# Are the GOP rooting for total economic collapse? **URL:** \ **Category:** Great Debates\ **Created:** [July 22, 2011, 11:06pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/are-the-gop-rooting-for-total-economic-collapse/590045 "2011-07-22T23:06:23Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 20\ **Page:** 6
**Author:** ![Zephyurs](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/z/dfb087/32.png) [@Zephyurs](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Zephyurs)\ **Post date:** [July 23, 2011, 10:33pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/are-the-gop-rooting-for-total-economic-collapse/590045/101 "2011-07-23T22:33:05Z")
> [@Martin\_Hyde](#): > > I understand politically some Republican congressmen were never going to agree with any tax increases. However, I honestly thought Speaker Boehner was going to use his leadership position to get a small portion of Republican congressmen to go along with the negotiated plan, so that when joined by the Democratic congressmen it would be enough to pass legislation. Obama has openly said he is willing to deal, Boehner is two things: either completely unwilling to deal because of ideological concerns, or he has gone to the caucus and found out he isn’t able to get enough of his own party to support a tax increase to get it through the house. > > If the first is true Boehner is an idiot. Based on talk earlier on I don’t think Boehner is personally unwilling to support a tax increase. Instead I think he is unable to get his caucus to vote for a tax increase in sufficient numbers to pass the legislation. That means he has failed as Speaker and should no longer hold the post. Realistically this is where I think the President should have the ability to just dissolve the House when it has proven it cannot pass legislation, which would fix this situation. To be honest, this entire negotiation has simultaneously increased my respect for Boehner and decreased my faith in… well, America. Obama wanted a clean increase and was sort of blindsided by Republicans using it as a bargaining chip. But that was totally fine, in the grand scheme of things–parties have to use the tools at their disposal to try and promote their stated priorities. (Obama should have rejected this for awhile instead of acceding to it immediately–I think it might make the negotiations easier–but that’s just a negotiation tactic, not a point of principle.) Then what should have happened is that they gradually circle down to some set of policies to reduce the long-term deficit and stabilize our debt level. Give and take on the exact composition of it. And Bohner during the negotiations has struck me as someone acting in good faith, with he and Obama playing the parts of the adults in the room. But intra-caucus political dynamics have pretty much ruined any chance of him getting a heavily spending-cut tilted Grand Bargain that’d cement his place in the history books as the Tip O’Neill to Obama’s Reagan. Unfortunately, Eric Cantor has designs on Bohner’s leadership position. Which may well have been good from a Republican perspective. With Obama knowing Bohner can’t give too much away or else Cantor will swoop in and stab him in the back, it forces Obama to give up concessions until the point he’d similarly be screwed. What has ended up happening, though, is that Bohner has refused to make any public concessions because of the Cantor threat, which means that a portion of the Republican base having veto power over any deal hasn’t become used to the idea of even small concessions. No signals have reached them saying they can’t restructure the universe according to the results of a single election. So we’re left with a situation where everyone responsible has roughly the same idea of the package that negotiations say should go through (at least 2 and up to 3.5 trillion dollars in mostly cuts to entitlement programs and some negotiable tax increases and reforms). But the people who ostensibly want this deal aren’t willing to vote for it. I think it’s still possible to escape from this, but I worry Congressional Democrats–particularly Pelosi–are sick of being shit on and think it should be their turn to act like insane monomaniacs to extort as many concessions as they can (which is undoubtedly how most of them see things). Honestly our credit rating should be downgraded, just because our political institutions are much closer to a Third World banana republic than any self-respecting developed country. ---
**Author:** ![yorick73](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/y/b5a626/32.png) [@yorick73](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/yorick73)\ **Post date:** [July 23, 2011, 10:33pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/are-the-gop-rooting-for-total-economic-collapse/590045/102 "2011-07-23T22:33:20Z")
> [@Der\_Trihs](#): > > Raising taxes and fees while lowering services and wages for the bottom +90%, while doing the opposite for the top few percent. Really? So the poor pay more in taxes and this money is transferred into the pockets of the rich? ---
