by Mark Silva
Record spending, record deficits - the president's proposed new federal budget offers Republican critics plenty of fodder.
Broken records - that's what the Republicans are starting to sound like, according to former President Bill Clinton.
"The era of big government is back, and Democrats want you to pay for it," House Minority Leader John Boehner of Ohio said today at a news conference on President Barack Obama's $3.55 trillion budget for 2010. Obama, Boehner suggested, is starting to make former President George W. Bush "look like a piker when it comes to spending."
Republicans aren't taking <strong>Obama's plans to raise taxes on the wealthiest Americans - the first such increase in 16 years - too kindly.
That's what Clinton did.
For his part, Clinton suggests that the GOP is in such a deep hole that the party's only prayer is to get in line with Obama's agenda for now and try to articulate a reality-based alternative vision over the long term.
"Their only shot to get back in this debate is to look like they're willing to cooperate with him now, and then to develop alternative ideas,'' the <strong>former president said in an interview with The Plum Line. "Newt Gingrich even recognized that, that's why he ran on that Contract with America. It's just that he still had a country which was still vulnerable to the appeals of the Republican right. [People are] just not there anymore. ''
Rep. Mike Pence of Indiana, third-ranking House Republican leader, says Obama can expect unified opposition to his proposed tax increase on the top-earning Americans -- about half of those earning $250,000 are small-business owners, and the proposed increase will stifle the slackening economy, he says.
""There will be overwhelming opposition from the American people and House Republicans to the idea that we should raise taxes during a recession," Pence told Bloomberg News in an interview. "Raising taxes in a recession is not a strategy for recovery."
"The independents and the Democrats have all moved with the president,'' Clinton said. "And the Republicans have isolated themselves by having predictable, tired old objections which are not supportable by the facts...''
The line that the minority party has drawn against the president's economic stimulus won't help the party, the former president says.
"You didn't see [Florida Gov. Charlie Crist] dissing the stimulus,'' Clinton noted.
"Because he knows in practical terms that there was probably no alternative to massive layoffs of state and local workers and school teachers in a way that would be devastating...Most Americans ... rejected the way [Republicans] think.
"They basically said, 'Look we've been around this track twice now, and both times ended in economic calamity'. The first time produced my election, the second time was worse, and produced President Obama's. And now, unlike the first time, they have now lost their natural cultural advantage, and the country thinks more like we do...''
Comments
I've talked with a lot of people who want to give the president's plans a chance. Hearing the constant carping of the republicans is just too predictable.
Let's give Obama and his ideas a chance to work.
Posted by: Dan | February 26, 2009 2:02 PM
The Greedy Oil Party and their decrepit "idea's" are dying of old age. One has to wonder when the corporate media will notice this?
.
http://s367.photobucket.com/albums/oo113/amk123amk/?action=view¤t=7B81007604-16b5-4583-ad73-6a6fd8d1d.jpg
.
Posted by: Ned Flanders | February 26, 2009 2:06 PM
The Republicans gave George Bush blank check after blank check after blank check. Hands down, no questions asked. No accountability whatsoever. Now the same unpatriotic rats are whining and crying about Democratic spending. Republicans lost big in the last two elections. They need to sit down and shut up.
Posted by: Doug R. | February 26, 2009 2:20 PM
Republicans continue to push the idea that this is a center-right country and that Americans have swooned for GOP anti-government posturing all these years, but the real electoral bait for them has been anger, recrimination and scapegoating. That's why McCain kept describing Barack Obama as some sort of alien and why Palin, taking a page right out of the McCarthy playbook, kept pushing Obama's relationship with onetime radical William Ayers.
And that is also why the Republican Party, despite the recent failure of McCarthyism, is likely to keep moving rightward, appeasing its more extreme elements and stoking their grievances for some time to come. There may be assorted intellectuals and ideologues in the party, maybe even a few centrists, but there is no longer an intellectual or even ideological wing. The party belongs to McCarthy and his heirs -- Rush, Hannity, Bill-O and Palin. It's in the genes.
The recent elections delivered a clear repudiation to just about everything they stand for, particularly that monumental waste of time and energy known as the Culture War and Small Gov Conservatism. Unfortunately they seem to have built their entire lifes out of stoking the flames of that dimming fire.
Posted by: Warren | February 26, 2009 2:51 PM
I would've thought he'd recommend getting some head from a staffer since that is what he'd really do.
Let's be honest.
Posted by: Rob | February 26, 2009 3:55 PM
Sorry, but there aren't enough "rich" people to tax and pay for Obama's socialism.And once you do take their money, then who's money do you take? Once the rich people are gone, what will be left? A Third World Nation?
