I only found out about the republican alternative to the stimulus due to Ron Brownstein on Meet The Press, other than that tid-bit it got exactly zero press coverage. Nothing so clearly says what Republicans stand for than this plan.
Ron was 100% correct in saying that the senate republicans who stood behind this plan and railed against the cost of the current stimulus plan are blatantly hypocritical.
If Brownstein’s math was correct this plan would cost 2.5 Trillion dollars.
Nice find. I’m gonna blast my Bush-loving economist prof on Wednesday with this.
This plan seems stupid, but I object to the concept that tax cuts ever “cost” money.
That’s a blatant re-definition of the normal sense of the word “cost” that liberals have been using for ages. It’s dumb.
Programs “cost” money. Tax cuts leave money in the pockets of citizens.
I am not arguing that tax cuts are always good, and in fact these tax cuts are probably not good, but they don’t “cost” money.
That’s just using terminology to lie.
What? I don’t follow. The government runs on tax money. Taking that money away is indeed a cost, despite it being tagged to a program. If the government increases spending or decreases operational income the result will be the same.
*Note that I understand it’s not the accounting definition of cost. I’m relating it to what happens afterward, that it’s a cost to the operation of the government. They are now having to to with much less income.
Tax cuts always cost money. Tax cuts leave money in the pockets of citizens, and then the government borrows the money instead to make up the difference, which the citizens are then obliged to pay back. With interest. The mindset that believes that tax cuts are a one-size fits all, downside-free cornucopia of prosperity is the same mindset that believed that taking out a no-downpayment, interest-only loan on a house that you can’t afford is a good idea.
You’re not listening. I said I thought the plan was stupid.
But saying that tax cuts “cost” money is bullshit.
In your formulation it’s the borrowing that costs the money and I’m 100% opposed to that.
Look you can spin this all day and night and unfortunately there are people out there that will believe you but if you actually think that it’s logical to say that when the government REFRAINS from taking more money from it’s citizens that it’s a COST then you’re twice as benighted as I thought you were.
[EDIT]
Let’s put it this way. Ben you are COSTING me money because you keep forgetting to send me $100 a month.
Pay up man!
OH SNAP
Hahaha, double benighted.
Ben, you are possessed of a muddy-mettle! Miscreant!
It’s not “spin” to point out that when tax cuts are not coupled with spending cuts, then it is idiotic to claim that they have no cost. When the Republicans say that they would prefer that any stimulus come in the form of hundreds of billions of dollars in tax cuts, and you say “Well, technically tax cuts don’t cost anything,” you are wrong. No need for spin–that statement is simply incorrect when applied to the current context. And even in a general sense, when you say that tax cuts technically never cost anything, you are also wrong. Cutting taxes does have a tangible cost when the cuts reduce income below the level of spending, much like charging money on your credit card has a tangible cost even though it leaves more money in your pocket right now. “Spin” is pretending that this is not true, which is something the modern GOP does way too often for my tastes.
According to standard English usage, tax cuts clearly are “costs” according to definition #3.
Honestly, Spoofy. Where do you come up with this shit?
This is tangential, but it pissed me off. Jon Stewart had former Senator Sununu from New Hampshire on the other night, and Stewart is making the case that Republicans were all gung ho about spending and expensive tax cuts when they were in power but not now. Sununu goes “Well, we had a surplus so it was time to cut taxes.” Yeah, genius, we had a fucking surplus. But we also still had debt.
It’s like… we’d been using a credit card so much that each month, we spent more than we earned. When we finally had one month where we earned more than we spent, they said, “Hot damn, a surplus! Better request a pay cut - we don’t need as much income anymore!” Except, of course, that we still had plenty of debt, and now we have deficits again.
What is all this jackanapery?
A pox on both your houses!
I’d also like to add that this analogy makes zero sense. Am I the taxpayers in that scenario?
The government spends money as a proxy for the taxpayers, which means that any “cost” accrued by the government is ultimately a cost born by them. You and I do not share the same relationship, so your analogy is nonsensical. Also, I have been benighted no fewer than four times, so you underestimate me, sir!
