the GOP has blocked pro-growth policy and backed job-killing austerity

[occupied]

I want to do that, I dont think the republicans have the balls to do it. Atleast not with RINOs running the show.

Dep of education and energy are both jokes. Everyone knows schools are local and the government should stay out of them, Just give vouchers and make schools HAVE to produce results or they go bye bye.

Dept of energy is not really doing much, except making us use expensive light bulbs. (Liberals love the green stuff but dont care if joe schmo has to go under to pay for it, I love how liberals stand up for the little guy!)

But you get rid of the useless people in Washington you can save a whole lot of money. Hey I have a great idea, how about hve the congressmen WORK instead of pawning it off on their staff of 20+. So we can slash the congresional staffs as well.

Remember when I used the words "reckless" and "arbitrary"? It was for attitudes like that where the aim is more politically attacking things liberals like than saving money. The proof is in republicans being unwilling to trim a penny from the defense budget where there is a world of untouched waste just sitting there safe as can be from the so called budget hawks.

So you think the Education department and the energy department are worth a crap?
Did I get that correctly?

They serve a purpose that republicans hate on libertarian ideological principal rather than any realistic fiscal or economic reason.

 

[buckeye45_73]

Remember when I used the words "reckless" and "arbitrary"? It was for attitudes like that where the aim is more politically attacking things liberals like than saving money. The proof is in republicans being unwilling to trim a penny from the defense budget where there is a world of untouched waste just sitting there safe as can be from the so called budget hawks.

So you think the Education department and the energy department are worth a crap?
Did I get that correctly?

They serve a purpose that republicans hate on libertarian ideological principal rather than any realistic fiscal or economic reason.

So you agree they are useless? If I hate them on ideology, please give me the reasons I should love these, but my guess is they're specious if there are any reasons.

 

[occupied]

So you think the Education department and the energy department are worth a crap?
Did I get that correctly?

They serve a purpose that republicans hate on libertarian ideological principal rather than any realistic fiscal or economic reason.

So you agree they are useless? If I hate them on ideology, please give me the reasons I should love these, but my guess is they're specious if there are any reasons.

Maybe you should explain why doing away with them would be an immediate fiscal benefit to the nation as it is the topic at hand, or maybe you should explain why the biggest discretionary spending we have, the pentagon, is somehow 100% money well spent? Don't cloak your arguments in complaints of government waste when it is nothing more than another ideological attack on the regulatory structure, that's a different argument altogether.

 

[buckeye45_73]

They serve a purpose that republicans hate on libertarian ideological principal rather than any realistic fiscal or economic reason.

So you agree they are useless? If I hate them on ideology, please give me the reasons I should love these, but my guess is they're specious if there are any reasons.

Maybe you should explain why doing away with them would be an immediate fiscal benefit to the nation as it is the topic at hand, or maybe you should explain why the biggest discretionary spending we have, the pentagon, is somehow 100% money well spent? Don't cloak your arguments in complaints of government waste when it is nothing more than another ideological attack on the regulatory structure, that's a different argument altogether.

Ok what would you cut in the pentagon? I'm not saying I'm opposed to it, just let me know.

But getting rid of those two departments would save us not only in direct costs of salaries and such, but also in regulatory costs as well.

Tell me why it's an ideological attack to want to get rid of the Engergy and Education departments?

Why do liberals need those, plus lets get rid of the NEA. It's a million bucks, hollywood can cover it, right?

 

[whitehall]

When is the left ever going to stop whining about the unfairness of only controlling the executive and half of the legislative branch of government? This is pure Alinsky stuff. First of all the GOP can't block anything with a simple majority in the House of Representatives. Democrats held the majority in both the House and the Senate when Fannie Mae collapsed bringing down the economy. Barney Frank was chairperson of the committee that had oversight responsibility for Fannie and he told America that Fannie was solvent when it was on the verge of collapse. My guess is that democrats engineered the collapse of Fannie in the biggest October surprise in history.

 

[buckeye45_73]

When is the left ever going to stop whining about the unfairness of only controlling the executive and half of the legislative branch of government? This is pure Alinsky stuff. First of all the GOP can't block anything with a simple majority in the House of Representatives. Democrats held the majority in both the House and the Senate when Fannie Mae collapsed bringing down the economy. Barney Frank was chairperson of the committee that had oversight responsibility for Fannie and he told America that Fannie was solvent when it was on the verge of collapse. My guess is that democrats engineered the collapse of Fannie in the biggest October surprise in history.

