Boehner stepping down

He balanced the budget by attacking education and local govt funding, which has resulted in the loss of nearly 25k public sector jobs. Private sector jobs, OH has tracked with national stats, nothing bad, but not great either, and far from your claim of “significant economic growth.” OH is far from some stand-out compared to the rest of the nation. And the attacks on education will bear rotten fruit down the road.

I think you’re kind of just seeing what you want to see. There are always ways to spin anything to support your own views, but I think that it’s really hard to do it here and seem reasonable. The improvements in Ohio under Kasich as a result of his policy decisions cannot really be construed as imaginary. If they were, he wouldn’t enjoy such good approval ratings. 62% of Ohioans aren’t Republicans, dude. That means even Democrats are thinking that he’s done a good job. All the spin aside, most of the people living in Ohio think that his policies are improving things.

I have no idea what point you thought you were making with your last post though.

It was somewhat far afield. I was just pointing out that I think your description of Republican policy as being universally fantastical is kind of at odds with the successes that Kasich’s policies have enjoyed.

A quick google search reveals that in order for tax cuts to increase goverment revenues the top rate would need to be above 70%. Kennedy cut the top rate from 91% to 70% and that did increase revenue, but the major tax cuts from Reagan and Bush resulted in higher deficits

Again, I think you are making statements that really aren’t supported by evidence. You are taking specific statements and then over extrapolating. For instance, the idea that tax cuts could not increase revenues unless the to rate is over 70% is complete nonsense, and not even remotely supported. It seems to miss the key aspect of the discussion here.

A major component of tax revenues is not simply the percentage rate, but also the size of the economic base being taxed. Economic growth increases the tax base, which increases revenues. Thus, the ultimate goal, if you want to increase tax revenues, is to generate economic growth.

So then, regarding taxation, the question becomes how does taxation effect economic growth. Statements like these one you made amount only tax rates over 70% having an impact is silly because it presumes that the entirety of the tax code is the top rate. There are all kinds of modifications to the tax rate schedule which will have varying impacts on the economy.

Certainly at the top, it can argued that tax cuts may have limited, if any, impact. The extremely wealthy will not likely buy more stuff if you cut their taxes. There could be increased investment, but the impact is likely still going to be limited.

But lower down the rate schedule, lowered taxes can give people more money to actually spend in the economy.

There are other aspects which complicate things further. On the topic of corporate taxation, for instance. At the current rates, some of these largest companies simply dodge most of their tax liability by holding profits overseas, where they aren’t taxed by us at all. Virtually all of the really big corporations do this at this point, as they all have international operations that facilitate it. In these cases, if you can encourage them to bring those profits back to the US, you could potentially get more revenue, even at a lower rate. Of course, it’s more complicated than simply lowering the rate, as there are other countries with much lower rates already, so it would end up being a balancing act, given that you will also lose revenues from smaller corporations who now pay a lower rate. Of course, for smaller corporations, leaving them more money could have other economic benefits.

Ultimately, tax policy is not a simple thing. You can’t boil it down to statements like you’ve been making. There are a ton of variables at play, where simple ideology can’t give the answer.

So approval ratings are your proof when other posters are providing actual stats and evidence. But I’m the one seeing what I want to see, eh? What I would like to see is actual proof to support your statement that Kasich’s policies have resulted in “significant economic growth.”

And did I misspeak on the loss of private sector jobs, that public sector growth tracks with national growth and thus doesn’t really stand out?

https://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/answer-sheet/wp/2015/07/20/what-ohio-gov-john-kasich-is-doing-to-public-education-in-his-state/

Edit: I’m also waiting on an example that in today’s environment additional tax cuts resulted in increased revenues.

The forum just ate my post, which is annoying. This will be more abbreviated.

So approval ratings are your proof when other posters are providing actual stats and evidence.

Individual statistics can certainly be useful, but also often fail to paint an accurate holistic picture. Something like approval ratings captures the actual perceptions of people living in that economy. If things are not actually improving, then what accounts for Kasich having such good approval numbers? Why are even Democrats approving of his job? It seems like for that to happen, his policies must actually be improving things in some tangible way.

I’m also waiting on an example that in today’s environment additional tax cuts resulted in increased revenues.

To be clear, I specifically did not claim that cutting taxes resulted in increased revenues. But, as you yourself admit, cutting taxes can potentially spur economic growth. And it’s growth that increases revenues.

This article presents three cases where effective rates dropped, and actual revenues increased.

Although that article is talking about top income tax rates, which is not generally where I would focus tax cuts. I would actually tend to prefer tax cuts for lower income brackets, and suspect they would effect things more favorably than lowering taxes on the super rich.

Try to understand here, I’m not making the argument that tax cuts “pay for themselves”, as is often suggested by conservatives. I’m merely making the more reasonable suggestion that tax cuts are not inherently incompatible with revenue increases.

I get where you’re coming from, but approval ratings are so fickle that I can’t buy them as any kind of reasonable indicator. They go up and down with media cycles, and they reflect all kinds of things not related to economics.

Which makes sense, with reasonable caveats (such as targeting cuts at lower income brackets to maximize effect). Unfortunately, our prospective new Speaker’s approach to budgeting does no such thing. Cuts to social programs, combined with decreases in tax rates that mostly benefit the rich, isn’t how you increase revenue.

Note my stuff about tax cuts wasn’t about Ryan in particular, but was rather just rejecting the statement grumpy made.

In terms of Kasich’s ratings, they’ve been pretty consistently high for a while now, haven’t they? It doesn’t seem like it’s some flash in the pan kind of thing.

This post is factually correct, but misses the point of the relationship between Ryan and the Tea Party.

