIN!)
At domestic agencies, the EPA’s budget would be cut by $60 million, and the IRS would lose $345.6 million. The nation’s tax agency also would be banned from targeting organizations seeking tax-exempt status based on their ideological beliefs.
It's simple: If the IRS budget gets cut, it means fewer audits of corporations and rich people. Any other questions?
http://www.motherjones.com/kevin-drum/2014/12/rich-people-cheer-republicans-cut-irs-budget
Provision Tucked In Spending Bill Blows Up Campaign Finance Limits
http://www.motherjones.com/kevin-dru...cut-irs-budget
Another Repug poison pill is gutting financial reform, allowing banks to gamble with taxpayer-insured $Bs.
voodoo economics (which is Repug smoke screen for "cut taxes on the wealthy and BigCorp)
Republicans weigh big changes at U.S. budget referee agency
possibly naming a new head and changing the rules used to assess the cost of legislation.
Conservative groups have been calling for the replacement of CBO Director Doug Elmendorf, who was appointed by Democrats in 2009 and whose term expires next month. They argue that a Republican-leaning economist would more readily adopt a cost analysis known as "dynamic scoring" that incorporates expectations of higher economic growth associated with legislation.
Analyses by the CBO, a non-partisan office, show how much a bill would increase or decrease the federal budget deficit over a 10-year period.
The budget math used under dynamic scoring has long been a goal for Republican lawmakers, including the incoming chairman of the House Budget Committee, Representative Tom Price, and the current chairman, Paul Ryan, who next month will take over the tax-writing House Ways and Means Committee.
Under current congressional analysis rules, if a bill cuts tax rates, government revenues fall. Dynamic scoring assumes that lower tax rates would boost growth and income, helping to offset at least some of the lost revenues.
http://www.reuters.com/article/2014/...e=domesticNews
iow, "ALL tax cuts (on the wealthy and BigCorp) pay for themselves"
Repugs gonna REALLY up the country and inflate the deficit AND national debt, as all Repugs have done since 1980.
of course, it doesn't
Robert Reich: The GOP's Economic Plan Has No Basis In Reality
According to reports, one of the first acts of the Republican congress will be to fire Doug Elmendorf, current director of the non-partisan Congressional Budget Office, because he won’t use “dynamic scoring” for his economic projections.
Dynamic scoring is the magical-mystery math Republicans have been pushing since they came up with supply-side “trickle-down” economics.
It’s based on the belief that cutting taxes unleashes economic growth and thereby produces additional government revenue. Supposedly the added revenue more than makes up for what’s lost when Congress hands out the tax cuts.
Dynamic scoring would make it easier to enact tax cuts for the wealthy and corporations, because the tax cuts wouldn’t look as if they increased the budget deficit.
Incoming House Ways and Means Chairman Paul Ryan (R-Wis.) calls it “reality-based scoring,” but it’s actually magical scoring – which is why Elmendorf, as well as all previous CBO directors have rejected it.
Few economic theories have been as thoroughly tested in the real world as supply-side economics, and so notoriously failed.
Ronald Reagan cut the top income tax rate from 70 percent to 28 percent and ended up nearly doubling the national debt.
His first budget director, David Stockman, later confessed he dealt with embarrassing questions about future deficits with “magic asterisks” in the budgets submitted to Congress. The Congressional Budget Office didn’t buy them.
George W. Bush inherited a budget surplus from Bill Clinton but then slashed taxes, mostly on the rich. The CBO found that the Bush tax cuts reduced revenues by $3 trillion.
Yet Republicans don’t want to admit supply-side economics is hokum. As a result, they’ve never had much love for the truth-tellers at the Congressional Budget Office.
In 2011, when briefly leading the race for the Republican presidential nomination, Newt Gingrich called the CBO “a reactionary socialist ins ution which does not believe in economic growth, does not believe in innovation and does not believe in data that has not been internally generated.”
The CBO has continued to be a truth-telling thorn in the Republican’s side.
The budget plan Paul Ryan came up with in 2012 – likely to be a harbinger of what’s to come from the Republican congress – slashed Medicaid, cut taxes on the rich and on corporations, and replaced Medicare with a less well-funded voucher plan.
Ryan claimed these measures would reduce the deficit. The Congressional Budget Office disagreed.
Ryan persevered. His 2013 and 2014 budget proposals were similarly filled with magic asterisks. The CBO still wasn’t impressed.
Yet it’s one thing to cling to magical-mystery thinking when you have only one house of Congress. It’s another when you’re running the whole shebang.
Now that Elmendorf is on the way out, presumably to be replaced by someone willing to tell Ryan and other Republicans what they’d like to hear, the way has been cleared for all the magic they can muster.
In this as in other domains of public policy, Republicans have not shown a particular affinity for facts.
Climate change? It’s not happening, they say. And even if it is happening, humans aren’t responsible. (Almost all scientists studying the issue find it’s occurring and humans are the major cause.)
Widening inequality? Not occurring, they say. Even though the data show otherwise, they claim the measurements are wrong.