**Author:** ![Try2B\_Comprehensive](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/try2b_comprehensive/32/65_2.png) [@Try2B\_Comprehensive](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Try2B_Comprehensive)\ **Post date:** [July 23, 2011, 10:49pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/are-the-gop-rooting-for-total-economic-collapse/590045/103 "2011-07-23T22:49:03Z")
> [@The\_Other\_Waldo\_Pepper](#): > > I’m going to need specifics. > > Take, say, a barber. Or a short-order cook. Maybe a janitor. I don’t know. Whatever. Name any three you want. Why aren’t they asking for more money in exchange for what they do? Who is ripping them off? How much wealth are they generating? > > Possibly I’m picking unfair examples. Cab driver? Bartender? Hotel manager? Who do you have in mind? I’m thinking of examples like Indiana steelworkers. They used to be unionized; people could raise their families working in that industry. Now most of them get minimum wage, and some forces would like to do away with minimum wage rules so that they may be paid even less. People in ownership or management positions are paid far, far more than the people who actually produce the steel. I don’t know if the white-collar guys are definitively worth _less_ than the producers, but as one group is in a position to define the pay of the other group by shuffling some paperwork, guess which group gets the short end? Wisconsin is another great example. The Koch brothers basically inherited a money-generating machine. They didn’t build it- it got passed down to them, other people do practically everything it takes to make it go yet they reap 100x or more the pay of anyone else in the organization. So what do they do? They capture the organs of government to destroy teachers’ unions to reduce the pay of more worthwhile members of society so that corporate taxes can be cut. That isn’t productive labor, but merely corruption. Does that clarify my point? I don’t mean it to be applied to every single example of income inequality. And I’m not motivated by bitterness over my own situation- I actually make enough to be satisfied. I feel sorry for people who are part of billion-dollar organizations who make orders of magnitude less than others who seem to do little but shuffle papers around and dream up ways to cut pay and benefits. It seems like the pubbies would do anything to create a system where no one has any choice but to work for minimum wage, or less. It’d be tyranny, but they’d claim it was the free market (“minimum wage is all any job pays due to market forces! Nevermind that we own every single company and your choices are minimum wage or starve”) ---
**Author:** ![ElvisL1ves](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/e/5daacb/32.png) [@ElvisL1ves](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/ElvisL1ves)\ **Post date:** [July 23, 2011, 10:49pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/are-the-gop-rooting-for-total-economic-collapse/590045/104 "2011-07-23T22:49:24Z")
**yorick** : In effect, yes. ---
**Author:** ![ElvisL1ves](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/e/5daacb/32.png) [@ElvisL1ves](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/ElvisL1ves)\ **Post date:** [July 23, 2011, 10:54pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/are-the-gop-rooting-for-total-economic-collapse/590045/105 "2011-07-23T22:54:45Z")
> [@Sam\_Stone](#): > > There’s no master plan, no evil Svengali deciding to rip off the poor working man. There are only free people voluntarily making deals with each other, trading service for service. That’s so cute. It pretends that those with more power to rig the rules to benefit themselves never exercise that power. Unfortunately the facts are once again against you, though. > [@](#): > > The left never wants to admit Still going with that monolithic hive mind strawman stuff, huh? That’s not so cute. > [@](#): > > that rich people generally get where they are because they have provided more value to others than a laborer has. Would you say that’s true of, say, Romney? What value has _he_ created for anyone but himself and his investors? > [@](#): > > Screw with this system at your peril. With it we got the world of Dickens. Can you really not see why that isn’t the bigger peril? ---
**Author:** ![yorick73](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/y/b5a626/32.png) [@yorick73](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/yorick73)\ **Post date:** [July 23, 2011, 10:58pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/are-the-gop-rooting-for-total-economic-collapse/590045/106 "2011-07-23T22:58:50Z")
> [@ElvisL1ves](#): > > **yorick** : In effect, yes. Please…explain this to me? ---
**Author:** ![wmfellows](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/w/c2a13f/32.png) [@wmfellows](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/wmfellows)\ **Post date:** [July 23, 2011, 11:02pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/are-the-gop-rooting-for-total-economic-collapse/590045/107 "2011-07-23T23:02:11Z")
> [@Zephyurs](#): > > To be honest, this entire negotiation has simultaneously increased my respect for Boehner and decreased my faith in… well, America. What I find extraodinary here is that I find (outside USA, well also inside USA) universal among conservative / non-Left commentators who have a proper business education horrified condemnation of this person… and here is a defence. No wonder you all are driving your way down the route to being a big Argentina. May God save us all. > [@](#): > > .. Honestly our credit rating should be downgraded, just because our political institutions are much closer to a Third World banana republic than any self-respecting developed country. Yes, in fact your expression of a hope of a downgrade is the very picture of that problem. The very picture. No proper fiscal conservative would ever write such a thing. Well, 200 yr experiment, perhaps proves out in the end. ---
