Buchanan on modern Republicans

[CarreraS2]

On Olberman tonight:

"Democrats are tax and spend. Republicans are tax cuts and spend, spend!"

Sadly, that accurately sums up George Bush and the current Republicans.

[HardDrive]

Ahem.

[island911]

But to GW's credit, he is looking to redirect spending. . . as government should do. There are far too many fat-cat pork programs existing on funding-inertia. (that is; pork-X spent all that money last year; so we better give 'em the same this year . . + a COLA, of course)

[Mulhollanddose]

Duplicitous at best...I won't hold my breath waiting for Democrats to offer up budget cuts...They only attack but offer no solution, they have not once demanded a cut back of the government or waste...Their solution, tax raises, are intended to ruin the economy...That is why they are fighting for them (that and they want more money to buy off constituencies).

Does my above conclusion seem over-reaching?...Do ya'll remember when Bush came into office and he was saying the economy was in recession?...Well, they concertedly came out and accused Bush of "talking down the economy"...Now, Bush was right...After the tax-cuts the economy began to rebound and the Democrats for those few months that the economy was faltering, did everything they could to "talk down the economy"...It was called "the worst economy since Herbert Hoover"...likened to the great depression, and basically the American people were emersed in Democrats blaiming Clinton's economy on Bush.

What is my point?...The Democrats will, the moment the economy begins to sag due to tax-raises, blame Bush...The media will gladly echo their intentional deceptions...Just like the above paragraph illustrates (when it suited them they blamed Bush of "talking down the economy", then they talked down the economy, trying their damndest to create consumer panic)

[Mulhollanddose]

I think this is from the AP?

Bush said it's important that government quickly fix the region's infrastructure to give people hope. Asked who would pay for the work and how it would impact the nation's rising debt, Bush said he was confident the United States could pay for reconstruction "and our other priorities."

He said that means "cutting unnecessary spending" and maintaining economic growth, "which means we should not raise taxes."

I am sure Bush would, if he could, but the liberals special interests and their political whores will blame Republicans of everything they blamed Reagan of doing...The mean nasty poor hating Republicans, pushing grandma into the street, taking away school welfare lunches, etc. etc. etc.

Democrats should be happy, suspicious that they are not.

[island911]

I don't think that they intended to ruin the economy . .. hmmm

Maybe:

a) they think they can squeeze the working harder and no one will notice.

or

b) They are just plain self absorbed, money-grubbing simpletons.

tho' I suppose you could be right. They do seem to think they will some how fair well in a broken economy.

[bryanthompson]

Is the line-item veto something that can be used? I dont' know all of the rules there...

[fintstone]

No, it was ruled unconstitutional by the Supreme Court in '98. maybe Judge Roberts can help with that though.

[techweenie]

Isn't it getting hard to blame the Democrats when all three branches of government are run by trillion dollar deficit Republicans?

No, of course it's not, as long as you don't think.

[jyl]

I find this fairly silly. People always say that if we would just eliminate "unnecessary spending", "pork", and "waste" then we could have our big tax cuts and eliminate the deficit and now pay the $200BN or so for Katrina.

The same people never identify precisely what unnecessary spending and waste they propose to cut. That's because - guess what - there is not enough pork and waste that can realistically and practicably be found in the federal budget.

This is an analogous situation to the current California Governor who won his office by lying, claiming that he would solve California's budget deficit by "cutting waste". After he took office, he couldn't propose a budget that would do any such thing - forget about whether it would have passed, he couldn't even come up with such a plan on paper.

So, Mulhollanddose [or others who make this claim] here's your challenge. Go look up the data on the FY05 federal budget, then come back and show us how you would have balanced the budget by cutting unnecessary spending and waste. Give us numbers and show your work.

Come on, show us that your ideas are more than right-wing liberal-basing hot air. At the same time, let's expose your definition of "unnecessary spending".

[MichiganMat]

I seem to remember something about a $240million "bridge to nowhere" in a certain highway/infrastructure bill that was passed recently...

[HardDrive]

As above.

Man.....that $200 billion we sunk in the Iraq war sure would be handy right now.....

But it was worth it. After all, its not like Iraq is slipping into a bloody civil war....oh....wait.......

[jyl]

Takes more bridges than we've got to make up a $300BN+ deficit plus $100BN+ in Katrina rebuilding.

[Mulhollanddose]

Originally posted by HardDrive
As above.

Man.....that $200 billion we sunk in the Iraq war sure would be handy right now.....

But it was worth it. After all, its not like Iraq is slipping into a bloody civil war....oh....wait.......

Similar to New Orleans, this (Iraq) never would have happened if Democrats weren't asleep at the wheel.

What was Sandy Bergler stealing?...I know, I know, he is just "sloppy".

[Mulhollanddose]

Originally posted by jyl
Takes more bridges than we've got to make up a $300BN+ deficit plus $100BN+ in Katrina rebuilding.

About time to cut back on entitlements huh?...That is always the Democrat play...Get spending out of control, get in trouble, and then demand tax-raises...Gray Davis made an art out of it.

[Mulhollanddose]

Lets not forget who dragged Clinton kicking and screaming to a "balanced budget"...One hint, the same party who dragged Clinton to "welfare reform."...One guess.

[Mulhollanddose]

The Congressional Budget Office (CBO) estimates federal debt could grow to as much as 40 percent of GDP by 2005 and then begin declining again. From 1986 to 1999, it was above 40 percent, and we did quite well during most of those years. Recent data showing both much higher economic growth and higher inflation (meaning much higher nominal GDP) than the CBO forecasted means the debt GDP ratio in fact is likely to remain almost constant.

What we do need to be concerned about is not the deficit, but the very rapid growth in real, nondefense, discretionary federal government spending, which is up an average of 7.2 percent yearly for the last three years. A continuation of this trend could indeed cause real economic damage.

Finally, the analysis of the historical data clearly indicates that if we had properly structured tax cuts (like the first Reagan and the most recent Bush tax cuts) in 1969, 1973, 1979, 1989 and 2000 we may have avoided the recessions, with all their human misery and unemployment, that occurred the year following each of the above dates. Unfortunately, policymakers in all of those years were more preoccupied with reducing the deficits rather than keeping the economy growing.

Cato

[skipdup]

Originally posted by HardDrive
As above.

Man.....that $200 billion we sunk in the Iraq war sure would be handy right now.....

But it was worth it. After all, its not like Iraq is slipping into a bloody civil war....oh....wait.......

We'll easily recoup that in all the oil we're stealing.

[HardDrive]

Originally posted by Mulhollanddose
Similar to New Orleans, this (Iraq) never would have happened if Democrats weren't asleep at the wheel.

What was Sandy Bergler stealing?...I know, I know, he is just "sloppy".

I think the costs of our action in Afghanistan can be blamed on on the Democrats. 9/11 was certainly a failure of the Clinton, not Bush, administrations.

But your comment is premised on the Iraq war being related to the war on terror, which I believe it is not.

I suspect we won't get anywhere arguing the point.......

[island911]

interesting.

Do you believe that tthe US could have walked away from Iraq (post 9/11/01)?