Ongoing Dishonesty

I would take right-wing rants about President Obama a lot more seriously if they were grounded in facts. Take, for example, this Ed Rogers hactackular entitled "The Lazy, Dishonest Democratic Arguments Against Tax Reform." Given that he may as well be talking about me, I figure I should respond to him.

Now that President Trump and Republican leaders in Congress have announced their tax-reform plan, the usual dividing lines are being drawn. Democrats and their allies in the media are whining about tax cuts for the rich and, to some degree, how tax cuts would reduce the government’s income and increase the deficit. I’m yawning. By being so predictable, so lazy and so dishonest, Democrats are thinking they can stifle any real debate over the merits of tax reform that features economy-boosting tax cuts.

Well, I'm sorry our "facts" bother you Mr. Rogers. However, if you would like me to NOT argue that your tax "reform" plan is simply a tax cut for the rich, perhaps you should come up with a tax "reform" plan that is NOT simply a tax cut for the rich. Also, in what world do tax cuts not reduce the government's income and increase the deficit? Remember how W cut taxes, exploded the deficit, crashed the economy, then handed the reigns to Obama? Remember how Obama cut the deficit in half? Remember how you ranted about the "exploding deficit" when opposing all of (and I mean every last one of) Obama's proposals?

Next, I would like to see some evidence that your tax cuts actually boost the economy. Certainly, if growth had exploded after the 2001 and 2003 tax cuts, we would be inundated with graphs, data, etc. The absence of same is striking, no?

They would rather revert to whining about tax cuts for the rich and accuse the GOP of wanting to coddle corporations. And by the way, in their heart of hearts, many Democrats do not want the economy to improve out of fear that a little prosperity for the middle class will hurt their chances at the ballot box in 2018 and 2020. This is the political reality in which tax reform must now be considered.

As noted above, if you don't want your tax plan to be characterized as "tax cuts for the rich" and "coddling corporations," perhaps designing a plan where the vast majority of the benefits don't flow to the rich and corporations would be a good start.

Second, I will thank Mr. Rogers to refrain from attacking my motives. That is the essence of a bad-faith argument. I could attack his, and simply state that he wants to keep the donor dollars flowing. I am, notably, refraining from that argument. Thank you in advance Mr. Hacktacular, for paying me the same courtesy.

Reasonable people can differ over how much growth and revenue tax cuts are likely to generate, but I don’t consider liberal activists, most elected Democrats or their allies in the media to be reasonable people when it comes to economic growth and taxes. 

So, reasonable people can differ over whether tax cuts boost the economy and by how much; however, anyone who disagrees with Mr. Rogers is not a reasonable person on this topic? Stated another way: anyone who disagrees with me doesn't know what he's talking about.

Well, now that we have that cleared up . . . can I just disregard Mr. Rogers yet?

Under President Barack Obama, the national debt grew from $10.63 trillion to $19.95 trillion in just eight years. And according to a June 2016 report from the Congressional Research Service, his policies led to “the slowest recovery seen in the post-WWII period era. Real GDP ha[d] grown at an average pace of 2.0% per year during the [Obama-era] recovery, compared with an average rate of 4.3% during the previous 10 expansions.” Is there any reason to call such policies anything other than a failure?

This conveniently overlooks the effect of the Bush tax cuts, the Bush recession, and the Republican congress for 6 of 8 years. Further, I would note that the link Mr. Rogers provides contains precisely ZERO discussion of President Obama's policies. Intellectual honesty? Methinks not.

The Democrats and their allies in the media are quick to go to the old cliche that Republicans are only in favor of tax cuts for the rich. Well, the current tax policy is so warped that in America, so few taxpayers pay such a large share of our taxes that it is impossible to have meaningful, stimulative tax reform that does not cut taxes for the people that actually pay them.

Well, the old cliche about Republicans favoring tax cuts for the rich became a cliche because it is true. Further, his point about so few taxpayers paying such a large share of taxes conveniently overlooks the fact that so few citizens control such a large share of the national economic pie. Fix one and you fix the other, from what I can tell.

It’s time to try the opposite of what we endured under Obama. The consequences of perpetuating the status quo are much bigger than just the inside-the-swamp political dynamics of a tax bill’s passage or defeat. If we don’t quickly restore robust economic growth, the divisions that produced Trump will only get worse. We will move even further into unstable territory. Who knows what might come next?

I too would like something other than the intransigence we experienced during the Obama years. However, Mr. Rogers, just because your party threw an 8-year temper tantrum does not mean that your political opponents should now give you everything you want, particularly when you and yours wrecked countless historical political norms to block every initiative put forth by President Obama for eight years.

And as far as restoring economic growth, I agree! Let's do it! However, I will NOT line up with the same policies that have failed time and again to produce growth, and that includes your tried and failed supply side "voodoo economics."

Finally, with respect to further movement into unstable political territory, this was not done by the liberals. We did not nominate an unstable sexual predator to carry our party's banner. The Republican Party owns Trump, through and through. When his policies predictably create calamity, I don't want to hear about how "nobody could have seen this coming," because I see that coming, right now. It's bad enough that I have to live with the terrible consequences of terrible policy; please don't insult me by saying I never saw it coming, because I did (see "Iraq, circa 2002").