WHY DON’T WE CALL THE LYING BASTARDS OUT?
I am tired of the political dissembling that is going on these days from the Republicans.
They are proposing more tax cuts as a solution for our economic problems, they want to increase defense spending, and they list the growing national debt as one of the nation’s biggest problems. Their approach is inherently inconsistent and therefore, bogus.
Here are the facts: the “golden years” or “good old days” that many people frequently refer to are the post-World War 2 1950s and 1960s. During the Eisenhower administration, the top marginal tax rates were in the 90% range. Despite those high rates, there were LOTS of very wealthy people, and the middle class was healthy and growing, perhaps due to the relatively large (compared to now) membership in labor unions, and the fact that most of what we bought during those years was made in the USA. One of the reasons the economy was doing relatively well during the good old days was that people with money had strong tax incentives to invest their money in new production capacity and employees, rather than today’s hedge funds and foreign investment.
Here is what has happened with previous tax cuts. In 1981, when Ronald Reagan took office, the total national debt was $994 Billion dollars, much of which was accumulated interest on the expenses of World War 2.
Then during the Reagan years, the marginal tax rates were dramatically reduced, and defense spending was increased.
When Ronald Reagan left office in 1989, the national debt had grown to $2.6 Trillion dollars, almost tripling the debt during his eight years in office. His successor, George H.W. Bush, who had famously, during the primary to the 1980 election, referred to Reagan’s proposed tax cuts as “voo-doo economics”, operating with Reagan’s cuts in place, saw the debt grow during his four years in office by $1.5 Trillion to $4.1 Trillion. So during the period from 1981 to 1993, Republicans more than quadrupled the national debt.
During Clinton’s eight years, primarily due to interest on the debt he inherited from George H.W. Bush, but, significantly, ALSO due to the low marginal tax rate he inherited from George H. W. Bush, the debt grew by only $1.6 trillion, to $5.7 Trillion. And he left office with the federal government having a budget surplus.
Now we get to George W. Bush, who started with a debt of $5.7 Trillion AND a balanced budget or even a surplus, but, having a Republican Congress, cut taxes again for the most wealthy of his friends, while increasing defense spending with two wars, and no-bid contracts to Vice-President Cheney’s former employer, Halliburton.
At the end of his eight years, the debt had almost doubled, to $10.6 Trillion.
Now we have Obama, whose administration has seen a perfect storm of low Bush era tax rates on those with the ability to pay, fewer working people to pay into the federal treasury, and many unemployed workers receiving unemployment compensation.
After starting with a debt of $10.6 Trillion, we have seen, over the last four years, an increase of $5.4 Trillion, to about $16 Trillion.
Much of this increase has nothing to do with “spending” as such, but instead is due to reduced revenues because of the big tax breaks for the rich, and lower employment. The other big factor in the deficits is the cost of actions required by the bad economy, including the $900 Billion stimulus package, and the costs of increased unemployment.
What candidate Romney is now proposing is too familiar. Cut taxes again and more defense spending. That is what Reagan did when he tripled the national debt. Does a $16 Trillion debt bother you? Try $50 Trillion. That is what Romney is proposing. He proposes an across the board 20% income tax cut, but we know that that necessarily means big cuts for the rich, since most of those taxes are already paid by the rich. He isn’t proposing a 20% cut in payroll taxes paid by ordinary working people, and in reality, such cuts would not be responsible, since those payments are necessarily tied to the viability of Social Security and Medicare. We need to remember where that money, the money that is spent to create the debt, goes. It goes into the pockets of the very wealthy individuals and corporations that, according to many accounting experts, currently have trillions of dollars on hold, waiting for even better tax rates.
At the same time, candidate Romney is also proposing to spend more on defense. Have we heard this song before? I think so. Every time it puts more money in the pockets of the rich and increases the deficit.
The big question is this: If we now have a $1.6 Trillion plus deficit, and Romney’s approach would cut taxes AND simultaneously increase defense spending, where would the money come from to reduce the deficit? It just doesn’t add up, and candidate Romney hasn’t given anything even resembling an explanation.
The truth is this: For the last 30 to 50 years, American politicians have increasingly defined economic success as increases in the profits of corporations, rather than growth of a healthy middle class.
But because it is middle class spending, and not investment by the wealthiest in hedge funds, that drives the American economy, the diversion of revenues from middle class working Americans to corporate shareholders neither creates jobs nor increases corporate profits.
The bottom line is that the Obama plan, clearly expressed at the beginning of his first term, is still the correct approach. What are the key elements?
1. Develop clean American sources of energy from wind and solar, and improve other energy technologies to eliminate the export of a billion dollars a day for foreign oil.
