Why Washington Isn't Doing Squat About Jobs and Wages

Washington isn't doing anything because there are two thoughts on how to address the situation that are entirely incompatible and neither the House nor the Senate and the executive are willing to allow the theory they don't agree with to be the one adopted. We've seen what compromise brings. Look at what happened during the Reagan years when he had to compromise his principles with the Democrats that controlled Congress. Look at what happened to the deficit in the last 2 years of Bush 43 when he had to do the same thing. Multiple years of Trillion dollar deficits is not going to make the current situation better and all of the tax hikes combined are not going to but a dent in the trillion dollar annual projected deficits of the Obama administration for the next decade. This nation will not survive a $25 Trillion dollar debt with another $150 Trillion in unfunded liabilities. That isn't going to happen. We can cut the DoD budget in half, enact all the tax hikes the Democrats want and we will still be running deficits that border on a trillion dollars a year. Congress isn't any more likely to pass the doctor fixes to Medicare this year than they were in past years. It's great for CBO estimates to sell your talking points to the electorate, but it never happens.

The bottom line continues to be that we don't have a revenue problem. Tax receipts are within their post WWII historical parameters. What we do have is a spending problem. We spend so much in excess of what is collected on a routine basis that when something happens that we need to increase spending to provide the increase threatens to push us off of the proverbial cliff. The economy can't afford to send 25 cents of every dollar it generates to Washington DC for an extended period of time, let alone into perpetuity. The federal budget needs to be around 15% of the nation's GDP on a regular basis. Not 25%, not 20%, not even 18% - 15% is the target figure. We would need a $23.3 Trillion dollar annual economy to sustain the current amount of government spending, not a $14 Trillion one. You can't spend your way out of debt - it simply doesn't work that way. You incur debt short term to address a specific need and then pay it back. We've been incurring debt for going on 50 years now. That isn't short term. We're in our 3rd year of trillion dollar plus deficits with no end in sight. That is not short term either.

Time to stop spending and start paying back the money that's been borrowed. We can do that one of two ways. We can continue along the Keynesian path and have inflation tax away everyone's savings and explode the cost of living as we did in the 1970's or we can cut the spending in half and cut the tax rates so that the people who invest the money get to keep more of the profits they realize by risking their capital as we did in the 1920's and after the conclusion of WWII that led to rapid expansion of the economy and an increase in the taxes remitted despite the lower tax rates.

That's it in a nutshell. We know what will happen based upon which path we pursue and the history of what happened in the wake of those choices being made. We can artificially increase the value of the economy by devaluing the dollar and having everyone earn twice as much to purchase the same amount of goods or we can increase the value of the economy by actually becoming more productive and producing more goods to purchase at the same price we are paying for them now. One leads to a healthy nation, the other leads to destruction. If we artificially inflate the number of dollars so that our economy becomes $23 Trillion annually and we generate $3.5 Trillion in taxes to spend, all we have done is allow the government to evaporate the nation's savings as they seek the means to pay back those that bought the debt. I don't know about you, but I'd be pretty upset if you halved the value of the money so that I was only being paid back the equivalent of half of what I lent you in the first place. I might be so angry I'd do something to punish you, like remove your currency as the reserve currency of the world, or stop exporting energy you need, or I might become so angry at you I actually decide to take what I rightfully view as mine by force of arms. Are you sure you want to risk any of that? I know I don't. That leaves us with cutting the federal budget to 50% or 60% of what it is now - something very close to the amount of revenue that actually has a chance of being collected - about 15% of a $14.5 Trillion annual economy.

Perhaps you could point out the legislation proposed by the House Republicans (who gained the majority by campaigning that they would focus solely on "jobs, jobs, jobs") that has or will increase employment in this country? Instead, they have simply proposed legislation regarding repeal of DADT, promote their anti-abortion platform, birth certificates, etc., yet not a single act that is focused on jobs.

Its not new legislation that is needed, its repeal of past legislation.

repeal obamacare (Didn't the house pass that symbolically?)
repeal extended unemployment welfare
repeal all mandates on private businesses that kill jobs
repeal legislation preventing oil drilling in Alaska and elsewhere
repeal all the silly tax credits and deductions and then reduce tax rates on individuals and business
repeal laws that give too much power to unions so Boeing can make airplanes in SC.
repeal, not legislate!

Of course if the house passed any of the above it would go nowhere.

