Tag Archives: debt

The ethos of Mitt Romney: “make-nothing, take-everything, screw-everyone”

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“…Instead of cars and airplanes, we built swaps, CDOs and other toxic financial products. Instead of building new companies from the ground up, we took out massive bank loans and used them to acquire existing firms, liquidating every asset in sight and leaving the target companies holding the note. The new borrow-and-conquer economy was morally sanctified by an almost religious faith in the grossly euphemistic concept of “creative destruction,” and amounted to a total abdication of collective responsibility by America’s rich, whose new thing was making assloads of money in ever-shorter campaigns of economic conquest, sending the proceeds offshore, and shrugging as the great towns and factories their parents and grandparents built were shuttered and boarded up, crushed by a true prairie fire of debt.

“Mitt Romney – a man whose own father built cars and nurtured communities, and was one of the old-school industrial anachronisms pushed aside by the new generation’s wealth grab – has emerged now to sell this make-nothing, take-everything, screw-everyone ethos to the world. He’s Gordon Gekko, but a new and improved version, with better PR – and a bigger goal. A takeover artist all his life, Romney is now trying to take over America itself. And if his own history is any guide, we’ll all end up paying for the acquisition.”

— Greed and Debt: The True Story of Mitt Romney and Bain Capital | Matt Taibbi | Rolling Stone

A summary of Paul Ryan: breathtakingly dishonest, post-truth politics, blatant lies

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All of which, unfortunately, makes Paul Ryan the perfect running mate for Mitt Romney.

Think Progress: Here are the most glaring lies from his speech:

1. “A downgraded America.” Ryan blamed the president for the nation’s credit downgrade in August 2011 after Republicans threatened to allow the government to default on its debt for the first time in history. But the ratings agency explicitly blamed “Republicans saying that they refuse to accept any tax increases as part of a larger deal.”

2. “More debt than any other president before him, and more than all the troubled governments of Europe combined.” Romney has made the almost identical claim, that Obama has amassed more debt “as almost all of the other presidents combined.” But their math doesn’t add up: when Obama took office, the national debt was $10.626 trillion. It has increased to slightly above $15 trillion.

3. Shuttered General Motors plant is “one more broken promise.” Ryan described a GM plant that closed down in his hometown, Janesville, Wisconsin, and blamed Obama for breaking his promise to keep the plant open when he visited during his campaign. But Obama never made that promise, and the plant shut down in December 2008, before Obama even took office.

4. Obama “did exactly nothing” on Bowles-Simpson. Ryan said, “He created a bipartisan debt commission. They came back with an urgent report. He thanked them, sent them on their way, and then did exactly nothing.” In fact, Ryan was instrumental in sabotaging the commission, leading the other House Republicans in voting against the plan.

5. “$716 billion, funneled out of Medicare by President Obama.” Ryan’s favorite lie is a deliberate distortion of Obamacare’s savings from eliminating inefficiencies. Furthermore, Ryan’s own plan for Medicare includes these savings. Romney has vowed to restore these cuts, which would render the trust fund insolvent 8 years ahead of schedule.

6. “The greatest of all responsibilities is that of the strong to protect the weak.” Ryan closed the speech with an invocation of social responsibility, saying, “The truest measure of any society is how it treats those who cannot defend or care for themselves.” However, numerous clergy members have condemned Ryan’s budget plan as “cruel,” and “an immoral disaster” because of its devastating cuts in social programs the poor and sick rely on. Meanwhile, Ryan would give ultra-rich individuals and corporations $3 trillion in tax breaks.

Eric Cantor explains Paul Ryan’s position on Medicare cuts: Attacking Obama’s health care reform law, Ryan said its “biggest, coldest power play of all” targeted seniors for $716 billion in cuts. But Ryan’s own budget counted on those same savings, which in fact would be squeezed from reimbursement payments to hospitals and insurers. Asked about the inconsistency of Ryan attacking cuts his own plan embraced, Cantor begged off. “The assumption was that, um, the, the, ah, again — I probably can’t speak to that in an exact way so I better just not,” he said.

Rudy Giuliani defends Paul Ryan’s lies: “Well, look, when people give speeches, not every fact is always absolutely accurate.”

Kevin Drum says even Ryan himself, when he was asked about [Medicare cuts], was forced to retreat into some word salad about baselines and the sun being in his eyes and it all being the fault of that tricksy Obama. There’s just no good answer here.

