House GOP to vote NO on stimulus package

[sealybobo]

Obama's plan is part of the solution. Trust me, much more to come my friend.

sealy uses a McCainism.

After the Republican Great Depression, FDR put this nation back to work, in part by raising taxes on income above $3 to $4 million a year (in today’s dollars) to 91 percent, and corporate taxes to over 50% of profits. The revenue from those income taxes built dams, roads, bridges, sewers, water systems, schools, hospitals, train stations, railways, an interstate highway system, and airports. It educated a generation returning from World War II. It acted as a cap on the rare but occasional obsessively greedy person taking so much out of the economy that it impoverished the rest of us.

And, most tragically, Reagan’s tax cuts caused America to stop investing in infrastructure. As a nation, we’ve been coasting since the early 1980s, living on borrowed money while we burn through (in some cases literally) the hospitals, roads, bridges, steam tunnels, and other infrastructure we built in the Golden Age of the Middle Class between the 1940s and the 1980s.

We even stopped investing in the intellectual infrastructure of this nation: college education. A degree that a student in the 1970s could have paid for by working as a waitress at a Howard Johnson’s restaurant (what my wife did in the late 60s - I did so working as a near-minimum-wage DJ) now means incurring massive and life-altering debt for all but the very wealthy. Reagan, who as governor ended free tuition at the University of California, put into place the foundations for the explosion in college tuition we see today.

Bullshit. My daughter is in college. She will have some loans to payoff when she is done but nothing along the lines of massive and life-altering. But you see, we planned for this and saved, she worked hard in high school and got scholarship money, there is grant money in there too. Its within reach of anyone who wants to work for it. There are many ways to afford it as well. For example, attending a two year college for the gen ed stuff then attending a four year for the rest cuts costs considerably. BTW, we're a family of five living on about $40,000/yr. Is that what you call wealthy? Were there sacrifices along the way? You betcha. Worth it? Every, single dime.

You might want to read a little bit more on the problems with today's skyrocketing education costs. One thing to consider is this. What kind of job is she going to get? I'm working with a bunch of accounting graduates. They just graduated from UofM and EMU. They make in the $40K's and with overtime can make $60. WOW! So they paid $40k and went to school for 4 years to make as much as my dad did and all he did was go to work for Ford Motor Company.

Our kids are going to make less than us.

If there is no manufacturing in America, then there is no need for engineers.

Bill Gates tells Congress he can't find good help in the IT field here in America. He needs more F1 Visa's. He can find Americans, but they want to make more than Indians.

And they're letting illegals in to do factory work and a lot of other jobs Americans will do.

All these things are to lower wages of the middle class.

Now take into affect that healthcare costs went up 191% since 2001. So the $50k your daughter makes isn't even what it used to be.

The only good thing is, she'll get a house really cheap. LOL And she can buy stocks really cheap and they have to rebound someday, right?

 

[indago]

We have shifted from manufacturing and production to service oriented industries in this country.

What kind of service do you think we could provide to China, India, Japan?

What, no response from Bern80? Must have really stumped on that one.

 

[sealybobo]

We have shifted from manufacturing and production to service oriented industries in this country.

What kind of service do you think we could provide to China, India, Japan?

What, no response from Bern80? Must have really stumped on that one.

I find guys like him are always right, IF a b and c aren't true, and they usually are.

 

[DiveCon]

and that's worked out sooooo well, hasn't it, bozo?

but thats typical for a partisan hack, like bobo

Here's what we should do Dive. Undo all this:

Reagan promptly cut income taxes on the very rich from 70% down to 27%. Corporate tax rates were also cut so severely that they went from representing over 33% of total federal tax receipts in 1951 to less than 9% in 1983 (they’re still in that neighborhood, the lowest in the industrialized world).

The result was devastating. Our government was suddenly so badly awash in red ink that Reagan doubled the tax paid only by people earning less than $40,000/year (FICA), and then began borrowing from the huge surplus this new tax was accumulating in the Social Security Trust Fund. Even with that, Reagan had to borrow more money in his 8 years than the sum total of all presidents from George Washington to Jimmy Carter combined.

