Quote:
Originally Posted by TheMercenary
Good post. Although your agnst for one party while ignoring what the other has done or not done over the last 15 or 20 years is a bit over the top.
We can fix a lot of these problems with a flat or fair tax. You could take 100% of the money from the top 1 or 2 percent and it would not finance us out of our problems for a month. Spending has to be cut, period. The deficit needs to be addressed for the long term but not the short term. First cut spending.
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There have been some Democrats who have contributed to many of the problems we face. I would never deny that. I don't think I'll ever forgive Bill Clinton for signing Graham-Leach-Bliley and destroying Glass-Steagall. But my recollection is that Republicans had a veto-proof majority in Congress, so his signature was moot anyway (though I'm happy to be corrected if that memory is incorrect).
However, what I contend is that it has consistently been Republican
policies that have historically done the most significant damage to our economy. We have suffered economically under Republican leadership to a far greater extent than under Democratic leadership in the last 50 years.
I don't think you'll find a Democrat who doesn't agree that spending needs to be cut. The Bush Administration and 6 years out of 8, of Republican majority in Congress, destroyed our economy by racking up spending on a gargantuan social program that
wasn't paid for in the budget and two wars that have lasted damn near a decade now, also
not paid for.
And although President Obama had to continue the Republican bailout programs, unfortunately to a greater degree, as more and more devastation to our economy was exposed, it was an absolute necessity to avoid a massive Depression. If John McCain had been elected, he would have been forced to do the exact same thing, and make no mistake, he absolutely would have.
But in spite of agreement that cuts need to be made, Republicans aren't acting in good faith or with any honesty on what needs to be cut and where those cuts will be most effective. They're cynically using the universally understood need for spending cuts to promote their
social agenda, and offering up cuts to programs that are not only seriously needed in this country (and ultimately
save our government money in the long run), but don't amount to a hill of beans on the side of Mount Everest when it comes to actually affecting the debt or deficit.
Cut oil subsidies. Cut farm subsidies for people who aren't even
farming! (Michele Bachmann, I'm looking at you!) Root out waste and fraud. Cut the Pentagon budget (which is the single biggest slice of the pie). Stop no-bid contracts that cost billions of dollars in wasteful spending. Then dig into the tax code. Eliminate tax loopholes that allow U.S. businesses to offshore their income and pay no federal taxes on it. Roll back the Bush/Republican tax cuts that were never paid for and were intentionally set to expire in 10 years in order to get away with not having to pay for them (thereby leaving the issue of "raising taxes" in the lap of Democrats - nice political maneuver there!) and then give tax incentives to
SMALL businesses to start hiring, thereby getting more people not only
off the unemployment rolls, but back
into the tax-paying pool, which will naturally raise revenues.
I want our government to get
SERIOUS about the debt and deficit and stop playing these fucking games of demonizing the poor and targeting programs that are perceived as anti-Republican. Stop "playing politics" with where those cuts need to come from and just do it!