It's their mindset. They think they are entitled to winning. They dont have to do squat. They dont like competition. Hence they need unions with guaranteed jobs, because they dont want to have their employment based on job performance. And yes they did hope up changes to Fannie and Freddie so we could have more minorities own houses, it's just they couldnt pay for them. Affirmative action strikes again!

 

[occupied]

Dept. of energy is responsible for every scrap of nuclear material and waste in our country, who do you want to hand that hot potato over to? Private industry? LOL.

Dept of education dictates uniform standards over the 50 states so that a kid can go to school in several states as I did and still receive a diploma.

These are two concerns right off the top of my head that I am sure you have never even considered.

 

[blackhawk]

Didn't Obama get the stimulus that was supposed to keep unemployment under 8% and create millions of shovel ready jobs passed? Didn't he get really everything passed during his first two year's in office that he wanted? Those policies did not work out very well and now you want to pass more of them brilliant.

50% of it were tax cuts that repubs wanted then when they got it, voted against it. Pretty clever because it makes people like you forget repubs asked for it.

And this claim of yours stopped Obama from getting what he wanted how? People like you want to forget that for his first two years in office there wasn't any major piece of legislation Obama wanted that he didn't get. After the 2010 midterms the House Republicans have blocked the President just as the Senate Democrats led by Harry Reid have blocked the Republicans but before that it was all Obama and the Democrats.

 

[buckeye45_73]

Dept. of energy is responsible for every scrap of nuclear material and waste in our country, who do you want to hand that hot potato over to? Private industry? LOL.

Dept of education dictates uniform standards over the 50 states so that a kid can go to school in several states as I did and still receive a diploma.

These are two concerns right off the top of my head that I am sure you have never even considered.

Ok so since both were started in the Carter administration, how did we handle it before then?
And what standards? Liberals are against standardized testing and how "biased" they are.

So before the Dept of Education, you couldnt go to school in different states and not receive a diploma?

how did military brats graduate prior to this department?

 

[chikenwing]

The question should be, why are they not as special as anyone who works for a living? These are real people with real lives, disrupting their lives for an entirely arbitrary reason that hurts far more than it helps is no way to run things. No one likes to hear tales of companies laying off and going away, it sucks for the economy, yet this is the stated policy of republicans who relish the idea of arbitrarily closing down a vast section of our economy to save the billionaires a relatively petty amount.

To save the billonaires, it's us taxpayers who pay their salaries and we can't afford it anymore with out this bloated Government wanting TO tax us more...sorry they are getting laid off, but so do a lot of people who DON'T work off the taxpayers backs

Republicans disproportionately target tax cuts towards the 1%. They could at least cut stuff and then pass the savings on to the rich, they are doing it backwards.

Just not so,the middle tax brackets along with the bottom bracket recied the largest percentage from the "Bush " tax cuts, the numbers are in black and white and available to all.

 

[Too Tall]

Democrats are the party of the 1%. They support the multi millionaire's public unions taxing the poor & accept big campaign money from them. Democrats are for Wall Street & not for Main Street. Bankers & executives have made record profits from pension funds paid for by taxes under Democrat rule. Over the last 5 years since Democrats took power the rich got richer & the poor got poorer.

Democrats took control on January 1, 2007. Look what happened to the jobs & poor.

DEMOCRATS JOBS RECORD!!!

Yeah..that had nothing to do with the Bush housing bubble blowing up.

The Bush housing bubble started under Clinton and was allowed to continue under
Bush. Bush tried to reign in Freddie Mac and Fannie Mae but was stopped by Barnie and Chris.

 

[Londoner]

The US has had two major forms of growth in the last 70 years.

1. Postwar Keynesianism, which stimulated middle class demand. It did this partly through the fed which was charged with maintaining full employment through a variety of mechanisms, including expanding the monetary base and lowering interest rates. But the most famous form of Keynesian spending was the Military Keynesianism that brought us out of the Great Depression. This is when the Government spent trillions on war manufacturing and put everyone to work. This had an immense multiplier effect because all the government workers had money to spend. And when workers have money, the capitalist has an incentive to add jobs in order to capture that money. And when the capitalist adds jobs, there are even more spenders, which leads to a virtuous cycle of adding ever more jobs to capture all the additional consumption.