**Author:** ![Zephyurs](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/z/dfb087/32.png) [@Zephyurs](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Zephyurs)\ **Post date:** [July 23, 2011, 11:13pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/are-the-gop-rooting-for-total-economic-collapse/590045/108 "2011-07-23T23:13:13Z")
> [@wmfellows](#): > > What I find extraodinary here is that I find (outside USA, well also inside USA) universal among conservative / non-Left commentators who have a proper business education horrified condemnation of this person… and here is a defence. I failed in getting across my point, which is that Boehner wants to raise the debt limit and in normal political dynamics he and Obama would have come to some understanding. Various malefactors,however, are threatening to destroy the United States’ credit for the sake of ideological purity. This is a bad thing, and they are bad people. > [@](#): > > Yes, in fact your expression of a hope of a downgrade is the very picture of that problem. The very picture. No proper fiscal conservative would ever write such a thing. Well, 200 yr experiment, perhaps proves out in the end. I do not hope for a downgrade. My ideal solution would be either a clean debt limit increase or one more heavily tilted toward tax increases than the one on the table. And a carbon tax. And a pony. I’d be more than willing to pass even the heavily spending-focused deficit plan, however, for the sake of increasing the debt limit. ---
**Author:** ![ElvisL1ves](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/e/5daacb/32.png) [@ElvisL1ves](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/ElvisL1ves)\ **Post date:** [July 23, 2011, 11:18pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/are-the-gop-rooting-for-total-economic-collapse/590045/109 "2011-07-23T23:18:13Z")
> [@Zephyurs](#): > > I failed in getting across my point, which is that Boehner wants to raise the debt limit and in normal political dynamics he and Obama would have come to some understanding. Various malefactors,however, are threatening to destroy the United States’ credit for the sake of ideological purity. This is a bad thing, and they are bad people. That’s where the leadership part comes in. Boehner took this office promising that his party would have an “adult conversation” about the budget and the deficit. He hasn’t held one yet, by all appearances, has he? And they’re \*not \*bad people, just misguided and irresponsible. ---
**Author:** ![ElvisL1ves](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/e/5daacb/32.png) [@ElvisL1ves](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/ElvisL1ves)\ **Post date:** [July 23, 2011, 11:19pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/are-the-gop-rooting-for-total-economic-collapse/590045/110 "2011-07-23T23:19:28Z")
> [@yorick73](#): > > Please…explain this to me? [You’ve heard of Wikipedia, right?](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Income_inequality_in_the_United_States) ---
**Author:** ![Zephyurs](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/z/dfb087/32.png) [@Zephyurs](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Zephyurs)\ **Post date:** [July 23, 2011, 11:23pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/are-the-gop-rooting-for-total-economic-collapse/590045/111 "2011-07-23T23:23:57Z")
> [@ElvisL1ves](#): > > That’s where the leadership part comes in. Boehner took this office promising that his party would have an “adult conversation” about the budget and the deficit. He hasn’t held one yet, by all appearances, has he? > > And they’re \*not \*bad people, just misguided and irresponsible. Yes, he’s failed in leadership. He’s failed to lead that faction of his party to take part in genuine negotations. But I’m not sure how much you can hold that against him. Could anyone have? ---
