Why does the GOP hide its agenda?
Ryan stays mum about his budget-busting "Roadmap" while Bachmann peddles debunked myths in rebutting Obama's SOTU
By Joan Walsh
Salon.com
Prepared for President Obama to give a "centrist" State of the Union address to prove he can work with intransigent Republicans, I was pleasantly surprised. They may be small things, but a few points stood out. I was happy he pledged that "we simply cannot afford a permanent extension of the tax cuts for the wealthiest 2 percent of Americans," adding "Before we take money away from our schools, or scholarships away from our students, we should ask millionaires to give up their tax break." I just hope he fights to end those tax cuts in 2012 even though he didn't in 2010. I'm glad Obama promised to cut taxpayer subsidies for oil companies (even though almost no one clapped.)
Sadly, it took a little bit of courage to speak with compassion about the children of illegal immigrants or to say "American Muslims are part of our family." I liked a lot of what he said about investment in education, transportation and infrastructure, but I have no idea how that squares with his promise to freeze domestic spending for five years.
The president was lucky to have not one but two GOP rebuttals, and they were equally strange and dishonest. Rep. Paul Ryan railed against the deficit without proposing even one specific cut. He didn't talk about his own infamous "Roadmap," maybe because most analysts have called it a budget buster, even though it essentially replaces Social Security and Medicare with vouchers. The Congressional Budget Office estimates Ryan's plan wouldn't balance the budget until 2063, and would add $62 trillion to the debt by then. Citizens for Tax Justice said Ryan's Roadmap raises taxes on 9 out of 10 taxpayers and while slashing them for the wealthiest.
(More here.)
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2 Comments:
Michele Bachmann is like Sarah Palin, Christine O’Donnell, Sharron Angle and Linda McMahon, they are just not right but funny. I especially like the clip of Bachmann saying that the founding fathers abolished slavery, wow, what a liar, not the first or last time that will happen. Does anyone with self-respect real believe her?
Her response failed to say how we got here from eight years of poor leadership, two wars without end, diminished Civil liberties. Its like she crawl out from under a rock just to complain about our current President. We all know that Americans for Prosperity and Freedom Works started the Tea Party, grasroots, please.
Don’t you read those special history text books the right wing is rewriting?
You know, the ones that claim that the Bush years were filled with rainbows and unicorns and cherry lollipops. There was no unemployment, no sickness, the economy was booming and every day was sunny. Everyone had a wonderful job, Katrina was the name of the waitress at your favorite diner and there were no criminals, no terrorist attacks, and the whole big, wide world loved us. The folks in Afghanistan and Iraq were really just having picnics in the desert and wore camo to make it more of a challenge when they played hide and seek. And Guantanamo Bay was for square dancing! And finally the Virginia and Texas Board of Education just approved the book and its use in their public schools.
Didn’t you read that part yet???
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