Well, now we know what the brain trust in the White House has come up with for next year:
The White House plans to test Republicans’ unity and political resolve on three controversial issues: repealing the Bush tax cuts, implementing the deficit commission’s findings, and pushing immigration reform. Obama’s team says that these issues will make for good policy—and good politics, forcing Republicans elected in swing districts to choose between placating Democrats and independents and risking a possible Tea Party challenge in 2012.
The White House believes immigration reform may be the toughest test for the GOP—even tougher than tackling the deficit. “This will separate the reasonable Republicans from the pack running for president,” said one senior Obama aide.
Repealing the tax cuts? So you’re gonna force Republicans to vote on tax cuts?
Wow…now that’s a good line of attack, especially when you couple it with the deficit commission’s findings which is sure to be tax hikes and reduced spending.
All the Republicans have to do to counter this is to stay true to the Tea Party message. Cut spending AND taxes.
The biggest spending fights next year will be about overall spending levels for next year, and while I don’t expect a government shutdown, I do think the GOP will come forward with a much lower baseline than the president is comfortable with. Republicans can keep the government running with short-term continuing resolutions and still force the president to veto a lot of spending reductions, making him look like a guy whose only real solution for balancing the budget is to raise taxes. If you are a Republican political strategist with an eye toward 2012, then that is exactly where you want your Democratic opponent: giving you plenty of ways to make the “tax and spend” label stick.
Lastly…immigration. We already know how that line of attack will go what with Obama’s recent speeches.
“Separate reasonable Republicans from the pack”
Basically code for some kind of racism charge against those who want to enforce the laws on the books already and ensure our border is secure. It all falls back to the racism charge.
See author page
Republicans should compromise just like Obama compromised over the last two years.
To paraphrase Frank Caprio, Obama can shove it.
Curt–
With all due respect, you’ve got it all wrong. The dems know that the Republicans will take control of the House and possibly the Senate, and plan to take advantage of that. The forces that Obama, the fed, and congress have set in motion are guaranteed to cause economic collapse here in America and would have done so already had not the fed been buying stocks and bonds and printing money like crazy. The dems know that. But their plan is hold off the collapse until the Republicans are in power and then to blame them since the collapse will be on “their watch”.
Sad to say but the Republicans think in terms of the next election and the Democrats think in terms of the next hundred years.
Ask not what you can do for your country but what you can do to get re-elected.
The head racists weighs in. I am beginning to detect some real nasty meanness in there.
I agree with John Cooper, I have been saying the same thing for a while. The only difference is I think they, both parties, a.k.a. the ruling class, are working together to collapse this country.
It isn’t the republicans vs the democrats, it is the government vs the people.
MIKE: hi nice to have you, Yes your right, this time is the people’s time,
the danger is they are not being honest with the voters now,all kinds of scams are introduce to
prevent the voters right,and the MILITARYS’right to vote. that is the problem with democrats
they also confuse the vulnerable people telling them where to send their ballots,in a false adress.
bye
0-bama has turned out to be a racist, idealogue, and loser. He blames everyone but himself for his failures and leaves our country in ruins. Can’t wait until America speaks come next Tuesday.
There is a cadre of elitist that are in Washington, that know no party. Power for powers sake is their agenda, but lets not paint with too broad a brush, there are plenty of good people also there, that have kept them in check until now that all aspects of government is owned by one party, this is what we must change, and change fast, if we are to have a chance. Obama has us pretty far down the road to ruin, it must be stopped! just when you thing Carl Rove is back in our corner, he jumps off the reservation, for my money he’s part of the cadre, and must be tossed out.
If we really want to achieve a balanced budget, tax revenues obviously must equal expenditures. One must go up, the other must come down, and a majority of the voters must be reasonably happy with how that’s accomplished. They won’t be forgiving if something isn’t accomplished.
Republicans have pushed the matter of fiscal responsibility front and center. After the mid-terms, they’ll likely find themselves with a legislative majority. The voters will demand results, and Obama will be making a case for the bipartisan debt commission’s recommendations.
