Actually, Cherub’s post (unintentionally?) illustrates the mental disconnect amongst conservatives these days. Borrowing his metaphor for a moment: the U.S. is a family making $60K a year but spending $90K; it’s borrowing a buck for every two it makes. But rather than dealing with what’s really gobbling up the household budget and driving them further into debt, they have somehow gotten into their heads they can put their affairs in order just by cutting back on incidental expenses - which, while arguably “wasteful,” are only a drop in the overflowing bucket. Even Timex acknowledges that won’t work and he never lets political realities complicate his hypothetical ideals!
So thanks for that demonstration, Bob! You can set aside the crazy persona now. Y’know, if you like.
Eh, I didn’t find that Bartlett article particularly convincing. Sure, there are some people in the House who would be willing to let things explode, but I’d still hope that the Democrats can scrape together enough Republicans to keep things going. The Republicans will have their tantrum about the deficit, then things will go on as they always do. Maybe I’m just an optimist.
While I agree with everything else in your post, I’d say Republicans instead of conservatives. Most actual fiscal conservatives of my acquaintance bailed on the party long ago, myself included, thus contributing to the swelling ranks of independent voters. Current Republicans are almost without exception social conservatives (if by social conservative you mean would-be-theocrat), but that’s the limit of their conservative cred.
Ok, leaving aside debate about whether the US government defaulting would be a good idea, or idiocy about whether cutting back on spending what amounts to pocket change would be enough…
What happens if these crazy fuckers actually follow through with their madness? It’d be unprecedented as far as I know, and it’s hard to get a sense for where the chips might fall.
Speculating, wildly…
Would it be painful for a while, but ultimately expose the Tea Morons for what they are, and thereby swing the system back to rational government? I have half a hope this would crush the GOP for decades to come, but that’s no doubt optimistic.
Or would it just bring economic disaster, with the Bozos responsible somehow able to foist responsibility on others, and so avoid their comeuppance? Will US debt sell, once it proves to be no more reliable a Banana Republic? What can the US do if it won’t sell, when a crunch comes… print money? What other options are there? Isn’t this just a recipe for runaway inflation?
I wonder what the percentage of angry Republicans are absolutely convinced that it’s all the illegals faults and if you just cut off their services we’ll have fiscal sanity again?
I don’t doubt that unless blood really hits the water that it’ll get blamed on the Obama administration. You just need to see the rhetoric thrown thats being thrown around over the bailout to see that.
The key area where Republicans and conservatives continue to live in a fantasy world relates to the inevitability of higher taxes to the long-run solution to our fiscal problem. At present, they all live in a dream world in which massive spending cuts that don’t hurt average Americans are the only solution to the deficit that they will entertain. But sooner or later, they will realise that this is simply not possible and that tax increases are not the worst thing in the world—Ronald Reagan raised taxes 11 times, including in 1982 when the economy was still in recession, and contrary to right-wing predictions Bill Clinton’s 1993 tax increase did not send the economy into a tailspin.
Once upon a time not too long ago there were serious people in the Republican Party willing to negotiate with Democrats in good faith on the issues of the day for the betterment of our country. Now they are all gone. Until they reappear our fiscal situation will get worse. Democrats can’t do it by themselves; they need someone on the Republican side with whom they can negotiate. I don’t see any such person anywhere in the country at the moment.
I’ve said several times that I think they should have let all the cuts expire. Add to that increasing the payroll threshold and ramping up taxes on the highest incomes to try and squeeze a few dollars out of the baby boomers before they fuck us all. Meanwhile be cutting spending where it makes sense, curtail the entitlements in government service, and for the love of god try to pay down the debt a bit.
All with a grain of salt, we have to stop on either end at some reasonable threshold, but that’s for the professionals to figure out. The real factor is that the only thing we can do quickly and effectively is increase taxes.
Tax cut expiration would only get us so far though. To Timex’s point, yes, we do really need to push up sleeves and fix things. And because we have some very stubborn and quite possibly mentally challenged people in government, it will probably take bad things happening before they agree on anything. Bad things being cutting the wrong things and leading to another recession (or longer one depending on how you look at data) or perhaps defaulting on debt, something that has never before happened in this country.
I’m hoping beyond hope that they will work out compromises, even if that means I pay more taxes, have less stability from social security, or even (gasp) have to retire a couple of years later than normal. I would also gladly give up a war and crazy, insane levels of military research and general spending budgets along the way. This country is becoming a joke and it’s because we don’t have any leadership willing to do the right things, regardless of future election chances.
I know VERY little about federal budgets, discretionary spending by the govt., social security, etc. There are two things I know about such things, and I am close to completely ignorant beyond these two things. Unfortunately, knowing these two things already means I am NOT the most ignorant person in this thread. Here they are:
1.) I know how to balance my personal budget through either increasing income or cutting spending, and I suspect most rational, responsibly people know how to do this.
2.) I know that a government budget is nothing like a household budget. And thus any analogy to how I would correct my household budget is completely irrelevant to a political discussion of this sort.
I think you are underestimating the amount that federal spending is interwoven with our economy. Now you might not like that it is (and you may be right that it shouldn’t be). But right now it is. Simply cutting things with the idea that it has to be done some time and we may as well get it over with, would literally crash the economy, sending unemployment to even higher levels and likely causing a Depression worse than the Great one. I’m not trying to be hyperbolic for effect. I really think that’s what would happen.
I wish it was this easy; honestly, I really do think they’re just fools. Republicans don’t get elected for their attention to budget details. The first thing that comes to mind is Yglesias’s bits about how Mike Pence, one of the supposed smart ones, knows nothing. Democrats aren’t geniuses, I think the GOP has just been selecting for an unusual level of pandering.
I think you’re looking too much at the status quo. I don’t expect it to happen, but the US could easily close our entire debt gap (10% of GDP for 2010; will go way down when the economy picks up, but for the sake of argument) and still collect less taxes than the average first world country. 34% puts you between the UK and Canada.
Yeah, but the UK and Canada systems don’t have people paying for as many services out of pocket (like health insurance). We would be raising our taxes in order to pay down debt, not in order to get additional services. That could hurt the economy in other ways.
A VAT, which almost every other industrialized country has, would eliminate the debt, make social security solvent, and pay for a real health care system.
It’s regressive, but if we look at this as a “government needs more money not to go bankrupt and still maintain our standard of living, how do we fix this” problem, VAT is the most obvious answer.
