Thursday, December 10, 2009

Schizophrenic Republicans

OK, this is it.  The Republican party is officially talking out of both sides of its mouth.  Today's business news proves it.

In one article from the AP, Obama administration extends bailout program, several Republicans urge strongly that the unspent portion of the $700 billion TARP funds "should be devoted exclusively to curbing the country's soaring budget deficits," instead of putting it into a jobs program (tax breaks for hiring new employees, increased small business lending, and an infrastructure program) as the administration proposes.

In a second article from the AP, House vote raises taxes to pay for extending tax breaks, Republicans object to proposed tax increases, which would pay for extending a number of miscellaneous tax breaks by increasing the penalties on international tax cheats (nobody objects to that!) and by taxing fees earned by investment managers as ordinary income (top rate 35%) instead of capital gains (15%).  

Republicans argued that the tax increase would reach far beyond Wall Street, hitting real estate investment funds across the country. Instead, Republicans said, the tax breaks should be financed by federal borrowing, increasing the budget deficit.
So - it's OK to increase the budget deficit to protect the favorable tax treatment of some of the richest people in the country, but it's not OK to increase the budget deficit by helping get unemployed Americans into work.

Do these guys ever actually listen to what they're saying, or do they just pick talking points off the list, as the spirit moves them??  I understand that the national Republican Party, as an organization (I except various individual Republican politicians), has no interest in the welfare of this country and its citizens at all - its only interest is in getting back into power.  But do they really think that this form of "white man speak with forked tongue" will do that??

5 comments:

  1. As long as enough of the electorate is stupid and frightened and amnesia-stricken and blinded by manufactured rage and swallows their talking points as facts - yes.

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  2. Yeah, the Republicans argued in favor of deficit spending when Bush was in office, claiming that their run-ups represented only a tiny portion of the GDP. This was "responsible spending"--i.e., war profiteering, tax breaks for the rich, and corporate pirates pillaging unabated. I for one haven't forgotten Cheney going into secret conference with the energy companies to find new ways to bilk the American public (as in Enron's rip-off of California users).

    So we got Smirk's "war on tare!" "job cree-a-shun"--but now that Obama's underwritten five more years of waste in Asia and the stimulus money is paying off Wall Street big-time (again), the Elephants are trumpeting about the deficit again.

    My position is we can neither afford the wars, nor the health care package. I say we tighten our belts and get back to balancing the budget. Canada does it. Why can't we?

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  3. Republicans are full of shit. Actually listening to what any of them have to say is a waste of time. There's really not much point in listening to Democrats, either, as they all either cave in to the GOP or simply do nothing (with very few exceptions).

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  4. It's always been all right to stimulate the economy with military spending - in economic terms, a free gift to the enemy - but not to help people, which is inflationary & meddlesome.

    Do the Democrats, for that matter, concern themselves with the well-being of the country and its people?

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  5. As far as I can tell, some of the Democrats concern themselves with some of the well-being of the country and its people, some of the time...

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