Cuz I didn't see you disagree with me in your statment.

Just sayin'...

statement*

I mean its a ridiculous hypothetical - a republican president inherits a recession and tremendous amount of debt, so puts in place programs to alleviate it, albeit while adding to the spending...and then democratic party leaders call for cuts to medicare and SS?

So...uh no, I don't agree.

However, were it simply "Republican president is spending a lot on programs that Dems dont support - Dems call for him to stop the spending."

Yes, that would probably happen.

Though I believe the Democratic party line would be more "Why are we spending so much on this stuff, we should be focus on this alternative" and not "Get the government out our wallets, this is socialism, I worked for my money and you're stealing all of it"

Yes, the rhetoric would be different, but the argument would still be present.

Bottom line, cut spending.

JCP; let me ask you a question. How much revenue do you plan on producing from the tax increases on the wealthy? Seeing as no democrats have actually released their plan to the public; how do you know how much revenue is going to be brought in. How do you plan on getting past the 20% GDP wall?

See the difference between me and you is that you still believe that the magic bullet to our problems is to just just take money from the rich. But in reality; Obama has no intention of doing so nor would it work even if he did; on the contrary; it is just a tactic to stop the massive beating in the polls he is getting at the moment.

I can't believe middle class democrats are cheering for higher taxes on 250k and up; when the upcoming inflationary environment will push many of them into that bracket. face+palm...

Haven't you ever heard of AMT? I got hit by that 2 years ago; and I am no where near rich.

Same game they always play; raise taxes on rich; inflate the dollar; now everyone pays the taxes.

Social Security was sold to the public as a social net for all and it would only cost 1 to 3% of your first $3,000 dollars earned in a year. Sounds like a sweet deal. What is it now? 6.2% on earnings up to $106,800. And if you are self employed like me it is; 12.4% on earnings up to $106,800. Brilliant. And if you think there is going to be any money left by time I retire; your smoking something wonderful.

Don't even get me started on double taxation once you start a business. How stupid!

I like that segments of the media constantly refer to the tax cuts as the 'Bush tax cuts for the wealthy.' Everyone's taxes went down, mine included, not just the wealthy. The middle class tax cuts hurt the bottom line more than the wealthy tax cuts, from a revenue perspective.

And if you follow local politics/regional politics, it is quite accurate that it tends to be Republicans who want to spend less. Granted, my experience is primarily in New York and Vermont, but it is true for both of those locations at least. Maybe your home town/county/state is different; I'd be curious to hear.

At the federal level everything seems to change. Everyone wants to spend money on whatever they deem most crucial but can't push through enough revenue/cuts to compensate for it.

On a different note, people are posting charts about how budgets & revenues have changed based on the President at the time. Does anyone know where there's a chart that also shows who controlled Congress, along with major events such as 9/11, the dot com boom/bust, the cold war, etc.? I'd be curious to see what the more complete picture looks like.

one of the oldest traditions in kdice: referring to pierce as JCP. never gets old.

i think what thrax was implying was that both repubs and dems are scared as shit to offend anyone that controls large voting blocks. so they all agree with america that "we need to drastically reduce our debt", because that pleases all of the americans. yay, didnt lose any votes by saying that.

so then it becomes a game of you-cant-please-all-the-people-all-the-time-but-goddamn-we-MUST-please-at-least-the-voting-majority-amount-of-people-that-we-arent-taking-a-single-dime-of-their-money-so-they-wont-vote-for-the-other-guy. fucking annoying. we got to this point because we kept giving handouts to too many people because we realized that meant more votes for us, whether repubs or dems. and now were overdrawn, with little hope of cutting ANYTHING because as soon as we cut a single thing, that means people are losing jobs and will DEFINITELY not vote for us, because the other party will DEFINITELY run ads claiming that we screwed them.

holy christ, how annoying is this shitshow quagmire tangled-web-we-weave that govt officials have assfucked us into because they are trying to please too many people too much of the time instead of just making goddamn wise decisions.

someone said this earlier, it just seems the govt officials are interested in getting re-elected, not in actually improving the nation. and theyre playing to americans greed. hey, elect me as your representative, because i will try to find you as many fucking handouts as i can. what the fuck has happened to us.

got to watch "the adjustment bureau" this past weekend, and matt damons character is giving a concession speech. id link you to a video, but its too early to find it online. so ill ctrl-v the speech here. even though i dont really like matt damon, and i was disappointed with the movie (the ending was too quick), it really left me an impression with this speech:

********************************************

[giving his concession speech in front of his campaign supporters]
David Norris: But we had a rule in my neighborhood, when you got in a fight, it wasn't whether or not you got knocked down. It's what you do when you get back up.
[the crowd cheers]
David Norris: And I came here to tell you tonight that I will get back up!
[the crowd cheers again but David gets quiet]
David Norris: Um...that's bullshit! We...we didn't have that saying in my neighborhood. It's just one of those phrases that uh...that has some attraction with a focus group and so we kept using it. That's not true. You know in 1998 I did a cover for GQ, the title was 'Youngest Congressmen Ever', and since then every story I tried to explain how I got here so fast. And...and the word that people kept uh...using was authentic and...
[the crowd cheers and claps]

[continuing his speech in front of his campaign supporters]
David Norris: But here's the problem, this isn't even my tie. This tie was selected for me by a group of specialists, in Tenafly New Jersey, who chose it over fifty six other ties we tested. In fact, our data su...suggests that I have to stick to either a tie that is red or a tie that is blue. A yellow tie made it look as if I was taking my situation lightly and I may in fact pull my pants down at any moment.
[the crowd laughs]
David Norris: A silver tie meant that I'd forgotten my roots. My shoes, you know shiny shoes we associate with a high priced lawyers and bankers. If you want to get a working mans vote you need to scuff up your shoes a little bit, but you can't scuff 'em so much that you alienate the lawyers and the bankers, cause you need them to pay for the specialist back in Tenafly.

[continuing his concession speech]
David Norris: So what is the proper scuffing amount? Do you know we actually paid a consultant $7,300...
[he turns to his campaign aids standing in the stage wings]
David Norris: Was...was it seventy three hundred dollars, Charlie?
[Charlie whispers something to the other campaign aids]
David Norris: Seventy three hundred dollars for a consultant to tell us that...
[he takes off his shoe and brings it up to show everyone]
David Norris: ...this is the perfect amount of scuffing.

Verms, I believe the reason some in the media referred to the "tax cuts for the wealthy" had to do with the democrats forcing the house to vote on the tax cuts for the highest bracket individually from the rest of the tax cut continuation in Jan 2010.