This would make a great Time-Life series.

How Republicans managed to completely and utterly screw up the balanced budget battle
How Republicans managed to completely and utterly screw up national defense
How Republicans managed to completely and utterly screw up tax policy
How Republicans managed to completely and utterly screw up immigration reform
How Republicans managed to completely and utterly screw up environmental protection
How Republicans managed to completely and utterly screw up the media

Because they were never interested in a balanced budget and only trot it out to score points with the rubes?

Balanced budgets are fine as long as they're balanced on the backs of poor people.

I am just going to guess that they did it the same way they usually do?

Aarontology: Because they were never interested in a balanced budget and only trot it out to score points with the rubes?

Ding!Ding!Ding!Ding!Ding!

Hard to bring the pork home to your district if you've balanced budget constraints.

Aarontology: Because they were never interested in a balanced budget and only trot troll it out to score points with the rubes?

FTFY?

They never proposed a balanced budget. Neither have the Democrats.

The only way to balance the budget is by either raising taxes to a very high amount or by a combination of tax increased and cuts.

No politician is going to propose such a thing to an extent that will actually balance the budget, because that politician would never be able to be elected or re-elected. Since the citizens of this country can't handle the truth.

That isn't what that link is about at all, its that the Democrats have, mostly by their utter inability to hold a single position. What is interesting is that the GOP is trying to stop the cuts on the idea that it will hemorrhage jobs. I thought the Federal government doesn't create jobs? If it doesn't create them, how can it hurt when it loses them?

I'm gona go with "by not actually caring about having a balanced budget?"

You know what? Let the Bush tax cuts expire. All of them. Yeah, it will hurt but it's for the good of the country. I'm willing to pay my fair share as long as the Koch brothers pay theirs. If we're going to have austerity, let's do it, but enough of this dicking around and trying to screw the other guy while maintaining our own benefits. I want to see the across-the-board cuts to social programs and the military (essentially the same thing in a lot of Red states). You've talked the talk, now walk the walk. Or in the case of the Tea Party, hoverround the Hoverround.

Lando Lincoln: They never proposed a balanced budget. Neither have the Democrats.

The only way to balance the budget is by either raising taxes to a very high amount or by a combination of tax increased and cuts.

No politician is going to propose such a thing to an extent that will actually balance the budget, because that politician would never be able to be elected or re-elected. Since the citizens of this country can't handle the truth.

Remember the crushing taxes of the Clinton years and how it stifled growth? Going back to those gets us most of the way there.

The myth that we are broke has been carefully crafted.

Republicans in power care not an infinitesimal iota about balanced budgets - shoveling money to rich people is literally their singular goal. 'Fiscal responsibility' is the trope intended to distract the rubes from their ever worsening finances.

Republicans like screwing things.

The economy.
Iraq.
Little boys.

This guy has farked the Republicans, and farked them hard.



At some point, they'll start asking the question "Is he a liberal plant?".

We might not be doing so badly if we didnt blow so much on defense.

Its mountains of money pissed away, for nothing.

Lando Lincoln: They never proposed a balanced budget. Neither have the Democrats.

The only way to balance the budget is by either raising taxes to a very high amount or by a combination of tax increased and cuts.

No politician is going to propose such a thing to an extent that will actually balance the budget, because that politician would never be able to be elected or re-elected. Since the citizens of this country can't handle the truth.

That is why they "balance the budget" based on some future date and economical growth prediction instead of just tightening the belt and doing it.

Some President "We will have a balanced budget in 2030" (assuming a 3% growth for the next 18 years and spending staying the same)

Because the Bush tax cuts for the rich were already so successful at stimulating the economy, we need to keep them, amirite?

LiberalWeenie: Lando Lincoln: They never proposed a balanced budget. Neither have the Democrats.

The only way to balance the budget is by either raising taxes to a very high amount or by a combination of tax increased and cuts.

No politician is going to propose such a thing to an extent that will actually balance the budget, because that politician would never be able to be elected or re-elected. Since the citizens of this country can't handle the truth.

Remember the crushing taxes of the Clinton years and how it stifled growth? Going back to those gets us most of the way there.

The myth that we are broke has been carefully crafted.

Exactly. there was a story today that said the overall rate of total US indebtedness public and private hasn't FALLEN this fast since the 1950's

So it truly IS a myth. What amazes me, is that the GOP seems to think that the massage of "we're broke, we can't afford to spend one more dime!" Showhow dovetails with "Oh except for giving millionaires tax breaks, and buying new fighter planes and attack subs designed to fight an enemy who hasn't existed in 2 dozen years"

meat0918: This guy has farked the Republicans, and farked them hard.

