Republican Fiscal Conservancy

[solarbird]

"Nothing is more important in the face of a war than cutting taxes."
-- Tom DeLay

Including, apparently, being able to pay for it. God, these people must want to bankrupt the country. It's like the old joke about the Reagan era, that they were putting the government in so much debt that there'd be no choice but to cut everything to zero. (But maintain high taxes to pay off the debt. Well done, sirs!)

Comments

[wrog]

It's like the old joke

I don't think it's a joke, or, at least, if it was a joke then, it certainly isn't now. It looks to me like conscious policy; they really do want to change the rules of the taxation game, set things up so that simply restoring the old status quo will be regarded as a huge shift to the left.

Actually, I'm not sure it was a joke then, either. Reagan talked plenty about "cutting the government's allowance" as being the only way to reduce spending.

There's also a theory that Bush+friends' refusal to address the AMT is also by design. Not only does the AMT make the budget gap significantly smaller than it otherwise would be, but, as the ordinary income tax rates come down and inflation takes off, a huge portion of the middle class will suddenly find themselves having to deal with the arbitrary stupidity of the AMT (which, unlike the ordinary tax code, has been given very little attention by the various reform/rationalization efforts of the past 20 years --- hence the lack of indexing for inflation, the lack of corresponding EZ forms for the simple cases, etc...).

Meaning that four or five years from now there will just be huge numbers of people utterly pissed off at the tax code, and thus motivated to toss it out entirely...

[solarbird]

And meanwhile, the debt spirals out of control?

That's the part I just don't get.

Or do they plan to print money to make it up?

[agrimony.livejournal.com]

Many of the Old Guard Republicans are involved in businesses that really depend on a crappy economy to make them money. They have a vested interest in concentrating the wealth and completely screwing over everyone else.

Of course, I'm a bitter, unemployed, completely broke Democrat, so you might want to take my opinions with a salt lick or three.

[llachglin.livejournal.com]

You seem to be assuming that conservative politicians care about the country as a whole. As far as I can tell they care about themselves and their friends who have businesses. So long as they can sustain profits and their own personal comfort, they'd sell out everyone else to Third World conditions.

But hey, they're the PATRIOTS and I'm some kind of TRAITOR for bothering to get pissy from time to time about how this country is being ruined, so it's probably a problem on my end.

Probably..

[brombear.livejournal.com]

Yeah...they'd probably print out more money, then enact some half-assed,politically motivated plan to stimulate the economy, while sending more money overseas to other countries. God forbid they get rid of a lot of these pork-barreled and needless Congressional committees that each have the budget of a small buisness (Haven't we figured out the environmental impact of the Darter Slug yet...?Oops...wait a minute...they'd form a committee to study the impact of dissolving the committee...)Once again we'll be stuck footing the bill, while they pocket thousands and thousands of dollars they get from "friends", getting richer, while they think that getting us to pay for their projects will solve all the problems. What was that diet show's favorite line? "Stop the insanity"? Whatcha think? Should the US Government go on a Diet?

[banner.livejournal.com]

You know, there's nothing stopping you from paying more money to the federal government :-)