2. Rebuild our American education system to insure our continued ability to dominate future innovation.
3. Clean up our air and water emissions to reduce the impacts of climate change on us and our allies.
Each of the elements of the Obama plan have been successful during the first four years and have created jobs in the private sector, even while the numbers employed In the public sector has decreased. They would have been a lot more successful, IF the Republicans had not, as columnist E. J. Dionne accurately observed, “been more interested in seeing Obama fail than in seeing America succeed.” The steadfast refusal of Republicans to implement some middle-of-the-road version of the American Jobs Act proposed by Obama shows the lack of ANY real concern about jobs from the Republicans.
I just learned of the true depth of the Republican depravity as it relates to their hatred of America. It seems that on the same day President Obama was inaugurated, a group of key Republican leaders, including former Representative Newt Gingrich, met to plan the downfall of the United States of America. Here is a link to my page that outlines the extent of this treason.
http://www.michaelchenoweth.com/wethepeople/plotagainstamerica.html
Republicans are quick to point to the failed federal loan to Solyndra as a sign of Obama administration corruption. The truth, though, is that of $90 Billion in federal funding for 120 different clean energy projects, the vast majority, about 98%, of those projects are ongoing and moving forward, creating new jobs, producing clean energy and reducing our dependence on foreign oil by increasing our energy efficiency. Here is an article discussing this further: http://www.huffingtonpost.com/heather-taylormiesle/romney-gets-the-energy-fa_b_1938674.html
The other big distortion I am seeing from the Republicans are statements comparing today’s unemployment rate and gasoline costs against the rates and costs on the day when Obama took office in 2009. Inauguration date is not the valid date for comparison, and the premise of the argument is false.
When Obama took office, Bush had lost 5 billion jobs in the previous year and job losses were at 800,000 per month. Specifically, when Obama took office, the job losses, which were 818,000 in January 2009, and were the legacy of previous bad policies, continued to plummet.
But, with the election of Obama, the rate of job loss began a sharp decline, probably, at least in part, due to an increase in consumer confidence. The job losses reached zero in March of 2010. Since that time, which is less than three years ago, there has been a general growth in jobs in the US.
This job growth rate was highest in January of 2012, when it hit 275,000. It has averaged about 150,000 jobs per month since the beginning of 2012. Since January of 2010, about 3.8 million jobs have been added, not enough, for sure, to eliminate the huge job losses created by the Bush era economic collapse, but certainly movement in the right direction.
The other false comparison being made by Republicans is the price of gasoline.
That price is a reflection of the health of the economy and competition of various users for the available supply of crude oil and refined products, and manipulation of the oil futures market. The price of gas hit its peak in the summer of 2008, when crude oil prices went to almost $150 per barrel, and gas prices climbed to over $4 a gallon for unleaded regular grade.
As the economy crashed, demand crashed with it, and oil companies reduced their gasoline prices accordingly.
When Obama took office, the economy was so bad that gas prices were below $2.00 a gallon. No one likes to pay a lot for gasoline, but the Republican suggestion that the low gas prices, when Obama took office, was a good thing, is a lie. Those low prices were a reflection of a terrible economy in the middle of a financial disaster. In less than six months, the price of crude oil had slipped by $100 a barrel to only $40 a barrel in January 2009. The increases in gas prices since then are a sign that the economy is improving, not an indictment of the Obama policies.
The many criticisms of Obama’s alleged failures have to be read in the context of a unified Republican decision to oppose any Obama programs. Obama has accomplished a lot in his first four years, most of which happened in the first two, when Democrats had majorities in Congress. The big ones are quickly and easily dismissed by the Republicans, but will make significant improvements in life for most Americans.
They include: the Lilly Ledbetter Fair Pay Act of 2009 to insure equal pay for equal work without sexual discrimination; the expansion of the State Children’s Health Insurance Program will provide $35 Billion over the following five years, to insure that children have access to health insurance; the Hate Crimes Prevention Act, to enable prosecution of persons committing hate crimes; the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act of 2009, which saved many American jobs and turned the economy around; the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act is a first step toward reforming the American medical care system, which already has seen over a billion dollars in premiums refunded by insurance companies; the Dodd-Frank Wall Street Reform and Consumer Protection Act, to provide better regulation of the financial sector; the American Clean Energy and Energy Security Act of 2009, which is providing incentives for development of clean power, including a doubling of the amount of installed wind-energy capacity.
Additionally, Obama established the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau, repealed “don’t ask, don’t tell” so that all patriotic Americans could serve their country in the military, regardless of their sexual orientation, acted decisively to save the American auto industry, and has established a way for aliens brought to the US as children to participate in our society while the government figures out a way to enact comprehensive immigration reform. This is only a partial list and it reflects only my own opinions.
For someone else’s opinion see: http://www.theatlantic.com/politics/archive/2011/08/obama-as-chess-master-think-of-him-as-bobby-fischer/243139/#.Tj1ecfhvUwA.twitter
|