Tag Archives: deficit spending

Teaparty Republicans’ budget plan: income redistribution by austerity measures

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Obama to lay out spending plan:

In addition to calling for higher taxes for those earning more than $250,000 per year, the Wall Street Journal reports that the president has his sights on “changing parts of the tax code he thinks benefit the wealthy.”

Much will be revealed at midweek, when the House and Senate are expected to vote on a budget for the remainder of this fiscal year and Obama unveils his plan to reduce the deficit, in part by scaling back the government’s chief health programs for seniors and the poor. The House, too, may vote on Budget Committee Chairman Paul Ryan’s spending plan for next year as Democrats readied arguments that it proposed “Draconian” cuts to Americans who need help the most.

I dislike talk of scaling back the health programs, but will wait to hear exactly what and how much is being scaled back. I have a feeling it won’t be on the level that Paul Ryan and the Republicans would like to see.

The teaparty Republicans and their Fox “News” PR machine will be in overdrive, convincing the NASCAR fans that Obama and the democRATS are going to raise their taxes (and take their guns and declare Baby Jesus’ birthday a Muslim holiday).

What the GOP won’t remind their base is that these austerity measures they keep presenting to us (to rob from the poor and elderly and middle-class to give to the rich) cannot go on without a rational expectation that those who make more than $250,000 should be expected to also “kick in” someday.

Paul Ryan’s very serious and brave spending plan would cut Medicare and Medicaid benefits AND cut taxes for the wealthy from 35% to 25%! Deficit reduction? Zero. But moar jobs?! Yeah. Right.

Income redistribution by austerity measures.

Citizens for Tax Justice has an analysis — 90 percent of Americans will see their taxes go up under the Ryan budget, because the tax breaks his bill calls for actually total more than $4.1 trillion. The bottom 80 percent would pay $1,700 more in taxes under Ryan’s plan, while the top 1 percent (those making more than $460,000 dollars per year) would pay more than $211,000 less on average.

The Atlantic: As Ezra Klein wrote, “two of every five dollars goes to Social Security, Medicare or Medicaid, all of which provide some form of insurance. A bit more than a buck goes to the military. Then there’s a $1.50 or so for assorted other programs — education, infrastructure, environmental protection, farm subsidies, etc. Some of that, like unemployment checks and food stamps, is also best understood insurance spending. And then there’s another 40 cents of debt repayment.” The business of the U.S. government, he concludes, is insurance … and military.

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Reid: “The only attention [the Teaparty gets] is in the House of Representatives.”

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Yesterday on Face the Nation, Sen. Harry Reid discussed deficit spending negotiations and said the Republican House leadership were “afraid” of the Tea Party:

“I think we can work this out. It’s so easy to do. Just really, in Washington terms, a few dollars short of being able to do this. It’s a question of how we do it. We can’t do it on Head Start. We can’t do it at the program for little kids. We can’t do it… on homeless veterans. Let’s work on programs that contribute to the debt.”

It’s fear of the Tea Party and the willingness to throw everyone under the bus to appease them that may cause the Republican House leadership to stick to the extreme “ideology” of their HR1 riders and cause a government shutdown.

It’s not about a dollar amount. It’s about what should be defunded. No compromise.

It will be the Republican-Teaparty’s fault if there’s a government shutdown

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Brent Budowsky at The Hill’s Pundit Blog correctly blames the Republican-Teaparty IF a government shutdown happens on April 8. Why? Because a shutdown will mean TP lawmakers refused to compromise  on any amount of deficit spending cuts if they can’t have their ideologically extremist riders on the H.R. 1 bill. They don’t CARE about spending cuts — it’s the ideology. And that’s what I’ve been saying for days.

The state of negotiations today is that a deal is close that would cut about $33 billion, supported by Democrats, more than halfway toward the Republican position.

If there is a deal-breaker, it would be because ideologically extreme Republicans want to wage near-religious wars against their enemies of the month: NPR, Planned Parenthood and the Environmental Protection Agency. This has virtually nothing to do with reducing the deficit, and everything to do with an ideological extremism of Republicans that is far outside the main stream of American opinion.

I believe there will be a deal, but if there is no deal, and there is a government shutdown, it will be a Republican government shutdown caused by ideological crusades that the American people will not join Republicans in supporting.

Tea Party support is falling fast in the polls.

