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Posted on 07/08/2011 5:38:53 AM PDT by Kaslin
By refusing to accept tax increases in a deal to raise the debt ceiling, Republicans are behaving like "fanatics," writes David Brooks of The New York Times.
Anti-tax Republicans "have no sense of moral decency," he adds.
They are "willing to stain their nation's honor" to "worship their idol." If this "deal of the century" goes down, as he calls the Barack Obama offer, "Republican fanaticism" will be the cause.
"The GOP has become a cult" that has replaced reason with "feverish" and "cockamamie beliefs," writes Richard Cohen of The Washington Post. The Republican "presidential field (is) a virtual political Jonestown," the Guyana site where more than 900 followers of the Peoples Temple drank the Kool-Aid that Rev. Jim Jones mixed for them.
Does anyone think this an appropriate description of such mild-mannered men as Mitt Romney, Tim Pawlenty and Jon Huntsman?
"The GOP's Hezbollah Wing Is Now Fully in Control," screams The New Republic over a recent lead editorial.
Other columnists charge the GOP with holding America "hostage" by refusing to accept tax hikes to avert a default on the debt.
What to make of this hysteria?
The Establishment is in a panic. It has been jolted awake to the realization that the GOP House, if it can summon the courage to use it, is holding a weapon that could enable it to bridle forever the federal monster that consumes 25 percent of gross domestic product.
To bully and blackmail the GOP into surrendering the weapon and betraying its principles and signing on to new taxes, that establishment has unleashed rhetoric more befitting a war on terror than a political dispute.
For how, exactly, are Republicans threatening the republic?
The House has not said it will not raise the debt ceiling. It must and will. It has not said it will not accept budget cuts. It has indicated a willingness to accept the budget cuts agreed to in the Biden negotiations.
Where the GOP has stood its ground is on tax increases.
Is fanaticism behind this stance? Does this manifest insanity? How does this imperil the nation's honor and future?
Behind the GOP opposition to tax hikes is the party's word given to the country that elected it in 2010, its political principles, its traditional view of what not to do when the nation is in a slump, and party history.
Fully 235 Republican House members signed a 2010 pledge not to raise taxes. And by giving their word they were rewarded with victory.
Should they now dishonor that pledge, what would differentiate them from George H.W. Bush, who famously promised in 1988: "Read my lips! No new taxes!" then went back on his word and took the party down to defeat with him?
Second, the GOP is the party of small government and low taxes.
Why would it agree to raise taxes on the private productive sector when federal spending, now at a peacetime record of 25 percent of GDP, is the problem?
Third, America is in a slump, with 9 percent of the workforce unemployed, another 7 percent underemployed and the economy growing at a tepid 1.8 percent.
What school of economic thought -- Keynesian, supply-side or monetarist -- says raising taxes in a slumping economy is the recipe for a return to prosperity? There is no such school.
Why, when the whole country is talking about the need to create jobs, would Congress raise taxes on a private productive sector that employs six in seven Americans and is the creator of real jobs?
In 1982, President Reagan agreed to the same deal being offered the party today: three dollars in spending cuts for every dollar in tax increases to which he assented. As he ruefully told this writer more than once, he was lied to. He got one dollar in spending cuts for every three in tax increases.
What of the charge that the Republican House is holding America hostage, blackmailing the nation with a suicidal threat to throw us all into national default if it does not get its way?
This smear is the precise opposite of the truth.
The Republican Party has not said it will refuse to raise the debt ceiling. It has an obligation to do so, and will.
The House has simply said it will not accept new taxes on a nation whose fiscal crisis comes from overspending.
If the GOP keeps its word, raises the debt ceiling and accepts budget cuts agreed to in the Biden negotiations, the only people who can prevent the debt ceiling's being raised are Senate Democrats or Obama, in which case, they, not the GOP, will have thrown the nation into default.
It is the establishment that is resorting to extortion, saying, in effect, to the House GOP: Give us the new taxes we demand, or Obama will veto the debt ceiling and we will all blame you for the default.
They're bluffing.
The GOP should stand its ground -- and fix bayonets.
