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The
GOP's Disastrous Ideas
by
Eliot Spitzer
'There you go again.' Those
now-famous words pretty much sealed the deal in the Reagan-Carter
debate in 1980 and proved what we have seen over and over: In politics,
charm and wit usually
count more than facts and logic. After Reagan's victory, we set out on
a path of deregulation and
tax cuts, a 30-year run on borrowed money and borrowed time that ended
horribly in 2008.
We know now where we stand in terms of what matters: a jobs crisis,
declining middle-class
incomes, structural federal budget deficits, trade deficits, and on and
on.
And what do Republicans offer now?
The Pledge to America is about as vapid a document as one
can imagine. It is nothing more than an offer of candy to kids on
Halloween, with no concerns about
what happens after the sugar high wears off. Its numbers simply do not
add up, and its deregulatory
language is remarkable in the context of the past several years we have
lived through...
Simple facts are worth
repeating: During the Clinton years, marginal tax rates were
raised to restore
fiscal sanity, leading to federal budget surpluses, and 23 million jobs
were created. During Fuhrer Bush'a
presidency, marginal rates were cut, the budget was left with a severe
structural deficit, only about 1 million
jobs were created, and we descended into an economic cataclysm.
Bill Clinton gave Democrats the blueprints for how to win
but they don't like Clinton and they don't like his blueprint.
Apparently we're going to have to take some awfully bitter medicine in November,
but if we can't learn from our mistakes, we're going to taste bitter every election.
It's so frustrating to have the truth and the facts on our side but our players are too timid
to mention the truth or the facts to the mega-ignorant voters - so we're a party of losers.
Poor people and the out-of-work middle class are about to vote for tax breaks for the super-rich
when that same money could be used to train people for better jobs, fix our infrastructure etc...
If only we had a Democrat in the White House and a Democratic congress.
Then everything would be f-ing peachy.