I doubt we’re ever going to agree on this. You can’t even see how bizarre your use of the language is.
Incidentally, we’re not even disagreeing on the basic issue here…that we simply cannot afford too many tax cuts if we want to keep on funding the services we’ve all come to expect.
Let me put it another way…I’ll try one more time to get through to you guys.
We know for a fact that tax revenues are down. Lets assume for a moment that Obama had done nothing. That all policies were left in place and all funding for programs was held constant, and we simply borrowed the x billions we needed to keep government programs exactly where they were.
I don’t even think you guys would try to call this failure to collect the same amount of revenue a “cost.”
From the standpoint of basic accounting you would never ever call it that. You would put the amount of money that was collected in one column and the amount of expenditures in another and you would see that there is a shortfall.
Very few politicians and talking heads would be so bold as to claim “the failure of the american taxpayer to pay the same amount of money as last year is costing us money!”
And yet that same television talking head would have no problem (just as you don’t have a problem with it) referring to a tax cut as a “cost” because referring to it in that way is a powerful way of portraying a tax cut in a negative light.
It’s propaganda.
It’s like you guys haven’t realized that you won. Obama is president, the democrats are in control. Only three national republicans in the entire country voted for the stimulus bill and it doesn’t matter. It passed anyway. You’re getting your way. Taxes are only being reduced by a small amount for the lower and middle classes and the spending on the projects you guys like is going to go through.
You don’t need to use the dishonest terminology that you used for the past eight years to sway people to your side. Everybody is already on your side.
But whatever. I doubt you’ll change. You finally have people on the conservative side (like myself) that are sick and fucking tired of the hypocrisy of the republicans and are actually really hoping (unlike the Limbaughs) that Obama succeeds.
I truly hope that this plan somehow succeeds. I hope that the amount of money we borrow pulls the economy out of the gutter and that we find some way of balancing the budget and moving forward into a time when we can afford all the social services that the majority wants without having to resort to this insane indebtedness.
But I’m never going to give up my core conservative principles…that you call things what they are and you try to live within your means.
I’ll say it again. You guys can stop hating on conservatives now…it’s over…at least for a while. Conservatives are basically powerless to stop any program that liberals want to enact.
Don’t be sore winners.
We’ll I’m winning because I was benighted for 8 years :)
Spoofy, can you explain the Republican obsession with tax cuts these days?
Way back in the days of the Reagan revolution, the story was:
“Government is too big. We’ll cut off the head of the beast with tax cuts - it’ll starve, and we’ll be forced to shrink government due to lack of resources”
So, cool. That makes some kind of sense - tax cuts is a means towards achieving an end: small government.
But now, we’re talking about a stimulus package. The goal is to increase spending, including government spending. So small government is decidedly not the goal. So, WTF - tax cuts? Where’s that come from?
In the larger, non-stimulus sense: small government is obviously not a goal for the GOP these past 8 years - so how are tax cuts still justified in conservative circles?
“Government is too big. We’ll cut off the head of the beast with tax cuts - it’ll starve, and we’ll be forced to shrink government due to lack of resources”
So, cool. That makes some kind of sense - tax cuts is a means towards achieving an end: small government.
And yet, we all know how well that turned out. They obviously weren’t forced to shrink government at all. Take a look at the Reagan years:
Let me try to explain what I think is going on. I don’t think I’ve ever been as far right as these guys even if it seemed like I was so I may not be the best person to explain it but I’ll try.
The real core conservatives simply have a built in revulsion for government. They hate the idea that they have to pay money and that people that they instinctively don’t trust are then going to use that money to pay for things that they don’t even support.
The one thing that most conservatives agree on is that defense is something that absolutely has to be paid for by taxes. Consequently, the massive increases in defense spending under Reagan (with the ridiculous deficits that went with it) and the incredible war expenditures under Bush (and all the consequences of that) end up hypnotizing conservatives in a way.
We’re so stuck on the idea that defense spending is worthwhile that we often end up giving lots of other non-conservative behavior a pass. Everybody was so busy defending Bush on the war front that they ignored the ways in which he was completely ruining other stuff.
