Republican agenda for the House in 2011

[Thunder]

I heard the GOP agenda will be to prevent all Democratic and Obama legislation from passing.

If they do this, for two years straight, the American people will know it.

And Obama will win again in 2012.

 

[Juniversal]

The Repubs only saving grace this year is that they aren't the Democrats. Voters certainly aren't running back to them because of anything positive they've done.

 

[Nosi]

"We're not going to do anything, you filthy statist! If you get the government out of all of these issues and let the almighty Invisible Hand of the blessed Free Market do it's holy magic, all those latter-day Horatio Algers out in the heartland who can pull themselves up by their bootstraps will be billionaires by January of 2012!"
"The rest? They're all lazy, non-Caucasian, welfare queens looking for a handout! The Invisible Hand and his prophets of profit, Holy Mother Ayn and Saint Milton of Friedman, commands that they starve!"

Considering the nuttiness of the extreme tea baggers, this isn't even funny. We may just see some of this.

 

[Bob Blaylock]

Bull flops.

Democrats already offered one good plan to reduce trhe [sic] deficit…

You mean like this…?



There is not, and never will be enough additional revenue to be gained from increasing taxes to even begin to pay foe the obscene spending orgy that Obama and his cohorts have been on for the last couple of years; even if you make the absurd assumption that taxes can be raised any more at this point without further collapsing the economy more than enough to offset any expected gain in revenue.

From where we are now, the only way to reduce the deficit, and improve the economy, is through massive, massive cuts to the size and expense and intrusiveness of government.

 

[Ziggurat]

Democrats already offered one good plan to reduce trhe deficit

So did Bush. Yet somehow, they both managed to increase it. Go figure.

and cut unemployment.

Indeed. Why, their plan was going to limit unemployment to just 8%! It was a wonderful plan...
http://michaelscomments.files.wordpress.com/2010/07/stimulus-vs-unemployment-june2010-dots.gif
... oh.

 

[Sceptic-PK]

You mean like this…?

View attachment 19967

There is not, and never will be enough additional revenue to be gained from increasing taxes to even begin to pay foe the obscene spending orgy that Obama and his cohorts have been on for the last couple of years;

Yeah, Bush's tax cuts have absolutely no contribution to your pretty graph at all! Neither do his wars, or the prescription drugs subsidy bill.

 

[leftysergeant]

You mean like this…?

View attachment 19967

There is not, and never will be enough additional revenue to be gained from increasing taxes to even begin to pay foe the obscene spending orgy that Obama and his cohorts have been on for the last couple of years; even if you make the absurd assumption that taxes can be raised any more at this point without further collapsing the economy more than enough to offset any expected gain in revenue.

Giving more to the useless idiots who tanked the ecconomy is just going to make it worse, because they need us reduced to Third World status to ensure their continued success in being simulltaneaously rich and useless.

From where we are now, the only way to reduce the deficit, and improve the economy, is through massive, massive cuts to the size and expense and intrusiveness of government.

That's what got us here in the first place. Dumb idea. FDR proved that. The New Deal worked, despite the halucinations that the rightwhackadoodles have been feeding us for the last seventy-odd years.

Did you notice how quickly the country started falling apart after some idiot out of California started undoing the New Deal?

Even scaling back the government is not going to help if the useless class are not made to start paying their fair share again, even if it seems like rape to them to have to give up an occassional new BMW. Screw the whiney babies.

 

[Ziggurat]

Yeah, Bush's tax cuts have absolutely no contribution to your pretty graph at all! Neither do his wars, or the prescription drugs subsidy bill.

Your second graph is useless, since it covers neither the current nor the future deficit. Only the first graph is relevant, but you're... overstating its significance.

First off, calculating the effects of tax cuts on revenues is a dicey proposition. What's typically done is to simply look at existing or projected economic activity and calculate how much revenue would have changed if that same activity were taxed at a different rate. But that's not what happens in real life: when you change taxes, economic activity changes in response to that. And because increasing taxes discourages economic activity which gets taxed, the revenue change from tax rate changes is generally smaller than that, but by a factor which we can't determine unambiguously.

