Where the GOP goes from here

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They will hoard it in the stock market or invest it overseas.

I can't understand how people don't want tax cuts; so you'd rather give your money to the government so they can waste it and put the entire country in debt then keep it for yourself and "waste" it. Such as using it to invest in a business. Or buy ice cream.

Private business firms are limited in their scope and extent. There are -national- problems and deficiencies in the infra-structure that no one business firm or even a consortium of business firms can fund to solve. That is why we have government as a collection agent (complete with laws and guns). If government were run rationally and honestly we would not have the problems we do. Unfortunately when people are placed at the levers of great power, they often become corrupt.

ruveyn

they're deluded into thinking more taxes will = more services

According to the Grace commission down back in the 80s, 100% of the our income taxes that are collected go to servicing interest on the debt and transfer payments. That was back in the 80s, we have a lot more debt and a lot more interest.

Adults pay their bills. What's silly is starting two wars and letting your grandkids pay for it. So revenues need to match the policies that both parties have enacted. That's why I'm most grateful that Romney lost.

The GOP makes a lot of hay that "takers" want free stuff. The Bush polices were entirely based on free stuff. And they are still on the books. Time to cough up.

The neocons have no leg to stand on financially. Their only care is war and concentrating government power. They support the growth of the welfare state as a means winning support from the freeloaders, corporate or otherwise.

I'm not a member of the GOP, I can't speak for them. My view point is that if you want to drastically lower standards of living in this country, then by all means follow Obama right off the cliff. I never said that we need to cut the social safety net, if you're talking about things like medicare, disability and welfare although those things could use some drastic overhauls to make them more efficient and cost effective.

The conservative mantra on taxes isn't about protecting corporations or wealthy individuals. It's about creating revenue by creating more general income. If you get rid of the red tape that mummifies the common business, especially small businesses, then it allows them to free up capital. When they free up capital, they expand their business, jobs are created and demand for workers increases. More workers means more income tax, even though you tax them at a lower rate. It's an old strategy of economics, reduce the price per item but make up the difference in volume.

- Reduce gov't spending by reigning in the bureaucracy.
- Lower tax rates across the board. For everyone, not just the upper echelons.
- Scale back needless red tape. I.E. Remove pointless regulations like Obamacare, Temper out of control agencies like the EPA.
- Overhaul and streamline social programs to improve efficiency, lower costs and check for cheaters.
- Keep a necessary level of military spending, but don't overspend. (Bush the Younger was bad about this.)
- Cut foreign aid to countries who are no longer acting like allies. Egypt and Pakistan would be good examples.

This is not a difficult concept to implement, the problem at hand is that democrats do not want to implement it. They prefer a tax and spend approach which expands their own power. Without any regard for fiscal responsibility. This is why they marry social issues to fiscal issues. They go after certain demographics and convince them the country is against them, and that they need big gov't to provide for them because they can't have a career because they're black, latino, female, gay, etc. They also use corrupt labor unions to rob their employees of more money and to bully them into voting how the union wants them to. It's a huge mind f**k and most democrat voters couldn't bite the hook faster if you baited it with a bar of gold.

How do conservatives win this fight? By convincing everyone that fiscal responsibility, lower tax rates and smaller govt will bring more prosperity for everyone.

How do conservatives sell that message? I have no idea, and neither does anyone else. Since 50%+1 are convinced that making wealthy people pick up the tab for govt handouts is so cool.

It won't be so cool when the money runs out. Ask the Greeks about it.

Tax and spend has worked for 10,000 years. Spend and party doesnt. Demonizing taxes is the road to ruin. David Stockman is the architect of Reagan's supply side cuts. His budget director. Today he says:

How the GOP can be in the winning spirit again:

1. Abolish the armed forces, and the foreign policy will basically be: Do whatever France does.

2. Abolish the death penalty, and change the criminal code to read that it's only a crime if the perpetrator is white. (this would improve race relations)

3. Anyone who isn't a white, Anglo-Saxon, Protestant, heterosexual male is excused from any responsibility and will be paid $100,000/year to do nothing. This is our way of compensating for past injustices. White, Anglo-Saxon Protestant, heterosexual males are banned from making more than $20,000/year, and are forbidden to have bank accounts. No banking limits for anyone else.

4. Ban religion, and practice state atheism (after all, Christians are the cause of all the world's problems)

5. Men are required to be subservient to women.

6. If the Dems are legalizing abortion and same-sex marriage, we'll legalize bestiality and incest.

7. Hate-speech laws stricter than those in Sweden.

Tim, better yet - abolish current political gridlock by promising to tax the top 2 percent more, thus creating an extra 60 billion in national revenue per year and slitting their own wrists as a party - as the democrats are doggedly demanding they do.

