Sorting the Real From Phony Spending Cut Options
Posted in Main Blog (All Posts) on July 9th, 2011 4:31 am by HL
Sorting the Real From Phony Spending Cut Options
Fred Barnes, WSJ
Simple lessons from the presidencies of Franklin Roosevelt and Ronald Reagan point to what's likely to be the only successful approach to containing government spending in the Barack Obama era.In FDR's time, a surge in spending by Washington was a cornerstone of New Deal efforts to lift the country out of the Depression. But unemployment never dropped below 14% in the 1930s and rose to 19% by the end of the decade. “Now, gentlemen, we have tried spending,” Henry Morgenthau, FDR's Treasury secretary, confessed to House leaders in 1939. “We are spending more than…
Budgeting for California’s Future
GOP Recklessness on the Debt Limit
Steve Benen, Washington Monthly
For two-and-a-half years, Republicans have cited “uncertainty” as one of the most serious issues facing the economy. It’s a shallow and painfully weak talking point, but they’ve stuck to it. Focus groups must love it.The irony, of course, is that these same Republicans are responsible for a debt-ceiling hostage strategy in which they’ve effectively proclaimed, “If we don’t get what we want, Republicans will crash the economy on purpose.” There’s arguably no better way to create uncertainty than by…
An Establishment in Panic
Pat Buchanan, Pittsburgh Tribune-Review
By refusing to accept tax increases in a deal to raise the debt ceiling, Republicans are behaving like “fanatics,” writes David Brooks of The New York Times.Anti-tax Republicans “have no sense of moral decency,” he adds.They are “willing to stain their nation's honor” to “worship their idol.” If this “deal of the century” goes down, as he calls the Barack Obama offer, “Republican fanaticism” will be the cause.”The GOP has become a cult” that has replaced reason with “feverish” and “cockamamie…
