While we here in Los Angeles are focused on the downpour and our news media on the attacks on Libya, we still need bear in mind that the current divided Congress has yet to finish the work the 111th (i.e., the Pelosi-Reid Congress) left undone. They still haven’t passed a 2012 budget.
You see, the Democratic Senate has rejected the budget the Republican House has passed.
As we think about matters budgetary, a thought occurs.
Recall how many Democrats (and their allies in the media and in the blogosphere) criticized the immediate past president for his failure to hold the line on spending. But, wouldn’t these folks have cried bloody murder had that good man tried to make the type of cuts passed by the Republican House. I mean, heck, the Washington Post characterized “the $6 billion cut in the most recent continuing resolution as ‘slashing’ the federal budget“.
Wonder what kind of cuts these folks proposed.
Cutting the amount of money the citizens get to keep for their own?
When the Senate Majority Leader can only offer a factually incorrect accounting of his state’s more “sensitive” buckaroos…. you know damn well the Democrats aren’t serious about making any budget cuts.
There are those that claim spending isn’t the problem; that the problem is the “Bush Tax Cuts for the Rich,” and that if we repealed them, all would be swell.
Let’s examine that argument mathematically.
For Fiscal 2011, according to the (always suspect) OMB, the Federal Government intends to spend $3.7 Trillion dollars (rounding) while taking in $2.2 Trillion dollars in tax receipts (rounding) leaving a defict of $1.5 Trillion.
According to the Tax Foundation, Individual income taxes are 45% of Revenue. or $990 Billion and the top 5% of wage earners (People earning $156K per year or more) paid 59% (let’s call it 60% to keep the math simple) of all income taxes. Or: $594 Billion.
So, let’s suppose we did what Levi and the Democrat-Socialists in Congress want to do and screw the rich. In fact, let’s go beyond raising the Bush tax rates or even what Jan Schakowsky and Al Franken are proposing. Let’s double the taxes on everyone making more than $156K per year. Let’s screw ’em so hard even Stephen King will the pinch. That’ll teach those bastards to work hard and get ahead!
Even supposing the rich (and not so rich) don’t balk at turning over 70% of their income so that we can keep cowboy poetry going. That only increases revenue by $594 Billion.
The deficit would still be a trillion dollars even after we fiscally cornholed the rich like a punk prison bitch.
I also realized I used math, which is absolutely against the rules when arguing with dumb liberals.
I think it’s more about the deficit. It was evil and cruel that Bush ran deficits as high as $100-400B, when he had a GOP Congress. Because he did that, now WE MUST run $1.6T deficits and it is evil and cruel that a GOP House wants to cut them to, say, $1.59T.
Go figure.
V, even if we raised taxes on the rich – the one move that wouldn’t necessarily be evil and cruel – per Krugman, we should increase spending to compensate. Because “stimulus” is the object. Bush’s relatively small deficits were so evil and cruel that we can no longer wish for deficit reduction.
But, ILC, Paul Krugman is a Nobel-Prize winning economist. How could he possibly be wrong?
/sarc
Rep. Nancy Pelosi proposed to cut her nose to spite her face; otherwise, she proposed no real cuts. She wants to spend more money that we don’t have. As does Obama.
#7: “Rep. Nancy Pelosi proposed to cut her nose to spite her face;…”
Oh sweet Jesus…please don’t tell me she’s going in to have MORE Tijuana-grade face work done.
#8 – Maybe that’s why she “fainted” in Rome. She saw how much her newest face lift would cost – and that she couldn’t write it off in the Speaker’s office funds.
Regards,
Peter H.
I thought she was hospitalized because she had an asshole transplant, and it rejected her?!?
It’s amazing, isn’t it? The Republicans want to cut all of $61 billion of a $2.8 trillion budget, which is the equivalent of 61 cents on $380. And the libs scream bloody murder. And these are the same folks who at election time assure us that yes, they, too, are fiscally responsible.
A 1.5 trillion dollar deficit. The number defies comprehension. And I, too, thought deficits of a few hundred billion were unacceptable.
Here liberal troll troll troll…
The Idiot Brigade has been conspicuously silent on this thread, Livewire.
#13 – V, it’s because these facts are “inconvenient truths” to those of the libtard persuasion.
After all, being uninformed is how liberals remain liberals. (H/T Ann Coulter for that gem of wisdom.)
Regards,
Peter H.