Ryan was one of the leading figures in the early Tea Party movement, working to get today’s Tea Party and Freedom Caucus types elected (back when he was one of the “Young Guns,” along with McCarthy). The goal at that point was to get “real conservatives” elected who would then be able to strengthen the Young Guns who would effectively take over the party and lead it in a more conservative direction.

What has happened is that the true conservatives who were elected are, by and large, true believers who want to dramatically diminish the size and scope of government, and are willing to employ nearly any means to get there. Since Ryan is not a lunatic, he is now too liberal for the Freedom Caucus (which explains why he doesn’t want the speakership – he can’t command loyalty any more than Boehner).

I get the Timex really, really seems to like Kasich. Aside from his popularity in the state – which reflects, I think, the overall improving economic health of the nation (and the national focuses on doing things like helping manufacturing and bailing out GM, which dramatically helped Ohio), rather than any particular policy of Kasich. Every serious analysis I’ve read of his budgets indicate he balanced them in large part through taking funds that would have been used for education. Timex and I went around on this in another thread, and while I generally respect his openness to data, I think this is one area where no data will be sufficient to convince him that Kasich just isn’t much of a leader.

What ineffablebob said. Why do presidential approval ratings go up after they’re out of office? Most Americans thought Saddam had WMDs in the spring of 2003. Polling #s and approval ratings aren’t hard data, but like Bob wrote they’re subject to lots of factors. Let a massive natural disaster occur and both Kasich and Obama’s ratings will go down.

Try to understand here, I’m not making the argument that tax cuts “pay for themselves”, as is often suggested by conservatives. I’m merely making the more reasonable suggestion that tax cuts are not inherently incompatible with revenue increases.

We’re in agreement then. There’s a happy balance when it comes to this stuff. Bartlett argues that the govt should skim roughly 20% off in terms of taxation based on historical data that shows it’s enough to run the country without damaging GDP growth too much.

If you’re as defensive about Kasich as Aleck suggests, I have to wonder why. Do you need him to be one of the good ones? Like I said, I was neutral toward him until some of the recent campaign rhetoric. But he isn’t all bad, he did take the Medicaid expansion for the state, and he doesn’t seem to need to constantly pander to the religious right like Jindal and some of the others. Nor does he come off as an entirely owned sock puppet like Walker. So he probably is a bit more moderate than a lot of other GOP governors these days, I just wish he wasn’t as actively hostile toward public education.

The issue there is Republican governments actively try to raise the tax burden on the poor, often by replacing progressive taxes like income taxes with regressive ones like sales taxes. Kansas and North Carolina are notorious for this, and I know when I was stationed at Shaw such things were considered as well.

i don’t think anyone is denying that tax cuts aren’t incompatible with revenue increases, but they are saying that the threshhold where this does happen is at near-Scandanavian levels.

63% of GOP voters would feel “comfortable and positive” with Ryan as the Speaker. Recall that 72% of GOP voters were dissatisfied with Boehner.

If would be nice to find out more about why GOP voters think Ryan is so dreamy and Boehner is so icky … or more accurately, why they think Ryan could do any better than Boehner at herding cats. Hope springs eternal, I guess.

i don’t think anyone is denying that tax cuts aren’t incompatible with revenue increases, but they are saying that the threshhold where this does happen is at near-Scandanavian levels.

Well, I actually posted some cases there where it happened, in non Scandinavian levels.

But the real thing I’m talking about is that “tax cuts” don’t mean “tax cuts on the top bracket”.

Because they’ve been taught that Ryan is awesome and Boehner is bad. Once Ryan had to do something, he would become a RINO and a terrible traitor.

Because the grass is always greener. Once Ryan had to actually do some things as Speaker, and inevitably fails to get the House to do anything useful, they’ll hate him too.

That happened last week.

Ryan just had a presser and says he’s willing to run. But only if the Freedom Caucus et al agree to his demands - mainly, that they stop acting like knuckleheads but also that Ryan not have to do all the fundraising the Speaker normally does so he can spend time with his family. He gave them a deadline of Friday to fall in line or he walks.

So now we have another deadline and another ticking clock. Tune in next week for the next exciting installment!

This was a pretty brilliant move by Ryan.
“I’ll take the job if you guys stop being bitches.”

I don’t think it’s brilliant at all, and does anyone see it working? I mean, nothing works better than staring at a group of uncompromising a-holes and demanding they change their natures and if they don’t compromise then another perceived establishment party member walks away. They’ll view it as winning, that by holding out they might eventually get one of their own in place.

It’s brilliant because it’s the only way he could react and not totally fuck himself.

If they agree, then he steps in and has saved the party.

If they don’t agree, they whatever. He tried. They can’t say he abandoned them.

He didn’t try, he acted just like the Freedom Caucus. My way or the highway. We need an adult in that position, not someone who parrots the very behavior that’s causing so much dysfunctionality in the House in the first place.

You aren’t getting it. He was in basically a no win situation, and he found an out that doesn’t destroy his career.

Saying, “my way or the highway” isn’t bad when your way is simply “don’t be crazy fucks”.

But hey, maybe I’m missing something. What exactly was the adult move here that he should have taken?

Within the narrow scope of the ‘Freedom Caucus’, I agree with Timex here. Their stated goals and means are antithetical to cooperation.

However, in principle, this doesn’t solve the root issue. Sure for Ryan this is the least bad option, but for the house it isn’t. The Republican majority, as a whole, needs to stand up to those legislative hostage takers, and shut them out. Have the whole party work together, with as many Dems as needed, to pick a speaker. Basically govern as a coalition government with three parties. Treat the Freedomers as a hostile third party.