Let the GOP tell the public what they want to cut.
They w-a-n-t cuts. What do they want to cut?
They want to cut entitlements, Dante. If we don't the whole house of cards falls down. The CBO has made it quite clear that we can't tax our way out of this...yet that's all that this Administration is willing to do.
The cuts have to be made...but Barry doesn't have the political backbone to do it. Instead he keeps kicking the can down the road while he continues to try and add MORE entitlements to what we already can't afford. Now it's universal pre-school on the taxpayer's dime.
One wonders if Reagan had the "backbone do it"?
To quote Adams correctly, facts are stubborn things...
Reagan's promises
1. Reduce federal spending
2. Reduce income taxes
3. Reduce regulation
4. Reduce inflation
Reagan's actual performance as rated when he left office (some records have been broken)
1. Promise to reduce federal spending
a. Tripled national debt from $900kk to $2.8kkk in eight years, raising it from 26%GDP to 41%GDP; before Reagan the fastest tripling of peacetime national debt took 31 years
b. Doubled foreign aid $10kk to $22kk
c. 53% increase in on budget federal spending; 60% gross increase in federal spending
d. 230,000 more CIVILIAn federal employees
e. Doubled subsidies to defense firms lobbying congress
f. More than doubled farm subsidies
g. Doubled subsidies to educational unions
h. Signed pay parity bills
2. Reduce income taxes create prosperity
a. Largest across the board tax increase in US history (TERFA) 1982
b. Largest middle class tax increase in US history (TRA) 1986
c. Unemployment AVERAGED 7.5%, the highest ever eight year average
d. Real rate of GDP growth 2.8% vs 3.4% under Carter
e. Productivity growth 1.4% vs 1.9% under Carter
3. Reduce regulation
a. First federal bailout of private banks (S&Ls)
b. First federal bailouts of Wall Street (FED buying private sector securities)
4. Reduce inflation
a. Borrowed money to hide the inflationary effects of changing economy toward asset base
b. Changed character of US job base from industrial to retail (MLM type instead of production)
c. Changed statistical bases for recording official numbers
Summary on Reagan
Reagan delivered higher taxes to working class Americans, lower taxes on people and corporations exploiting American workers, and he did it with a smile, hitting every mark on his stage. In sum Reagan was a shallow thinking gladhanding corporate shill; Otis Chandler hired him to beat Pat Brown in California, then handed his boy off to Don Regan. Reagan's stage managers kept him center stage shadow boxing a bankrupt and tottering empire to the applause of halfwit America, while they worked behind the scenes with corrupt congresses to loot the federal treasury. By the time he left office WF Buckley and Barry Goldwater had come to regret ever supporting Reagan. All that kept them silient in public was their own complicity in electing someone that stupid and weak.
Exective abstract: During Reagan's terms clowns entertained cheering fools while knaves looted the bank.
A footnote: Reagan's acting chops were not recognized in life; in real time he fooled that segment who could be fooled. That was then. An important measure of the worth of a person is whether they continue to buy the Legend of Ronald Reagan or not.