More importantly, Obama and the Democrats have been in charge for 2 years now. While you can attribute whichever of those factors you want to as having started under Bush, they were continued by Obama and the Democratic congress. Those tax cuts? They could have been repealed. They weren't. They're set to expire, but the Democrats want to extend most of them. Iraq and Afghanistan? Well, Bush was already drawing down in Iraq, Obama is just continuing that, but he's doubled down on Afghanistan. That was a central part of his campaign, in fact. He ran for office on that platform. He owns that war now.

Two years into Obama's presidency, with significant majorities in both houses, and you STILL want to blame Bush for everything. How long until Democrats actually become responsible for what's going on during their watch? It's not like they didn't have the votes, OR the time, to actually do something about the tax cuts and spending.

And lastly, of course, if the projection is taken out even further, increasing Medicare and Medicaid costs will creep up into it. Those entitlement explosions aren't going to go away on their own. Who's going to do anything about that? Do the democrats have a plan? If they do, they sure don't talk about it much.

 

[Sceptic-PK]

Your second graph is useless, since it covers neither the current nor the future deficit. Only the first graph is relevant, but you're... overstating its significance.

First off, calculating the effects of tax cuts on revenues is a dicey proposition. What's typically done is to simply look at existing or projected economic activity and calculate how much revenue would have changed if that same activity were taxed at a different rate. But that's not what happens in real life: when you change taxes, economic activity changes in response to that. And because increasing taxes discourages economic activity which gets taxed, the revenue change from tax rate changes is generally smaller than that, but by a factor which we can't determine unambiguously.

More importantly, Obama and the Democrats have been in charge for 2 years now. While you can attribute whichever of those factors you want to as having started under Bush, they were continued by Obama and the Democratic congress. Those tax cuts? They could have been repealed. They weren't. They're set to expire, but the Democrats want to extend most of them. Iraq and Afghanistan? Well, Bush was already drawing down in Iraq, Obama is just continuing that, but he's doubled down on Afghanistan. That was a central part of his campaign, in fact. He ran for office on that platform. He owns that war now.

Two years into Obama's presidency, with significant majorities in both houses, and you STILL want to blame Bush for everything. How long until Democrats actually become responsible for what's going on during their watch? It's not like they didn't have the votes, OR the time, to actually do something about the tax cuts and spending.

And lastly, of course, if the projection is taken out even further, increasing Medicare and Medicaid costs will creep up into it. Those entitlement explosions aren't going to go away on their own. Who's going to do anything about that? Do the democrats have a plan? If they do, they sure don't talk about it much.

I was merely disputing the fact that Bob's pretty little graph was indicative (solely) of Obama's "obscene spending orgy". In my opinion the debt and yearly deficits are owned by many elected officials, and cannot be blamed on any single person or party, which is what Bob was attempting to do.

 

[leftysergeant]

And lastly, of course, if the projection is taken out even further, increasing Medicare and Medicaid costs will creep up into it. Those entitlement explosions aren't going to go away on their own. Who's going to do anything about that? Do the democrats have a plan? If they do, they sure don't talk about it much.

Social Security is the easiest thing to fix. Just remove the cap on taxable wages. Problem solved.

(Might also be a good idea to run a few yards of duck tape around the mouths of the idiots who think that privatizing it on the Chilean model is a good idea.)

 

[Bob Blaylock]

Giving more to the useless idiots who tanked the ecconomy is just going to make it worse, because they need us reduced to Third World status to ensure their continued success in being simulltaneaously rich and useless.

I agree, completely.

Fortunately, this election, we just threw a bunch of these useless idiots out of office, and greatly reduced the power of those who remain.

 

[thaiboxerken]

The GOP has no plan except to get Obama out of office. They will sacrifice the entire country to do this.

