Reminder to Republican Bush Supporters: He's Not One Of You!
More than anything else, what is the one quality that defines the conservative movement, or at least by which it defines itself in order to get support? Fiscal responsibility.
And so this article from the New York Times reminds us quite clearly that Bush is no conservative, at least in this respect.
According to the nonpartisan Congressional Budget Office, the Bush budget will RAISE the deficit by $1.2 trillion in the next 10 years, and $35 billion this year alone.
How are those numbers reached? Simple. Bush's tax cuts (largely for the wealthy), if passed as budgeted, will cost $1.7 trillion over those same ten years. Meanwhile, the budget reductions Bush has targetted will save about half a trillion over that same time period.
Add in the proposal to partially privatize Social Security, and you can add another $312 billion over those ten years.
One of the differences between this report and the rosey projections that come out of the White House? The now habitual tactic of never BUDGETING for war funding. So far this year, we've added $92 billion in "supplemental spending" to the war effort, not a penny of which was listed in the official budget numbers. And of course although we seem poised to strike at Iran (at least, the rhetoric about Iran now sounds eerily similar to what was being said about Iraq prior to that war), no money is budgetted for that.
Also, keep in mind that a lot of Bush's budgeted tax cuts come from services to veterans. While saying that Democrats and other war opposers don't support the troops, this Administration has quietly been cutting funding for veterans services, so the brave men and women over there, risking their lives and (for those who return) the very real risk of permanent physical and psychological damage come home to find they can't even get the support they were promised as veterans of war.
Amazing how Bush's budget cuts largely come from the poor and middle classes (public education, community development block grants, low income housing, child support enforcement against deadbeat parents, etc), while the tax cuts go largely to the wealthy and the corporate.
But regardless, don't believe it when Bush says he's on a pace to reduce the deficit. His current budget, when not looked at sideways, squinting on a foggy day, proves it.
Liam.
posted by Liam at 3/04/2006 08:14:00 PM
6 Comments:
Our choice was made back when Bush was running against Gore. If the decision were today, and it was still Bush against Gore, my decision would have to be the same. Not becausse Bush is always right, he is NOT, but still listening to Gore's speeches, I would arrive at the same decision. When the next election arrives, I will still want a conservative in the White House; your rant seems to imply that Bush is running again when we all know he isn't;even if he could I don't think he would want to nor do I want him to.
Sunday, March 05, 2006 8:56:00 AM
I didn't intend to imply that I thought Bush would run again, although I suppose that's my fault for noting several days ago that several Republican congressmen have put forth a proposed Amendment to repeal the 22nd. However, I don't believe that will pass, both because I don't believe it has popular support and because as I said, it would free up the one person who both sides pretty much agree is the one person the Democrats have right now who can really rally the people.
However, what I'd like to ask you is: What do you really want in 2008? What did you really want in 2000? A conservative or a Republican? They're not the same thing.
Looking at the policies enacted under President Clinton compared to those enacted under Richard Nixon, politics have taken a serious hard turn to the right, Clinton was significantly to the right of Nixon, but those on the right decry Clinton as this bleeding-heart liberal while many will still privately tell you that the only thing wrong with Nixon was that he got caught.
Gore was pretty much a centrist like Clinton, his two main failings were his tendency to be stiff and wooden (although no worse than Bush, he came across so by comparison to his boss) and an inability to counter the utterly false right wing meme that he was a liar and prone to wild exaggeration.
I always thought that when someone wanted a conservative candidate, they were for smaller government (Clinton gave us that, Bush has turned that around) and fiscal responsibility (Clinton gave us that as well, and Bush has again turned it around).
The only thing Bush had going for him was his support for the pro-life crowd and so far, that has proven to be more lip service than actual anyway. When all other things are equal, he'll throw that bone to his supporters, but it certainly has not been his number one agenda. While we can't know what Gore would have done, he worked pretty well with his boss, so we can probably assume he'd have followed a lot of the same policies.
So, do you honestly believe you want a conservative in 2008 (or if we were back in 2000)?
Because if I'm looking for the more conservative candidate, I'll take a fiscally responsible, smaller government Democrat over a borrow-and-spend Republican any day.
Liam.
Sunday, March 05, 2006 6:35:00 PM
First I want to say that I would never want a President to be able to have 3 terms, I don't care who or what he or she is or has done.
In my opinion, neither Clinton nor Gore are/were Centrists. Under Clinton, when Gingrich was in charge of the House, they had to drag Clinton kicking and screaming to the balanaced budget and budget cutting they wanted. His (Clinton's) submitted budgets were enormous on increases in social spending. What balanced the budget was two things. First was a spectacularly growing economy that was the result of 12 years of laying the groundwork, and the luck of timing. Second, was a significant decrease in military spending expressed as a percentage of the GDP. Admittedly, these are points that could be argued from both sides by any able debater, (the cause of the growing economy that is) but the facts of the budgets reductions in military spending and the growth of the economy are facts. These do not make Clinton a centrist. On the social issues, I don't think we even need to discuss the fact that Clinton was to the left side of most of the issues, and Gore was way to the left of him.(Gore's book stated that the most dangerous thing in the world today was the internal combustion engine.