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Unrelated to his speech of lies, but still…is there anything Paul Ryan won’t lie about? Pathological? –

Paul Ryan admits his marathon time claim was untrue: “The race was more than 20 years ago, but my brother Tobin—who ran Boston last year—reminds me that he is the owner of the fastest marathon in the family and has never himself ran a sub-three,” Ryan said in a prepared statement. “If I were to do any rounding, it would certainly be to four hours, not three. He gave me a good ribbing over this at dinner tonight.” The admission comes after wide speculation that Ryan had exaggerated his marathon time. Running a sub-3 hour marathon means averaging under 7 minutes per mile for the entire race, a possible but extremely impressive feat. As the New Yorker’s Nicholas Thompson put it, “It’s the difference between racing and running.”

Paul Krugman says it comes down to credibility (or lack thereof): I know, the [marathon thing] sounds trivial. But I remember the 2000 campaign, when Al Gore was constantly hounded by claims of fibbing on trivial issues — claims that, by the way, were all, as far as I could tell, fabricated. These alleged fibs supposedly showed some deep defect in his character. So if Ryan is making false claims about his physical prowess, this is absolutely fair game.

The strategy behind all the lies:

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“Mitt Romney is one of the greatest and most irresponsible debt creators of all time.”

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“…This is the plain, stark reality that has somehow eluded America’s top political journalists for two consecutive presidential campaigns: Mitt Romney is one of the greatest and most irresponsible debt creators of all time. In the past few decades, in fact, Romney has piled more debt onto more unsuspecting companies, written more gigantic checks that other people have to cover, than perhaps all but a handful of people on planet Earth.

“By making debt the centerpiece of his campaign, Romney was making a calculated bluff of historic dimensions – placing a massive all-in bet on the rank incompetence of the American press corps. The result has been a brilliant comedy: A man makes a $250 million fortune loading up companies with debt and then extracting million-dollar fees from those same companies, in exchange for the generous service of telling them who needs to be fired in order to finance the debt payments he saddled them with in the first place. That same man then runs for president riding an image of children roasting on flames of debt, choosing as his running mate perhaps the only politician in America more pompous and self-righteous on the subject of the evils of borrowed money than the candidate himself. If Romney pulls off this whopper, you’ll have to tip your hat to him: No one in history has ever successfully run for president riding this big of a lie…”

— Greed and Debt: The True Story of Mitt Romney and Bain Capital | Matt Taibbi | Rolling Stone

(Emphasis above, mine.)

Morning Bunker Report: Wednesday 6.13.2012

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WHAT ROMNEY / REPUBLICANS STAND FOR———————————————

“Governor Romney is a tremendous improvement. I think we could have been even more of an improvement, but that’s, you know, that’s, that, that, that, that issue was passed. Uh, Governor Romney is an important and dramatic improvement, and that’s why we’re behind him.” – Rick Santorum’s fiery, pulse-pounding, and inspirational endorsement of Mitt Romney


via: ablogtorememeber

Fox “News” disappears Romney’s attack on Teacher, Firefighter, and Police Hiring – Fox & Friends is shielding Mitt Romney from scrutiny after the GOP presidential candidate suggested that we don’t need “more firemen, more policemen, more teachers,” selectively editing an interview with Obama campaign advisor David Axelrod to excise out his criticism of what Romney said. In doing so, Fox avoided a discussion of the merits of Romney’s comments: that we should not address or rectify the severe and unusual loss of public sector jobs or a conversation about how public sector job losses are hurting the overall economy. – MMFA

It’s absurd that Romney doesn’t know the federal government DOES, in fact, pay for teachers, firefighters and cops — “That’s a very strange accusation,” Romney said on “Fox & Friends.” “Of course, teachers and firemen and policemen are hired at the local level and also by states. The federal government doesn’t pay for teachers, firefighters or policemen. So obviously that is completely absurd.” In fact, the federal government spends huge amounts of money to support all those professions. [...] In all, the federal government pays for nearly 11 percent of the country’s public school costs. Uncle Sam also funds thousands of police jobs ever since the Community Oriented Policing Services program was created in 1994. [...] The feds have doled out less for firefighters, but the money is still substantial. – HuffPo

