Pathetic job by the Republicans

sure lj sure...

LadyJazzer, I love you. You give me so many smiles with your clever retorts. No sarcasm, very sincere from me.

Interesting topic here.

This morning I heard on the news that no incumbent president has EVER been reelected when the unemployment rate is over 8%. According to the job report released yesterday, the current unemployment rate is around 9.1% with only some 54,000 non-farm jobs created in the month of May. Economists are saying that in order to bring the number below 8%, thousands of jobs must be created, primarily in the private sector, over the next 12-18 months. Meanwhile, our President was in the Rust Belt trying to talk about ANYTHING but the economy.

So I have to wonder why the President isn't really interested in talking about the elephant in the room?

And while we are talking about pathetic jobs, how long has it been since the democrat-controlled Senate passed a budget now? Did I hear someone say well over 700 days?

An old saying goes, "he who lives in glass house should not throw rocks." That seems appropriate here to me

LadyJazzer wrote: Just wait until 2012 and the Dems beat the GOP over the head with the Ryan Kill-Medicare plan that picked up a seat in NY-26, and they win back control of the House. I can hardly wait to hear the weeping and wailing... THEN you will see the Reagan-era taxes reinstated, the billionaires start paying a little more, the withdrawal from Bush's unnecessary wars accelerated, and hopefully, a filibuster-proof majority in the Senate as well...

The GOP can't field a single candidate that isn't a loon or a buffoon.

Based on what I'm hearing about the economy and the projections, the GOP could run Pee Wee Herman for President and he might win. You can blow smoke all you want.....but if the President and his administration don't figure out how to turn this economy around soon, he will be a one-term president. As far as I can tell, he and his administration don't have a clue how to pull that off. They can attempt to balance the budget on the backs of the top 2% of tax payers and all that will do is inspire an even greater slowdown in the private sector. Why would ANYONE work harder so they can pay MORE taxes? They can also bankrupt the country trying to preserve those sacred cow programs. None of that will lead to a stronger economy.

I wonder what Pee Wee Herman is doing these days anyway?

We did pretty well with the tax rates we had under Reagan and Clinton... How well did it work out with the Bush tax-cuts? Bush created a total of 3 million jobs, and handed off the worst Recession since the Great Depression.... Clinton (with the 3.6% higher Reagan tax-rates) created 23.1 million jobs... Hmmmm, I know which period *I* preferred living in....

Yep, just keep hoping we get those heavy weights candidates from the GOP... and they keep talking about killing Medicare...

LadyJazzer wrote: We did pretty well with the tax rates we had under Reagan and Clinton... How well did it work out with the Bush tax-cuts? Bush created a total of 3 million jobs, and handed off the worst Recession since the Great Depression.... Clinton (with the 3.6% higher Reagan tax-rates) created 23.1 million jobs... Hmmmm, I know which period *I* preferred living in....

Yep, just keep hoping we get those heavy weights candidates from the GOP... and they keep talking about killing Medicare...

I guess we can argue the statistics and whether or not your life or mine was better under one President or another....but really I'm betting neither of us are trained economists. This one seems pretty simple though. I can't see how raising taxes creates jobs in the private sector. It seems to me that it would lead to the exact opposite effect. The first analogy that strikes me is the following:

You wheel a critical patient into the emergency room. They are in bad shape but there is a good chance they will recover given the proper care and attention. So what does the staff of the ER do? One of them climbs up onto the chest of the critical patient and starts jumping up and down. Now will this action kill the patient? I don't know. But I'm certain it won't help their recovery.

Again, I'm clearly no economist...but I wasn't born last night and can't, for the life of me, see the logic in raising taxes on the top 2%-the very people who are generating potential work in the private sector. I also don't see how growing the government leads to prosperity either.

Another analogy. It seems to me that growing government to improve the economy is like a person trying to pick up the very pail they are standing in. I don't think it can be done. We can throw snotty barbs all day long, but at the end of the day our economy is still tanking and the current Administration will be held accountable for failure in the polls come the 2012 election if the trend isn't reversed soon. You don't turn these things on a dime and soon it will just be too late. Read it and weep.

Here's the effect of your Bush tax-cuts...



If it weren't for Bush's tax-cuts and the two unnecessary wars, we'd be in pretty good shape...

It's from a pretty decent article... Of particular interest is the section:

Heritage Foundation’s Analysis is Misleading

* Heritage ignores the fact that rapidly-rising interest costs — one of its “culprits” behind rising outlays — result in significant part from the tax cuts and other fiscal policies of the Bush era .

* Heritage ignores the fact that the share of deficits accounted for by the Bush-era tax cuts will grow in future years as the impact of the economic downturn on deficits diminishes .