[upload.wikimedia.org image 220x302]

At some point, they'll start asking the question "Is he a liberal plant?".

Lando Lincoln: They never proposed a balanced budget. Neither have the Democrats.

The only way to balance the budget is by either raising taxes to a very high amount or by a combination of tax increased and cuts.

No politician is going to propose such a thing to an extent that will actually balance the budget, because that politician would never be able to be elected or re-elected. Since the citizens of this country can't handle the truth.

And we're done here.

The article should have mentioned how the Republicans shiat all over their desires for a balanced budget in 2003 and haven't looked back since.

PowerSlacker: The article should have mentioned how the Republicans shiat all over their desires for a balanced budget in 2003 and haven't looked back since.

It goes back a little earlier than that, when they decided to squander the projected surplus on the mid-2001 tax "rebate" - which wasn't anything of the sort, because the Treasury borrowed to pay for it.

Step 1: by starting a battle over the budget.

/What a strange game. The only winning move is not to play...

CPennypacker: I'm gona go with "by not actually caring about having a balanced budget?"

I am going to go with; they are banking on economic failure to help them win in the fall.

meat0918: This guy has farked the Republicans, and farked them hard.



At some point, they'll start asking the question "Is he a liberal plant?".

It's so creepy. He's creepy. Smarmy, slimy, rich, coddled, pampered, genius-in-his-own-mind entitled bully.
The deference and respect shown to this overblown twat is just freaky.

I imagine McCain's aeroplane wreckin' days must have seemed like this.

And certainly he's bad for the party in other ways. As he gets the pendulum swinging back in his face (it alawys will no matter how far you push it) his true, whiny self has been showing up in the lamestreamMSMlibtardmedia a bit more.
Kinda thinking Rmoney is more physically attractive and better with a plastic smile, but pretty similar to this assclown.

Also done in one, with style I might add.

And I will.
Farked in the boobies with style.

-Democrats win election-
Democrats - We're gonna give these 1000 starving voters 2 loaves of bread from every rich person.
Republicans - No no no no no absolutely not no no no stop.
498 democrat voters - We need those loaves to live
497 republican voters - No no no no absolutely not no no no stop. Pray to jesus for food
5 independent voters - We need food
Republicans - Democrats are ruining this country, also the group of 498 democrat voters has a black guy in their group, don't let him vote.
498 democrat voters - WTF no!
Republicans - too bad, :::yoink::::
497 democrat voters - We need to kick the republicans out, they're killing us.
497 republican voters - Democrats are ruining this country and have bad ideas. We're voting republican.
5 independents voters - I dunno, I'm undecided
Republicans - Here's an assload of television ads saying why you shouldn't vote for abortion causing, arugula eating elitist Democrats.
Democrats = bad. Democrats = bad. Democrats = bad. Democrats = bad. Democrats = bad. Democrats = bad. Democrats = bad. Democrats = bad. Democrats = bad. Democrats = bad. Democrats = bad. Democrats = bad. Democrats = bad. Democrats = bad. Democrats = bad. Democrats = bad. Democrats = bad. Democrats = bad. Democrats = bad. Democrats = bad. Democrats = bad.
5 independents voters - Hrm, gah! stop with all the words! It makes my brain hurt. I'm voting for the incumbent to make this insanity stop!
-Republicans win election-
Republicans - We're gonna give these 1000 starving voters .25 loaves of bread from every 2 loaves imported from China but they have to buy them from rich people at the 2 loaf price.
Rich people - Woah, Woah, Woah, Woah, Woah. We're not gonna charge the 2 dollar loaf price, we're gonna charge the 1.99 loaf price that way you save .01 loaves every time you buy from us.
497 republican voters - Yay republicans are feeding us yay and business knows what's better for us than the government does
5 independents voters - I dunno, I'm undecided
497 democrat voters - WTF

A large defense budget is not a bad thing. It is a jobs program for engineers and scientist doing research that would never be done by the private sector without government support. My problem is with how it is spent. How about less nation building and bombing brown people and more towards projects like rail guns, quantum computers, flight technology and other techs that can filter down from defense research like GPS and the internet.

Aarontology: Because they were never interested in a balanced budget and only trot it out to score points with the rubes?

That's what I thought.

grimeystubs: A large defense budget is not a bad thing. It is a jobs program for engineers and scientist doing research that would never be done by the private sector without government support. My problem is with how it is spent. How about less nation building and bombing brown people and more towards projects like rail guns, quantum computers, flight technology and other techs that can filter down from defense research like GPS and the internet.

