Kevin I am happy to discuss things with you. But I am tired of your added condescending comments when you disagree. My comments were not ridiculous. Typically anyone who says anything you don't agree with is either ridiculous or an idiot.
Oh give it a rest Jason, I didn't say
YOU were ridiculous, and "idiot" never even entered my mind when typing that. I said
Romney's defense was ridiculous, and it is. Is it
your defense too? If so, then that's news to me. I assumed you were just telling us what Romney's defense was, which I called ridiculous. I didn't think you were actually supporting it. But now that it seems that you are, I'll stand by my position that it is a ridiculous defense and hopefully you'll choose not to be offended where no offense was intended.
It is really quite simple. Deficits or surpluses are a combination of revenue generated through taxes and the spending of that revenue.
Of course they are.
Will it it ridiculous for you to simply say all tax cuts increase deficits.
That isn't ridiculous at all. The deficits are always worse off than they would otherwise be had there never been tax cuts implemented. That's because the revenues which offset spending, comes from taxes. When you cut taxes, you cut revenues. Postulating some mysterious "offsetting" factors is just worthless rhetoric unless these things can be identified and shown to be mathematically sound. The fact is government spending has been going up for decades, and the bulk of it cannot be controlled, but the deficits can be offset by increased revenues.
As you can see, revenues kept pace with increased spending until the Bush tax cuts. During a period when the government was already financially strapped because of two wars. That created massive deficits for the same reasons deficits were created under Reagan. You just can't expect to maintain a certain level of spending while diminishing income.
But you never responded to my parallel in logic. According to what Romney is saying here, government spending should always be considered deficit neutral so long as someone makes the claim that they'll increase revenues to offset said spending. Right? And it shouldn't really matter if every non-partisan economist on the planet says that such a feat is mathematically impossible to accomplish. I mean this is pretty much what Romney is doing here, and he directs u to "six studies" to support his math, when in fact only two of them are studies and both come from his personal advisory team of economists. The other four "studies" are just OP-ED publications in Right Wing literature that merely reassert what these two economists said.
The government does not have any right to a set level of income nor to a set level of spending. It is all up for debate and legislation.
This is only true for discretionary spending which accounts for roughly 35% of all government spending. Mandatory spending is pretty much set in stone and so we already know what kind of revenue we would need just to keep pace with it. Defense is an easily modified expenditure and in accounts for almost half of all discretionary spending, so it should be obvious where we should be looking at if we're serious about making meaningful cuts for the sake of the deficit. But Romney is such a bonehead he wants to increase discretionary spending (Defense)! He also wants to further diminish the government's ability to pay its bills by decreasing revenues with huge tax cuts that would require an extra $4.8 trillion in revenues just to break even. It is the whole Ayn Rand philosophy Droopy was honest enough to explain. The idea is to starve government of funding so it can't spend. If it can't spend, it has no power. It is a war against government, the primary mechanism by which "we the people" can enact change for the benefit of society.
of course his is dumb. You disagree with him.
No, the reason it is dumb should be self-evident. You don't think it is dumb to try knocking down trillion dollar deficits with a plan to shut down PBS? It is completely dumb, because even if successful, it doesn't make a dent in the deficit. All it does is rile up the Right Wing base that listens to FOX News preach to them about how the evil government conspires to use PBS to indoctrinate our children with progressive ideas. The Republicans simply do not have a coherent plan that is based in math and Romney's response about Big Bird proves this. Be upset with me all you want for calling it stupid, but you haven't explained away the stupidity. All you've done is attack me for saying it is.
Romney's plan does not work. Nor does Obama's.
Obama's plan already has worked to some degree. He employed Keynesian economics principles, deficit spending, for the sole purpose of kick-starting the economy and increasing employment. Most economists agree wholeheartedly that this plan worked in that respect. The problem is that the stimulus wasn't big enough, which is why the Republicans so desperately wanted to stop his Jobs Bill. We already know more government spending in the form of stimulus, translates to a boost in employment, and right now they just can't have that because they're primary goal is to make sure Obama doesn't win the election. They said so themselves. The well being of this country is just something they'll be interested in whenever one of their own is at the helm.
The only plan that works is the one nobody wants to talk about and that is the one I mentioned on another thread. EVERYONE's taxes has to go up. Not just the rich but the higher income earners taxes should go up. Go back to the Clinton era taxes on everyone. This is modest tax increase. Then cut. Cut defense by $150 billion per year, reform entitlements, looks for other smaller budget savings like PBS and many others.
And so do you think your plan looks more like Romney's that Obama's? Romney wants to do the exact opposite of what you just said. Personally I believe Obama wants to eventually raise taxes on everyone, but only after we get out of the economic hole we're in. As it is, Republicans do no, nor have they ever, cared about deficits. The only reason they complain about them now is because they are desperate for ammunition against the Democrat in office. They sat idly by and did nothing when Reagan showed us what it really meant to drive up massive deficits, and they happily sat by as Bush did the same thing. When Democrats warned of the impending deficits, Dick Cheney insisted "deficits don't matter." So where was the Tea Party outrage then?
If you paid attention to what I said you would not have posted this. I noted that the 1986 act cut rates, And it did. Drastically. But it closed down so many other tax deductions and loopholes that it ended up raising revenue. In others words it was a back door tax increase.
Given the context of this discussion being a defense of Romney's claim that he would produce enough revenues despite the proposed tax cuts, I naturally assumed that was your point with the Reagan Tax cuts.
Personally I don't view the Bush tax cuts remaining in force as a tax cut.
And that was the beauty of the Bush tax cuts. They were designed so that when the time came that politicians came to their senses and realized they needed revenues, the Republicans could just whine about how the Democrats want to "raise taxes as usual." But all Obama is really trying to do is bring them back to the levels where they once were, when mandatory spending was lower than it is now.
Yes but what tax cut or increase is ever permanent?.
Jason, the Bush tax cuts were set to expire in ten years. Generally, tax increases/cuts don't come with expiration dates as these did. Subsequent changes in tax rates are generally made via further legislation, but not in this case. Obama can't be accused of increasing taxes when all he would really be doing is nothing. If he had done nothing the cuts would have expired, but he extended them a while longer because that was the only way he could have pushed through a number of other stimulus measures (i.e. extending unemployment benefits which the Republicans held hostage).