Crossposted from Hillbilly Report.
The Republicans want to portray themselves as "deficit hawks". They constantly maintain that slashing spending on the social safety net millions of Americans depend on and lowering taxes on themselves and those they represent will bring the deficit down and help the economy. After thirty years of this failed "trickle-down" idiocy on thing is clear. Due to the definition of insanity we should be fitting the whole Republican Party and many of the Democrats for a strait jacket.
Yes, Republicans keep doing the same thing over and over again and expecting a different result. I guess they really do not expect a different result, to them their own greed trumps the betterment of our country and anyone else within.
And so is the case anew with the Bush Tax Cuts. While they have been producing draconian budgets to hamstring women, children, the elderly, workers and the unemployed they demand that any new spending that favors the most helpless in society be offset by cuts. However, there is one thing they do not want offset by any cuts whatsoever.
Yes, when it is time for the greediest and least patriotic among us to slop at the trough then damn anyone else who would try to stop them. Proving their idiocy and greed once again Republicans are demanding the Bush Tax Cuts be extended and of course, are not asking them to be paid for:
House Republicans say they have no plans to pay for the extension of the Bush-era tax rates, a move that could erase the deficit reduction they have achieved since winning their majority in the chamber in 2010.
It is Republican Party orthodoxy that tax cuts do not need to be offset because of the additional tax receipts they spur through economic growth. And in interviews, even House Republicans who have broken with the party leadership on taxes told The Hill they do not believe the extension of the Bush-era rates needs to be paid for.
The lawmakers also said that Republicans had always intended for the rates on income and capital gains, enacted during former President George W. Bush’s first term, to be permanent.
http://thehill.com/...
Unfortunately for Progressives the refusal of this Administration and other Democrat "leaders" to fight for what they believe in and instead capitulate to idiocy is handcuffing their own arguments:
Republicans counter the Democratic attack by pointing out that Obama and the party’s congressional leadership agreed to extend all of the Bush-era rates in 2010 without offsetting spending cuts or tax increases. Some Republicans have even taken to referring to the policy as the “Bush-Obama tax cuts.”
Which leads to the question we should pose to all of these Republicans and those Democrats that would agree with them or capitulate to them. If these tax cuts are so wonderful to the economy and provide so much economic growth, where the hell is it? These cuts have been in effect for over a decade, were exteded by a Democratic President and what has happened?? Our economy has fallen and can't get up!! No amount of propoganda spewed forth like gospel can change the hard facts.
The simple fact is that these "Bush Tax Cuts" and the whole "trickle-down" philosophy is a dismal failure that has been destroying the American dream for three decades. And the spending cuts so zealously pursued by Republicans and their enablers in the Democratic Party? They are further destroying our economy:
Federal government spending dropped 5.6 percent, with military spending down 8.1 percent. Spending by state and local government dropped by 1.2 percent. If only private-sector components of the GDP are taken into account, the economy grew at a 3.5 percent annual rate, according to Alan Krueger, head of the White House Council of Economic Advisers.
http://seattletimes.nwsource.com/...
And the recent war on workers that can actually bargain for the middle-class? That has added even more to our economic misery:
Continuing losses of state and local government jobs also continue to drag down monthly employment numbers. These trends raise questions about the course of federal budget policies that will be argued throughout this presidential-election year.
In fact as always there is only one bright spot for one group of people in all of this. The folks our representation in Washington really works for, Corporate America. And of course as always they refuse to let anything "trickle-down" to those who do real work in this country:
The latter numbers highlighted a divide between businesses, which appear to be thriving, and workers. Corporate profits rose by nearly 7 percent in 2011, according to Commerce Department figures, while employee compensation rose less than 5 percent.
Despite the surge in corporate profits, business fixed investment fell 2.1 percent, spending on business structures plunged a whopping 12 percent and spending on equipment was up by a weak 1.7 percent, which partly reflects the end of a tax break for business investment last year.
In other words the very folks who have picked us clean, been rewarded by us are picking us clean again and now expect to be rewarded for it once more. Those of us who work or depend on the government for anything are expected to continue funding the ridiculous lifestyles of a very few of these greedy bastards.
The sad part is that we even have to argue about this again. The sadder part is that many Democrats seem to be either in the pocket of these same interests, or just too cowardly to fight for anything that makes sense. In the endgame these tax cuts will probably be extended once more and will continue to destroy the American economy for years to come.
Unfortunately this is the sorry state of American Democracy in 2012.