A good start would be scrapping the programs Congress is forcing through that the Pentagon doesn't want.

grimeystubs: A large defense budget is not a bad thing. It is a jobs program for engineers and scientist doing research that would never be done by the private sector without government support. My problem is with how it is spent. How about less nation building and bombing brown people and more towards projects like rail guns, quantum computers, flight technology and other techs that can filter down from defense research like GPS and the internet.

Or we could just accomplish this stuff with NASA instead

Sabyen91: grimeystubs: A large defense budget is not a bad thing. It is a jobs program for engineers and scientist doing research that would never be done by the private sector without government support. My problem is with how it is spent. How about less nation building and bombing brown people and more towards projects like rail guns, quantum computers, flight technology and other techs that can filter down from defense research like GPS and the internet.

A good start would be scrapping the programs Congress is forcing through that the Pentagon doesn't want.

Why not redirect a bunch of it to NASA and energy R&D?

ImpendingCynic: PowerSlacker: The article should have mentioned how the Republicans shiat all over their desires for a balanced budget in 2003 and haven't looked back since.

It goes back a little earlier than that, when they decided to squander the projected surplus on the mid-2001 tax "rebate" - which wasn't anything of the sort, because the Treasury borrowed to pay for it.

This, plus there was the first round of Bush tax cuts for the rich... the one in 2003 was yet another.

clambam: You know what? Let the Bush tax cuts expire. All of them. Yeah, it will hurt but it's for the good of the country. I'm willing to pay my fair share as long as the Koch brothers pay theirs. If we're going to have austerity, let's do it, but enough of this dicking around and trying to screw the other guy while maintaining our own benefits. I want to see the across-the-board cuts to social programs and the military (essentially the same thing in a lot of Red states). You've talked the talk, now walk the walk. Or in the case of the Tea Party, hoverround the Hoverround.

I'm totally with you but with the pragmatic concession to phasing the tax hikes and spending cuts over say 3 years.

Raising taxes and cutting spending will be a drag on yeh economy, and although we need to take our medicine sooner or later it'd be preferable IMO to
phase in the pain

They screwed it up by taking a position that can't balance the budget. No tax raises and no cuts to our largest discretionary expense make it pretty well impossible to balance the budget. Taking that position means that any real move towards a balanced budget is pretty much a loss for Republicans.

Lando Lincoln: They never proposed a balanced budget. Neither have the Democrats.

The only way to balance the budget is by either raising taxes to a very high amount or by a combination of tax increased and cuts.

No politician is going to propose such a thing to an extent that will actually balance the budget, because that politician would never be able to be elected or re-elected. Since the citizens of this country can't handle the truth.

Carter tried talking to Americans like they were adults, see what it got him?

GAT_00: That isn't what that link is about at all, its that the Democrats have, mostly by their utter inability to hold a single position. What is interesting is that the GOP is trying to stop the cuts on the idea that it will hemorrhage jobs. I thought the Federal government doesn't create jobs? If it doesn't create them, how can it hurt when it loses them?

Looks like GAT_00 is the only commenter that actually RTFA and was able to respond coherently. Everyone else is responding to the troll headline.

Both parties have put forward their own budget plans/ideas to reduce the deficit and both sets of plans are supposed to be for some future time when the economy has recovered, and both expected that to happen by now.

You can certainly argue that Republicans have delayed the recovery by delaying legislative action, but it takes two to tango. The Republicans in the house have passed resolutions which roughly resemble budgets but the Dems have ignored these, the same way the House and Senate both ignore Obama's budget proposals.

As they propose ways to kickstart recovery, the Democrats seem to be considering evidence and history while the Republicans side only seems to be working in a proprietary set of moral absolutes. However, the Democrats have their own proprietary set of moral absolutes which may or may not be helpful. They believe that certain sectors, like first time home buyers, long-term unemployed, and people who trade in large displacement cars, deserve stimulus, while others, such as large investors, in fact deserve not stimulus but rather a marginal disincentive. Granted, I agree with them that investment activities in general are undertaxed, but this should be corrected across the board and not just targeted at the wealthy.

GentDirkly: They believe that certain sectors, like first time home buyers, long-term unemployed, and people who trade in large displacement cars, deserve stimulus, while others, such as large investors, in fact deserve not stimulus but rather a marginal disincentive. Granted, I agree with them that investment activities in general are undertaxed, but this should be corrected across the board and not just targeted at the wealthy.