  • NOTE TO ROMNEY: the federal government does fund teachers, firefighters and police – Romney’s comment demonstrates a disturbing lack of understanding of both federal funding and his own published plans. While it is true that teachers, firefighters, and police are hired at the local level, a significant portion of their funding, recruiting, and training comes from the federal government. Here are just some of the ways the federal government funds: continue reading  – Think Progress
  • Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell (Ky.) was happy to back up Romney’s position: “It is not the responsibility of the federal government … to send money down to state government so that state governments don’t have to make tough decisions about balancing their budgets. We all admire police officers, firefighters and teachers. The decision about how many of those folks to have rests in the hands of state and local governments.” […]  A McConnell spokesman did not immediately answer a question about whether the minority leader thought it was time to stop federal spending under Title 1, IDEA, COPS and the SAFER program. – HuffPo
  • Flip-flop alert! Romney doesn’t want to argue against hiring cops. Now what? — You can see Romney trying various gambits to escape the logic of his position. First he says the federal government “doesn’t” pay for the cost of hiring those workers. That’s generally true, though in a massive economic crisis, state and local governments see their revenues collapse and their costs rise. Since they have to balance their budget and the federal government doesn’t, giving them temporary aid makes sense so that state and local government cutbacks don’t worsen the economic crisis. Romney wants to essentially push the question out of bounds — borrowing money to hire back cops and teachers may sound nice, but the government can’t do it, so fuggedaboutit. But, of course, the federal government obviously can borrow money to help strapped state and local governments. – Jonathan Chait


via: reagan-was-a-horrible-president

Romney Mocks Stimulus For Saving Jobs – When Mitt Romney mocks the Obama Administration for using stimulus funds to “protect government,” who he’s really attacking is police, firefighters, and teachers. The overwhelming majority of stimulus funds distributed to the states were used to prevent layoffs of public employees. Over 3 million public employees were in danger of losing their jobs following the onset of the recession, but the stimulus afforded states the funds they needed to avoid handing out massive amounts of pink slips. Pink slips that would have gone to police, firefighters, and teachers. As far as Romney is concerned, if you are a public employee then you are a leech, and he thinks you should be out of a job. Ensuring that you lose your job as an employee of the state is now a centerpiece of his campaign. As far as he’s concerned, the money used to employ you would be put to better use by passing another tax cut for himself. That’s not conjecture or hyperbole. That is his platform. – JM Ashby

  • Romney bashes stimulus, then fundraises in the home of a stimulus recipient – Romney will spend Tuesday night at a $10,000-a-head fundraiser at the house of Orrin H Ingram II, Chairman of the Ingram Barge Company — which received $130,000 in federal stimulus money. Ingram Barge Company is a private company, not a government entity. – Think Progress

Romney confirms he’ll deny insurance to millions with pre-existing conditions if Obamacare is struck down — Mitt Romney confirmed on Tuesday that he would allow insurers to deny coverage to millions of Americans with pre-existing conditions if the Supreme Court strikes down Obamacare later this month. ROMNEY: So let’s say someone has been continuously insured and they develop a serious condition. And let’s say they lose their jobs or they change jobs or they move and go to a different place, I don’t want them to be denied insurance because they have some pre-existing conditions. So we’re going to have to make sure that the law that we replace Obamacare with ensures that people who have a pre-existing condition, who have been insured in the past, are able to get insurance in the future so they don’t have to worry about that condition keeping them from getting the kind of health care they deserve. – Think Progress

WHAT THE PRESIDENT / DEMOCRATS STAND FOR ————————————

“Everybody knows that government creates jobs.” — Sen. Sherrod Brown (D-OH), citing infrastructure programs and the hiring of private contractors.

President Obama: Debt, deficits were ‘baked into the cake’ with Bush’s tax cuts and the wars – “I love it when these guys talk about debt and deficits,” Obama told supporters in Baltimore. “I inherited a trillion dollar deficit. We signed two trillion dollars in spending cuts into law,” Obama said. “Spending under my administration has grown more slowly than under any president in 60 years.” Obama said that the country’s budget deficits and big debt were the result of the George W. Bush’s two tax cuts, as well as the Iraq and Afghanistan wars. “They baked all this stuff into the cake with those tax cuts… and the war,” Obama said. “It’s like somebody goes to a restaurant, orders a big steak dinner, a martini and all that stuff, then just as you’re sitting down they leave and accuse you of running up the tab,” Obama said  – POLITICO

