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.

Pau Babeu at his coming out press conference
Daylife/AP Photo used by permission

A local sheriff resigned as a co-chair of Republican presidential hopeful Mitt Romney’s campaign in Arizona on Saturday after he was accused of threatening a former male lover with deportation to Mexico if he talked about their relationship.

In an embarrassing incident for Romney’s struggling campaign, Pinal County Sheriff Paul Babeu denied that he or his lawyer made the deportation threat but stepped down from helping the former Massachusetts governor in the border state.

Babeu acknowledged at a press conference on Saturday that he is gay and that he had a personal relationship with the man making the allegations, whom he identified only as “Jose…”

The Phoenix New Times alternative newspaper reported on Friday that Babeu’s lawyer had asked Jose to sign a legal agreement that would require him to keep quiet about his involvement with the sheriff. According to the newspaper, the lawyer also warned Jose that any talk about their relationship could imperil his immigration status.

“All of these allegations that were in one of these newspapers were absolutely false, except for the issue that referred to me as being gay, and that is the truth. I am gay,” Babeu said at the news conference.

Babeu first came to statewide prominence in 2010 when he appeared in a campaign ad for U.S. Senator John McCain of Arizona, the Republican presidential nominee two years earlier, calling for tough immigration measures.

The sheriff, who is a tough law-and-order advocate, was considered a rising star in state Republican politics and a strong candidate to win the Republican nomination for a congressional seat in Arizona this year.

“For what shall it profit a man, if he shall gain the whole world, and lose his own soul?” — might be the first response among the religious who wander through here. It worked for Woody Guthrie as well.

So, Paul Babeu – I wish you well in your new life in the open. Please reflect on your former buddies, political supporters, allies in fighting for the sort of society you thought worthwhile. A lot of them are going to be the first to turn their backs on you.

“I never noticed how lovely your eyes are”

A new Tax Policy Center analysis finds that Mitt Romney’s tax plan would cut taxes for millions of households but bestow most of its benefits on those with the highest incomes. At the same time, it would significantly cut corporate taxes and add hundreds of billions of dollars to the deficit…

For individuals, Romney starts by making permanent both the 2001 and 2003 tax cuts and the “patch” that protects millions of middle- and upper middle-income households from the Alternative Minimum Tax.

At the same time, he’d end President Obama’s 2009 stimulus tax reductions, including Obama’s more generous versions of the child tax credit and earned income credit—both aimed at helping low-income working families. He’d also repeal the tax increases included in the 2010 health reform law…

He’d cut the corporate rate from 35 percent to 25 percent, make the research and experimentation tax credit permanent, and temporarily allow firms to continue to write-off the full cost of capital investment as soon as they acquire the property. Multinationals would get a temporary tax holiday for overseas profits they bring back to the U.S….

Nearly all middle-income households would get a tax reduction. Among those making $50,000 to $75,000, the average tax cut would be about $1,800.

But much of the largess goes to those with the highest-incomes. Households making more than $1 million would get an average tax cut of almost $300,000, largely because, as owners of capital, they’d receive the bulk of the benefit of Romney’s very generous corporate tax reductions. While those making $1 million-plus pay about 20 percent of all federal taxes, they’d receive more than 28 percent of Romney’s tax cuts…

Almost everyone who makes more than $1 million would get a tax cut averaging roughly $150,000. As a group, they’d receive nearly half the benefit of Romney’s tax plan.

Romney says he’d rewrite the entire tax code–someday. But he doesn’t say how or when. Until he does, a Romney Administration’s revenue agenda would look a lot like President George W. Bush’s, just more so.

Screwing the same people. Playing kissy-kissy to the same class of society for whom money essentially is a commodity – to be traded.

The buying and selling of our politicians doesn’t seem to be changing a great deal. The same people, the same corporations end up holding the keys to the treasury.

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.

Thanks, Cinaedh