One way of looking at the cynicism of the Republican Party is to think about what would happen to them if they got what they say they want. They want a balanced budget amendment; they want to cut the budget by at least as much as they agree to raise the debt ceiling. Okay. Let’s say that we gave them both of those things. You know what would happen?
If we couldn’t borrow money to run cherished government programs, we wouldn’t cut them. If we did, the voters would throw that party out of power. What we would do is raise taxes. And we’d raise them on the rich. Oh sure, we’d try to turn everything into a lottery and raise fees on poor and middle class people. We’d squeeze every last bit of juice out of the lemon. But it wouldn’t be enough.
What Republicans apparently do not realize is that funding the government on debt is a tax break for them. All these years that we’ve raided the Social Security Trust Fund to pay for general expenditures have been nothing but a way for politicians to avoid taxing rich people. If you make it impossible for them to avoid taxing you, guess what is going to happen?
Morons.
That doesn’t stop them from trying. I mean the plan to kill Medicare has massive tax cuts built into it.
Any jobs “plan”, like Pawlenty’s, from the Republican candidates ends the inheritance tax, ends or decreases the capital gains tax, cuts the corporate tax rate, and lowers taxes on the rich. Hell, unless I’ve read the reports wrong they are trying to make it so that corporate earnings outside of the US cannot be taxed.
I don’t know how this will end and I don’t feel very optimistic.
I watched an interesting PBS documentary on Alexander Hamilton before I left for Europe, and it cemented my view of him as my “favorite Founder”. Beyond his obviously brilliant economic insights before the occupation existed, I didn’t realize how much he put the country before himself; in fact I’d say he did it to a stupid end, as he left his wife and children with no estate. Every Founder was profiting because they knew where the investments were going, but he refused to make one cent as he deemed it corrupt. I knew Jefferson went in with a fine toothed comb after Hamilton left, not finding anything, but to that end? Wow, what a great man.
The reason I bring Alexander Hamilton up is because had these Republicans been the first Secretary of the Treasury — or even if Thomas Jefferson had been in that position — America would not have succeeded. He took a broke country, broke beyond all recognition, and in 3 short years gave it outstanding credit.
~Alexander Hamilton
Of course, conservatives look back on this and it’s why they revere Thomas Jefferson. I love Jefferson for different reasons, but no man influenced our government the way that Hamilton did. In fact, what was once known as the “American Dream” is in fact “Hamilton’s Dream”. For without the establishment of that initial credit, America would not be the powerhouse that it is. And like Hamilton at the time who was uncertain that his economic policies would be seen through (which many of them later weren’t, such as his banking policy that Canada has since adopted and modeled from…and also has the soundest banking system in the world), I feel our American experiment is being threatened by these fuckers:
~Alexander Hamilton
Conservatives do not revere Thomas Jefferson. They think John Calvin was much more important in American history. So much so that Texas had Jefferson written out of school books to make room for Calvin.
Conservatives talk about freedom, but they mean the freedom for the rich to do whatever they want, not freedom for the masses.
Perhaps we need to start playing by their rules. Let’s offer a counter-proposal: we won’t raise the debt ceiling unless any cuts in spending demanded by Republicans are offset by tax increases on those earning over $250,000. Then we can compromise on a clean bill.
HA!
I say again HA!
The voters would throw that party out of power for, at best, two terms. And it would only be “out of power” in the sense that they wouldn’t have a majority in any branch of government (except the Supreme Court, where we’re stuck for a while). They might be able to keep 41 seats in the Senate, giving a party willing to be that self-destructive the ability to continue on in their catastrophe creation.
And then, once the “other party” didn’t magically fix everything in one term that the wrecking ball party broke, they’d be out on their asses and the wrecking ball party would be right back into power to wreck some more stuff for a term. And the cycle would continue until the safety net was completely shredded and the masses were swarming the gates of the gated communities demanding heads.
The important thing to keep in mind about the modern Republican party is that all of the checks and balances we used to have on elected officials have been subverted. They don’t care about keeping their jobs – they only care about exploiting power when they have it and blocking the use of power by the other party when they don’t. Individual legislators are assured good positions as lobbyists or some other form of wingnut welfare if they willingly immolate themselves on the pyre of the Conservative Movement when their chance comes up.
That’s why Paul Ryan isn’t worried – either his constituents will vote him back in for another term or they won’t. If they don’t, he’ll be taken care of – he has ZERO concern about keeping his job and so he can sacrifice everything for The Party to move that football another 5 yards or so down the field.
If you gave Republicans everything they wanted what would happen is a dismantling of the social safety net – that’s the only guarantee I can give you. I can’t even be assured that Republican voters in gerrymandered would wise up and vote their asses out of office – there would still be a significant minority in the House that could do some damage procedurally while out of power, as well as the cadre in the Senate who would probably be enough to block a supermajority and monkeywrench things to their hearts’ content.
The important thing to keep in mind is that Republicans have committed themselves to the destruction of what we’ve done over the course of the last century. Being committed to destruction, they don’t HAVE to do anything productive, just kick things over whenever they get the opportunity. So far, they’ve done a bang-up job with it going back to Reagan. There’s no reason to think that anything will stop them – even electoral setbacks – until they’ve managed to drag the country back to the pre-New Deal days (or, god help us, the pre-Teddy Roosevelt days). There’s a possibility that they might self-destruct – but it would take a complete economic collapse that bankrupted the money-men like the Koch brothers (or had the masses dragging them out of their houses for “trials” before a 21st century Madame Defarge) to do it.
This is what comes of letting one party get completely taken over by the Birchers – the Bircher agenda has finally become the GOP’s ONLY agenda. And with the support network they have they can kamakazi as many legislators as it takes to get it done.
that ping-pong between the two corrupt legacy parties is going to go one for the next ten years or so. “you didn’t fix the problems? out you go”, pretty much every election year. isn’t that what went down in japan during their lost decade?
As long as neither party is willing to tackle the root of the problem, I suspect it will continue. The Dems continue to think that things can be patched over with technocratic tweaks. The Republicans are interested in Disaster Capitalism – they aren’t interested in fixing anything, just creating so many problems that the only solution is to dismantle the social safety net and the regulatory state (this conflicts with their goal of ending abortion, but that’s red meat to keep the proles in line, not a core Bircher value like reversing the New Deal).
I honestly am starting to feel pretty pessimistic about the next two decades or so – it really is beginning to feel like we’re trapped in a death-spiral that will only end when we really bottom out. I had some hope that the last economic shock would precipitate things, but the folks at the top were too sheltered from the repercussions of their bad decisions (“privatize the profits, socialize the costs” once again), so no.
I should add that this is WORSE in many ways than what Japan went through, because it seemed like the major parties in Japan were both interested in fixing things, they just couldn’t within the limits their elites set for them (as if the major parties in Japan were all the Democrats – thinking that this technocratic tweak or that one could be “the one” that fixed their system).
We actually have a hostile force that gets power every few years and is dedicated to kicking The System down completely. One side wants to fix it, one side actively wants to BREAK it, and we’re switching which side has control every few years. That’s a dangerous situation to be in, but I don’t see any way out of it short of the Republican Party actually destroying itself – and it seems like there’s nothing that they can actually do as a party to destroy themselves in the short term. People will still vote them into enough power to do damage, no matter how obvious it is that they’re bad for the country’s economy.
The balanced budget crap is just cover to give them fiscal “seriousness” while they continue their tax cut pandering.
Tax cuts are not integral to their real ideology; they are part of their election strategy to reach their long-held dream of a permanent Republican majority.