victory for the tea party activists!!

[johnson1010]

The republican party is supposed to be the party of fiscal responsibility, but that simply has not been the case for the last thirty years.

Starting with Reagan, un-equivacally, republicans have run up massive debt.

"conservative" no longer means fiscal conservative. it means socially conservative.

I would gleefully vote republican if i saw a real plan to reduce debt, handle the budget, and actually reduce government. Cutting medicare to buy more tanks is not the answer. hating gays (while secretly being one) is not a plan of government.

Please, PLEASE field an actual fiscal conservative.

Sarah Palin, O'donnel, Angle are not leaders. They are just the most well-entrenched in delivering talking points and sound bites that give the superficial illusion of a policy.

O'Donnel and Palin have both proven that not only were they not keeping up with politics and history before they ran for big, high-responsibility positions, they also made no attempt to catch up on those situations after they DID make it their business to run for office.

Just look at Palin's dissasterous interviews during 08, and O'Donnel's continuous trainwreck of public discourse during this election.

[Chris OConnor]

I have to agree with everything you've just said.

[geo]

Fiscal conservatism used to be a Republican trait. I don't know what happened, but I suspect Reagan used deficit spending for short-term political gains and that has been the model ever since. Moving forward, I think our next president—Democratic or Republican—needs to be a fiscal conservative.

[Chris OConnor]

Moving forward, I think our next president—Democratic or a Republican—needs to be a fiscal conservative.

I agree completely.

[seespotrun2008]

I completely disagree with the people that argue that Obama is creating jobs. In my opinion Democrats, as a general rule, have a poor understanding of economics and the factors that fuel an economy. Obama has not and will not create jobs or growth. He is not creating anything other than debt, dependency and an entitlement attitude.

Why do you think that? How do democrats not understand the economy? Social Darwinism is what colors your beliefs. Not everyone is a Social Darwinist, other people see the world differently. That may not mean that they do not understand the economy; it just means that they see the world differently.

For me being a Democrat means the community supports each other. Money is not the bottom line; people are. As I have said before, I think that American individualism is a wonderful thing. I think that the community is also important and there has to be a balance there. I would not want to live in a place where the community is more important than the individual because individual rights are important. However, I don’t want to live in a place where the individual usurps the community. They are both important and both need to play a role in the society.

As for the jobs argument, it is not entirely true. If the Republicans are in office they just value different jobs. They seem to think that everyone can be a corporate executive or entrepreneur if they are just smart enough and work hard enough. Other jobs do not matter, they are unimportant. The local cashier really does not even deserve to have a minimum wage. She is obviously not working hard enough or smart enough to get a better job; therefore she does not deserve a living wage. Yet minimum wage does not pay for college. But she should figure that out on her own; maybe by the time she is 50 she can be worthy enough to feed her family.

You said that only 50 per cent of the people actually pay taxes, yet still vote. I asked you where you got that information and you did not answer me. Is that because you did not see my question?

Taxes are pretty complicated from the research I have been doing. I studied Wikipedia, which I know is not ideal. It is not always clear where that information comes from. But this article seems to be well cited and there is quite a bit of info cited from the irs. There are many different taxes that we pay: federal, state, local. We pay property taxes, income taxes, sales taxes. I was thinking about it and even children pay sales tax and they do not get to vote; taxation without representation. Of course, many times it is their parent’s money. However, a 15 year old with a job makes his or her own money and still pays sales tax. The only two states in the union that do not have sales taxes are Oregon and New Hampshire. So everyone else in the country pays sales tax. If you own any property, a house, a condo, you pay property tax. Even if you rent, you are indirectly paying property taxes.

Are you referring to income taxes? It is true that lower income people are exempted from paying income tax. However, you have to make a pretty small amount to be forgiven from taxes. This is the chart for people that do not have to file income tax:

http://www.irs.gov/pub/irs-pdf/i1040.pdf

However, that does not exempt them from sales tax or property taxes if they are paying rent. There are deductions of course. But both the wealthiest and the poorest of Americans have access to those. So where did you get only 50 per cent of Americans actually pay taxes?

