Rep. John Boehner, the perpetually tanned House Minority leader, unveiled his plan to get the economy going today in a speech before the Cleveland City Club. Hold on to your job -- if he becomes Speaker, things will get worse.
Understandably, Boehner said not a word about the policies that led to the Great Recession. In fact, he said not a word about the economic collapse. Instead, he argued only that America's economy was in trouble because business was scared to death. It isn't the worst recession since the Great Depression, the lack of demand and customers that is plaguing businesses; it is the fear of tax hikes and regulation.
In response, Boehner detailed a five point plan to "break the ongoing economic uncertainty."
Three of the five points are basically rhetorical. He calls on Obama to pledge to veto any future tax increase. He calls on Obama to fire his economic team. And he pledge to eliminate the 1099 tax return mandate that requires small businesses to report any expenditure on goods and services over $600, an aggravation that Democrats are intent on reversing also.
The last two points have greater substance. Boehner would keep tax rates where they are, opposing Obama's plan to let the Bush tax cuts expire for couples making more than $250,000 a year, or the top 2% of Americans. The Center for Budget and Policy Priorities estimates this would add about $1 trillion to the deficit over the next 10 years.
Second, he would impose an immediate cut of about 25% on domestic discretionary spending, returning it back to 2008 levels, repealing any further recovery spending. Later, he suggests that the cut with a "hard cap" (presumably for 3 years) would save $340 billion, recouping a little more than a third of his proposed top end tax cut.
That's it. (Later in the speech, Boehner promises to unveil a more complete agenda in the future, and suggests possibilities, including the conservative standards -- less spending, more tax cuts, less regulation, and more corporate trade treaties. Details to come later.)
There are some major problems with the Boehner plan.
1. It is a joke. We have over 25 million people unemployed, with an economy that is slowing. The Boehner response is to keep tax rates where they are for the rich, and cut all recovery spending, slashing 25% from domestic discretionary spending. We know two things about this program: It will kill more jobs than it creates; and it will add to, not subtract, from projected deficits.
2. It's half baked. It is as if Boehner hasn't noticed what is going on in this country over the last decades of conservative domination. Instead he would exacerbate the worst ruinous trends. For example:
We suffer from the worst inequality ever. The top 1% pockets about 20% of all income, and has captured 2/3 of all income growth in the Bush years before the recession. Boehner's extension of the Bush top end tax cuts will simply add to that in after-tax income.
We suffer a costly and growing public investment deficit -- in everything from sewers and roads, to education and training, to research and development -- areas vital to sustaining a competitive private economy. Slashing non-defense discretionary spending -- which includes spending on education, on energy, on the environment, on everything the government does outside of defense and entitlements like Social Security and Medicare -- will only worsen that.
(And the hints Boehner offers about future plans aren't reassuring: More trade treaties that led to ruinous trade deficits that force us to borrow $2 billion a day, largely from Chinese and Japanese central bankers; less regulation in the face of what deregulation of the big banks did to the economy, to the citizens in the Gulf, in the coal mines, and in the grocery store buying eggs; turning Medicare into a voucher, and more.)
Boehner became an instant YouTube celebrity for his "hell no you can't" rant on health care reform. So it is understandable why he would want to offer voters some clue about what Republicans are for, not just what they are against. And no doubt the rhetoric of his speech has been dial tested and focused grouped to the last syllable.
But as a plan to get the country going, a plan to put people to work, a plan even to "break the ongoing economic uncertainty," this is just silly. The time would have been better spent working on his tan.
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They worked hard making money from everyone else. They deserve the privileges that entails.
Why is this a surprise to anyone?
Why is this man still in office?
Americans are "simple minded." (from Japan)
Simple minded is polite.
Isn't that the cost of the healthcare bill?
And yet poor people continue to vote for these same policies.
That was disagreed to by a couple with a different view.
I will give them credit as to the fact that the Social Security
funds are no kept in a bank acct but are kept in the form of
government bonds.
Where the disagreement exists is the losses incurred by
a majority of 401K accts. They disagree that there was
a significant loss as they say there loss was minimal.
Good for them!! I work for a company that has over 900
Employees and I checked with 37 of about their 401K Value.
The person with the lowest loss incurred a loss of 54%.
The largest loss incurred by a person I his early 60’s
Trying to maximize his return on invest he lost 73% of his investment.
The average loss Percentage came out to be 67%.