**Author:** ![Sam\_Stone](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/ecccb3/32.png) [@Sam\_Stone](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Sam_Stone)\ **Post date:** [July 23, 2011, 11:37pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/are-the-gop-rooting-for-total-economic-collapse/590045/112 "2011-07-23T23:37:04Z")
> [@wmfellows](#): > > Yes, in fact your expression of a hope of a downgrade is the very picture of that problem. The very picture. No proper fiscal conservative would ever write such a thing. Well, 200 yr experiment, perhaps proves out in the end. No one hopes for a downgrade - it’ll cost the U.S. a fortune in additional debt servicing costs, for one thing. But what makes you think a debt ceiling increase will avoid a downgrade? it seems to me that what matters is what kind of deal is struck. If Obama gets what he wants, which is basically a political accommodation to push the problem past the next election cycle with no major structural changes to the government, then I think a downgrade is very likely anyway. Two years from now the debt ceiling crisis will be back, only next time the debt will be worse and taxes higher as a result of the deal Obama wants. In terms of calamity potential, I’d rate it like this: 1. No deal is reached. 2. Obama gets his way. 3. Boehner gets his way. But even the Republican’s plan isn’t enough. So frankly, I think the U.S. is headed for a downgrade anyway, and that’s going to mean higher interest rates, a double-dip recession, and debt servicing costs that will jump at least 150 billion dollars per year, making the deficit worse and the necessary corrections even larger. So if they can’t get a reasonable deal passed now that puts the U.S. on a better fiscal trajectory, I’d put my money on eventual default, which means I wouldn’t put it in America. ---
**Author:** ![yorick73](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/y/b5a626/32.png) [@yorick73](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/yorick73)\ **Post date:** [July 23, 2011, 11:37pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/are-the-gop-rooting-for-total-economic-collapse/590045/113 "2011-07-23T23:37:26Z")
> [@ElvisL1ves](#): > > [You’ve heard of Wikipedia, right?](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Income_inequality_in_the_United_States) Wait…are you really suggesting that income inequality is a transfer of wealth from the poor to the rich by government?!? LOL ---
**Author:** ![Sam\_Stone](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/ecccb3/32.png) [@Sam\_Stone](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Sam_Stone)\ **Post date:** [July 23, 2011, 11:40pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/are-the-gop-rooting-for-total-economic-collapse/590045/114 "2011-07-23T23:40:58Z")
> [@Zephyurs](#): > > Yes, he’s failed in leadership. He’s failed to lead that faction of his party to take part in genuine negotations. But I’m not sure how much you can hold that against him. Could anyone have? Well, according to Boehner he was ready to deal yesterday morning, and at the last minute Obama changed the deal and threw in 400 billion more in tax increases which poisoned the well and caused Boehner to believe that Obama isn’t dealing in good faith. If that’s true, then it may well be Obama that wants a default, because that allows him to transfer blame for a bad economy from his own actions to the Republicans. ---
**Author:** ![Broomstick](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/broomstick/32/246_2.png) [@Broomstick](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Broomstick)\ **Post date:** [July 23, 2011, 11:53pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/are-the-gop-rooting-for-total-economic-collapse/590045/115 "2011-07-23T23:53:41Z")
That sort of ignores the fact that Great Recession started during the Bush years, doesn’t it? ---
**Author:** ![Damuri\_Ajashi](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/d/898d66/32.png) [@Damuri\_Ajashi](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Damuri_Ajashi)\ **Post date:** [July 23, 2011, 11:59pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/are-the-gop-rooting-for-total-economic-collapse/590045/116 "2011-07-23T23:59:06Z")
> [@Martin\_Hyde](#): > > As a Republican I’m starting to turn pretty actively against my party on this one. > > At one point in the negotiations it seemed like President Obama was basically willing to give us 95% of what we wanted in return for moderate changes to the tax code and minor increases on a small subset of earners. To me, the fact that he was even willing to talk about reductions in entitlement programs meant we could have achieve real reductions in spending long term at the cost of tax increases which could have been scaled back 10 years down the road if we have an economic boom and they are no longer fiscally necessary. > > This idea that you must blindly refuse any tax increases is just honestly stupid. Yes, taxes introduce inefficiencies in the market, but they have to be weighed on their own merits. In this scenario we would be getting sufficient returns that I think on a societal level the $4tn deals I’ve read about with minor tax increases would have been worth it. > > I understood and supported the Republican position in the very beginning. Basically, we control the House and we want to use that to get some of what we want out of the President. I’m all for that, that is how politics is played. You don’t start off giving up anything, you start off asking for everything and giving nothing. That’s how negotiation works, but if you’re not willing to ever change your original position you aren’t negotiating at all. We control the House but we do not control the Senate or the White House, so if we aren’t willing to negotiate at all we’re basically saying we’re shutting down the government completely. That isn’t supposed to be how our system works. > > I understand politically some Republican