 

[Undesired Walrus]

Your second graph is useless, since it covers neither the current nor the future deficit. Only the first graph is relevant, but you're... overstating its significance.

First off, calculating the effects of tax cuts on revenues is a dicey proposition. What's typically done is to simply look at existing or projected economic activity and calculate how much revenue would have changed if that same activity were taxed at a different rate. But that's not what happens in real life: when you change taxes, economic activity changes in response to that. And because increasing taxes discourages economic activity which gets taxed, the revenue change from tax rate changes is generally smaller than that, but by a factor which we can't determine unambiguously.

More importantly, Obama and the Democrats have been in charge for 2 years now. While you can attribute whichever of those factors you want to as having started under Bush, they were continued by Obama and the Democratic congress. Those tax cuts? They could have been repealed. They weren't. They're set to expire, but the Democrats want to extend most of them. Iraq and Afghanistan? Well, Bush was already drawing down in Iraq, Obama is just continuing that, but he's doubled down on Afghanistan. That was a central part of his campaign, in fact. He ran for office on that platform. He owns that war now.

Two years into Obama's presidency, with significant majorities in both houses, and you STILL want to blame Bush for everything. How long until Democrats actually become responsible for what's going on during their watch? It's not like they didn't have the votes, OR the time, to actually do something about the tax cuts and spending.

And lastly, of course, if the projection is taken out even further, increasing Medicare and Medicaid costs will creep up into it. Those entitlement explosions aren't going to go away on their own. Who's going to do anything about that? Do the democrats have a plan? If they do, they sure don't talk about it much.

This seems like an argument for arguments sake. You don't even know if the bloke you are responding to votes Democrat.

 

[Ziggurat]

This seems like an argument for arguments sake. You don't even know if the bloke you are responding to votes Democrat.

No I don't. But the argument I put forward is still rather directly relevant to the thread topic.

 

[Undesired Walrus]

You don't have to be consistently frustrated with what you deem to be the stupidity of others you know. I don't think I've ever seen you respectfully disagree, only ever seeing your posts littered with exasperated italics.

 

[EatatJoes]

Social Security is the easiest thing to fix. Just remove the cap on taxable wages. Problem solved.

(Might also be a good idea to run a few yards of duck tape around the mouths of the idiots who think that privatizing it on the Chilean model is a good idea.)

Wanna provide some evidence for your first claim?

 

[Sam.I.Am]

A government in gridlock is almost always a good thing. If Bush had an opposing congress in 2002 we probably wouldn't be in this mess or at least not as badly. Almost anytime the people holding the purse strings and the people spending the money are the same people (ideologically) the odds of out of control spending and things like that happening go way up. Clintons best years were when he had to deal with a congress who wouldn't rubber stamp everything he wanted (and vice versa). Even Bush fared better once the congress reigned him in after 2006.

So hopefully the agenda will be gridlock.

I don't see any viable candidates for president coming from the Republicans anytime soon so hopefully it'll be the other 1/2 of congress for them and the executive for the Democrats in 2012. If for some reason a surprise presidential winner from the Republicans magically appears then I'd hope (and vote) for an opposing Democrat congress for him/her as well. I'm not partisan like that, I think they all need to be kept in check and the best way to do that seems to be to make them work together and compromise.

 

[Ivor the Engineer]

Given that the GOP seem to want to drastically cut the size of government, why do they not support significant cuts in spending on 'defence'?

 

[Sam.I.Am]

Defence is one of the few things that the government is supposed to fund. A lot of the other stuff is questionable depending upon your point of view but defence is clearly spelled out in the constitution as something that the government must do. Think of it as an insurance policy, it's high on the list of bills that get paid first. We've let that insurance lapse in the past and ended up paying dearly for it both in people and treasure later on.

 

[Bob Klase]

Did you notice how quickly the country started falling apart after some idiot out of California started undoing the New Deal?

I remember. Things were going so well under Carter.