Wait, I thought the GOP was the party of fiscal conservatism and reducing the deficit? Shouldn't they be reducing the debt ceiling rather than raising it?
> Wait, I thought the GOP was the party of fiscal conservatism and reducing the deficit?
This has not been true since Reagan. The US political right has been selling economic bullshit since the 1980s:
> Ronald Reagan launched his 1980 campaign for the presidency on a platform advocating for supply-side economics. During the 1980 Republican Party presidential primaries, George H. W. Bush had derided Reagan's economic approach as "voodoo economics".[21][22] Following Reagan's election, the "trickle-down" reached wide circulation with the publication of "The Education of David Stockman" a December 1981 interview of Reagan's incoming Office of Management and Budget director David Stockman, in the magazine Atlantic Monthly. In the interview, Stockman expressed doubts about supply side economics, telling journalist William Greider that the Kemp–Roth Tax Cut was a way to rebrand a tax cut for the top income bracket to make it easier to pass into law.[23] Stockman said that "It's kind of hard to sell 'trickle down,' so the supply-side formula was the only way to get a tax policy that was really 'trickle down.' Supply-side is 'trickle-down' theory."[23][24][25]
They’re the party of saying that, but then cutting taxes and launching insanely expensive very-optional wars paid for by credit card. This is just what they in-fact do when given a chance.
They claim to want to reduce the deficit, but are also committed to pretending that the best and least-painful ways to do that just don’t exist. So. Kinda hard to actually do it.
They only care about deficits when a democrat wants to pay for sick children’s medicine or something.
If you think that, then they've been successful at their usual smokescreen: blame Democrats for deficit spending, and then when the GOP is back in power, they do... more deficit spending. Sometimes even more deficit spending. Somehow a lot of people seem not to notice that.
No need to worry about running deficits when the tax cuts realized by the richest individuals and corporations “trickles down” to the rest of us. Still waiting for that magic rain…
They absolutely should be. The legislature is not representing the will of the voters and refusing to do what's right for society as a whole and pass term limits for themselves. It's not complicated. Those who vote yes are reasonable, ethical, moral people, and those who vote no leave behind a permanent legacy of boundless self-interest.
That solves a symptom, not the problem. You need stronger legislation against lobbying, campaign financing, and investing by representatives.
If that works, the incentive to be a representative is reduced and there won’t be people who make it into a profitable career against the interests of the people.
I agree wholeheartedly. I think addressing any of these - term limits, lobbying, campaign finance reform, congressional insider trading - is a good thing and we should be wanting to address all of them. RepresentUs had a really good platform for this up until COVID, then seemingly all of their credibility around genuine bipartisanship disappeared and the old open-minded, respectful, cross-aisle cooperative spirit was just thrown straight out the window. I was very disappointed by this.
Public sector liabilities are private sector assets. GOP is the party of billionaires and billionaires want more money, so they demand lower taxes and greater deficits.
I'm not sure if this is true any more, or if it is it's nominally true. But Democrats certainly have a lot of wealth - Kamala Harris raised about $1.4bn to Trump's $700m in her campaign, and in record time.
Well… technically the Democrats and the GOP changed sides on things such as civil rights and slavery, so it’s hard to say they always were like that. The people yes, but not the label.
> Well… technically the Democrats and the GOP changed sides on things such as civil rights and slavery, so it’s hard to say they always were like that.
Pre-1960s the racists were mixed between the two parties to a varying degree. In the 1960s the GOP decide to actually go after / court the racist voter.
I believe it was more complicated than that, with some moving around since the 1930’s at least. I think the 1960’s civil rights movement just made it painfully obvious.
Having said that, Americans seem to be extremely pragmatic when it comes to voting, not ruling out someone for being a terrible human being if their policy proposals make sense to the voter. I wish Americans would be more ideological and principled in that situation.
Interesting. Coming from a country where most people vote purely based on their ideologies, I wish they would vote more for policies. Grass, green, etc, I suppose.
