•Maintains Defense spending that is nearly twice the $400 billion (adjusted for today's dollars) that General Eisenhower spent in the 1960s
•Shreds the safety net provided by $100 billion in food stamps and $300 billion in Medicaid
•Does not cut one dime from Medicare or Social Security for another decade
•Includes no serious plan to create jobs
•Radically cuts taxes on the richest Americans while eliminating tax breaks that mostly help the middle class
•Fails to even consider a "value-added sales tax," which is the only way the country can begin to climb out of its budget hole
the bolded above is from the story jms linked.
on the first bullet-it's absurd. i think the two biggest problems i have with republicans are their love of defense spending (which is already incredibly massive, exactly why does it need increasing?) and their continued song and dance of tax cuts for the wealthiest, who pay less and less as the years go by. and as they pay less, the jobs don't increase, and the debt grows. so exactly what does giving tax breaks to the wealthy accomplish? well, nothing, unless you're the wealthy guy laughing because he's doing better and better.
bullet number three-again, other than defense, medicare/caid and ss are the other huge drain on the fed. that and defense are the two elephants in the corner that everyone ignores. ignoring those programs does nothing to address the concerns there. a small move now would not only put things back on track, but would lessen the larger, and more painful moves that would be needed in future if nothing is done now-and has anyone seen anyone in d.c. make any move there? nope. the payroll tax cuts that keep getting argued about-that's a lowering of ss payments. yeah, the program needing help-it's got less funds coming in than planned for, so that hole will grow.
the next two points, see my comments about the first bullet point. as the article i linked to the other day showed, the higher taxes were on the wealthy, the more they grew jobs-perhaps because that was a way to avoid taxes, and perhaps shelter some of the money by putting it in business? lower taxes, hell, they'll just let that stuff sit there and accumulate-and that's exactly what they're doing with it.
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Books serve to show a man that those original thoughts of his aren't very new at all.
Abraham Lincoln
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