Correct me if I'm wrong Dog, but the Republicans passed a budget for the next year - something they had to devote a lot of time doing this session since the last Congress punted on the opportunity to do their jobs. Where does that budget sit now? What have the Demoncrats passed in the Senate to counter it? Why, nothing when you come right down to it. All they've done is say they won't pass what they've been handed. Seems like Reid could at least sit down in the Senate and put together something they would pass so that the two could be reconciled in committee like they did with ObamaCare. But no, nothing is done after the House did its job because Reid can't lead and neither can the man in the Oval Office. Until the Senate actually gets around to passing a budget, what else is there for the Republicans in the House to do? Now, I know that Reid lost his ability to force the progressive agenda on the nation when the Democrats lost those Senate seats in 2010, but what you are seeing is that the Democrats lack the ability to compromise, or to even come up with a plan that has a chance of being voted on in that august chamber of the legislature. They would prefer to let everything collapse before they compromised. The House voted on a straight increase in the debt ceiling, which any intelligent person would have voted against. That's akin to giving an alcoholic a warehouse full of booze and expecting that they will quit drinking.

We will still be able to pay off our debt obligations without an increase to the debt limit after all. At that point the general government will have to eliminate the $180 Billion a month it puts on the national credit card currently, that's all. It can then make the decisions on whether to fund every other function of the general government or the mandatory spending it created when it employed the sophistry on the term "general welfare".

The current tax receipts are enough to fund most of Social Security and most of Medicare A. Medicare B and D which steal most of their money from the general fund would be in jeopardy of course as well as the individual welfare programs or every other function of the federal government. Is it more important to protect the food supply, the water supply and repair roads and bridges or fund the obscene costs of college education through loan grants? You do know that college education has increased in price more than health insurance, right? Perhaps we stop subsidizing the public union employee wage and benefit packages with federal dollars and force these institutions to charge a fee that is something a family has a reasonable chance of being able to afford without digging themselves tens or hundreds of thousands of dollars into debt. Do we pay the men and women of the armed services for their service to the nation or continue to pay the landlord the majority of the rent he charges the renters of his Section 8 housing. Do we continue to provide unemployment welfare for 99 weeks or expect that these people will get out of the 99 week hammock and take a couple of part time jobs to pay their bills. Do we continue to guarantee home loans made by a GSE or use that money to keep the engineers on the levies during flood season.

I think forcing the general government into making the decisions it has been punting on for most, if not all, of the last 3 decades is a needed cleansing. Yeah it will hurt, but that's what happens when you continually make poor decisions over a long period of time. Eventually those poor decisions come back to bite you in the posterior. Time to start letting some backsides get bit so that people learn from their mistakes instead of perpetuating them by removing the pain associated with making that bad decision.

The question was in regard to "jobs, jobs, jobs", not their required duty to submit a budget which has zero chance of passing. I realize that you prefer to deflect from the question that was posed, since the Republicans have done absolutely nothing to increase employment in this country since their campaign promises of last year.

I'm quite sure they will continue to do nothing, it is my opinion (so don't be asking for sources on this) that the Republicans would prefer to let the economy languish, even dip into another recession, to increase their chances of winning more seats in the Senate and retake the White House. The don't now, and never have, much cared what happens to the little guy in this country....it's all about getting their party back into power and helping their wealthy and corporate friends. And that folks, is why I won't vote for them, even if they run Sarah Palin.
:rofl

archer wrote: I'm quite sure they will continue to do nothing, it is my opinion (so don't be asking for sources on this) that the Republicans would prefer to let the economy languish, even dip into another recession, to increase their chances of winning more seats in the Senate and retake the White House. The don't now, and never have, much cared what happens to the little guy in this country....it's all about getting their party back into power and helping their wealthy and corporate friends. And that folks, is why I won't vote for them, even if they run Sarah Palin.
:rofl

Which makes them different from democrats how?

Something the Dog Said wrote: The question was in regard to "jobs, jobs, jobs", not their required duty to submit a budget which has zero chance of passing. I realize that you prefer to deflect from the question that was posed, since the Republicans have done absolutely nothing to increase employment in this country since their campaign promises of last year.

Reducing the tax rates, a no starter by Democrat standards, reducing the federal spending spree to mildly, as opposed to wildly, obscene have been proposed, and passed. Their attempts languish in the Senate which would rather do nothing than compromise on some of their radical agenda ideas and propose and pass an amended budget for the House to consider. When the party in power in the Senate and the White House are intending to keep as many as they can unemployed for as long as they can until they are willing to further submit their liberties to the general government, this is what you get.

The people told them they didn't want ObamaCare, they didn't want the banks bailed out, or the auto companies bailed out, or half a trillion dollars going to reward campaign contributors under the sophistry of "stimulus" spending and the Democrats ignored them all, just as they are continuing to do now when the voters tossed them out in record numbers in the legislative body responsible for originating all appropriation bills. Rather than listen to the voters and actually represent them instead of their party agenda, they simply sit on their hands and say every offering is a non-starter.