Milton Friedman famously undermined Postwar Keynesianism by showing how it lead to inflation and then stagflation, which had the opposite of the intended effect.

Uncle Milty's defeat of the postwar model lead to the Supply Side revolution, which shifted government's roll from boosting middle class demand to helping the suppliers through tax and regulatory reform. So we imposed austerity on the middle class in order to make room for tax cuts on top, hoping that this would increase investment, innovation, and job growth. [Of course, the promised cuts in government spending turned out to be misleading because Reagan famously doubled spending: for every dollar he slashed from a social program he put $10 into military spending. This was actually not all bad, as the Democrats claim. Places like San Diego and Orange county saw major job growth from Reagan's military Keynesianism.]

Unfortunately, by divesting in middle class support (cutting all their programs and lowering their wages to make business more competitive), we had to find another way to stimulate consumption.

2. The Reagan expansion of credit. After Reagan (and later Clinton) freed capital to go after higher returns through 3rd world labor markets (and thus shipping manufacturing jobs to freedom-hating places like China), and after Reagan imposed austerity on the middle class in order to make room for tax cuts to the wealthy, America faced a demand problem: that is, having lost wages, benefits, and government programs, workers lacked the money to consume? So how did Reagan fix the demand problem? Answer: credit, i.e., debt based consumption. Don't take my word for it. Check out the expansion of household debt starting in the 80s. America went on a 30 year spending (debt) binge called Morning in America. This is why we all started receiving 3 credit cards a week.

Unfortunately, by over-extending credit for 30 years, we ended up breaking the bank. We now have too much consumer debt along with too many destroyed families from the bursting of the housing bubble > > > and the result is: consumers are broke and can't borrow another dime. So the great Reagan credit stimulus is over

(Now we have nothing to fuel the economy. We can't go back to the Keynesian model because the Right will not allow it - and the Democrats are powerless wimps with no courage)

If Obama originally had the courage to ignore health care and use all his political capital to do a real stimulus - like the government spending on WWII that brought us out of the Great Depression - we may have seen some growth. But the Republicans would never have let that happen, which is why the stimulus was so small, and why most of it was tax cuts. Of course, if we begin to see growth, we will run into the other problem caused by Reagan: high gas prices. Carter begged the nation to get off oil because the military costs of stabilizing the middle east are too high, and the rising demand of China, India, and the developing world would lead to prices so high that they would kill any economic growth. Reagan, owned by big oil, convinced the nation that Carter was crazy and oil would be plentiful for ever. (Wait 'till people see the cost of oil from tar sands or shale fracking. If you think we're in a depression now, just wait until we get to the expensive oil)

America swallowed poison in 1980. We are almost dead.

 

[Soggy in NOLA]

The GOP wants to empower foriegn money to influence our democracy

I like spicy mustard on my turkey sandwiches.

 

[Too Tall]

The US has had two major forms of growth in the last 70 years.

1. Postwar Keynesianism, which stimulated middle class demand. It did this partly through the fed which was charged with maintaining full employment through a variety of mechanisms, including expanding the monetary base and lowering interest rates. But the most famous form of Keynesian spending was the Military Keynesianism that brought us out of the Great Depression. This is when the Government spent trillions on war manufacturing and put everyone to work. This had an immense multiplier effect because all the government workers had money to spend. And when workers have money, the capitalist has an incentive to add jobs in order to capture that money. And when the capitalist adds jobs, there are even more spenders, which leads to a virtuous cycle of adding ever more jobs to capture all the additional consumption.

Milton Friedman famously undermined Postwar Keynesianism by showing how it lead to inflation and then stagflation, which had the opposite of the intended effect.