Hey, he said deficits and debt would be addressed as the recession passed. The Bush tax cuts will necessarily be part of the deficit and debt discussion. How could they not be? Immigration reform? That’s another issue republicans have pushed to the front. Obama said it was going to be addressed, too.
Republicans have never taken what the guy says seriously. Nor do they seem to understand that he’s a long-game strategist. Their entire focus has been on the coming election. It’ll be interesting to see what they’ll do if they get what they’ve wished for.
I just hope the GOP movers and shakers don’t try to compromise with Obama. They need to pass Obamacare repeal even if he vetoes it. Then they need to pass it again, and make him veto it again, as many times as it takes.
But what will happen, in all likelihood they will adopt a replace and repeal strategy; picking it apart instead of chucking the whole mess out the window.
Obama has absolutely no concern for his own party of how many he sends into retirement. This guy has turned the idea of self-consumed into an art form never seen.
Kathryn Jean Lopez interviews Stanley Kurtz about his new book:
The entire interview is well worth the time taken to read it, Kurtz used to have a blog I read in the past, he wrote quite a bit about Obama’s efforts spent on the Annenburg Challenge and the Woods Foundation in Chicago and about his close mentors and associates, some are with him to this day influencing not only his path, but ours. Others, he tries to keep out of sight, out of mind. Due to threats and sabotage, Kurtz locked it up and eventually shut the blog down, boy was I disappointed. Since then he’s concentrated on tracing and documenting Obama’s path to the WH. I’m definately going to buy this book.
Here are a few questions she asks him during the course of the interview that I think are helpful:
The whole interview is a must read:
http://www.nationalreview.com/articles/251245/radical-white-house-interview?page=1
Dennis Praeger had Stanley Kurtz on his show earlier this week…thank you for the reminder – I have a “books to buy” list, and this needs to be added to it.
Here’s another reminder of the cause of our economic problems:
http://directorblue.blogspot.com/2010/10/deroy-murdocks-three-charts-to-make.html
I have a problem with the Republicans promise to cut the budget by $100 billion.
Fox News reports, Rep John Boehner is promising to enact cuts in spending, tax breaks, and other actions that could total a whopping $100 Billion dollars. http://www.foxnews.com/politics/2010/10/28/gop-poised-big-gains-plan-b-cuts/
Whoopie!
NOT!
With a 2010 budget of over $3.5 TRILLION dollars, they could only find $100B to cut? If my math is correct, that is only a 3.3% cut.
They couldn’t find as much as the $787 billion American Recovery and Reinvestment Act (better known as the Stimulus Bill).
There’s the $400 billion left over from the Stimuls Bill.
How about the $50 billion for teachers, schools and firefighters?
How about the $51.7 billion for the State Department, of which a large portion goes overseas?
Or the direct $126 billion for foreign investments?
How about the $7 billion for the National Science Foundation or the $1.1 billion for something called the “Corporation for National and Community Service”??
Or the $46.7 billion from the Department of Education?
How about putting a callback on the TARP funds?
We are spending more for Social Security ($678 billion) now than we are for our national defense ($667 billion).
We are spending more for Welfare ($79 billion) than we are for Homeland Security ($43 billion).
Is there no one that can grab a knife and start cutting this budget?
@ Nan G, scalpel cuts are not going to have any consequence. It will take a double bit axe and an end to earmarks and any discretionary spending to make a dent in the waste, fraud and abuse.
Un-Wasted TARP Funds need to be rolled into an actual Trust for Social Security.
The Department of Education needs to be abolished as that is a prerogative of the individual States.
Just for starters. Refer to the 10th Amendment regarding duplication of administration/expense where the Federal Government has no Constitutional basis for meddling.
The National Endowment for the Arts and NPR need to find private funding. Congressional and Senate Staffing can be cut by 50% with no ill effects. The State Department can be cut by 50% with ease.
