What's the real GOP agenda for the economy?
Maybe the Republican plans for Medicare and the debt ceiling are reckless attempts to derail the recovery before 2012
Posted on May 26, 2011, at 4:03 PM
Robert Shrum
The Week
The trains are speeding down the track toward each other, but as the deadline for raising the debt ceiling nears, the establishment seems to assume that somehow Republicans and Democrats will find a way to avoid a head-on collision. But there's always the chance that this could become a case of runaway trains – and that in the perennially peculiar month of August in our politics, the United States could actually default on its debt. Here's how it could happen.
President Obama is looking for compromise, but the GOP's definition of that looks more like wholesale surrender. The president won't accept budget cuts that would shatter the recovery and shred the social safety net. He also knows, as do most economists who aren’t paid for their opinions by right-wing non-think tanks, that the great fiscal challenge facing America can’t be met without new revenues.
That is anathema to the GOP, which has elevated "no new taxes" to the level of inviolable doctrine. Never mind that Ronald Reagan, so often invoked as an icon by conservatives, not only raised the debt ceiling repeatedly, but raised taxes when it was in the national interest. Indeed, the tax burden today is now lower than it was under Reagan – and lower than at any time since 1958.
(More here.)
Posted on May 26, 2011, at 4:03 PM
Robert Shrum
The Week
The trains are speeding down the track toward each other, but as the deadline for raising the debt ceiling nears, the establishment seems to assume that somehow Republicans and Democrats will find a way to avoid a head-on collision. But there's always the chance that this could become a case of runaway trains – and that in the perennially peculiar month of August in our politics, the United States could actually default on its debt. Here's how it could happen.
President Obama is looking for compromise, but the GOP's definition of that looks more like wholesale surrender. The president won't accept budget cuts that would shatter the recovery and shred the social safety net. He also knows, as do most economists who aren’t paid for their opinions by right-wing non-think tanks, that the great fiscal challenge facing America can’t be met without new revenues.
That is anathema to the GOP, which has elevated "no new taxes" to the level of inviolable doctrine. Never mind that Ronald Reagan, so often invoked as an icon by conservatives, not only raised the debt ceiling repeatedly, but raised taxes when it was in the national interest. Indeed, the tax burden today is now lower than it was under Reagan – and lower than at any time since 1958.
(More here.)
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