Profiles in Failure

(2 pm. – promoted by ek hornbeck)

Cross posted from The Stars Hollow Gazette

Continuing economic policies  the have failed is flat out stupid. Proposing to not only continue with those policies but to reinforce them by making them worse is economic and political suicide. It is the path that the Obama administration and Congress have taken us down by renewing the Bush Tax Cuts until December 2012. Some of the GOP candidates would like to cut taxes even further, so much so that it would cripple the government and widen the socio-economic gap of the haves and have-nots.

June 7th was the tenth anniversary of the Bush tax cuts that were enacted on the promise as a  necessary economic stimulus that would boost job creation and a stalled economy by the Bush regime who said the “deficits didn’t matter”. Bush promised that result would be that the Federal debt would be paid in 10 years that was in 2001. At the end of 2008, the national to over $10 trillion dollars, 69% of the GDP and the highest it had been since 1955.

Think Progress compiled a concise video with graphics and music that demonstrates how the Bush tax cuts drove up the deficit and will continue to make matters worse over the next 18 months.

Yet, we still have the right wing pundits and GOP candidates for president repeating the with most of the talking heads nodding in acquiescence. Lawrence O’Donnell was the exception last night comparing the ignorance of Sarah Palin to the out right lies about tax cuts by GOP presidential hopeful, ex-Gov Tim Pawlenty. If elected, Pawlenty would propose cutting the business tax rate and wipe out the capital gains tax, interest income tax, dividend tax and the estate tax.

It’s estimated that Pawlenty’s proposals would triple the size of the Bush tax cut costing another $7.8 trillion over the $2.5 trillion the current extension is costing. Meanwhile, the other GOP contender, ex-Gov. Mitt Romney, follows the Bush/Cheney economic theory that deficits don’t matter with his endorsing a “federal spending at 20 percent or less of the GDP and finally, finally balance the budget” without mentioning the other side of the equation, revenue.

With Obama caving on just about everything, his word that he will not extend the Bush tax cuts again doesn’t hold much water. His economic policies and thus his re-election is in the inept hands of a Wall St. shill, Treasury Secretary Timothy Geithner and his Chief of Staff, former Morgan Stanley bank executive, Bill Daley. If Ben Bernanke expressed less than a rosy economic outlook, it understandable that the markets worldwide are taking a tumble.