The UN can be relocated to Iraq, Afghanistan or Somalia as they need to be closer to the real world. No US Taxpayer funded Foreign Aid to any Nation that harbors or trains terrorists.
No US Taxpayer funding for any Agency that suffers under the delusion that Climate Change is a legitimate concern. Cut the EPA funding, Regulatory Authority and Over Reach and relinquish that Regulatory Authority to the Individual States.
Fiscal prudence requires a return to the basics.
re #14:
$100 billion in spending cuts. Assume they actually do that, manage to keep the cuts in place for 10 years and don’t increase spending anywhere else. (Defense spending, for example.) That would save $1 trillion over a decade.
It’s been calculated that their proposed tax cuts would reduce revenues by $4 trillion over the same decade.
Subtraction, anybody? I get another $3 trillion added to the national debt.
GREG, your not counting the businesses coming back to improve the wealth of this NATION with a lot of jobs creation because of it, and the AMERICANS confidence upward starting to spend and enjoy the new feeling of hope for the future therefore INVESTING in a more secure future,
and many more unexpected goodies that you don’t foresee. bye
@ ilovebeeswarzone, #17:
I don’t believe that effect has been convincingly demonstrated, let alone reduced to any sort of formula that reliably predicts the result in dollars and cents. In fact, an explanation has to be given for why every time this has been done, we’ve come out the other end with a significantly higher national debt.
Basically, we’d be taking it on faith that a calculable $4 trillion in revenue losses would be offset by $1 trillion in promised spending cuts, and $3 trillion in guessed at revenue gains that we don’t even have an equation to compute.
One fairly certain result would be the further upward redistribution of wealth. That’s happened every time we’ve done this.
@ Greg, Lets start here as these folks write the Tax Laws and see if they want their wealth redistributed?
237 millionaires in Congress
http://www.greenchange.org/article.php?id=5201
WOW, can you say Conflict of Interest?
Now Greg, we have been down this path before. It has been cited here time and time again that under JFK and Reagan both, when taxes were cut the economy vastly improved. In fact Krugman himself has written that after Reagan’s tax cuts, the Federal revenues jumped 50%.
If you doubt me, Greg – here’s the data from the Joint Economic Committee for the Congress of the United States:
So please if you would Greg, please cite your specific studies that prop up the hogwash you spew.
Show us where raising taxes raises Federal revenue.
Show us where cutting taxes lowers Federal revenue.
http://www.huppi.com/kangaroo/L-taxcollections.htm
I’ve never actually seen a clear and straightforward compilation of historical figures–properly adjusted into constant dollars to offset the distortions produced by inflation–that demonstrates increased revenues to be a predictable result of tax cuts. The evidence for the proposition that tax cuts increase revenue seems to be advanced selectively in bits and pieces, with figures, charts, and graphs that never quite pull everthing relevant together at once.
The increased economic activity that has coincided with tax cuts in the examples often cited as evidence might be explained more logically in terms of when they’ve come in relation to recurring business cycles.
That’s not to say the Laffer curve is totally bogus. It illustrates the point that there’s probably some “sweet spot” where tax rates are optimally calculated, producing the most revenue without becoming revenue-reducing disincentives. The problem, I think, is that it’s often incorrectly used to argue that tax cuts are better to the same extent that they’re bigger, period. There’s an unsupported argument made that we’re way over on the disincentive side of the curve at present. I don’t see evidence of that. I don’t believe that’s the reason we’ve been in a recession, nor do I believe the wide-ranging, top-heavy tax cuts republicans are pushing would be a magic bullet to quickly get us rolling again.
Greg said:
And what prompts those business cycles? I know, I know…………there are many situations and events that effect whether the economy is booming or repressing. Things like disasters(man-made or otherwise), interest rate cuts and hikes, etc., etc., etc. Does tax hikes or cuts play into it? Or is that taxes have no effect on it?
By taking the stance that tax cuts or hikes do not influence the economy as much as a vague event as ‘business cycles’, you show how little you know about economics.
