Eideard

The U.S. national debt will swell further under tax-cut plans floated by three of the top four Republican presidential candidates, according to an independent analysis of their fiscal policy proposals released on Thursday.

Plans put forth by Newt Gingrich and Rick Santorum would pile up the largest increases in debt, while Mitt Romney’s initial plan, since revised with bigger proposed tax cuts, would increase it by a smaller amount over the next decade.

Only Ron Paul’s plan to drastically shrink government and cut taxes would produce a reduction in debt levels through 2021…He just destroys federal agencies.

Romney’s new tax plan, which matches the 28 percent top rate proposed by Santorum, promises to be revenue neutral, but does not offer any specifics on how to make up for lost revenues…

“Are they making proposals that risk making the debt problem worse?” said Alice Rivlin, a former head of the Congressional Budget Office and Federal Reserve vice chairman who now serves on the group’s board. “On that score, all of these candidates fail. They all reduce the revenue that is available to the government over time…”

The group said the middle path for Gingrich would add $7 trillion to the national debt by 2021 versus the baseline, largely because he has proposed deep tax cuts for individuals and corporations, including an alternative 15 percent “flat tax.”

This would boost debt as a share of the overall economy to 114 percent in 2021 from the current level of about 70 percent, compared with an anticipated 2021 baseline level of 85 percent.

The middle scenario for Santorum’s plan would add $4.5 trillion to the debt, also due to tax cuts…The debt-to-gross domestic product ratio would rise to 104 percent under Santorum’s plan…

The middle scenario for Paul was the only one to reduce debt below the baseline – by $2.2 trillion – largely due to spending cuts on healthcare programs and Social Security and elimination of five federal departments and many State Department programs. This would cut debt to 76 percent of GDP by 2021. And Ron Paul doesn’t need Social Security or healthcare or foreign policy to live in his accustomed style.

In other words – besides being liars – the Republican candidates don’t know diddly-squat about economics. And hope you never learn.

That didn’t take long.

As we’ve gotten around to casting votes to select a Republican presidential nominee, the antiblack rhetoric has taken center stage. You just have to love (and despise) this kind of predictability.

On Sunday, Rick “The Rooster” Santorum, campaigning in Iowa, said what sounded like “I don’t want to make black people’s lives better by giving them somebody else’s money. I want to give them the opportunity to go out and earn the money.” At first, he offered a nondenial that suggested that the comment might have been out of context. Now he’s saying that he didn’t say “black people” at all but that he “started to say a word” and then “sort of mumbled it and changed my thought.”

“Uh huh.”

Newton Leroy Gingrich has been calling President Obama “the best food stamp president” for months, but after plummeting in the polls and finishing fourth in Iowa, he must have decided that this approach was too subtle. So, on Thursday in New Hampshire, he sharpened the shiv and dug it in deeper, saying, “I’m prepared, if the N.A.A.C.P. invites me, I’ll go to their convention and talk about why the African-American community should demand paychecks and not be satisfied with food stamps.” On Friday, Gingrich defended himself, as usual, by insisting that exactly what he said wasn’t exactly what he said. He was advocating for African-Americans, not disparaging them.

“Uh huh.”

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Two leading members of the lyin’ bastards club

Republican presidential candidates Mitt Romney and Rick Perry have been accused of telling TV viewers blatant untruths about Barack Obama.

The candidates deny their TV commercials are deceitful and dishonest but both ads selectively quote the president to make it appear he is saying one thing when he is saying another.

The advertisements have been widely scorned for crossing a line from a longstanding practice of political campaigns pushing the truth to its limits, over to misrepresentation. One ad appears to show Obama admitting he will lose next year’s election if he talks about the economy. The other has him calling American workers lazy.

Romney’s campaign ad is airing on TV stations in New Hampshire, which holds its primary in January. It shows the president saying: “If we keep talking about the economy, we’re going to lose.” But Obama’s words were from his 2008 campaign, and he was quoting a statement by a strategist for his Republican opponent, John McCain, who was the one on the back foot over the economy.

Perry’s ad shows a short soundbite of Obama saying: “We’ve been a little bit lazy I think over the last couple of decades.”

The ad switches to Perry saying: “Can you believe that? That’s what our president thinks is wrong with America – that Americans are lazy. That’s pathetic.”

But a viewing of Obama’s full statement shows that he was saying the US government had been lazy in attracting foreign investment.

Darrell West, director of governance studies at the nonpartisan Brookings Institution in Washington, said that Romney and Perry had gone further than previous campaigns in misrepresenting the truth.

“Those ads are blatant misrepresentations,” he said. “They are much more egregious than what we’ve seen in the past. Typically candidates have tried to be close to the truth because they know journalists are paying attention, but with all the problems of the news industry politicians have concluded they can get away with murder…”

But West acknowledged that politicians are less concerned about being exposed by reporters. “Politicians think that the news media have completely collapsed, based on the financial crisis, and so they are acting as if there’s no accountability and they can say whatever they want,” he said.

West makes a great point about American journalists having as little integrity as Republican candidates. Since their employers are either corporations controlled by Republicans or clown who consider news as entertainment – or both – there’s little encouragement for any of them to point out any of the lies or liars.