Voting fraud? Happening all over the country, they say, which is why voter IDs and other limits on voting are necessary. Even though there’s no evidence to back up their claim (the bestevidence shows no more than 31 credible incidents of fraud out of a billion ballots cast), they continue to assert it.
Evolution? Just a theory, they say. Even though all reputable scientists support it, many Republicans at the state level say it shouldn’t be taught without also presenting the view found in the Bible.
Weapons of mass destruction in Iraq?
America’s use of torture?
The George W. Bush administration and its allies in Congress weren’t overly interested in the facts.
The pattern seems to be: if you don’t like the facts, make them up.
Or have your benefactors finance “think tanks” filled with hired guns who will tell the public what you and your patrons want them to say.
If all else fails, fire your own experts who tell the truth, and replace them with people who will pronounce falsehoods.
There’s one big problem with this strategy, though. Legislation based on lies often causes the public to be harmed.
Not even “truthiness,” as Stephen Colbert once called it, is an adequate subs ute for the whole truth.
http://www.alternet.org/economy/robe...-basis-reality
... Repugs simply, blatantly don't GAF about harming the 99%, nor about harming the environment, just as long as their paymasters get protected and paid.
Last edited by boutons_deux; 12-29-2014 at 09:46 AM.
G.O.P. Turns to the Courts to Aid Agenda
Democrats say the legal moves reflect a convenient turnabout for the Republican Party and a newfound willingness to seek an active role for the judiciary when it benefits conservative policy goals.
“What they cannot win in the legislative body, they now seek and hope to achieve through judicial activism,” said Representative Gerald E. Connolly, Democrat of Virginia.
“That is such delicious irony, it makes one’s head spin.”
“They decry the courts’ overruling or implementing things they don’t like,” he said, “but are eager to have the courts implement things they like.”
For years, conservatives criticized liberals who sought judicial action on civil rights or social issues.
“We’re seeing that activist judges across the country are overturning the will of the people,” Franklin Graham, a son of the Rev. Billy Graham
Mr. Connolly, whose cons uents include federal workers in the Virginia suburbs outside Washington, said the Supreme Court’s decision in the 2000 Bush v. Gore case had sent a signal to conservatives to view the courts as a place for political success.
“It absolutely opened the floodgates to such judicial activism from the right,” Mr. Connolly said. “It blessed it, and it sanctioned it.”
http://www.nytimes.com/2015/01/04/us...s&emc=rss&_r=0
Four New Anti-Choice Bills Introduced in U.S. Senate
http://rhrealitycheck.org/article/20...ality+Check%29
Repugs, yawn, ing up Social Security and Disability, cutting disability payments by 19%.
"The Associated Press reports that "benefits for 11 million disabled workers, spouses and children would be automatically cut by 19 percent" under a new rule adopted by House Republicans on the VERY FIRST DAY of the new Congress."
Republicans In Congress Begin New Effort To Water Down Dodd-Frank Law
Boosted by their November election gains, congressional Republicans have launched a new effort to weaken, bit by bit, a law that dramatically expanded federal oversight of the financial system after the Great Recession.
On Wednesday, the Republican-controlled House is expected to pass a package of bills making changes to the 2010 law, known as Dodd-Frank, which also created a powerful new agency to protect consumers.
The law was enacted over nearly unanimous opposition from Republican lawmakers. Many despise Dodd-Frank almost as much as they do Obamacare because they believe it’s an overreaction to the 2008 financial crisis and an unnecessary burden on business.
Now with a Senate majority too, Republicans no longer have to worry about Democrats stopping attempts to chip away at the law’s hundreds of regulations, though President Barack Obama’s veto pen looms in the White House.
“The truth is Dodd-Frank was not chiseled in stone. Nobody brought it down to us from Mount Sinai,” said House Financial Services Committee Chairman Jeb Hensarling (R-TX), who is leading the effort to change the law.
“Congress would be negligent in its duties if we did not continually monitor and fix Dodd-Frank’s unintended consequences.”
In the last few weeks, Republicans watered down key parts of Dodd-Frank by attaching provisions to so-called must-pass bills — one funding most of the federal government and another reauthorizing an important terrorism risk insurance program that had expired. Obama signed the bills despite his opposition to their changes in Dodd-Frank.
The maneuver provided an early road map to how the new Republican-controlled Congress might try to make long-sought changes to financial regulations over Obama’s objections.
Liberal Democrats, led by Sen. Elizabeth Warren (D-MA) and Rep. Maxine Waters (D-CA), are rallying to stop the effort.
They nearly derailed the government funding bill last month because it contained a provision that eased Dodd-Frank restrictions on bank trading of financial derivatives — the type of complex investments that helped trigger the financial crisis.
http://www.nationalmemo.com/republic...odd-frank-law/
So, all y'all REDNECK taxpayers ready to bail out Wall St again when it INEVITABLY blows up again?
And if you're really lucky, the banks will "bail in" themselves by taking YOUR money directly from your deposit accounts. IT'S THE LAW!
Last edited by boutons_deux; 01-15-2015 at 04:25 PM.
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