Friday, July 22, 2011

To the GOP: "Cut, Cap, and Balance My Ass!"

The Republicans generated most of our national debt with spending under Bush, who had inherited a surplus under Clinton. The Republicans caused the economic collapse with the deregulation of the financial institutions. The Republicans caused our budget short-falls because of the Bush tax cuts. The Republicans outsourced our jobs with "free trade" agreements. But they blame one man for all of America's present woes. They want you to believe that just one man, in only two short years, had single-handedly brought America's economy to its knees.

What the Republicans left behind in 2008 was economic ruin, so because of that (and corporate greed), Obama was forced to spend money to bail out the auto companies and banks, and create a "stimulus" bill to try and revitalize the economy, help the State budgets, extend unemployment benefits for those that the Republicans put out of work, and to pay for food stamps for the millions of middle-class Americans that the Republicans drove in to poverty.

When the Republicans were voted into office last November to "cut spending", the voters wanted to see waste, fraud, and abuse cut...not their Social Security, Medicare, and social safety nets. The voters wanted to eliminate the corruption and waste in defense contracts that corporations benefited from (remember the $800 hammer or the $400 toilet seat?) The voters wanted to eliminate the corruption and waste in Medicare that corporate medical facilities, wealthy doctors, and corrupt politicians benefited from, such as Florida's Republican governor Rick Scott. The voters never voted to cut their Social Security after paying in to that program all their lives.

Not one single Republican pledged during their campaigns last year: "Elect me, and I promise to eliminate Social Security and Medicare!" If they had, not a ONE would have been elected into office.

The voters had wanted to cut spending and balance the budget, but not on THEIR backs. They have already made all their sacrifices. They wanted "wasteful spending" cut, and never meant Social Security or Medicare. The Republicans have twisted the whole conversation on its side. And they think most of the general public is too stupid to see through their ploy. "Cut, Cap, and Balance" my ass!

The Republicans keep repeating, "We came up with a plan to cut spending, where's Obama's plan?"

First of all, why do the Republicans want to cut spending in the middle of The Great recession when we have 40 million Americans unemployed or reduced to poverty and forced to subsist on food stamps? It was the Republicans that decided that NOW was the time to cut spending and reduce debt. Why now? After 250 years? Why now, when so many are out of work and suffering, while corporate America and the banks are doing so well? Why not ten years ago, or ten years from now? Why is NOW so important to them?

The Republicans made an issue of Medicare and lost that argument (Paul Ryan's plan), so they cleverly used a back door and worded their true intentions in a different way. But it's all the same. They only want to cut spending for programs that average Americans need, yet refuse to raise taxes on the very few who can easily afford to pay a little more to support these programs (programs that have been under-funded for years by a tax code that mostly benefits the wealthy).

The Republicans keep repeating, "We came up with a plan to cut spending, where's Obama's plan?"

Why do we need a "plan" for this now? And besides...Obama and the Democrats already had a plan. Tax the rich their fair share and save Social Security and Medicare for those who paid in to it all their lives. That's their plan. The Republican's plan is to eventually and totally dismantle the working-class's retirement and healthcare benefits so that the rich can just get richer. (The Republicans don't call them "rich", they call them "job creators").

When it comes to actual spending, little is mentioned by the Republicans regarding corporate welfare (subsidies), or corrupt government contracts for large corporations to profit from, or wasteful spending in earmarks like "bridges to nowhere", or three wars in the Middle East, or our out-of-control military defense industry that takes a large percentage of the budget. Those are items that big banks* and corporations* profit from. 

* The political campaign contributors of Republicans.

There are no gray areas between the two political parties, it's all in black and white. The Democrats want to tax the rich their fair share and protect programs for working and unemployed Americans. The Republicans want to screw the working and unemployed Americans yet more, while rewarding the banks and corporations further. 

Last night I was watching C-SPAN regarding the new consumer protection agency. The Republicans want NO REGULATION of the banks at all, and want us to be totally at their mercy.

The Republicans keep harping about creating jobs, but after 8 whole months in office they have yet to introduce a real jobs bill to put people back to work. Instead, they've spent most of their time going after public labor unions, abortion clinics, National Public Radio, Planned Parenthood, and Medicare. The Republicans aren't interested one iota in creating any more low-paying jobs; the Republicans are more interested in their wealthy backers who have already cost us millions and millions of good-paying jobs. The voters DO NOT WANT, more of the Republican same.

The Republican's #1 mission is ousting Obama, not creating jobs. The Republican's #2 mission was insulting the jobless, calling them lazy bums.