Boehner is looking for a way to surrender.
This sunday meeting is a fraud to mke the politicians look busy.
This is just their morning 'junkie' fix. While true, it minimizes the fact that it owes an amount nearly equal to the GDP in real money; it's unfunded liabilities are near $100 Trillion if you count Social Security, Medicare, Medicaid, EITC, EBTs, etc.
My only quibble with an otherwise sound article is that Pat knows better than this. Bush made a promise that isn't really in the keeping of the President, especially when Congress is in the hands of the other party. The President can veto new taxes, to be sure, if he doesn't mind vetoing every bill containing them, but that's all he can do. It was a stupid promise to make and the Dems made him pay for it.
What an idiot!
Needed to be repeated...........louder. :)
Don't you DARE cave! Holding the line is what you got ELECTED for, Republicans. You cave, you lose your jobs!
Gee, what’s with all the references to “terrorist” etc.? Chrissy, this, other quotes I’ve seen
Looks like the Dem talking points found their mouthpieces
Sorta like how we all learned the word “gravitas” back in the early Bush years.
(double down)
I call.
I am stunned at the shoddy job of communications the Republicans are doing.
The Democrats have massively increased spending with stimulus and other “emergency measures” and others programs since 2009 and now they are trying to lock in this massive spending.
Republicans need to make it clear that they are trying to get us back to roughly 2008 levels of spending which most considered way too high.
The world will not end if we to back to 2003- 2008 spending levels because the world did not end back then
Now the Rats want to limit the tax deductibility of employer-provided health insurance.
In other words, DeathCare in a different form.
If the GOP votes for this, they are anethema to me, DeathCare implementers.
It IS a tax increase and reduces the availability of health insurance to the PRODUCERS in our society, which are getting smaller in number every day.
Do it GOP, and you are DONE.
Government Stock Exchange.
Pat says, “fix bayonets!”
It must not. America's future hangs in the balance. Twenty-five percent of GDP going to government is not sustainable. If we do not get spending under 20%, this country will not survive.
“You are correct Peet, except the Latin is idiota and the Greek is idotes”
Thanks, but I’m the “donkey-like” (asinine) guy — I think Houghton M. was the idio* greek/latin poster. No biggie, though; my middle name could be “confused.” ☺
Technically, Keynes was against this, but in practice, Keynesian economists have never seen a tax hike they didn't love, regardless of where we are in the economic cycle.
Technically, Keynes was against this, but in practice, Keynesian economists have never seen a tax hike they didn't love, regardless of where we are in the economic cycle.
“Keynesian economists have never seen a tax hike they didn’t love.”
In Krugman’s case, he’s never seen a tax hike that he thought was big enough.
Enough really is enough. The Left does not understand economics. The Left embraces economic fallacies that suit its ideological wish lists--its dreams of a world that somehow vindicates the make believe world of "Human equality," where those who out produce others are seen as villains exploiting the less successful; where people who simply want to maintain the cultural heritage that their ancestors achieved over many generations of struggle are treated as the enemy of anyone on the planet who lacks pride in his or her own heritage; where the ultimate goal is a humanist project, harnessing the same hubris as with Nimrod at ancient Babel, to destroy all nations in a World-wide tyranny--the ultimate example of Totalitarian madness--called World Government.
Enough is certainly enough. This war on actual human achievement, on the realities of Man & Nature, as God created them, has been tolerated for far too long. People need to understand the game--driven by fantasy, compulsion & hatred--indeed, the furthest qualities in the world from the feigned "altruism," its perpetrators claim, and demand that it stop.
For more on the Babel analogy: Return To Babel?.
For a better understanding of why the Keynesian folly in Washington has not contributed to improving the employment picture--as witness this morning's data: Economics Of A Sociopath.
Enough is enough! It is not rendered holy by the pontifications of journalistic apologists.
William Flax
I thought the health care bill was going to be the game changer that saved us tons of money, reduced the debt, put folks back to work and cured global warming.
Now in addition, these same folks say the only cure to spendaholism is more tax?
Can I go to an enablers meeting?
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