9 Policies Conservatives Were For Long Before They Were Against Them
By Joshua Holland, AlterNet
Posted on September 21, 2011, Printed on September 28, 2011
http://www.alternet.org/story/152447/9_policies_conservatives_were_for_long_before_they_were_against_them
In 2001, the GOP's budget guru, Rep. Paul Ryan, R-Wisconsin, was excited for the opportunity to vote for Bush's "temporary" tax cuts. "I think we ought to have this income tax cut fast ... to make sure we get a good punch into the economy, juice the economy to make sure that we can avoid a hard landing," he said at a committee hearing. "The economy has soured," he continued. "And it is my concern that if we keep waiting and seeing we won't give the economy the boost it needs right now."
Fast forward 10 years, to this August. President Obama was poised to call for an extension of a payroll tax break -- and an additional break for businesses -- and Ryan began singing a very different tune. "Those things are all temporary," he told Fox News. "They are demand-sided. And they are proven not to work and they still facilitate uncertainty for businesses." Suddenly, tax cuts -- the GOP's answer to every economic issue of the past four decades -- were "proven not to work."
"What's plaguing our economy today," he said, is "the amount of uncertainty as to what the future holds for them on regulations, on taxes, on interest rates and all of those things." He said that the temporary nature of the cuts "exactly exacerbates those problems."
Obama had made a point of the fact that the proposals contained in his jobs package had all been embraced by Republicans in the past, but that didn't prevent them from bashing it, just as they had decried many other erstwhile conservative ideas as so much misguided "socialism" when proposed by Democrats.
(More here.)
Posted on September 21, 2011, Printed on September 28, 2011
http://www.alternet.org/story/152447/9_policies_conservatives_were_for_long_before_they_were_against_them
In 2001, the GOP's budget guru, Rep. Paul Ryan, R-Wisconsin, was excited for the opportunity to vote for Bush's "temporary" tax cuts. "I think we ought to have this income tax cut fast ... to make sure we get a good punch into the economy, juice the economy to make sure that we can avoid a hard landing," he said at a committee hearing. "The economy has soured," he continued. "And it is my concern that if we keep waiting and seeing we won't give the economy the boost it needs right now."
Fast forward 10 years, to this August. President Obama was poised to call for an extension of a payroll tax break -- and an additional break for businesses -- and Ryan began singing a very different tune. "Those things are all temporary," he told Fox News. "They are demand-sided. And they are proven not to work and they still facilitate uncertainty for businesses." Suddenly, tax cuts -- the GOP's answer to every economic issue of the past four decades -- were "proven not to work."
"What's plaguing our economy today," he said, is "the amount of uncertainty as to what the future holds for them on regulations, on taxes, on interest rates and all of those things." He said that the temporary nature of the cuts "exactly exacerbates those problems."
Obama had made a point of the fact that the proposals contained in his jobs package had all been embraced by Republicans in the past, but that didn't prevent them from bashing it, just as they had decried many other erstwhile conservative ideas as so much misguided "socialism" when proposed by Democrats.
(More here.)
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