Most 401K invested though your employer usually gives you a limited number
of investment options and these are at the discretion of the company.
They are negotiated mainly for the max benefit of the company not the employee.
1. its not a joke,
2. it's real, and
3. enough will believe in this BS
He has to stop the BLAME, find the SOLUTION.
We cannot keep doing what we've been doing, expecting different results.
We are in deep, deep trouble, and there have been no realistic answers to the dilemma of the common perception that our Government is out of touch with its population, and irresponsible in their delegation of duties.
Even some Democrats say it may well be worth discussing at least some of his ideas - none of which clearly involve giving money to corporations.
But this is a lie. The report makes no consideration of the revenue losses from his tax cuts.
The nonpartisan Tax Policy Center did consider the whole "plan". Its numbers show that the Ryan plan would kill revenue, losing almost $4 trillion over the next decade. If you do the math,, you get a much larger deficit in 2020, around $1.3 trillion more.
Freezing non-defense spending at 2009 levels, gutting social security, creating i"individual medical" & "individual retirement' accounts (No mention of what the economy would've done to those accounts, ask anyone with a 401K), flattening the tax curve...In short, it is just more of the same strangle-the-gov, supplyside pantload the republicans have been advocating for 30 years.
The same "if you're making less than 300K, F__K YOU policies that have crushed the nation, & nearly driven us out of the first world.
http://www.cbo.gov/ftpdocs/108xx/doc10851/01-27-Ryan-Roadmap-Letter.pdf
America needs a big, REALITY CHECK.
Of course you are right RB about our unequal tax structure. It has to be changed, but the driving force of this conviction is unfortunately ascribed to those without the FORCE, deep Money pockets. We have in place a group of "leaders" who simply cannot understand the spend less, earn more concept and trust that Big CORP will trickle down, somehow. The only trickle down I see is when they cough, vomit, fail, and create the TOO BIG TO FAIL clause, when the rest of us shakes our heads at "No more" ... What I mean by this is simple:
We cannot afford a defense budget that is proportionally out of whack with current the Global Picture. Let's share in the Defense of Liberty BS. We cannot afford foreign aid at levels where we were in the 1980s. We cannot afford big spending social welfare programs that are subsidized by big business. It's corrupt, induces laziness as habitual as man himself. We cannot afford the American Government we have built upon the simple, Special Interest influence.
The rest of us are far from being willing to put up with corrupt financials, corrupt healthcare and corrupt administration practices. But we have to swallow this. Look at the Press! Dancing with The Stars gets far more coverage. Exposure is everything. The masses comply:
"If they are doing this, why shouldn't I borrow beyond my own means - just as irresponsibly....?"
Boehner is the symptomatic infectious boil of the underlying grave illness. Our government is being run by corrupt influences that have only corporate profit in mind, and do NOT understand the perceptive effect this has on the general populus. Until we change how we operate our administering of legislature there will be no recovery. It is all about the consensus of perception. for the eighteenth consecutive month, we have over 300,000 foreclosures, and higher bankruptcies!
Less is more. Less government, less spending, less influence buying, less stupidity.
This leads to the road better production incentives, as many of the comments made below. Expand small business incentives, give these start-ups greater loan incentives, less taxation, more support by having less intervention with a simpler, kinder tax code instead of the 10,000,000,000 points of "light" code interpretations we have now....
One of the factors contributing to the fact that most people do not understand how taxation works (particularly progressive taxation) is that we talk about marginal tax rates in terms of a "tax on -people- -making- more than X dollars," or "on -people- -making- X dollars or more." This is inaccurate and misleading.
People are not taxed. Income is taxed. Dollars are taxed. And different dollars are taxed differently, not different people.
Setting aside the disparities between gross and taxable income, if my taxable income is $50K and yours is $500K, you and I are paying the same tax rate on $50K of income. Your first $50K is taxed at the same rate as my whole $50K. As you move into higher tax brackets, only income that exceeds the bracket threshold is taxed at the higher rate. The total percentage of your total taxable income that you end up paying depends on what your taxable income is; it -approaches- your top marginal rate, but can never get there because a portion of your income will always be taxed at the lower rates. It is mathematically impossible for a person to take home -less- after-tax income than someone in a lower tax bracket, even if the former makes only $1 more than the latter in -taxable- income.
Therefore, we need to replace the phrase "people making" with the phrase "income exceeding".