If there were no Social Security or Medicare programs today, and 100% of the national budget went to corporate defense contractors, the Republicans wouldn't be complaining about "debt" at all.

Why do we still have so many military installations all throughout Germany (and the rest of the world). Germany has one of the best economies in the world and their manufactures pay their workers the best decent "living wages". We pay half as much to those who still have jobs and if they're not in a strong labor union. And all those American soldiers in Germany (and all throughout the rest of the world) are pumping their taxpayer dollars into foreign economies, while we have 30 to 40 million under-employed and unemployed hardly putting any money into our economy - and paying very little in tax revenues because of low pay or non-existent wages.

And is government spending really so bad? Ironically, it took massive government spending in the defense industry during World War II to pull us out of the Great Depression (because just building Hoover Dam wasn't enough). And just as it was in 1941, in 2011 all our politicians and soldiers are also "government workers", not just teachers, firefighters, and sanitation workers.

But at $700 billion a year for "defense" spending, it cost the taxpayers $7 trillion to kill Osman Bin Laden. (And that doesn't include our nuclear arsenal, which is budgeted under the Department of Energy). So who else are we defending against?

I predict MASSIVE "buyer's remorse" come election time in 2012 (as we've recently seen in Wisconsin). But the voters won't be happy with a Democrat like Obama either; not if he's going to keep "compromising" like a wimp with those who destroyed the middle-class in America. I'd even vote for Howard Dean (boy, have I changed since the start of The Great Recession!)

Maybe these two guys should run on the Democratic ticket next year.

Read > Four Deformations of the Apocalypse

7 comments:

  1. Because of the bad economy in this recession and the high unemployment rate, the military retention rate is very high. Fewer people are leaving the armed services because of joblessness. They are re-listing for multiple tours of duty, so now it's harder for someone to even enlist in army.

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  2. Regarding this: "And is government spending really so bad? Ironically, it took massive government spending in the defense industry during World War II to pull us out of the Great Depression (because just building Hoover Dam wasn't enough)."

    I read that we were starting to come out of the depression and then FDR started listening to the deficit hawks and went with austerity, and we started going back into the depression (called recession so American's wouldn't get scared). Then Japan attacked us and we got involved in WWII. We also had a larger deficit (in %) AFTER WWII than we do now, but managed to overcome it and flourished.

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  3. The Republicans voted five times to raise the debt ceiling under Bush to aid his senseless wars in Iraq and Afghanistan. Henry Paulson just for accepting the Treasury job from Bush received tax benefits of an amount roughly equivilent to 130000 social security checks. Around 200 to 300 million dollars saved from taxation when he sold his Goldman stock. They make me sick with their obsession with defending the rich from any taxation.

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  4. The debt ceiling was raised 7 times under George W Bush and 17 times under Ronald Regan. The reason the Republicans have a problem with any Democratic plan is that their plans include taxing the rich and closing tax loopholes for the rich. In my opinion the Republican party represents only the very rich and big business unfortunately they have convinced some of middle America that they represent them as well. The Republicans will throw America into economic chaos by refusing to raise the dept ceiling unless they get their way. I can only hope we do not forget this fact when it comes time to vote.

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  5. So....the Democrat Party's plan to support Planned Parenthood's efforts to end poverty by killing enough "poor" people's babies isn't working....what's " Plan B " look like?
    " Make sure your next baby is the gender you've been hoping for"
    ( Sign seen in L.A." Fertility clinic" )
    So now we know what " Plan B " is

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  6. The Republican's "Plan B" isn't to save babies, it is the mass genocide of all Americans earning less than $50,000 a year. First outsource their jobs. Then deny them unemployment benefits. Then cut food stamps. Then eliminate Social Security and Medicare. Then repeal "ObamaCare". And finally, to make sure multi-national corporations continue getting richer by ensuring that the entire population (those that are left anyway) have to sustain themselves on part-time low-paying jobs. Then tax them at a higher rate than those making a million dollars a year. That's always been the Republican plan. Do you really think the Republicans give a damn about all those poor little black babies living in the Ghetto? The Republicans don't care about babies when they start wars. When they say "our children and grand-children", they really mean THEIRS, the rich white Christian babies. The Republican's "Plan A" was the redistribution of wealth from the bottom to the few at the top, and to hell with everybody else. The Republicans have succeeded very well so far. They are winning the class-war.

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  7. To "government tit"...I posted your comment here:
    http://bud-meyers.blogspot.com/2011/08/government-tit.html

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