* In constructing its baseline, Heritage partly assumes its own conclusion.

* It was not a sudden spurt of growth in Social Security, Medicare, and Medicaid that turned projected budget surpluses into deficits . CBO and many budget analysts have long pointed out that the “big three” entitlement programs will swell in future decades as a result of an aging population and steady growth in per-capita health-care costs.[15] Indeed, CBO had already projected that this would eventually occur when, in 2001, it projected significant budget surpluses through 2011 and years beyond . [16] Since the growth in these large programs was anticipated (other than the growth due to enactment of the Medicare prescription drug benefit), it is not what turned projected surpluses to deficits.

http://www.cbpp.org/cms/index.cfm?fa=view&id=3036

I have yet to find a president who was able to control the economy. If so, we would never have a recession or depression.

LadyJazzer wrote: Here's the effect of your Bush tax-cuts...

If it weren't for Bush's tax-cuts and the two unnecessary wars, we'd be in pretty good shape...

It's from a pretty decent article... Of particular interest is the section:

Heritage Foundation’s Analysis is Misleading

* Heritage ignores the fact that rapidly-rising interest costs — one of its “culprits” behind rising outlays — result in significant part from the tax cuts and other fiscal policies of the Bush era .

* Heritage ignores the fact that the share of deficits accounted for by the Bush-era tax cuts will grow in future years as the impact of the economic downturn on deficits diminishes .

* In constructing its baseline, Heritage partly assumes its own conclusion.

* It was not a sudden spurt of growth in Social Security, Medicare, and Medicaid that turned projected budget surpluses into deficits . CBO and many budget analysts have long pointed out that the “big three” entitlement programs will swell in future decades as a result of an aging population and steady growth in per-capita health-care costs.[15] Indeed, CBO had already projected that this would eventually occur when, in 2001, it projected significant budget surpluses through 2011 and years beyond . [16] Since the growth in these large programs was anticipated (other than the growth due to enactment of the Medicare prescription drug benefit), it is not what turned projected surpluses to deficits.

http://www.cbpp.org/cms/index.cfm?fa=view&id=3036

Problem with the graph is that it doesn't, and could never show, what unemployment WOULD HAVE BEEN without the Bush tax cuts. You can say there still would have STILL been low unemployment but that would not make it so. After 9/11 the economy was tanking fast, then magically after the tax cuts it started to come back.

If lowering taxes was a bad idea after 9/11 and the near meltdown, then surely raising taxes during that time would be better right? Companies would be hiring in the face of higher per employee expenses and the uncertainty of another terrorist attack which nearly everyone on the planet was expecting...right?

These graphs are pretty worthless when they don't account for every factor like employment or uncertainty during times of emergency imo.

LadyJazzer wrote: Here's the effect of your Bush tax-cuts...

If it weren't for Bush's tax-cuts and the two unnecessary wars, we'd be in pretty good shape...

It's from a pretty decent article... Of particular interest is the section:

Heritage Foundation’s Analysis is Misleading

* Heritage ignores the fact that rapidly-rising interest costs — one of its “culprits” behind rising outlays — result in significant part from the tax cuts and other fiscal policies of the Bush era .

* Heritage ignores the fact that the share of deficits accounted for by the Bush-era tax cuts will grow in future years as the impact of the economic downturn on deficits diminishes .

* In constructing its baseline, Heritage partly assumes its own conclusion.

* It was not a sudden spurt of growth in Social Security, Medicare, and Medicaid that turned projected budget surpluses into deficits . CBO and many budget analysts have long pointed out that the “big three” entitlement programs will swell in future decades as a result of an aging population and steady growth in per-capita health-care costs.[15] Indeed, CBO had already projected that this would eventually occur when, in 2001, it projected significant budget surpluses through 2011 and years beyond . [16] Since the growth in these large programs was anticipated (other than the growth due to enactment of the Medicare prescription drug benefit), it is not what turned projected surpluses to deficits.

http://www.cbpp.org/cms/index.cfm?fa=view&id=3036

Since you brought up the Heritage Foundation, they have their own spin on that graph as well...

Under a current-policy budget baseline, Washington will collect $33 trillion in taxes and spend $46 trillion over the next decade. One could cherry-pick any $13 trillion in spending or tax policies and blame them for the entire budget deficit. CBPP chose to pick the tax cuts, wars, stimulus/bailouts, and economic downturn to equal the sum of the deficit. One could have just as easily singled out Social Security and Medicaid (combined cost: $13 trillion), Medicare and net interest costs ($13 trillion), or discretionary spending ($15 trillion) for blame. There is no mathematical reason to single out the programs CBPP selected while ignoring the other costs.

http://blog.heritage.org/2011/05/13/liberal-think-tank-fails-statistics/