This is why I'm really starting to think we have the congress of 1860 all over again - I really don't believe our politicians will stop playing chicken or offering suicide to the other party as the only way to fix the problems until both cars playing chicken go off the WB Wiley Coyote Grand Canyon cliff or off the peer into the ocean. Its on us this time, not them, just like whether the US turns into Libya or not in two years time is on us - not them.

Basically what you're doing is spouting a bunch of claims without empirical support. You've bought into the supply-side nonsense hook line and sinker. When you talk about waste you don't seem to realize that money never simply drops off the face of the earth. Even the "inefficient bureaucrats" and "welfare leeches" end up passing their dollars back up the chain when they buy stuff. What's inefficient is the fact that our country doesn't produce enough to justify our consumption level, and it's not the poor or people on welfare who are the biggest consumers. It's the middle class and up.

You make the mistaken assumption that America is self-sufficient. We are not. The problem isn't that we're dependent on too many government handouts. It's that we're dependent on crap made cheaply by people in other countries. We aren't making things in our own country that the rest of the world wants. In the 1950s and 1960s we were still making things that others in the world would buy.

If things are as dire as you think no amount of damn tax cuts or spending cuts is going to save us. We should simply count our losses and try to take care of each other as best we can to avoid too many riots. It seems neither the Republicans nor the Democrats are willing to admit that we are an economic empire in decline. The "we just need to balance the budget, deregulate everything, and go back to basics" message is intuitive to conservatives, but in reality it isn't any more realistic an option than the "permanent Keynesian" deficit spending you seem to think all liberals advocate. If you think we have to lower the standard of living in order to compete with the developing world then don't beat around the bush and make empty promises. Just come out and say it. It's completely hopeless. This country is screwed and there is no knight-in-shining-armor that's going to save us. I'd almost rather let the Republicans have 100% control just so they can stop whining and blaming Democrats for everything. As it is a lot of Republican voters seem so out-of-their-mind with fear that I wouldn't be surprised if Obama goes the way of JFK. Then the real excitement starts. Prepare for the blood to flow.

Reagan-era fiscal policy which was effective through the 90s and utilized to one degree or another by Presidents of both parties seems to be evidence enough that supply-side works. Although you do have a point about our country not producing enough exports. That you can blame squarely on Labor Unions and the death of apprenticeship in the U.S. Which is partly due to technological advances, but mainly due to the collegiate education system running a media blitz to convince people that you must have a college degree to survive. Again, a function of the labor unions. Particularly teacher's unions which are known to be the most corrupt of all unions.

Economic red tape and the EPA also have played a vital role in killing industry in our country. Between, oppressive regulation that go well beyond the scope of original intent being mixed in the high cost of labor and other legal factors, it's no wonder that companies are setting up shop in places like China, India and New Zealand where labor is cheap and the governments are more business friendly.

Or go even further and break up the banks. Obama will not allow it if his cabinet is restaffed again with the same people whose institutions put us in the current situation. That would have given Romney the upper ground, and no conservative principles betrayed.

The Republicans lost a major opportunity with the Stimulus, wherein they could have agreed to it (if it was going to get passed anyways) in exchange for some meaningful long term cuts in entitlements. They are now no longer in any position to negotiate. I don't think the GOP's concessions in Taxes will be met in kind with some meaningful attempts to address our entitlements or our education spending.

Tax the top 2% in an entirely different bracket(s) with the top 1% paying a little more, and the top 10% of the top 1% occupying a bracket of their own. We cannot tax those with 1,000,000 income at the same rate we tax those with 100,000,000. This would take the fight to the Democrats as they no longer have any excuses to tolerate our failing educational systems, our archaic infrastructure, our encumbering entitlements, our reliance on foreign energy, and our public sector unions whose pensions are saddling us with immense debt, and we will no longer throw money at the problem, but make them more efficient and maybe save a buck or two.

The whole "Unions are the Enemy" thing seems to be a ploy. The real solution is places like China and India need to unionize in order to raise wages and reduce their trade surplus. If labor was 100% mobile like it should be in an ideal capitalist model, Chinese and Indian workers would demand much higher wages. Either they go up or we go down. If the west goes down it will send a shock the puts the entire world into a depression. European austerity is already dragging the world down.

You are arguing that business owners with more money will no longer be business owners. By definition, a business owner is one who invests in capital goods to produce other goods. Sure, some may decide to take an incremental increase in money and spend it on consumer goods. But in general, business owners are people who spend money on capital goods. An economy is built on these people spending their disposable income on capital goods.

If the assertation is false, then wealth wouldn't exist in the first place. Everything produced would be consumed.

More money in the hands of business owners will result in job creation. Moreover, it's the only way to create jobs.