  • George W. Bush’s Tab – When you check reality, rather than the alternate universe constantly created by Fox News and an amnesiac press, you find that Bush had a chance to pay off all our national debt before we hit the financial crisis – giving the US enormous flexibility in intervening to ameliorate the recession. Instead, we had to find money for a stimulus in a cupboard stripped bare – its contents largely given away, by an act of choice. I’m tired of being told we cannot blame Bush for our current predicament. We can and should blame him for most of it – and remind people that Romney’s policies: more tax cuts, more defense spending are identical. With one difference: Bush pledged never “to balance the budget on the backs of the poor.” — Andrew Sullivan
  • The Fiscal Legacy of George W. Bush  – Putting all the numbers in the C.B.O. report together, we see that continuation of tax and budget policies and economic conditions in place at the end of the Clinton administration would have led to a cumulative budget surplus of $5.6 trillion through 2011 – enough to pay off the $5.6 trillion national debt at the end of 2000. Tax cuts and slower-than-expected growth reduced revenues by $6.1 trillion and spending was $5.6 trillion higher, a turnaround of $11.7 trillion. Of this total, the C.B.O. attributes 72 percent to legislated tax cuts and spending increases, 27 percent to economic and technical factors. Of the latter, 56 percent occurred from 2009 to 2011. — Bruce Bartlett

Claims that President Obama’s policies have hurt businesses are greatly exaggerated — “Let’s start with the idea that the Obama administration sees businesses as piggybanks. Since 1950, corporate tax receipts have averaged 2.7 percent of GDP. In the Obama years, they’ve averaged 1.16 percent of GDP… Going forward, the Obama administration’s budget envisions corporate tax receipts rebounding to about 2.4 percent of GDP — again, beneath their historical average… After taxes, corporate profits amounted to 6.9 percent of GDP in 2010 — their highest level since 1966… That’s a mighty odd outcome for an administration that supposedly sees the existence of private businesses as an unpleasant side effect of the government’s need for tax revenues, don’t you think?” — Ezra Klein

How Obama’s ‘Doing Fine’ Gaffe May Help Him – Americans may hate the idea of government in the abstract, but they like it in the specific. The Republican strategy is always to keep its discussion of government programs general — with a handful of exceptions, like foreign aid and programs that help the poor — while Democrats try to make it as specific as possible. Firing police officers, firefighters, and teachers is way less popular than firing government bureaucrats. Obama has taken great care to turn the question into one of those specific job categories, and Romney has inadvertently helped him. Also, and perhaps more important, the entire controversy has fixed the attention of the news media on the very point that Obama was trying to make: There are many fewer government employees now than there were when Obama took office. Romney is trying to attack Obama for changing his mind on the merits of this fact, but in so doing he is helping to drive home the very existence of this fact. [...] What’s more, this debate fulfills a second goal of Obama’s: to place himself in opposition to the economic status quo. The broader purpose of his Friday press conference was to remind America that he has an economic plan that Republicans won’t enact. Romney’s general strategy is to force Obama to own everything that has happened to the economy, even those things that have happened over his opposition. Now Romney is endorsing the status quo, and Obama is against it. That is surely the opposite of what Romney wants. — Jonathan Chait

Morning Bunker Report: Monday 5.21.2012

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WHAT THE REPUBLICAN PARTY STANDS FOR TODAY—————————–—

Presumptive Republican presidential nominee Mitt Romney’s budget would add $10.7 trillion to the debt and reduce federal revenues to just 15 percent of GDP, exploding the “prairie fire of debt” Romney warned the nation about in a speech last week in Iowa. …House Budget Committee Chairman Paul Ryan (R-WI), in an appearance on Fox News this morning, made the laughable claim that a budget that explodes the debt will simultaneously prevent a debt crisis: RYAN: More to the point, though, the kind of budget Mitt Romney is talking about is one that prevents a debt crisis. — ThinkProgress

Jim Cramer: Romney is ‘a job destroyer, not a creator’ — Appearing on Meet The Press in the roundtable segment, the Mad Money host differed with David Gregory’s** perspective that Romney had a “real area of strength” over President Barack Obama on the economy. Gregory based his view on a recent ad from the Romney campaign that mentioned how the former Massachusetts governor would approve of the controversial Keystone pipeline if he was president. “Romney is known as a job destroyer, not a creator,” Cramer said. “I just don’t think that this will stick, I think Bain sticks. I think the idea that you bring in Bain, which is what happened, in the 80′s. They fire people and that’s how they get prosperity for the rich.” – Raw Story || ** NOTE on David Gregory’s ‘perspective’: This month, Gregory headlined as a keynote speaker for a major Republican advocacy group. Your liberal media.

