Well, if that’s the level we’re going to bring this to, then, SOP from the Right - borrow, cut taxes, borrow, cut taxes more, start off-budget wars, spend like a drunken sailor, and demonize anyone who resists.
It’s okay. If it works out the way they want it, taxes for those with million dollar incomes will probably be able to be cancelled in perpetuity. And corporations will probably manage to get to the point of even more negative income tax rates.
If that’s not worth screwing a few billion people I don’t know what is.
-Joe
Assuming you mean Hatch’s co-sponsorship of a bill in 1993, eighteen years ago, was this statement of yours honest? “MANY republicans are on record in support of such legislation UNTIL Obama proposes it.”
That statement suggests a bit more recent turnaround time, doesn’t it? I mean, 18 years is enough time for a person to go from diapers to the voting booth. If Hatch changed his mind at some point over the 18 years between then and now, why should the assumption be he changed it based on Obama’s proposal?
Nor is it particularly clear he favored it in 1993, except as the lesser-of-two-evils alternative to Clinton’s plan. “Politics is the art of the possible.” Fearful that Clinton’s more intrusive plan might pass, Hatch could have co-sponsored the plan he did not out of a belief that it was a good idea, but out of a belief it was a less terrible idea than Clinton’s.
Yes?
Less party discipline, driven partly because there are a number of conservative Democrats who could easily lose their seats in the next election if they are seen as too “soft” on this issue.
Well, if her brother had been employed, it might have helped her get the money to make the house payments, he lived there with her, after his crazy, drug-addicted ex-wife tried to kill him.
Maybe, although Republican party discipline isn’t what it once was, with the rise of the Tea Party. However, Obama doesn’t need party discipline to threaten to veto any debt limit bill that has more than just raising the debt limit. He only has to have self-discipline.
Face it-everything Obama has done has left the economy in WORSE shape-no jobs (except government jobs) have been created, the states are bankrupt, and a second housing collapse is in the offing.
It is naive to think that ANYTHING the Republicans could do, could make things worse.
I expect Obama to be a one term presidency-he will leave Washington nder a cloud of scandal.
Why not do both? I’m a lefty, and I’ve no issue with slashing entitlements fairly heavily provided we also make the same cuts to military spending.
No, it’s naive to think that they couldn’t. They could, for example start another trillion+ dollar war in order to dig us deeper in debt, while lowering taxes on the wealthy even farther. The Democrats at least are not deliberately trying to wreck the economy and the government.
You can’t expect good government out of people who think that government is bad; they won’t even try to do a good job.
I read recently (here?) that the best thing Congress could do for the budget deficit is nothing. If they go home and play X-Box, the Bush tax cuts will expire and no additional special military funding will be made, and those two things will go a huge way toward fixing the budget deficit, much more than any proposal Congress is actually considering.
When you can do your job best by doing nothing, it’s a sad day.
(And yes, technically Congress needs to pass a budget–don’t let facts get in the way of a rhetorical flourish!)
It’s hard to imagine that someone would co-sponsor a bill, not merely argue for or vote for a bill, if he didn’t think it were a reasonably good idea.
Agreed if that’s true. Do you have a cite for that? I hadn’t heard about that.
A little burglary? That’s not much. The only reason it was even a big deal was because they did it to someone with actual power. Try this.
So they run for office for the lulz? I’m sure their benefactors think the government does a great job, as long as it has the proper interests at heart.
More bullshit. How are they discouraging contraception exactly?
No they believe some government is necessary (otherwise they’d be anarchists).
They run for government to enrich themselves, and tear it down in the process. They deliberately do as bad a job as they can get away with, in hopes of creating as big a disaster as possible that they can blame on “government incompetence”. The Bush Administration did quite a big of that; their handling of Katrina being one example.
The military and the police, since all they care about is hurting and controlling people.
Are you channeling George Carlin?
Do you think those situations are even remotely analogous?
In Obama’s case there were already enough votes to raise the debt ceiling. Obama’s vote was a protest vote rather than a vote to bring down the world financial system. He wasn’t using the debt ceiling as a negotiating chip.
In the current case, the Republicans are in fact playing chicken with our economy and using the threat of financial collapse as a negotiating tool.
I don’t know if you are in the US or not but in 1996 we passed the Welfare Reform Act of (wait for it) 1996. We don’t have excessive welfare and lifetime welfare benefits are limited to 60 months. So what is it about welfare is it that Republicans are opposed to these days other than the theorteical notion that we have too much welfare.
Republicans have been peddling the welfare queen myth for decades and it never seems to get old.
What? Did her brother own the mortgage on the house or something?
The Republican senators in 1992. (Dole comes to mind).
Mitt Romney.