I guess that is change you can believe in.
Posted by: John D | February 26, 2009 3:58 PM
"Obama can expect unified opposition to his proposed tax increase on the top-earning Americans"
Yeah, I'll bet that the richest 5% of Americans are unified in their opposition to this increase. Maybe they'll all hold their breath and stomp their feet, too.
Posted by: Quippy | February 26, 2009 4:10 PM
As long as the Republicans keep cheering on Bobby Jindal and Sarah Palin (and Rush Limbaugh, Ann Coulter and Sean Hannity), while ignoring Charlie Crist and Arnold Schwarzenegger, they will be on the outside looking in. They don't believe in "country first" it's all about 2012. So if that is their choice, go ahead and stick it to them, President Obama.
Posted by: rupert | February 26, 2009 4:55 PM
From the Congressional GOP comes the budget facts summary that the Democrats don't want reported:
"In 2009, federal spending will approach $4 trillion, or 28 percent of gross domestic product (GDP) – a one-third increase in the size of government in a single year. The budget released by the White House today is loaded with job-killing tax hikes and a slate of even more government spending. Overall, the blueprint projects a record $1.75 trillion deficit this year while doubling the national debt over the next ten years. Following are just 10 fast facts about the Administration’s budget, which our children and grandchildren will be paying for far into the future.
1. The Administration’s projected budget deficit of $1.75 trillion is higher than the last five years of deficits combined, and under this plan, we will see three consecutive trillion dollar deficits between now and FY 2012.
2. While it was purported to cut the budget deficit in half – from $1.75 trillion in 2009 to $533 billion by 2013 – this budget projects higher deficits in 2014 ($570 billion), 2015 ($583 billion), and 2016 ($637 billion). In 2019, the final year in the budget, the deficit is projected to be $712 billion.
3. Including the recently-enacted trillion-dollar “stimulus” spending bill, discretionary spending will soar by 24 percent this year under this budget.
4. The budget projects that the national debt will increase from $8.4 trillion in 2009 to $15.4 trillion in 2019.
5. The Administration’s budget contains $1.4 trillion in tax increases – tax hikes that will impact everyone, from small businesses, charities, and seniors to everyone who owns a 401(k) and anyone who flips on a light switch.
6. After promising that he will reduce taxes on 95 percent of Americans, the Administration’s budget establishes a $646 billion energy tax hike that will impact anyone who uses electricity, drives a car, or relies on energy in any way.
7. This budget forecasts more than $1.5 trillion in new health care spending, including a 10-year, $634 billion a health care “reserve fund.” The budget also calls for seven percent annual growth in Medicare and more than six percent annual growth in Medicaid over the next 10 years.
8. The budget includes a $750 billion placeholder for a second round of spending under the Troubled Assets Relief Program (TARP), even though the first round of TARP spending is not yet finished, nor is there a clear explanation of how funds under the initial round was spent.
9. The Administration’s budget claims that reducing the number of troops in Iraq over the next 10 years will cut the deficit by $1.6 trillion; however, that is only because the budget allocates the same amount of funds for the Iraq war each year over the next decade, even though most combat troops may be withdrawn during the next 19 months. The savings are, at best, deceptive.
10. The budget provides a scant 2.9 percent pay raise for military personnel as required by law, less than a week after Democrats in Congress provided the necessary funding to implement District of Columbia locality pay for overseas Foreign Service officers, which would constitute an 18 percent
pay increase."
For Democrats, these are inconvenient truths.....
Posted by: HopeNChange | February 26, 2009 5:56 PM
For Democrats, these are inconvenient truths.....
Posted by: HopeNChange | February 26, 2009 5:56 PM
.....
It's a SPENDING bill, you moron. And we wouldn't have to spend to stimulate the economy if the BushCo Republicans that you support hadn't spent the last eight years tanking our economy. If you don't like something in the bill take it up with one of your idiot wingnut "leaders". You know, the guys that put us in the economic mess in the first place.
Posted by: Teresa | February 26, 2009 8:11 PM
Lots of fat geese to be plucked.
Lots of abusive tax shelters to be investigated and collapsed.
Lots of tax loopholes for corporations to be fixed.
That should help close the deficit a goodly bit.
BillC's credentials as a political prognosticator need to be revalidated after that primary that Hillary was supposed to have all sewed up by last February.
Posted by: ornery | February 26, 2009 8:43 PM
"HopeNChange"
How can you possibly have "Congressional GOP" and "facts" in the same sentence?? The party first, country second crowd.
Posted by: Flo | February 26, 2009 10:09 PM