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Rep. Paul Ryan (R-WI) claims his budget ‘pre-empts austerity’ –  Paul says that his plan to slash government spending on programs for the poor while increasing defense spending and giving tax cuts to the wealthy would actually “prevent austerity.” […] “What we’re saying is let’s get on growth and prevent austerity,” he continued. “The whole premise of our budget is to preempt austerity by getting our borrowing under control, having tax reform for economic growth and preventing Medicare, Social Security and Medicaid from going bankrupt. That preempts austerity.” […] The budget plan Ryan unveiled earlier this year aimed to cut spending by privatizing parts of Medicare, slashing Medicaid programs for the poor by $810 billion, spending 38 percent less on transportation and 33 percent less on education than the Obama administration has proposed. — Raw Story

RNC chair blames Obama for Rev. Wright attack ad story  – [RNC Chairman Reince Priebus] on Sunday said it was the fault of President Barack Obama and the Democrats for reports that a super PAC supporting presumptive presidential nominee Mitt Romney was considering attack ads featuring Obama’s former pastor Rev. Jeremiah Wright. “I know how it works,” Priebus insisted to CNN’s Candy Crowley. “It’s the Democrats and Barack Obama that want the story out there… — Raw Story

WTF, Cory Booker? Newark Mayor Cory Booker Defends Bain Capital, Attacks Obama Campaign – On Meet the Press, Booker called criticizing Romney’s time at Bain “ridiculous” and “nauseating.” [...] By [Sunday] afternoon, Booker had started to walk back his criticisms of Obama and his campaign. – ThinkProgress

GOP House = 218 frogs in a wheelbarrow: “I’ve never been shy about leading. But you know, leaders need followers. And we’ve got 89 brand new members. We’ve got a pretty disparate caucus. It is hard to keep 218 frogs in a wheelbarrow long enough to get a bill passed.” – – House Speaker John Boehner (R-OH), in an interview on This Week. – Political Wire

WHAT THE PRESIDENT / DEMOCRATS STAND FOR ————————————

Private Jobs Increase More With Democrats in White House — The BGOV Barometer shows that since Democrat John F. Kennedy took office in January 1961, non-government payrolls in the U.S. swelled by almost 42 million jobs under Democrats, compared with 24 million for Republican presidents, according to Labor Department figures. Democrats hold the edge though they occupied the Oval Office for 23 years since Kennedy’s inauguration, compared with 28 for the Republicans. Through April 2012, Democratic presidents accounted for an average of 150,000 additional private-sector paychecks per month over that period, more than double the 71,000 average for Republicans.  –  Bloomberg

RESHORING: Factories begin to shift back to US — Two-thirds of big US manufacturers have moved factories in the past two years, with the most popular destination being the US, according to a survey being released on Monday by Accenture, the consultants. The report provides some of the first industry-wide empirical evidence of “reshoring,” the trend of jobs once outsourced to low-cost emerging economies being brought back to the US. President Barack Obama has proposed tax incentives for companies that move their overseas operations back to the US and tax penalties for those that do not. “If you’re a business that wants to outsource jobs, you shouldn’t get a tax deduction for doing it,” Mr Obama said in this year’s State of the Union address. “No American company should be able to avoid paying its fair share of taxes by moving jobs and profits overseas.” Some 65 per cent of the senior executives questioned by Accenture said they had moved their manufacturing operations in the past 24 months, with two-fifths saying the facilities had been relocated to the US. China was the second destination for relocated factories, with 28 per cent, followed by Mexico with 21 per cent. […] The survey also reveals that US manufacturers expect China to overtake Europe as their second biggest market within three years. – FT.com || (original link is subscription only)

Pelosi described Boehner’s approach to coming debt-ceiling negotiations as immature and irresponsible. “Last year, just the threat of not lifting the debt ceiling caused our credit rating to be lowered. This is not a responsible, mature, sensible place for us to go. We all know we have to reduce the deficit. We have to do it in a balanced way,” she said on ABC’s “This Week.” “The speaker wants to go over the edge. […] “If the speaker was serious about moving forward, Pelosi said, he should bring the middle-class tax cuts to the floor now so that they are not held hostage during negotiations after the election. “I challenge the speaker right now to bring the middle income tax cuts to the floor,” she said. Pelosi praised the defense cuts that are scheduled to take effect in 2013 as a result of the previous debt ceiling deal. — HuffPo