In addition to badly throwing the nation into debt, Reagan’s tax cut blew out the ceiling on the accumulation of wealth, leading to a new Gilded Age and the rise of a generation of super-wealthy that hadn’t been seen since the Robber Baron era of the 1890s or the Roaring 20s.

ThomHartmann.com - Roll Back the Reagan Tax Cuts
And, most tragically, Reagan’s tax cuts caused America to stop investing in infrastructure. As a nation, we’ve been coasting since the early 1980s, living on borrowed money while we burn through (in some cases literally) the hospitals, roads, bridges, steam tunnels, and other infrastructure we built in the Golden Age of the Middle Class between the 1940s and the 1980s.
We even stopped investing in the intellectual infrastructure of this nation: college education. A degree that a student in the 1970s could have paid for by working as a waitress at a Howard Johnson’s restaurant (what my wife did in the late 60s - I did so working as a near-minimum-wage DJ) now means incurring massive and life-altering debt for all but the very wealthy. Reagan, who as governor ended free tuition at the University of California, put into place the foundations for the explosion in college tuition we see today.
The Associated Press reported on August 4, 2007, that the president of Nike, Mark Parker, “raked in $3.6 million [in compensation] in ‘07.” That’s $13,846 per weekday, $69,230 a week. And yet it would still keep him just below the top 70% tax rate if this were the pre-Reagan era. We had a social consensus that somebody earning around $3 million a year was fine, but above that was really more than anybody needs to live in America.
When Reagan dropped the top income tax rate from over 70% down to under 30%, all hell broke loose. With the legal and social restraint to unlimited selfishness removed, “the good of the nation” was replaced by “greed is good” as the primary paradigm.
In the years since then, mind-boggling wealth has risen among fewer than 20,000 people in America (the top 0.01 percent of wage-earners), but their influence has been tremendous. They finance “conservative” think tanks (think Joseph Coors and the Heritage Foundation), change public opinion (Walton heirs funding a covert effort to change the “estate tax” to the “death tax”), lobby congress and the president (who calls the “haves and the have-more’s” his “base”), and work to strip down public institutions.
The middle class is being replaced by the working poor. American infrastructure built with tax revenues during the 1934-1981 is now crumbling and disintegrating. Hospitals and highways and power and water systems have been corporatized. People are dying.
And Bush, following closely in Reagan’s footsteps, is making things worse. As Senator Bernie Sanders pointed out at recent hearings for the confirmation of Bush’s new nominee for the Office of Management and Budget:
Since Bush has been president:
• over 5 million people have slipped into poverty;
• nearly 7 million Americans have lost their health insurance;
• median household income has gone down by nearly $1,300;
• three million manufacturing jobs have been lost;
• three million American workers have lost their pensions;
• home foreclosures are now the highest on record;
• the personal savings rate is below zero - which hasn’t happened since the great depression;
• the real earnings of college graduates have gone down by about 5% in the last few years;
• entry level wages for male and female high school graduates have fallen by over 3%;
• wages and salaries are now at the lowest share of GDP since 1929.
The debate about whether or not to roll Bush’s tax cuts back to Clinton’s modest mid-30% rates is absurd. It’s time to roll back the horribly failed experiment of the Reagan tax cuts. And use that money to pay down Reagan’s debt and rebuild this nation.

so bobo the moron, thinks we should roll back the Reagan tax cuts
yeah, that will help the economy

 

[Kevin_Kennedy]

The correction happens earlier if the government acts and if the government doesn't do it the correction will happen at a point when more of your economy is even more seriously damaged. And to restore that economy will take less time if you don't have huge unemployment, a lot of money that has "disappeared", a small number of companies left that can make goods and services.

Yes I know that inflation is the increase of money, but it makes people poor because they will loose more money on buying products that would be cheaper in a normal economic situation.

The correction is not being allowed to happen because the government keeps tampering with the market. By bailing out insolvent businesses the government does not allow the reallocation of resources that has to happen in the correction. By taking hundreds of billions of dollars from the private sector the government is not allowing them to stimulate the economy, and the private sector is where wealth and jobs are really created.

What are you talking about? Nobody is taking money from the private sector, the government is spending money on private companies. The government is making sure that the private sector is employed so it can create wealth and jobs.

