Then why did he push and vote for a bad deal that plunged our nation TRILLIONS of dollars deeper into debt?
Muli-TRILLIONS!! What were they thinking!!
HOLD THE LINE, DAMN IT!!
If not now, when?
"When I began entering into the give and take of legislative bargaining in Sacramento, a lot of the most radical conservatives who had supported me during the election didn't like it. "Compromise" was a dirty word to them and they wouldn't face the fact that we couldn't get all of what we wanted today. They wanted all or nothing and they wanted it all at once. If you don't get it all, some said, don't take anything. I'd learned while negotiating union contracts that you seldom got everything you asked for. And I agreed with FDR, who said in 1933: 'I have no expectations of making a hit every time I come to bat. What I seek is the highest possible batting average.' If you got seventy-five or eighty percent of what you were asking for, I say, you take it and fight for the rest later, and that's what I told these radical conservatives who never got used to it." - Ronald Reagan, An American Life
Yes, if not now but if not now it won’t matter. Without reverting to panic... if we don’t get this mess changed now it will not recover in most of our lifetimes.
The link to Ryan’s oped is here: http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424052748703806304576242612172357504.html
Pretty words but too many and too complex for the mouth breathing masses to understand. Heck, they will never see or hear this. They don’t read the WSJ and they sure don’t read the oped page of that, what is becoming just another rag. The message has got to go out to the masses in a way they can understand and it has to go out bluntly. We are broke and unless you want to eat the cow that provides the milk we have got to stop spending and take care of the cow.
Most mouth-breathers wouldn’t understand that because they have never seen a cow and think the milk comes from the grocery store and Uncle Sugar.
Ryan is beating a dead horse if he thinks that the takers can be encouraged to become producers by training them. What will convince them to work is an empty feeling in their bellies, a cold night or a very hot day in their apartments. They don’t want to work people! They make more by not working and have gotten used to it and they LIKE IT!!!!
What Mr. Ryan and other political hacks keep missing is that we MUST eliminate BASELINE BUDGETING. It encourages waste. (for definition see here: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Baseline_%28budgeting%29). Carter tried to implement Zero Base Budgeting but like most of what he did it was a cluster fluck. Baseline Budgets are sinister and allow political hacks to argue over how they are going to spend the automatic increases to what they have already wasted and will continue to waste. Google this discussion, Taxpayer’s Against Govt. Waste get it.
If Mr. Ryan and his gang of hacks are serious and unafraid of losing their fat cat contributors they should clearly state that many corporations, BIG ONES, pay essentially NO TAX AT ALL. They don’t pay the 35% highest corporate tax rate in the world at all. Lower the corporate tax rate to 25% and make it payable on all C corporations. Hell, S corporations pay it already. Share the sacrifice. Be honest about it. On the other hand, encouraging reinvestment so the stockholder doesn’t pay double taxes on both profits, dividends and capital gains is a pretty good idea. The whole thing is screwed up... Ryan is right, can the tax code but then again, starting over opens the door for lots of politics and handouts and graft and corruption.
Nobody likes it but repeal the Bush tax cuts. Yes, that is what I said. Give the masses what they want. Return of the Bush tax cuts will raise taxes on those who pay almost no tax at all by a larger percentage increase than they do on the “wealthy”. If that is what the lefties want to promote, that it taxes the “wealthy” “fairly” let ‘er rip so long as the return to pre-Bush is uniformly applied.
Medicare is a sticky mess. It is a blank check for extension of life when death is inevitable. My father died over the course of 5 days. I never saw a bill. Poppa was going to die anyway. We spent a lot of taxpayer money, enriched the hospital to subsidize others and provided some good fees to a large group of doctors... all to let Pop suffer and think longer about he inevitable. He would have been better off at home on the farm with his last sight across the valley and the fields and of his family.
Limit Medicare lifetime expenses. Let persons decide how they want to use them. Subsidize the premiums for private health care premiums as a transition and let Medicare disappear. Deep six Medicade at the same time... another blank check spending disaster facilitated by the taking class.
As for health care reform, it is another cluster fluck, go back to the drawing board but first repeal oblabla care. Fix the real problems with health care, too much cost, no portability, selective purchasing by consumers with no risk management allowed, no transportability across state lines.
Making work pay didn’t work out. Maybe making hunger motivate would. Maybe we could help people but also make them understand that a $10 an hour job doesn’t look too bad at all.
FAT CHANCE. NONE OF THIS WILL EVER HAPPEN. WE ARE HEADED FOR THE WASTE BASKET OF HISTORY and I am wasting my time here today. We all are aren’t we?
I think one of the reasons is the S & P. The politicians knew this was coming, and I think they HOPED that it would delay the downgrade. Ed Morissey made this point...that Republicans would have been blamed for the downgrade (which would have happened on Wed) if nothing had been done. As it is now, my hope is that the debate on REAL spending cuts can begin because ultimately S & P have said it’s all about the debt and entitlements...and tax increases won’t make a dent in that. I DO believe that the if Cut, Cap and Balance had passed, we wouldn’t have been downgraded...and that’s something that the republicans should NOW try to get off the table and passed in the Senate.