I predicted this would happen, and it certainly wasn't much of a stretch.
When Minority Leader Mitch McConnell and House Speaker John Boehner gave in to President Obama's desire to raise the debt ceiling, much was touted about a so called 'super committee' made up of six Democrats and six Republicans who were to come up with recommendations to cut the deficit by at least $1.2 trillion over 10 years. it they weren't able to agree by November 23, Boehner and McConnell stupidly allowed themselves to be maneuvered into agreeing to massive automatic spending cuts, with a majority coming from the defense budget.
With a made to order deal like that, is it any wonder the Democrats are taking a hard line? If they dig their heels in, they get what they want either way. Either they get the tax increases they want, thus making the Republicans complicit in unpopular tax increases or they get massive cuts in the defense budget, where President Obama wants to slash by $700 billion anyway.
Virtually every Democrat member of the committee (James Clyburn, Chris Van Hollen and Xavier Becerra from the House, Max Baucus , John Kerry and Patty Murray from the Senate) are notorious for being on the far Left of the Party and never seeing a tax increase they didn't like. The GOP, on the other hand, went out of its way to avoid anyone associated with the Tea Party or on the party's conservative wing. The closest thing the GOP side of the committee has to that is Senator Pat Toomey from Pennsylvania.
I still like Pat Caddel's description of our two parties...as he often says, there's the corrupt party and the stupid party.
If the stupid party is to survive, they had better smarten up.
1 comment:
We do often refer to the Repubican party as the stupid party, however, "go along to get along" may be a more accurate description of the Republican party. The Democrat party controls the courts, the government bueracracy which includes but is not limited to the EPA, OSHA, the National Labor Relations Board, the FBI, and the CIA. The Democrat party also contols the public eduation system grades K-12 and the proferssoerships, the management, and the administation of the major univerisites. Givne the control the Democrat have over the government it makes it very difficult for a second party to have the oxegyn to survive. As such, if they are to survive it will likely be very tempted to go along to get along.
As for defense cuts, this probably has to happen any way. With our massive national debt we simply can't afford it. Russia and China curently have the most powerful military forces on earth. The US is not going to be able to compete with these powers in conventional forces in the coming years. Good outcomes for America are still possible though.
What America should do is invest what resourcdes it has in expanding and upgrading the nuclear arsenal. With this investment America should be able to neutralize to a large degree the massive conventional edges that Russia, China, and others possess over America. Yhid hsd the added advantage of being less expensive than other options.
I would tend to agree with a tanking economy raising taxes right now is the absoute worse option that one should consider. Yet debts still need to be paid. A better option would be try and reach settlements with some of the creditors. This combined with spending cuts should reduce the amount of monetary outflows. Reducing or streamlining government regulations should result in economic growth which will result in increased monetary inflows to the government.
We can get out of the issues we currently place, if we do what I suggest. Unfortunately I don't have much confidence in either Republicans or Democrats having the leadership to do ANT of this except raise taxes and gut the military!! I pray I'm wrong of course.
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