GOP Hypocrisy, Where to Begin?

How about fiscal restraint?


"Consider the fiscal health of the country (and thus, also, of your wallet). The Republicans bill themselves as the party of fiscal discipline, but when Ronald Reagan came into office he spent so much, and cut taxes on the wealthy so much, that he had to quadruple the national debt to (not) pay for it. Democrats managed to reverse that decline in the 1990s, generating the largest surpluses in American history, but then Bush administration policies made Reagan's recklessness look like kid's stuff. Spending like crazy - much of it on foolish priorities like an unnecessary war in Iraq, a prescription drug plan which primarily benefits drug and insurance companies, and pork-barrel legislation like multi-million dollar bridges to nowhere in Alaska - while also taking a meat-axe to taxes formerly paid by the wealthy, George W. Bush and his Republican allies in Congress have created the biggest pile of debt in American history.

Indeed, Mr. Bush has now borrowed more money from foreign governments to finance his (well, actually, your) fiscal nightmare than have all the 42 presidents who have come before him - combined! Just how much is that, and why should you care? The national debt has now surpassed $8 trillion. That is about two-thirds the size of what the entire American economy produces (GDP) in a given year. All this, and more, has to be paid back. What is the 'more'? Well, we're adding to this mountain of debt to the tune of $350-450 billion every single year, digging ourselves further in. And, of course, we not only have to pay all this back, but the accumulating interest on this debt as well.

All told, each American, including any just born this second, and including each reader of this article, will spend some good portion of their lives paying off their share of this national blow-out, that share at the moment equaling more than $27,000 per American. But since only about half of us work, at least enough to pay taxes, the reality is that any American with a job owes over $54,000 to cover for the Republican Party's party at your expense. Plus the approximately $2,600 being added to the pile each year, every year. Plus interest on all that. How do you feel about coming out of school with $60,000 worth of debt hanging over your head, for something you didn't even benefit from?

Meanwhile, here's the real kicker. We used to have a somewhat fair system of tax distribution prior to the Bush program, but nowadays the rich pay far less in taxes than they used to, and the middle class pays just slightly less (and that's only if you don't count increases in state and local taxes, tuition, fees for government services, and more, all of which have gone up to fill in for the loss of federal revenues). Since these tax 'cuts' have been financed by borrowing, however, what that means is that the middle class will continue to have to pay their own share of the national debt in future years, plus the taxes that the rich won't be paying in the future, plus the taxes that the wealthy also didn't pay in the past (now) when this problem was created. Americans should therefore understand that this was never really a tax cut, but simply a tax transfer, from the rich to the middle class..."

http://www.hofstrachronicle.com/media/paper222/news/2005/12/01/EditorialopEd/From-The.Faculty.Its.Your.Life-1119456.shtml?norewrite&sourcedomain=www.hofstrachronicle.com


... If Bush were a Dimmocrat, the pubbies would almost certainly have impeached him by now. Instead the Coalition of the Conniving and the Clueless continue to praise him as if he were the Second Coming.