Answer this question: If you are a small business owner, who files his taxes under the personal income tax rules, and your taxes are cut, do you stockpile that money or do you re-invest it into your business hoping it will grow?
OR
If you are just an investor, who regularly contributes good sums of money into retirement accounts and mutual funds, and you get a tax cut, do you take that money and stuff it under a mattress, taking wealth out of circulation and use by companies hoping to expand, or do you invest the extra, hoping the returns will be enough to allow you to either retire earlier or work less in your later years, and by doing so, enable companies that receive your support by way of your investment, to have more capital on hand for improvements or expansion?
If you are just middle class who only does a moderate amount of set investing through your company’s 401k or other plan, and you get a tax cut, do you take that money and bank it for a rainy day, or do you take the extra and either spend it, which increases demand for the items you buy with it, increasing economic activity, or pay down outstanding debt, putting more money available for others looking to buy a house or car, or start their own business, or consolidate their own debt?
Simple questions, simple answers. In each one, the tax cuts received are likely to be put to use by adding purchasing power to business owners, investors and simple taxpayers, and their use becomes added economic activity which helps to spur the economy.
Tax hikes, on the other hand, put less wealth in the private sector for use by the above, meaning that even at the best, there is less economic activity.
And all the economic activity from the above results in more taxes paid through newly hired workers and expanded work hours by the people who provide the services and/or products the receivers of the tax cuts choose to purchase.
That is a simplified description of a business cycle, and has been presented here on FA in many differing forms by numerous posters, and the liberals/progressives still do not get it, or choose to ignore simple logic. They would rather explain the economy in mystical terms that have no substantial definition like “recurring business cycles”. And all to defend their ideology of taxing the those who can pay it, more. For people who claim to want the economy to do well, they sure are ignorant in their calls for actions that hamstring it.
We went into one of the worst recessions since the Great Depression despite the fact that tax cuts had been in effect for six consecutive years, and continued to be in effect.
I don’t think anyone has ever figured out what causes the periodic increases and decreases in overall economic activity commonly known as “business cycles”. Be that as it may, they’re observable. They can be historically charted. One thing that can be predicted about them is that they will continue to happen.
GREG, please check suek link, they’r not even trying to hide it anymore,
I have an idea that you still can change your mind and join here, the ones true AMERICANS,
who will do what it take to redress the dangers of communist,
yes we need all AMERICANS to join this side of the truth. bye
Very odd Greg that even though the Joint Economic Committee from Congress stated that the Clinton tax hikes did not increase Federal revenues, the link you cite says otherwise. Hmmm, I guess that is what happens when you try and use someone’s personal website as a credible source.
Sorry, but you did not show a credible source, a study from a credible source or even an opinion from a credible source backed up with facts. What you cited amounts to someone’s blog. From the home page of the source you cite:
LOL, you used a personal, family website as your source.
Small wonder that you get so little respect around here at FA.
>”The White House plans to test Republicans’ unity and political resolve on three controversial issues: repealing the Bush tax cuts, implementing the deficit commission’s findings, and pushing immigration reform.”
Correct me if I’m wrong, but the executive does not set the legisativer agenda. House Repblicans will control most of the next 2 years’ agenda.
@ antisocks, #25:
I rather like the presentation for its straightforwardness and clarity. Regular people aren’t incapable of drawing intelligent conclusions.
If we want the opinions of serious economists–mostly conservative–who believe the proposition that tax cuts increase revenue is patent bullsh-t, a large number of them are quoted here.
Maybe the new republican majority’s first order of business should be to have some of their own economists brought up on charges of heresy.
@ Timothy, #26:
Which is why there will be another round of the same sort of tax cuts that doubled the national debt the last time republicans had a controlling majority. Tax cuts are the one thing they’re all agreed on.
Does anyone really believe republicans will cut spending enough to compensate for the $4 trillion in revenue losses it’s been calculated that their tax cut proposals will produce? The spending cuts they’ve proposed only add up to about $100 billion per year. If they managed that for a decade straight, and added no new spending of their own for a decade, they would save only $1 trillion.
