liberal opinion

It is apparent that today’s Congress is fixated on determining the payment plan for new initiatives well before they are passed out of committee. That is not such a bad thing, you know, being fiscally responsible. As a matter of fact, seeing the need to have the funding for anything without going to China for the cash is great, in my book. More comments follows this snippet.

Re: White House Outlines $467 Billion In Savings To Pay For Jobs Act

WASHINGTON — The Ob ama administration announced on Monday a series of tax policy changes that officials say will pay for the costs of the president’s job creation plan.

The provisions, announced by Office of Management and Budget Chair Jack Lew, would raise an projected $467 billion over the course of 10 years. The American Jobs Act, as outlined by the president last week, will cost an estimated $447 billion.

The president is set to offer those pay-fors as part of an larger package of debt and deficit reduction measures that he will present to the congressional committee tasked with finding $1.5 trillion in savings. Whether the committee incorporates those measures is up to them, Lew said. If they choose not to, however, the administration said it would welcome Congress as a whole taking up the proposal.

The provisions the White House is offering as an offset are largely rehashes of tax policy changes that the president has pushed before. The primary piece would be to limit itemized deductions for individuals making over $200,000-a-year and families making over $250,000 — which Lew said would raise $400 billion over 10 years. Another pay-for would be to treat carried interest as ordinary income rather than capital gains, which Lew said would raise $18 billion. The White House is also calling for the end of tax subsidies for certain oil and gas companies, which the administration believes would raise $40 billion, and the axing of a tax break for corporate jet owners, which it believes could save $3 billion.

“The kinds of provisions we are talking about changing we don’t believe will cause a reduction of any kind of economic activity or job loss,” said Lew.

The thing that strikes me as odd, though, is listening to the right-wing echo machine go on and on about paying for everything, including disaster relief for hurricane victims prior to any emergency funds being sent to the disaster area. Geesh! Talk about your puppy killers! Anyway, my point is this question: where were all these fiscally responsible right-wingers and their insistent droning about spending during the Bush administration?

I remember the October 13, 2004 presidential debates when John Kerry announced that the U.S. must start funding the wars and everything else using a “paygo” system. George Bush damn near laughed him off the stage! Following are snippets from that debate narrated by Bob Schieffer:

SCHIEFFER: All right.

Senator Kerry, a new question. Let’s talk about economic security. You pledged during the last debate that you would not raise taxes on those making less than $200,000 a year. But the price of everything is going up, and we all know it. Health care costs, as you all talking about, is skyrocketing, the cost of the war.

My question is, how can you or any president, whoever is elected next time, keep that pledge without running this country deeper into debt and passing on more of the bills that we’re running up to our children?

KERRY: I’ll tell you exactly how I can do it: by reinstating what President Bush took away, which is called pay as you go.

During the 1990s, we had pay-as-you-go rules. If you were going to pass something in the Congress, you had to show where you are going to pay for it and how.

President Bush has taken — he’s the only president in history to do this…

SCHIEFFER: Mr. President?

BUSH: Well, his rhetoric doesn’t match his record.

He been a senator for 20 years. He voted to increase taxes 98 times. When they tried to reduce taxes, he voted against that 127 times. He talks about being a fiscal conservative, or fiscally sound, but he voted over — he voted 277 times to waive the budget caps, which would have cost the taxpayers $4.2 trillion.

He talks about PAYGO. I’ll tell you what PAYGO means, when you’re a senator from Massachusetts, when you’re a colleague of Ted Kennedy, pay go means: You pay, and he goes ahead and spends.

He’s proposed $2.2 trillion of new spending, and yet the so-called tax on the rich, which is also a tax on many small-business owners in America, raises $600 million by our account — billion, $800 billion by his account.

There is a tax gap. And guess who usually ends up filling the tax gap? The middle class.

I propose a detailed budget, Bob. I sent up my budget man to the Congress, and he says, here’s how we’re going to reduce the deficit in half by five years. It requires pro-growth policies that grow our economy and fiscal sanity in the halls of Congress.

It doesn’t take a genius to figure out that Bush was vehemently opposed to PAYGO and that Kerry was to be despised because he voted to raise taxes. Well, so did the rest of Congress.

If you think about all this in smaller terms, say like your household budget and if your bills exceed your income then you have one of two choices. One, you can try to stop or reduce discretionary spending like that night out on the town you take every Friday night for example, and two, you can try to increase your income to cover your expenditures. Simple. Bush decided early on that he was going to do neither and spend money like a drunken sailor and damn the consequences even though there is not enough money in the till to cover it. Kerry wanted then what all the right-wing, flip-flopping blow-hards want now – responsibility.

The righties have unwittingly proven that Kerry was correct in his vision of our economic future.

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