NAACP follows Obama’s lead on marriage equality – Over the weekend, the board of the NAACP, in a near-unanimous vote, followed Obama’s lead and endorsed same-sex marriage. — Maddow Blog

Obama’s Super PAC is trailing Romney’s Super PAC (not to mention all the other GOP ones) in fundraising. — Politico

Americans more concerned about the economy and jobs than the deficit 58% to 16%

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Americans (58%) think the economy and jobs are more important, but Teapartyers (16%) want to use the debt / deficit politically. Think Progress reports:

[N]ew polling from Gallup shows that far more Americans care about the economy and jobs than addressing U.S. debt. The poll finds that 31 percent of Americans find the economy to be the most important problem in America today, 27 percent find unemployment to be the highest problem, and only 16 percent say that the debt is:

The divide between Americans and the Teaparty has never been more clear than it is right now. A loud minority shouldn’t be allowed to set our country on fire.

Private sector job growth: Who made things worse — Democratic vs. Republican majority?

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Job growth with Democratic congressional majority vs. Republican congressional majority:

liberalsarecool:

[On the left is a] chart showing private-sector job creation in the latter half of 2010, when stimulus money was still being spent, and when Democrats enjoyed the congressional majority.

[On the right is] a chart showing private-sector job creation so far in 2011, after stimulus spending largely ended, Republicans took control of the U.S. House and most of the nation’s gubernatorial offices, and the national discourse pivoted from jobs to the deficit and debt.

thenationmagazine:

How would you grade Republican leadership? A complete failure and reversal of the job growth that Democrats created. And Mitt Romney likes to talk all about who “made things worse.”

See what happens when you don’t get out and actually vote, liberals?

Sparta 2011: America is Greece, according to Mitch McConnell

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“We have a debt as big as our economy. We look a lot like Greece already. And it’s going to have to have broad impact on every aspect of our society in order to get this problem under control.” — Mitch McConnell (R-KY), who was unable to identify a single specific concession he’d ask of wealthy people.

Strikers clash with riot police during a demonstration in central Athens Tuesday June 29, 2010. Greek labor unions held nationwide 24-hour general strike to protest overhaul of social security, labor law. The reforms are part of the government’s efforts to pull Greece out of its financial crisis.

credit: Alkis Konstantinidis via nickturse

Unserious deficit discussions

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“I’ve said this before, and I will say it again. Unless your proposal includes a substantial increase in taxes and a substantial amount of cuts to the military budget as well as ending the farm subsidies and giveaways to big oil and big energy and big business, you can kindly just shut up about the deficit and the debt. Additionally, any cuts to entitlements need to include cuts to the CURRENT recipients, not grandfathering the boomers and then wondering why the cuts never materialize in the future. If you aren’t going to do those things, just shut up. You aren’t serious.”

— John Cole

Yes, what he said.

Or we could END THE BUSH TAX CUTS FOR THE WEALTHY, which will wind up costing the country over four trillion.  Unfortunately the GOP would rather discuss the need for a higher retirement age, or dismantling health care reform, or stripping the annual budgets of those federal agencies that regulate consumer protections — like food safety.

But if we really think about it, the bottom line for the Republicans is to muck up any and every solution between now and 2012. The GOP can’t afford to have even one thing run smoothly if they hope to take back the Senate and the White House.

President Obama urged newly empowered Republicans to not wage “symbolic battles”

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“President Barack Obama urged newly empowered Republicans on Saturday not to wage “symbolic battles” against him but to instead work together to help spur job growth and economic recovery. Obama issued his appeal in his weekly radio address after Republicans took power in the House of Representatives on Wednesday, setting up potentially fierce fights with the president and his Democrats on spending, debt and healthcare.”

—-  Things that, sadly, will never happen

The GOP-Teaparty has one goal: obstructionism until Election Day 2012 to put a Republican in the White House. End of goal.

Country last.

CBO: Extending the Bush tax cuts will hurt the economy, reduce incomes

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CBO Director Doug Elmendorf testified before the Senate Budget Committee today and dropped something of a bombshell. Extending the Bush tax cuts, he said, will “probably reduce income relative to what would otherwise occur in 2020.” The reason is simple: Debt.

[...] The less you extend the tax cuts, the less damage you do to the economy.

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–Everything Bush did was an everlasting  f*ck you from the GOP to the nation. Legacy!
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http://old.stevenberg.net/wp-content/uploads/2007/01/bush-finger.jpg.