Call it whatever you want…stupidity, hypocrisy, evil…whatever. It’s the basic weakness of the average conservative voter…we’re willing to ignore a ton of awful shit if we think that the government is actually doing something worthwhile for once.
Once liberals are back in control, the slimy hypocritical republican politicians simply change their tune, reverse course, and start decrying all the spending.
See, when a “conservative” was president, people were willing to look the other way about the crazy shit Bush was doing because he appointed conservative judges and “secured the borders” and “made the country safer” (even though he really did absolutely nothing for safety and security.)
Now that a liberal is president, the republican politicians have only one option…they have to go back to screaming about how much money we’re spending on things. They know that the basic conservative likes tax cuts because he distrusts government, and they realize that we have short memories. They’ll keep screaming about this and try to wait and hope that Obama fails. Then if he does, they’ll blame everything on the liberals and try to convince enough marginal conservatives that they really have reformed and that they care about basic conservative principles like living within your means and preventing government bureaucrats from spending money on stuff they hate.
It’s a retarded cycle and I think for the first time in my life I’m really sick and tired of it. I don’t know if I’ll ever trust the republicans again. They would have to change in some fundamental and amazing way.
But that’s my take on why the republicans are reversing 8 years worth of tax and spend shenanigans and acting like the only thing that can save the country is tax cuts.
If I had to describe the american psyche right now it would be this:
We like having stuff but we don’t like having to pay for it.
This is amply demonstrated in the way we all bought enormous houses, cars, TVs, etc. We want everything now and we want it to be really cheap.
The problem is that a lot of the things we want–top quality healthcare, extensive services, environmental programs–simply cost more than we really want to pay. It’s paralyzing really. In my opinion this country is headed for collapse.
But I think I understand on some level why liberals refer to tax cuts as a “cost.”
I guess the feeling is that it’s one of the only ways to make people understand that you can’t have both things. You can’t have top quality government services and extremely low taxes. I understand that the point is to try to turn people against tax cuts.
Like I said…I don’t think there should be any tax cuts right now. We simply can’t afford everything we want to pay for.
But I still find it impossible to agree with using the word in that way.
Agreed. But it’s actually more than that, since in addition to budgetary expenditures, the government is also sitting on top of a pile of debt. So we also cannot afford too many tax cuts if we want to pay down the federal debt–or even just stay on top of the interest and prevent it from growing.
We know for a fact that tax revenues are down. Lets assume for a moment that Obama had done nothing. That all policies were left in place and all funding for programs was held constant, and we simply borrowed the x billions we needed to keep government programs exactly where they were.
I don’t even think you guys would try to call this failure to collect the same amount of revenue a “cost.”
If we weren’t being pedantic, then I think we could (and should) acknowledge that there is a cost associated with failing to collect enough revenue to cover our spending, yes. And if we have a choice to do one or the other–collect the money needed to fund spending, or not collect the money needed and borrow to fund the spending, then I fail to see how it is intellectually dishonest to consider the “cost” of doing the latter. Because there definitely is a cost to taking that course of action–one that you can put a specific dollar amount on, and which will ultimately have to be paid by the taxpayers.
From the standpoint of basic accounting you would never ever call it that. You would put the amount of money that was collected in one column and the amount of expenditures in another and you would see that there is a shortfall.
Actually, the specific term used by accountants and economists for what we are talking about is “opportunity cost,” which is simply a comparison of the overall price tag associated with taking one course of action over another. And businesses absolutely do assess their spending in those terms. “If we use this money in this year’s budet for X instead of Y, how will that affect our bottom line?”
Very few politicians and talking heads would be so bold as to claim “the failure of the american taxpayer to pay the same amount of money as last year is costing us money!”
They might not, but they would not be mistaken if they did say that.
And yet that same television talking head would have no problem (just as you don’t have a problem with it) referring to a tax cut as a “cost” because referring to it in that way is a powerful way of portraying a tax cut in a negative light.
It’s propaganda.
It’s reality.
It’s like you guys haven’t realized that you won.
Wait, I won? Yay me! What did I win? Hopefully is not a bequeathment of nighthood, because I already have that.