Bush’s tax cuts are FAKE
“You know, if you let me write $200 billion worth of hot checks every year, I could give you an illusion of prosperity, too.”
- Lloyd Bentsen, 1988
The universal diss against Democrats is that they “Tax and spend”. Thank goodness for the Republicans who cut taxes! And if any Democrat opposes them, they can plant their feet resolutely and demand; “Are you willing to make Bush’s tax cuts permanent, or NOT?”
Only trouble is, Bush’s tax cuts are fake. As long as we keep spending vastly more than we are taking in, we’re heading for disaster. So says America’s ‘Accountant In Chief’, the head of the GAO, David M. Walker.
We. Are. Headed. For. Disaster. Deficit spending will destroy our economy. Thanks for the big favor, mister president.
At least with “Tax and spend” the transaction is done. You taxed, you spent, that’s it. Well, not really ‘it’. The money didn’t disappear from existence; it went back into the economy. Some government programs actually do some good, too. OK not many, but some.
Not so with “Borrow and spend”. When you borrow money, you have to pay it back someday under conditions of compound interest. This is just as true for governments as it is for individuals. Bush’s tax cuts just push off the taxes to our children. By then, interest will be the bulk of the federal budget.
It’s no use whining about Democrats – it’s been a Republican shop for six years now. House, Senate, President – it’s all yours. Our president never vetoes any spending. But “borrow and spend” is a bigger threat to our country than Al Queda could ever think of being. So when i talk about Bush being a threat to our country, I mean it; absolutely, literally, in the most direct sense. He and his band of borrow-and-spend so-called “conservatives” are on-track to destroy our country.
Only thing I can’t figure out is how the Democrats were too dumb to come up with the phrase “borrow and spend” a long time ago. It’s been obvious to me for years. And now it’s official.
It’s not that they are too dumb to come up with phrase, it’s that they were too dumb to push it out to the media. I’ve known about borrow and spend since the 90’s from my parents whom continually told me not to count on the government being able to supply me with social security. The Democrats don’t spend nearly the amount of money the Republicans do to push out their catch phrase of the week.
Think back to 2000 what was the catch phrase the Republicans sent out, “Gore: ‘I invented the Internet’.” Did Gore ever say this. Nope, just good advertising by a party that wanted to win.
How bout 2004, “Well my opponent is a flip flopper, he can’t stand firm on an issue.” Even though Kerry actually never flip flopped, the Republican PR machine lied and used two completely separate voting records.
This is the problem. The Republicans use dirty tricks that the Dems refuse to resort to and people are stupid enough to not actually find the stance the two presidential candidates take. What I mean is that one of the dirty trick used by Repubs is they will send a message to the mass media about their opposing candidate. Take either example from above. Then people do not actually look to see if this is true, and they either don’t vote, or will vote for the other party.
You want to solve all political problems we currently have in our government, the solution is simple. Take money out of politics. How? Use a percentage of taxes to devote to political candidates that want to run for office. Make a law that states they can only use that money to run and no outside or personal funding can be used. This way the politicians have no one in their back pocket and no need to give “back scratches”.
Head of the G.A.O,,ROFLMAO.
I’d rather live by a tax and spend system. I’d rather have higher taxes and guaranteed health care for all. Regardless of Mr. Clinton’s personal (family values) issues, he was an excellent president. He balanced our budget for heaven sake. I wonder how long it will take after the Shrub leaves office for that to happen again. I wonder if it will ever happen again. I could say more, but writing this is depressing me to death.
And who holds the lion’s share of this paper? Communist China, our Most Favored Nation. So much for family values, etc. This is rape. They have turned this country into a circle-jerk service economy industrial wasteland, and made themselves rich in the process. All hail Wal-Mart! Let them eat crap! A good cut of meat is now selling for $9.00 a pound, but we don’t have any inflation. There’s plenty of cheap alternative “Meet” (r) and “Cheez” (r) to go around.
Of course, if they keep blowing Terrorist smoke up our respective asses, nobody will notice what’s really going on. And what was the title of that report again Condi?
Anyone who has managed to get past the sixth grade knows that if you take out more than you put in, you end up in deep kimshee. When setting up a budget, you want the income and expenses to be equal or, better yet, the income to exceed the expenses. If this is not the case, you have two options – increase income (whether with a second job, selling assets, or borrowing) or (gasp!) REDUCE SPENDING.
IMHO, where the money is COMING FROM is not as much of an issue as where it’s GOING. In order to put a lid on “tax and spend” or “borrow and spend”, we need to put a lid on the “spend” part of the equation. We don’t need more social programs … the ones we have now don’t work. Throwing money at a problem does not solve it. We don’t need <strike>more</strike> any funding for the arts. This is a capitalistic country – if the arts can’t support themselves, boo-hoo.