The correction will happen anyway, it is the speed to recover from it that is the problem. Circulation of money = the economy, that is the main reason why the government must spend: to get a circulation of money that can be like an "engine" for the rest of the private sector. If you have no more circulation of money or the speed at which money circulates lowers significantly then you have a problem that has nothing to do with the correction. A private sector that does not spend is the problem here, therefor the government must spend money to replace the spending that the private sector has stopped with.

The government is not taking money from them, it is employing the private sector by spending government money to let them do something. This will create stability that will allow those companies (who get paid by the government) to invest on the long term, hire more people.

Where does the government get all of it's money, considering it earns no money of it's own? The private sector. When the government takes money from the private sector they (the private sector) have less money to spend on the things they actually need. The government is "employing" parts of the private sector at the expense of the rest of the private sector. The Keynesian idea that the government can spend us out of a recession is absolutely wrong. It needs to cut taxes and cut it's own spending.

 

[Bern80]

I don't think it is Republican voters who are leading the way in the GOP buddy. I thnk it's the corporate media and John Boehner/McCain liars that tell people like you lies and get your broke ass to vote against your own best interests.


Are you a corporation or a bank? Then you're an idiot.

The debate as to which one of us is lacking a brain would be long and unfruitful. This whole you believe what you're told argument is rather weak. I'm sure you have pundits you agree with as well. That of course (sarcasm here) means all you are is a sponge used to regurgiate what they've told you to.

It was reported through various media and is on the record that many constituants did in fact contact their representives in oppossition to the first bail out. Explain how it is my best interests to support Obama's bill. For the FOURTH time sealy, what SPECIFICALLY is in this bill that you believe is my best interest and will turn around our economy?

Your question about whether I am a corporation or bank makes no sense either. After all if it is good for me shouldn't it ultimately be good for them too?

Obama's plan is part of the solution. Trust me, much more to come my friend.

I'm not sure how you can know that when you refuse to answer a simple question. All you keep saying is 'it will work', 'it will work'. Yet it is brutally obvious (since this will be the fifth time I have asked) that you don't know what's in the bill at all and therefore can't explain WHY it will work.

Let's try AGAIN; WHAT SPECIFICALLY IS IN OBAMA'S STIMULUS PLAN THAT WILL PROVIDE IMMEDIATE ECONOMIC RELIEF AND SUSTAIN IT INTO THE FUTURE?

And just so you don't trip up again the answer to the question is NOT some regurgitation of what you thinik an ex-President did.

 

[Munin]

The correction is not being allowed to happen because the government keeps tampering with the market. By bailing out insolvent businesses the government does not allow the reallocation of resources that has to happen in the correction. By taking hundreds of billions of dollars from the private sector the government is not allowing them to stimulate the economy, and the private sector is where wealth and jobs are really created.

What are you talking about? Nobody is taking money from the private sector, the government is spending money on private companies. The government is making sure that the private sector is employed so it can create wealth and jobs.

The correction will happen anyway, it is the speed to recover from it that is the problem. Circulation of money = the economy, that is the main reason why the government must spend: to get a circulation of money that can be like an "engine" for the rest of the private sector. If you have no more circulation of money or the speed at which money circulates lowers significantly then you have a problem that has nothing to do with the correction. A private sector that does not spend is the problem here, therefor the government must spend money to replace the spending that the private sector has stopped with.

The government is not taking money from them, it is employing the private sector by spending government money to let them do something. This will create stability that will allow those companies (who get paid by the government) to invest on the long term, hire more people.

Where does the government get all of it's money, considering it earns no money of it's own? The private sector. When the government takes money from the private sector they (the private sector) have less money to spend on the things they actually need. The government is "employing" parts of the private sector at the expense of the rest of the private sector. The Keynesian idea that the government can spend us out of a recession is absolutely wrong. It needs to cut taxes and cut it's own spending.

Look man, I know countries in europe that have the highest taxes in the world. Yet they do belong to the most high ranked economies in the world. High taxes doesn't mean that the private sector is poor, it is the economy itself that determines wether your sector is poor or not. It could be that you have higher taxes then in another country, like for example in Belgium and yet you still earn more money then people in other european countries with lower taxes earn (who have the same currency): How is this possible? Because of economic prosperity that is caused by good education, good infrastructure, ... all funded by the government so companies have an efficient workforce and a good environment to work in (transport, ...).

