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Will congressional Republicans offer anything but knee-jerk tax-cut ideology? Date published: 1/28/2009
THE OBSERVATION that "it U.S. Rep. Eric Cantor, the 7th District Republican who serves as House minority whip, is giving little reassurance that the GOP role will be anything but ideologically orthodox. As the House prepared to vote on an $825 billion economic-stimulus package, Mr. Cantor told USA Today that it is too heavy in spending and too light in tax cuts for small businesses and that, furthermore (quoting the newspaper's paraphrase), the "billions of dollars of aid to states included in the bill is [sic] tantamount to rewarding legislatures that increased spending beyond their means." About the measure's spending-tax-cut ratio, reasonable people can disagree. But seven years of Bushian tax cuts, however beneficial, were manifestly insufficient to abort the current crisis. Republicans, having controlled Congress during that period, are out. Democrats, bearing the theories of John Maynard Keynes, are in. (See: vox populi.) The pertinent argument is not about economic philosophy, but electoral history. And speaking of history: Republicans during the decade themselves spent like cowhands on a Saturday night in Dodge. What the American Institute for Economic Research calls "welfare-state spending" jumped by 32 percent in constant dollars between the end of the Clinton years and 2007, notes AIER. And while much of the increase was driven by the demands of unreformed entitlement programs, this isn't true of the infamously proliferating pork-barrel earmarks of the era. How now the GOP reluctance to come across?
"Massive government stimulation" will not help. Stopping spending, cutting spending, giving tax cuts - those might help, but where do you think the government gets its money? By printing it - devaluing our currency - or by taking it from us. Jobs don't get created because the government spends money; they get created when something actually needs to be done.
Since I'm sure leaders of the counties you "serve" with this editorial, like the State of Virginia, have already appealed to the new Administration for their portion of the coming "bailout money".
What we have is the new version of trickle down economics. One that will undoubtably be paid back by our Grandkids. The problem with the past administration is NOT the "tax cuts", but failing in controling spending.
Imagine that. The country is facing the WORST econmic crisis since the depression. Virtually all economists say that Govt must spend as consumer spending has dried up. And yet the Republicants who have run up deficients in the last eight years while times were good, are now worried about deficeit spending???? You have got to be kidding me. "Deficeits Don't Matter" - Dick Cheney, circa 2005.
twice and I am absolutely flabbergasted. It blasts "Bushian" tax cuts and then, correctly, blasts the GOP for it's wild spending AND then supports the theory that further federal spending is the way out of the current economic crisis. Is there some contradiction here? I would suggest that the current economic situation is not the fault of either spending or tax cuts. It is the result of plain old poor management compounded by lousy credit regulation and it is a completley bi-partisan fault.
but without demand, they're worthless. The Republicans already had their way with tax cuts in the last eight years.
Looks like they really worked!
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