I believe this country must be governed in a bipartisan manner. I don't know how much of the obstructionist game playing in recent years is the fault of the Democrats, especially the Democrat minority in the House, but you do the fucking math.
The taxes on the rich issue is bullshit and we all know it. I believe the super wealthy need to pay their fair share. But that isn't going to erase the deficit. And that's not "the sole reason for a dire fiscal outlook" in my world. In fact, the fiscal outlook in my world is pretty bright and getting brighter every day. Stock market soaring. Joblessness decreasing. Manufacturing jobs coming back to the US. The "dire fiscal outlook" you lament is more likely the invention of the compulsive lying machine that is the GOP. In fact, there's a thread about that in the Sandbox right now.
IMHO, the ridiculous spending done by the recent REPUBLICAN administrations are what put us on the road to ruin... and that's a 20-30 year road. Ain't about taxes. It's about stealth bombers, Star Wars and undeclared wars prosecuted on false pretense. It's better to bomb kids thousands of miles away when we could be feeding and educating them here instead.
Now as far as putting labels on me, or anyone else on this board, that's certainly your prerogative. I submit you're the blind partisan ... driven more by your hatred of the administration and progress than your love of America. But the more you talk, the bigger a dipshit you reveal yourself to be.
Originally Posted by Yssup Rider
Since, unlike Little Stevie, you actually made an errort to offer a few thoughts, I'll take a stab at answering them.
First of all, don't reflexively compartmentailize. I am not a "partisan," since I consider today's Republican Party an utter train wreck that's been dominated by phonies and hacks, just like the Democratic Party. In fact, if I could walk into a voting booth and pull a lever marked "Divided Government," that's what I would do. As currently constituted, neither party has shown any signs of offering a responsible or sustainable plan, and both are good for little more than preventing the other from cramming through a ruinous agenda. However, I am right of center and would prefer a robust, center-right economic growth agenda, not a march toward further bloating the entitlement state. For the record, I did not vote for Romney, and as unserious as I believe Obama is, I am not unhappy that he won re-election. It was my view that Romney, nothing more than a political opportunist, would have combined with congressional Republicans to overplay their hand in a suicidal manner.
Our fiscal outlook is manifestly not very bright. Large swaths of the economy are doing pretty well, and the S&P 500 is almost back up to its 2007 highs. But that's largely due to ZIRP and oceans of QE. What will happen when all that monetary accommodation has to be withdrawn, as eventually it must? Nobody knows for sure. You can't mathematically model things like that, at least not with any degree of efficacy. Maybe we'll be able to slowly let the air out of the balloon, or maybe we will not.
But reducing the deficit is really not the overriding concern now. Economic growth is. If we can return to RGDP growth rates of at least 3.5%, a lot of problems will take care of themselves over time. Even so, the debt trajectory cannot simply be ignored. That would be virtually certain to lead to trouble down the road.
You correctly mentioned that Republicans put us on an irresponsible path and that it's been a 20-30 year process. I submit that it's primarily been an 11-year process. 2002 was the year that a Republican congress jettisoned PAYGO rules so that we could cut taxes while simultaneously porking up the budget with a big spending spree. As I recall, that's why Paul O'Neill (not the baseball player) broke ranks with the Bush administration. At about the same time, Cheney said that "deficits don't matter," a statement that's simply ridiculous on its face. Then the Iraq war exacerbated fiscal problems that would have still been serious even if it had never happened.
But simply stacking failure atop failure is not much of a plan. We need a serious growth-oriented agenda, not just another politically driven one. For one thing, we need to fix the health care reform plan. As currently constituted, it's nothing more than an expensive, inefficient clusterfuck. I believe that its implementation is going to be a messy and costly process, and that it will create chaos and dislocations. As it stands, it's a significant impediment to economic growth and employment.
Then we need to actually
fix the financial system. Dodd-Frank does far more harm than good, and little about TBTF. For all intents and purposes, it's just another crony capitalist shuffle. But
neither party is even talking about an effective plan to fix any of this. Both are in the pay of the biggest players.
And we badly need tax reform. Our tax system is nothing more than a national embarrassment. One of the highest priorities, in my view, is implementing a territorial corporate tax system. That alone would make a big difference. But here once again, our "leaders" are asleep at the wheel.
We should be doing much better than we are. But until we address all of these structural issues, I'm afraid we'll be stuck in a slow-growth rut.
We are adrift with no real leadership, and we aren't even trying to fix anything.