I m not saying high taxes are good, I m saying that the economy is more relevant then your taxes. If your infrastructure and education system is screwed up then your economy suffers on the long run (less educated workers that are badly needed can be employed, ...).

The government will get this money on the long run payed out from taxes by both companies & taxpayers, because when the economy will run normal/good you will have more income as a government. It is an investment that repays itself back to the government on the long run if their government spending works to get the economy back on track (get the money circulation back).

 

[StaleBO]

Ahhhh, stimulus via BIG government...trickle down economics the left way.

 

[DiveCon]

Ahhhh, stimulus via BIG government...trickle down economics the left way.

yeah, where the big money gets wasted in the bureaucracy

 

[StaleBO]

Ahhhh, stimulus via BIG government...trickle down economics the left way.

yeah, where the big money gets wasted in the bureaucracy

All the while the central government is amassing more power by creating the Dependent States of America. Sometimes I feel its a matter of deciding of whom do I distrust less those who covet money more than power or those who covet power more than money. I view the left agenda as the latter which I fear more.

 

[KittenKoder]

OP: And just like Bush, Obama ignored the opposing side.

 

[DiveCon]

OP: And just like Bush, Obama ignored the opposing side.

except for one thing

Bush bent over backwards to work with the dems

 

[KittenKoder]

OP: And just like Bush, Obama ignored the opposing side.

except for one thing

Bush bent over backwards to work with the dems

They must have deleted all that from the media.

 

[DiveCon]

OP: And just like Bush, Obama ignored the opposing side.

except for one thing

Bush bent over backwards to work with the dems

They must have deleted all that from the media.

too bad some people actually have memories that cant be deleted, like the internet can be.

 

[KittenKoder]

except for one thing

Bush bent over backwards to work with the dems

They must have deleted all that from the media.

too bad some people actually have memories that cant be deleted, like the internet can be.

Didn't realize they could delete live TV broadcasts of his speeches ... while live.

 

[DiveCon]

They must have deleted all that from the media.

too bad some people actually have memories that cant be deleted, like the internet can be.

Didn't realize they could delete live TV broadcasts of his speeches ... while live.

thats not what i was talking about
Bush did tons of things to get along with dems and not ONCE did i ever see him do things that were divisive in domestic politics
do you have an example?

 

[jeffrockit]

The problem with the Republicans here is they can knock down this package all they want; but the American people want solutions.

The Republicans as far as I know have offered none other then to let all these companies and businesses fail.

That's not a solution, that's called sitting on your ass when you're suppose to represent the people who vote for you; the same ones who are losing their jobs right now.

Wrong! The Republicans had several (12 I think) amendments and all were rejected by Pelosi and her brood. So much for Bi-partisanship.
There were also a small number of Democrats (the one's with brains) who voted no.

 

[jeffrockit]

I can already see the major problem with this thread when it comes to people who feel this businesses should just fail.

Many did what you say Avatar, "Be honest, work hard, and live within your means."

I hate it when people assume that everybody who is broke or going out of business is because they are greedy.

I did not see that assumption anywhere. Some businesses fail because of mis-management or because the individual that started the business did not research enough to find out if it would work. Other reasons are businesses that were started as a get rich quick venture and failed as most of those types do.
I realize there are some exceptions but going into business is a risk from the start even in a good economy.

 

[KittenKoder]

too bad some people actually have memories that cant be deleted, like the internet can be.

Didn't realize they could delete live TV broadcasts of his speeches ... while live.

thats not what i was talking about
Bush did tons of things to get along with dems and not ONCE did i ever see him do things that were divisive in domestic politics
do you have an example?

He knocked down every proposal to help the economy that the Dems put out and passed every one that the Reps put out without even reading them. He always went against the Dems and always bad mouthed them whenever he could. I hate both parties equally, because of this, both do it.

 

[jeffrockit]

Obama has met with the Repubs three times so far. When did Bush ever do that? They refused to compromise even though they lost the election and 65% of the nation support Obama.
The bullshit non partisan rhetoric is on the right this time.

what was the compromise?

so? they should vote for a bill they are against because they lost an election? That don't make walking around sense.

Not only were they against the bill, all of their amendments were denied by Pelosi and her gang.