re: #703 PAUL_MACDONALD

If that were the case, they would have been out in force during the Bush years. They get to hide behind the rhetoric of “lower taxes and smaller government” because they really have a problem with a black guy being president.

It’s fairly clear that the tea partiers and their candidates have nothing concrete in the realm of how and what to cut.

Oh? Here’s a start. Cut social security payouts. Rescind the health care takeover. Stop backing mortgages that stand no chance of being paid off by the borrower. Don’t hand out student loans when there’s little chance the student will graduate—-and for sure, don’t hand out student loans when the school is so bad that there’s no chance a degree from that school will lead to a job. Stop bailing out financial firms that made reckless bets and lost.

End earmarks. At this point, you’ve made a little progress on balancing the budget, and you begin to enter the opposite of a vicious circle.

Now what the tea party movement completely gets wrong is that this agenda, which is a fairly drastic one, is quite insufficient. Pity to say, taxes will have to go up. Make all social security payments taxable income. (Those who most need that money won’t be liable for any taxes anyhow.) Raise rates a couple percent across the board. (The middle class is going to have to be part of the answer when it comes to revenue. The rich aren’t tapped out but relying on them to carry the load alone is not feasible.) Don’t institute a VAT or other stealth tax, because stealth taxes become cash cows for unrestrained spending and that just worsens the national debt.

As to having not spoken up during the Bush years, give people a little credit for stupidity. Odds are these guys didn’t sell all their equity holdings in 2006 and 2007. They sincerely didn’t get it that we were spending our way into a fix. Almost by definition, when there’s a bubble, people mostly haven’t figured out that it’s a bubble. But now, sadder and wiser, we know better.