congressmen were never going to agree with any tax increases. However, I honestly thought Speaker Boehner was going to use his leadership position to get a small portion of Republican congressmen to go along with the negotiated plan, so that when joined by the Democratic congressmen it would be enough to pass legislation. Obama has openly said he is willing to deal, Boehner is two things: either completely unwilling to deal because of ideological concerns, or he has gone to the caucus and found out he isn’t able to get enough of his own party to support a tax increase to get it through the house. > > If the first is true Boehner is an idiot. Based on talk earlier on I don’t think Boehner is personally unwilling to support a tax increase. Instead I think he is unable to get his caucus to vote for a tax increase in sufficient numbers to pass the legislation. That means he has failed as Speaker and should no longer hold the post. Realistically this is where I think the President should have the ability to just dissolve the House when it has proven it cannot pass legislation, which would fix this situation. Umm, I’m a Democrat, I don’t like the idea of giving ANYONE the power to dissolve the house no matter who is in the majority. The fact that the Republican party has been commandeered by the reincarnation of the John Birch Society doesn’t mean that there aren’t enough “country before party” Republicans left to form a coalition with the Democrats. If we need a last minute solution, then what we can get is a clean increase in the debt ceiling without any of the spending cuts the Republicans are insisting on. ---
**Author:** ![Try2B\_Comprehensive](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/try2b_comprehensive/32/65_2.png) [@Try2B\_Comprehensive](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Try2B_Comprehensive)\ **Post date:** [July 24, 2011, 12:00am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/are-the-gop-rooting-for-total-economic-collapse/590045/117 "2011-07-24T00:00:55Z")
> [@yorick73](#): > > By what mechanism do we redistribute wealth from the bottom 99% to the top 1%? Unnecessary wars. Tax dollars go directly into the pockets of favored contractors. De-regulation. The system tanks, and to prevent a total catastrophe taxpayers are on the hook for hundreds of billions of dollars. The people who caused the problem get million dollar bonuses. If the US credit rating gets torpedoed, then that. Interest rates spike. The corporations sitting on that $2 trillion, along with anyone else who has a mountain of money, invest in bonds with artificially inflated rates for a nice sure-thing investment. They’ll know damn well that the US is good for the money. Taxpayers will be on the hook for all that interest. ---
**Author:** ![Damuri\_Ajashi](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/d/898d66/32.png) [@Damuri\_Ajashi](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Damuri_Ajashi)\ **Post date:** [July 24, 2011, 12:01am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/are-the-gop-rooting-for-total-economic-collapse/590045/118 "2011-07-24T00:01:39Z")
> [@Recovering\_Republican](#): > > Obama can solve this problem in five minutes. > > Shut up about tax increases. No one is going to support those. > > Problem solved. You know you are wrong, right? Does that even matter to you? ---
**Author:** ![Damuri\_Ajashi](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/d/898d66/32.png) [@Damuri\_Ajashi](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Damuri_Ajashi)\ **Post date:** [July 24, 2011, 12:04am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/are-the-gop-rooting-for-total-economic-collapse/590045/119 "2011-07-24T00:04:08Z")
> [@yorick73](#): > > What was that 95% of what we wanted? Some kind of potential reductions in growth of certain programs sometime in the future in exchange for tax increases now? Both Reagan and Bush Sr. got hoodwinked on this type of deal…the tax increases arrive immediately and the cuts never materialize. When the heck did we ever raise taxes under Reagan? ---
**Author:** ![Try2B\_Comprehensive](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/try2b_comprehensive/32/65_2.png) [@Try2B\_Comprehensive](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Try2B_Comprehensive)\ **Post date:** [July 24, 2011, 12:05am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/are-the-gop-rooting-for-total-economic-collapse/590045/120 "2011-07-24T00:05:46Z")
> [@Sam\_Stone](#): > > Screw with this system at your peril. Let’s not frame my points as radical anti-capitalism, ok? Yes, I would probably want to see more limits to raw unfettered capitalism than you (monopolies are bad for instance. Poor people ought to be able to visit doctors. Old people ought to be able to pay rent), but I’m by no means a Marxist. As for screwing with the system at my peril, um… it is the House Republicans who are screwing with the system, to the world’s peril. [Previous page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/are-the-gop-rooting-for-total-economic-collapse/590045.md?page=5) [Next page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/are-the-gop-rooting-for-total-economic-collapse/590045.md?page=7)