You know what's funny?

ALL OF THOSE THINGS THAT DEMOCRATS SUPPORT COULD ALSO APPLY TO THE WEALTHY MAN WHO LOSES HIS JOB, GOES TO BUY A FIRST HOME, OR WHO TRADE IN LARGE VEHICLES FOR MORE FUEL-EFFICIENT ONES. ALL OF THOSE PERKS CAN BE HAD BY THE WEALTHY OR THE FULL TIME INVESTOR.

So, what is your problem with them? I mean, are you in the same boat that Republican politicians were, where many supported these programs until certain Democrats supported them. The working class has given up much in the past decades (real wages stagnant or reduced, real productivity up, prices up in nearly every part of the economy save the cost of electronics, increasing imprisonment and punishment for lower/middle class crimes, etc), and people like you keep screaming "well, in the interest of FAIRNESS..."

Incidentally, yeah, I'm pretty sure Democrats would concede some of those perks for, say, fairer taxes on higher incomes, taxes on investment earnings that are more in line with other taxes, and a minor (say, 0.3% as proposed by Peter DeFazio) tax on the companies that make their money by trading stocks at an insane rate at lower per-transaction profits. That's what Democrats keep doing: conceding things. The Republicans keep moving the goal posts (or they just put them in another stadium), and Democrats seem to blindly be stumbling around looking for said goal posts.

And, yeah, Democrats DO keep farking up. They support many of the same Republican tax policies that hurt the bottom line. They believe in perpetuating the country's military imperialist attitude across the planet, and instead of discussing where true cuts need to be made and where they CAN be made in ways that will, in no way whatsoever, put troops in harm's way, they keep talking about NOT wanting to make cuts in other programs.

Start talking dollars and cents with people, and even those who don't support Democrats at the moment may begin to listen. There are billions upon billions of dollars that could be cut from the Pentagon's budget. Hell, how about we use some of that money for, I don't know, increased safety equipment and health care for veterans?

GentDirkly: The Republicans in the house have passed resolutions which roughly resemble budgets but the Dems have ignored these

What's the point when their budgets will explode the deficit and utterly crash the economy?

Lando Lincoln: They never proposed a balanced budget. Neither have the Democrats.

The only way to balance the budget is by either raising taxes to a very high amount or by a combination of tax increased and cuts.

No politician is going to propose such a thing to an extent that will actually balance the budget, because that politician would never be able to be elected or re-elected. Since the citizens of this country can't handle the truth.

The only way to balance a budget the size of the US is to admit it will never be "balanced" in the formal sense of that word. The idea that we can somehow a) reduce spending, b) increase revenue and c) eliminate a ten-figure debt is completely ludicrous. It can't be done and will never happen.

What CAN and SHOULD be done is to bring spending under control and increase tax revenue to a sensible level that can match spending; and stop trying to "balance the budget" like it was some housewife trying to balance her checkbook at the end of the month like so many people seem to think it is.

Mr. Nordquist really is being a big baby, too. Of our three Republican candidates for Senate, one hasn't signed his sixth-grade term paper. His organization is throwing a major, major fit about that. It's quite clear that Nordquist sees him as a lost sheep who needs a good whupping to get back in line. Witness also his comments that Republicans who were starting to regret signing that stupid thing need to have their leashes yanked. This is a scary baby who needs to have his toys taken away.

The government could issue money instead of the federal reserve and eliminate interest on the money we borrow. That would save hundreds of billions a year and trillions over a decade.

Brontes: The government could issue money instead of the federal reserve and eliminate interest on the money we borrow. That would save hundreds of billions a year and trillions over a decade.

I believe that was either the dumbest or most brilliant thing ever said on Fark. Depends on the tone, though.

Sabyen91: Brontes: The government could issue money instead of the federal reserve and eliminate interest on the money we borrow. That would save hundreds of billions a year and trillions over a decade.

I believe that was either the dumbest or most brilliant thing ever said on Fark. Depends on the tone, though.

I'm not sure. I'm still gathering my jaw up off the floor.

The Republican version of a balanced budget goes like this...

If we take in 10 dollars, we can only spend 10 dollars, because that's what a balanced budget law would call for.

The Democrat version of a balanced budget goes like this....

If we take in 10 dollars and we want to spend 25 dollars, raise taxes automatically until we have 25 dollars because if we want to spend that much the law says we have to have that much.

Brontes: The government could issue money instead of the federal reserve and eliminate interest on the money we borrow. That would save hundreds of billions a year and trillions over a decade.

Dang, didn't catch anyone :(