One of the nice parts about the election night wins by Republicans is they put themselves on record with what they plan to accomplish after their victory wave (tidal wave, tsunami, earthquake, plague, etc.). Well Republicans, I was listening. They plan to lower unemployment. They plan to repeal health care reform. They plan to lower the debt. They plan to extend the Bush tax cuts. They plan to reform the way congress works. They plan to make government smaller.
Luckily for the Republicans President Obama has deferred to congress on many important decisions that could have used more Executive Branch direction. This means with the convincing wins, come January, the Republicans will be fully in charge of delivering upon the rhetoric that got them here. Below is my list of expectations.
- Unemployment should be around 7.5%. This would show good gains and that we are on a path towards the 5% unemployment rate that we seem comfortable with.
- Under Obama and the Democrats we saw the largest reduction in the deficit in history so given that this was not enough to be considered successful then next year I expect and even bigger reduction of the deficit
- I expect a complete repeal of health care reform. You can't tell me that this was the main reason you were elected and then just make small fixes. Republicans have to sack up and get the full repeal done or they failed.
- All of the tax cuts must be extended and there needs to be proof that the extension of these tax cuts made a difference. If the stimulus being made up of nearly $300 billion in tax cuts is a failure and one reason the Republicans got elected then the mere passage of tax cuts is not good enough so a burden of proof is required.
- Passage of at least three congressional reform bills. If congress is broken as is often professed by Republicans than you must start fixing it. I would think they could come up with a least three things in two years that need to be fixed. If not then it really couldn't have been that broken and Republicans should acknowledge that they lied about this claim.
- A 5% reduction in size of government as quantified by spending. Given how bloated the federal government is according to Republicans it shouldn't take long to cut a measly $175 billion from the federal budget. Again if this number is not attained then perhaps the claims of government being too big are false.
Congratulations Republicans, you got the keys back. Now you have to prove that you can drive, and no, just sitting in the driveway in the drivers seat with the car running doesn't count as driving. It counts as a commitment to drive and I'll be watching.
I think the teabaggers are going to be very disappointed very quickly.
ReplyDeleteThis is in the light of the last two years have proven that Washington is what it is.
Change all the names that show up ballots and put "new people" into office all you want.
Washington is and will be run by the lobbyist and special interest...
Then again we could a major economic recovery. Because wall street and the big banks won't be shitting their panties anymore about extending credit to small business
They won't have to worry about all those imaginary taxes and non existent regulations.
They will give up the deliberate of sabotage of the recovery process IE not extending lines of credit to credit worthy small business and start ups.
Once they put some of the hundreds of billions of tax dollars they have in "cash reserves" into the hands of community banks and small businesses.
The sad part the wing nuts will try to take credit for the magical freeing up of credit to small business.
Even though it is was and always will be the wheelers and dealers on wall street who are to thank of blame...
I would really like to hold the Republicans accountable for all of their claims that lead to their wins so that when they do try and take credit for something we can point out the many things they failed to accomplish, as they have done so often over the last 2 years, as well as give Democrats credit for all of the good legislation that has occurred recently. How do we accomplish this goal?
ReplyDeleteThe short answer is we can't.
ReplyDeleteThe mantra of the wing nuts is always the same "Government doesn't work markets do" They'll claim that the reason the wheelers and dealers on Wall Street didn't release all those cash reserves into lines of credit for small business.
Which has already begun to happen BTW was because "The Government" was preventing it from happening.
Even if nothing additional were to happen all they have to is blame it on the government.
The advocates of Keynesian economics.
Regardless of actual real world performance are guilty of stiffing and stagnating the economy.