They’re simply running the same political scam they’ve run before, wrapped up in rhetoric designed to appeal to Tea Party sensibilities. The result will be another upward transfer of wealth, at the cost of another jump in the national debt.
@Silly Bob: You whined, err I mean said:
I rather think that Pelosi’s Congress who brought us 5 TRILLION DOLLARS IN NEW SPENDING. But you can blame the GOP if it makes you feel better.
And besides the numbers don’t lie. Under JFK, Reagan and Bush 43’s tax cuts, the economy improved greatly. Do I need to remind you of what the economy looked like immediately post 9/11?
@ anticsrocks, #28:
From a Report for Congress by the Congressional Research Service, dated September 27, 2002; The Economic Effects of 9/11: A Retrospective Assessment:
Typical Greg – take one sentence from my post and focus on that.
What about the fact that Pelosi’s “most ethical Congress” brought American taxpayers FIVE TRILLION DOLLARS in new spending?
No comment on that one, I see.
But to your 9/11 comment.
Or from the Department of Homeland Security – dated more recently, I might add – August 2009 –
So there you have it. 9/11 reduced real GDP growth by a half a percent and increased unemployment by .11% – or a half a million jobs. If you take into consideration that our present economy is only growing at 2% a year, not even enough to keep pace with population increases – it is clearly evident that 9/11 DID have a negative impact on the US economy.
I mean are you REALLY saying the events of 9/11 did not impact the American economy adversely?
Really?
I think Obama is myopically seeing this as a “win win situation.” (Just as any comic book “evil genius” would when their carfully laid plans come to fruitation.) If the Republicans succeed in in fixing the economy, Obama and the Democrats will claim the credit. If the economy collapses because of the economic strain Obama and The Democrats put on by hiking spending and the deficit to astronomical levels, Well, then Obama and his cronies will secretly, and gleefully cheer the collapse, all the while blaming it on the Republicans. Then the MSM propaganda ministry will jump on that bandwagon to try to get more Democrat socialists elected to “save us from the crisis the Republicans created.” (Which is exactly what I expect them to say.)
This is going to be a monumental task for the Republicans, who need to understand that they had better lead intelligently, and make sure the public is kept aware of precisely what they plan to do, and explain how their plans can solve the nations economic problems. Nor should they expect anything but opposition from the Democrats. They need to focus on job creation, cutting government waste, reductions in spending and the deficit. And not on enriching the rich through “trickle down economic” programs and “free-trade” deals that will ship manufacturing overseas. More working-class employment is what is needed to create trickle-up prosperity. Put the damn “Free-trade” agenda on hold. Multinational corporations, millionaires and billionaires can afford to wait out these hard times. the rest of us can’t.
ditto: hi, yes, IT will be the beginning for them to tackle so many wrong doing,
they surely know of the big efforts they will have to make to get to the bottom of each,
tricks which have been employed all this time to concealed them from the people,
they are a smart group that will all have to rolled their sleeves and work harder than
any time in history, to speed up the return of normalization in the whole UNITED STATES,
OF THIS BEAUTIFUL AMERICA, WHERE the TRUSTH and HOPE will be RESTORE AMONG THE AMERICANS, which will smile again and CREATE again for the future of their CHILDREN.
AS much as they tried to separate the love of their COUNTRY with a REGIME UNFIT for a SUPERPOWER,the PEOPLE know now IT cant be separate, no never.
@Ditto – I agree with you in that the GOP will need to chart their course carefully. The Dems are crafty bastards and need to be held at the end of a long leash. I only hope the GOP try, try and try again, over and over to repeal Obamacare, making Obama veto it time and time again.
Well, the election’s over and the results are in. I think Charles Krauthammer’s take on the results are right on point, and that it is the best result for the Republicans. http://www.realclearpolitics.com/video/2010/11/03/charles_krauthammer_obama_agenda_is_dead.html