Read more…

And the Tea Party may as well fold up their misspelled signs, climb aboard their Li’l Rascals, go home and deal with their wacky anger issues over things like “modern day” or “the year 2011.”  Not only did today’s TP rally in DC draw ‘dozens‘ but regular Americans (as opposed to TP ‘Muricans) really don’t like the Tea Party (emphasis mine):

The tea party has hit rock bottom in the eyes of the American public, a new CNN/Opinion Research poll found Wednesday. Just 32 percent of respondents viewed the tea party favorably, while a record-high 47 percent had a negative view of the movement that propelled Republicans to dramatic Congressional victories last November. Fourteen percent had no opinion, and 7 percent said they’ve never heard of the tea party. — Raw Story

Government Shutdown: what’s the Republican-Teaparty trying to prove?

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Ezra Klein says it’s beginning to look a lot like a shutdown (emphasis mine):

Brian Beutler has a nice story running down the state of play on the budget negotiations. The takeaway is that Republicans aren’t just insisting that Democrats cut as deep as the GOP wants, but that they also cut in the way the GOP wants. House Appropriations Committee aide Bob Inglee, for instance, told Democrats “they should reach a spending cut target by choosing from the menu of cuts included in the controversial House-passed continuing resolution.” Reading this, you really wouldn’t know that Democrats, who control both the White House and the Senate, technically have a lot more power than Republicans, who only control the House. At the very least, no one appears to have told this to the Republicans.

Brian Beutler says:

Even if this impasse is bridged, the three parties still haven’t addressed the question of policy riders — abortion restrictions, EPA authority and other issues — many of which Republican  rank and file members want included in the final package.

Harry Reid provided a statement this afternoon that doesn’t sound very hopeful (emphasis mine):

I am extremely disappointed that after weeks of productive negotiations with Speaker Boehner, Tea Party Republicans are scrapping all the progress we have made and threatening to shut down the government if they do not get all of their extreme demands. The division between the Tea Party and mainstream Republicans is preventing us from reaching a responsible solution on a long-term budget that will make smart cuts while protecting American jobs, and prevented negotiations from taking place over the weekend even as the clock ticks toward a government shutdown. Apparently these extremists would rather shut down the government and risk sending our economy back into a recession than work with Democrats or even their own leadership to find a responsible compromise.

“For the sake of our economy, it’s time for mainstream Republicans to stand up to the Tea Party and rejoin Democrats at the table to negotiate a responsible solution that cuts spending while protecting jobs.

Hint: this is really NOT going to be about deficit spending or a budget. Regardless of what it does to our country or economy or recovery or people, the Republican-Teaparty will have their tax cuts for the wealthy and their ideological riders (spending  cuts for everyone else) — even if just as much spending could be cut elsewhere.

No, this is about freedom boners and the Teaparty wants to prove theirs are the biggest. We’ll see.

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All Government Shutdown related posts…

John Boehner: I don’t need to see GDP numbers or to listen to economists

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Think Progress:

The GDP numbers that Boehner doesn’t want to see showed a relatively weak 2.4 percent growth rate in the 2nd quarter, which indicates that the economy is losing momentum:

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The consensus from leading experts is that the original stimulus was too small for the magnitude of the crisis. Forty notable economists and historians, including Joseph Stiglitz, Alan Blinder, and Mark Zandi, recently signed their names to statements calling for more government stimulus. “The urgent need is for government to replace the lost purchasing power of the unemployed and their families and to employ other tax-cut and spending programs to boost demand,” they wrote.

Fed Reserve Chairman Ben Bernanke — who Boehner has praised in the past — has said that deficit spending is critical in the short-term and that pulling support from the stimulus isn’t the right solution. “At the current moment…the large deficits, as unattractive as they are, are important for supporting economic activity, and they were important also in restoring financial stability,” he said. “And so I think they were justified in that respect, and I would be reluctant to withdraw that support too precipitously in the near term.”

CBO Director Doug Elmendorf — yet another expert that Boehner has praised in the past — has explained that there is “no intrinsic contradiction” between supporting more stimulus now and demanding deficit reduction later. Yale economics professor Robert Schiller writes in today’s New York Times, “We need more stimulus, not less — but we need to focus much more on actually putting people to work. … [U]nless we take new measures, we face the prospect of protracted unemployment.”

MOAR stimulus!

Of course if the economy was to turn around with more stimulus money, that would be bad for the GOP. There’s no way they’ll take a chance on losing seats in Congress like that. So instead they’ll argue to extend the tax cuts!

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