Reverse Racism

[A Black Falcon]

Denial that Republicans are, on the whole, financially in favor of less government, less bureaucracy, lower (OVERALL) taxes, is ignorant. Dem's deny that this is their platform because it wins votes. Obviously, there are exceptions on both sides. Ben Nelson is a fiscal cons. Dem. from Nebraska. And there are probably more frivolous Republicans as well.

Ah yes, Republicans and small government...

If Republicans are such fans of small government, why did the government grow to its largest size ever under the Bush II administration? :)

I know, the excuse is "9/11 made us". But the committed conservative -- which of course Bush was not, and nor is most of his party -- would not have done it even so... because Republicans have found that, while they love to attack "big government" when out of power, when actually IN power, they find it very hard to reduce its size at all, and usually just end up making it bigger anyway, just with less of the size increase actually paid for.

First of all, we'll see about that in November. Second, you blame Bush for the disaster of 9-11? As if Afghanistan was his fault... approved by congress, heralded abroad by an international coalition... you can't blame him because that fell on his lap during his watch any more than you can blame the cost of WWII on FDR. Iraq, while in hindsight a colossal mistake, was also approved by congress... including many of your favorist socialists. Beyond these, what other spending are you referring to?

I wasn't referring to wars, actually, but the Republican party's love for unfunded tax cuts.

Essentially, spending increases that are going towards health care, the environment, financial reform, saving the economy from dropping into depression, helping unemployed and poor people, etc. is all unacceptable, and must be countered by other cuts to "fund" it.

However, revenue decreases on giant tax cuts very heavily weighted towards benefiting the rich many times more than anyone else? Those don't need to be funded with anything! Both Reagan and Bush II pushed the federal debt to record levels, thanks to their tax cuts. The same goes for military spending -- No military spending increase needs to be paid for. Just borrow it all from China. Oh, the Republicans will try to cut a few social programs to fund a tiny percent of it, rail about earmarks perhaps which are a minuscule percent of the federal budget, etc, but that only pays for a tiny fraction of their spending.

Look at a chart of the federal deficit in the past few decades. It goes way up under Reagan and Bush I, begins to decline under Clinton until he actually starts posting some surpluses, and then jumps back to giant record-setting levels under Bush II as he spends those surpluses on huge tax cuts for the rich and more military spending.

You cannot increase spending and decease taxes without there being huge consequences down the road! This has been proven over and over and over, and yet the Republican party keeps doing it, ruining the economy every time. First it was the recession that defeated Bush I, then the recession we're in now... both were caused or made much worse by Republican economic policies.

It's very true that Republicans do favor policies that help businesses stay competitive. Everyone knows that in the businessworld, it's a cut-throat, Darwinian theater. Republicans do tend to support big-businesses, but not at the expense of anyone else. You like to say they don't care for the poor, but that's not at all true. Republicans support the middle, working class. They do not necessarily, however, have much tolerance for the poor Welfare leaches that your on the left cater to. Republicans believe in a hard-working middle class, and in case you didn't notice, the hard-working middle class is vastly Republican. One minute, you depict all Republicans as rich white men, the next, they're all poor trashy white people. At least be consistent with your stereotypes: are they all poor white racist trash, or rich Scrooge-types?

The poor white people voting Republican are the ones I've referred to several times as being the ones either voting Republican only for social reasons (that is because they oppose gays, abortion, etc.) or because they've been conned into supporting economic policies devastating to their own economic status, maybe because they think that if they ever suddenly got rich, then they'd prefer the Republican way...

Such is an opinion, and a biased one at that.

No, it's not opinion.



See how it goes way, way up under Reagan and the Bushes, and down under Clinton? Yeah.

On that note...

Propping up the economy you say? By EXPLODING the national debt? I must say, the economy surely is trucking along now... however many hundreds of billions of dollars they irresponsibly spent.. it seems to be... well, not working, but... they meant well, so it's OK. Helping the poor? I assume you mean welfare and unemployed. And our friend Ben Nelson agreed that, extending unemployment benies MUST BE PAID FOR FIRST... which was not at all to say that it would not have been passed, but, once again, the Republicans sought FINANCIAL RESPONSIBILITY PRIOR TO SPENDING. The Dems refused, and passed more unpaid-for legislation. And the middle class? How are the Dems helping them out again?

It's utterly unbelievable how the Republican Party has proven in the past few years that they have learned absolutely nothing from the Great Depression... I thought we had learned in the 1930s that the way you get out of depression or recession is via government spending. That it was indelibly proven by how the depression hit its lowest point in 1937, after the government decided to cut back on recovery spending and instead go for "financial responsibility" which of course completely sabotaged the recovery and made things infinitely worse, similar to as is happening this year as Republicans block every measure aimed at helping us out of this recession. Obviously not, so instead we repeat the mistakes of the past, and suffer needlessly for it. It's ridiculously stupid...

The way you get out of recession or depression is by spending. Only after the recession is over can you then go back to financial discipline. That is how things work. The reason why the economy is heading downhill this summer is because no more stimulus is getting passed, more than anything else.

Republican denial on this this recession, which is almost exactly identical to Herbert Hoover's "do nothing" policy about the Great Depression, is failing just as badly now as it did in the 1930s. Only the recovery bills that we did get passed, some with Bush's support because he evidently cared a little more about saving the economy than most of his party does, kept things from getting much worse... but by quitting on recovery now, as I said, we repeat 1937, albeit on a smaller scale because of the comparably lesser recession now.

They're not fiscally disciplined.

See chart above. If the Democrats aren't financially disciplined, the Republicans are many times worse. Bush was unbelievably borrow-happy, increasing our debt many times. He borrowed every penny we spent on the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, and never included either war in the normal military budgets -- both were paid for exclusively by supplementals. Obama ended that and put most military expenditures on the normal budget, which accounts for a big part of the "budget increase" under Obama -- he simply moved the massive expenses of the war from the cover of secrecy to the light of day. He's also promised to reduce deficits, as soon as we're recovered enough to begin to do so; I have no doubt he will, just like Clinton. Democrats are much better at actually paying for things they spend money on than Republicans. Letting the Bush tax cuts expire will be a good start towards that... you simply can't increase the size of government and decrease collected revenue, as Republicans have done since Reagan, it's insane long-term policy!