What we need to do is to get the federal government back to the fundamentals of the constitution (regulating interstate commerce and providing for the common defense), and send the rest of the stuff (like education) back to the local level. The further down the food chain that an item is from it’s funding, the less impact each dollar gets. Fund education from the county level and a dollar is worth more like 80 cents. From the state level, maybe 50 cents. From the federal level, we’re lucky if we’re getting 30 cents on the dollar. (No, these are not actual numbers, but serve to demonstrate the point. I could look up the actual numbers, but then, so could anyone else who wants them).
Let’s stop borrowing money for government spending. Let’s stop taxing the working citizen to the breaking point. The only way to accomplish this is to REDUCE SPENDING.
Morning glory: Do you realize that almost every social program we currently have could be funded using 15% of military spending? And that roughly 15% of military spending is still being used on cold war spending that doesn’t need to be spent.
But I still am confused by the idea of having the local governments fund education. How will local governments afford this? Most local governments can barely afford to pave their streets let alone fund their schools. And with more and more factory jobs going over seas, a lot of local governments have lost their work force. This almost instantly destroys the local economy. Some examples are Watseka Illinois, Danville Illinois, Rockford Illinois, Kankakee Illinois, and the list goes on.
The only way they could possibly afford to educate their own is to raise taxes, but with low skilled, low wage workers, how could anyone afford those higher taxes?
Web05: Do you realize that none of the social programs that we currently have are working? Throwing more money at them is unlikely to change that. I’d be happy to hear of any that are, but I believe that I’m correct.
In order to fund the schools from the local level, we would have to stop sending the money that the Feds now spend on education to the Feds; instead, a lesser amount could be sent to the local coffers where it would be distributed directly to the community that provided it. This would cut out a series of “middle-men” that the money is currently funnelled through (Federal to the States, States to the Counties, and Counties to the schools), thereby giving us more bang for the buck. Yes, local taxes would by necessity go up, but they would go up by no more than, and probably less than, Federal taxes could be brought down if the Feds weren’t funding education. I’m sorry I didn’t make that clear in my earlier post.
As far as military funding, that is constitutionally a function of the Federal government (one of the very few). That makes it a reasonable thing to expect them to spend their money on. Education and social programs, on the other hand, are not within the scope of their powers. To paraphrase, any activity not specifically granted to the Federal government is implicity denied.
So again I ask: How are towns that are almost shut down because their low wage, low skilled workforce got laid off, supposed to afford this new local education plan? In the case of Danville, I mentioned earlier, we are talking about a town the size of 120,000 people (at least it used to be). The town lived off of GE which shut down.
So again, I see you taking away federal taxes, which will help, but then local taxes go up. And to support a town this size with hardly any economy at all you are talking a HUGE increase in local taxes. One that only the richest in the area could afford.
I’m sorry but I just have trouble seeing how this will help anything for the larger factory towns that have lost their factories or are going to in the near future. I only see this plan of local governments funding education helping the rich.
I am sorry I wasn’t clear enough earlier. But you were making the point earlier that spending money on social programs and the “arts” was a waste of money. And I was trying to make the point that if you take wasted money on programs like cold war spending in the military, and nuclear arms military spending, you could easily afford social programs. All that is needed is just a small chunk to spend, and social programs are not failing. Since you are making the claim they do it is up to you to supply the evidence. I will agree that there is plenty of money being wasted on social programs because there is no oversight, but for those that truly need the programs, the money is not wasted.
But if you think social programs and liberal arts programs are failures I suggest you look at governments were no money at all is spend on the people but instead horded for a rich bureaucrat. Every industrialized nation has one thing in common, social programs. Reason for it, they help out those in need.
I am by no means in favor of throwing money away, but to forget about the lower classes and those that are living on the streets helps no one. Are there people that take advantage of social programs? Of course, but instead the system should be changed so that people have less of an opportunity (or no opportunity) to take advantage of a system designed to help others. Social programs are actually applied economics. Sometimes the incentives help, sometimes they don’t. I blame the failures of social programs on our governments ineptitude to make changes to the programs and make it better.
Any country any system any organization is only as good as it’s weakest link. And leaving the poor and social inept behind with a dismissive attitude makes the fortunate no better than them.
Web05: You bring up some interesting comments. I ask that you allow me some time to formulate an answer; I’ve just arrived at work and will be happy to respond to you this evening. You’ve got me thinking, and seeing some things from a different perspective. That’s not a bad thing. =MG=
No please take your time. I appreciate those that actually think before they talk… or type. But I have a test coming up, so please be patient if it takes me a couple days to respond.