Phillies, I did not say get rid of the private insurance industry. What I said was that if we have universal health care you would hire people to support the implementation of doing that. And the private industry may benefit as well. If everyone has insurance then you have more people to help. And having a public health care option would mean that you create government jobs; which are good jobs. Having a “bigger” government means creating more government jobs where people are paid well, have access to good health care, and other benefits.

I like Sarah Palin in many ways. She is sort of the type person I can totally see myself getting together with for a cup of coffee. I do not agree with her political views, but that is what is great about American. We all think differently and still manage to get along for the most part. I just saw a news article today where the Taliban killed 70 people in a mosque who disagreed with them. Thank God, most people in our country are sane.

The republicans have alway seemed like Atticus Finch.

Starhwe, how do you get Atticus Finch from the republicans? Atticus Finch defended a black man in the 1930’s against prosecution for a crime he did not commit. To Kill a Mockingbird was a very progressive book. That is what I got from it anyone. It is one of my favorites.

[Robert Tulip]

The republicans have alway seemed like Aticus Finch. The ones who have to tell the kids you can't have ice cream for dinner.

I'm not familiar with Aticus Finch, but I assume you're saying that the republican Party is the party of self-control when it comes to spending. If this is your position I would agree with you. But it is relative. Both parties need to learn to spend LESS than taxes bring in. I don't mean spend an EQUAL amount.

Historically, the Nixon-Ford-Reagan-Bush line in the Republican presidency has been more profligate while Kennedy, Johnson (mostly) and Clinton balanced the budget.



Atticus Finch is from To Kill a Mockingbird.

[Chris OConnor]

Do you have stats showing Obama's reign?

[Robert Tulip]

A Source

Code: Select all

Year	GDP-US
$ billion	Federal Deficit -fed
$ billion
2000	9951.5	-236.24	a
2001	10286.2	-128.24	a
2002	10642.3	157.75	a
2003	11142.1	377.59	a
2004	11867.8	412.73	a
2005	12638.4	318.34	a
2006	13398.9	248.19	a
2007	14077.6	160.94	a
2008	14441.4	458.55	a
2009	14258.2	1841.19	b
2010	14728.8	1258.44	b
Legend:
a - actual reported
b - budgeted estimate in US fy10 budget

[geo]

This massive spike in deficit spending, unfortunately, may end up being Obama's legacy. Though I agree that Obama's Health Care bill was ill-timed, probably most of this deficit is the result of the flailing economy which he inherited from the previous administration. The Republicans would have certainly had stimulus packages of their own. It drives me crazy that conservatives are blaming for Obama for this mess when he has been in office for only two years. I think it can be argued that a sitting president doesn't have that much control over the economy anyway. It's a fact that presidents don't do well in bad economies.

The scary thing is that the economy may get worse before it gets better. Some say we are already entering the third depression.

http://theinternationalforecaster.com/I ... A_Recovery

[JulianTheApostate]

I'm not sure what "fiscal conservative" even means. If by conservative, you mean acting responsibly and cautiously, the Democrats who opposed W's massive deficit-inducing tax cuts are more fiscally conservative than the Republicans who supported the tax cuts. If "fiscally conservative" means a willingness to reduce spending, that term better describes liberals who want to reduce defense spending and opposed the Iraq War, compared to the conservatives who push for more military spending.

In practice, people who describe themselves as fiscal conservatives want to reduce social programs. They seem oblivious to the suffering that results from limiting unemployment benefits, firing teachers and policemen, reducing Social Security payments, etc. As a liberal, I'm far more concerned about the quality of life of American citizens, as opposed to the amount of government spending.

Improving the economy and increasing jobs are very important, and liberals are better in that regard the conservatives. When the economy is in very bad shape, spending money is the best to get it moving again. Paul Krugman, the Nobel Prize-winning economist, published an excellent column yesterday explaining that Obama's policies were too centrist and how much worse things will be if Republicans get their way:

http://www.nytimes.com/2010/11/05/opini ... aulkrugman