Uncle Milty's defeat of the postwar model lead to the Supply Side revolution, which shifted government's roll from boosting middle class demand to helping the suppliers through tax and regulatory reform. So we imposed austerity on the middle class in order to make room for tax cuts on top, hoping that this would increase investment, innovation, and job growth. [Of course, the promised cuts in government spending turned out to be misleading because Reagan famously doubled spending: for every dollar he slashed from a social program he put $10 into military spending. This was actually not all bad, as the Democrats claim. Places like San Diego and Orange county saw major job growth from Reagan's military Keynesianism.]

Unfortunately, by divesting in middle class support (cutting all their programs and lowering their wages to make business more competitive), we had to find another way to stimulate consumption.

2. The Reagan expansion of credit. After Reagan (and later Clinton) freed capital to go after higher returns through 3rd world labor markets (and thus shipping manufacturing jobs to freedom-hating places like China), and after Reagan imposed austerity on the middle class in order to make room for tax cuts to the wealthy, America faced a demand problem: that is, having lost wages, benefits, and government programs, workers lacked the money to consume? So how did Reagan fix the demand problem? Answer: credit, i.e., debt based consumption. Don't take my word for it. Check out the expansion of household debt starting in the 80s. America went on a 30 year spending (debt) binge called Morning in America. This is why we all started receiving 3 credit cards a week.

Unfortunately, by over-extending credit for 30 years, we ended up breaking the bank. We now have too much consumer debt along with too many destroyed families from the bursting of the housing bubble > > > and the result is: consumers are broke and can't borrow another dime. So the great Reagan credit stimulus is over

(Now we have nothing to fuel the economy. We can't go back to the Keynesian model because the Right will not allow it - and the Democrats are powerless wimps with no courage)

If Obama originally had the courage to ignore health care and use all his political capital to do a real stimulus - like the government spending on WWII that brought us out of the Great Depression - we may have seen some growth. But the Republicans would never have let that happen, which is why the stimulus was so small, and why most of it was tax cuts. Of course, if we begin to see growth, we will run into the other problem caused by Reagan: high gas prices. Carter begged the nation to get off oil because the military costs of stabilizing the middle east are too high, and the rising demand of China, India, and the developing world would lead to prices so high that they would kill any economic growth. Reagan, owned by big oil, convinced the nation that Carter was crazy and oil would be plentiful for ever. (Wait 'till people see the cost of oil from tar sands or shale fracking. If you think we're in a depression now, just wait until we get to the expensive oil)

America swallowed poison in 1980. We are almost dead.

The cost of oil from the Canadian tar sands is about $27 a barrel.

 

[KissMy]

If Obama originally had the courage to ignore health care and use all his political capital to do a real stimulus - like the size of the government spending on WWII that brought us out of the Great Depression - we may have seen some growth. But the Republicans would never have let that happen, which is why the stimulus was so small, and why most of it was tax cuts. Of course, if we begin to see growth, we will run into the other problem caused by Reagan: high gas prices. Carter begged the nation to get off oil because the military costs of stabilizing the middle east are too high, and the rising demand of China, India, and the developing world would lead to prices so high that they would kill any economic growth. Reagan, owned by big oil, convinced the nation that Carter was crazy and oil would be plentiful for ever. (Wait 'till people see the cost of oil from tar sands or shale fracking. If you think we're in a depression now, just wait until we get to the expensive oil)

Republicans would have went for stimulus & jobs but the Obamacrats did not tackle our economic problem & decided to take away healthcare choice & push cap & tax instead.

Shale fracking & tar sands oil is way cheaper than what the middle east is charging for oil today.

 

[occupied]

Dept. of energy is responsible for every scrap of nuclear material and waste in our country, who do you want to hand that hot potato over to? Private industry? LOL.

Dept of education dictates uniform standards over the 50 states so that a kid can go to school in several states as I did and still receive a diploma.

These are two concerns right off the top of my head that I am sure you have never even considered.

Ok so since both were started in the Carter administration, how did we handle it before then?
And what standards? Liberals are against standardized testing and how "biased" they are.

So before the Dept of Education, you couldnt go to school in different states and not receive a diploma?

how did military brats graduate prior to this department?

These two were created from an existing patchwork of offices and agencies, conservatives have no intention that I have ever heard of replacing them with anything. Again, try to separate your ideological hatred of regulation from whatever secondary desire you have to save money. If these departments were destroyed in a frenzy of republican shortsighted stupidity they would just have to be recreated later, sounds kind of expensive.