To say that this war against terror has cost money that increased the budget is true, but to say that we have had more pork in these budgets when they were submitted and passed through the house is just as true, and this when a supposedly conservative Republican Party contols all three houses ie White,Senate,Congress. This is an exteme disappointment to those of us really in the conservative movement. The good things are the President's handling of the war on terror (I know from reading your previous rants and comments that this statement really gets you mad, sorry) the appointments to the Supreme Court, and his having such well qualified people of all races in large numbers in his appointed positions of power.
As for the appointments to the Supreme Court let me say that I have watched the Supreme Court disrespect the Constitution by making law instead of interpreting it and I think the two latest appointees have shown that they will interpret and not make law from the bench.
Monday, March 06, 2006 6:09:00 PM
Can you imagine the Supreme Court appointees we would have gotten under Gore? Ruth Bader Ginsberg comes to mind. She is considered by conservatives to be ultra-liberal!
Monday, March 06, 2006 6:33:00 PM
On the first point, at least, we agree. I think the 22nd Amendment was a very good addition to our Constitution. It forces a shake up of the system at least occasionally. Without it, we could have a President who sits as long as some Senators do, and have children who grow up never really grasping that there's any other way.
As to the budgets, we have to agree to disagree on that. I think what enabled us to balance the budget (you're going to notice a recurring theme here) was different parties in control of the two branches of government, combined with people in both places who honestly wanted to fight the deficit. Clinton wanted some things he didn't get. Bush wants and he gets. Yet another good thing about the two parties sharing power: If they have checks and balances over each other, neither can spend insanely on their own agenda. Since the things most important to each party are not the same as those important to the other, spending can be kept down as each side uses its "veto" power over the other's extravagances. Does that mean Clinton deserves the kudos for balancing the budget? Maybe not, but he deserves PART of it. The argument that it was all the Republican congress simply won't fly any more, since we STILL have a Republican congress and we're back to record setting deficits.
We'll also have to agree to disagree about where Clinton was on most issues. I still maintain he was, for the most part, significantly to the RIGHT of Nixon. It's all a matter of perception. The Right has managed to swing public perception so far in that direction that people who would previously have been thought of as centrist or even conservative are now seen as wildly liberal.
As to the combustion engine, I think the jury is still out on that one. Gore may turn out to be Chicken Little yelling erroneously about the sky falling, or we may eventually determine that yes, all of our automobiles ARE causing the global warming which is most definitely happening. I've yet to see any conclusive studies proving or debunking humanity's hand in the warming of the planet, but I think we're safely past the time when we could argue about whether it is warming. If it turns out that greenhouse gases are mostly or entirely at fault, then Gore's statement changes from insane rambling to prescient wisdom.
The war on terror is a cost driver, to be sure. However, the war in Iraq has nothing to do with it. And since going into it, the war in Iraq has been badly mishandled in a lot of ways. Note how even die hard conservatives like Wm. F. Buckley (“One can't doubt that the American objective in Iraq has failed”) and O'Reilly ("So the only solution to this is to hand over everything to the Iraqis as fast as humanly possible. Because we just can't control these crazy people.”) are starting to talk about how badly things are going and how we need to get out. We were told that the entire war would cost us three to four billion dollars at most, and that the Iraqi OIL would foot the rest of the bill. Now there are estimates that when all the costs are totaled up (including long term care for the wounded soldiers of this conflict) we could be talking nearly a trillion dollars. That's almost three orders of magnitude off. And for what? So he could go home at family reunions and say "See? I did what Dad couldn't, I took out Hussein!" With the vastly increased level of hatred for our country across the Muslim world, the Iraq foolishness certainly has done nothing to make us safer, indeed it has been a huge expense in money and lives (lost and ruined) resulting in the exact opposite effect.
I take issue with the characterization of most of his appointments as being qualified. Hardly a week goes by when we don't hear of some other crony being appointed to a position he or she is totally UN-qualified to fill. The former lobbyist for the mining industry who is now in charge of mine safety, under whom enforcement of even the simplest of mine safety rules has gone by the wayside, resulting in several recent mine tragedies, just for one example. A number of months back, I detailed quite a few of these crony appointments. Hardly a qualified bunch.
As to the Supreme Court, I hear that argument a lot, that the Justices are making law instead of interpreting it. I'd like to know exactly how they've done that. It's one of those talking points that gets repeated often, but in fact it's simply not true, because they don't have that power. The Judiciary has two main duties, and they're both vitally important. The first is to apply the laws of the land in criminal/civil suits, and the second is to judge laws against the Constitution, ensuring that changes to the core of the Constitution can only be made through the amendment process and not slipped through as someone passes a law which violates our core rights. The Supreme Court *can not* enact a law. There is simply no means for them to do that. They CAN strike down laws as being unconstitutional, but that's not making law, that's performing their absolutely vital role of keepers of the Constitution and protectors of the public. And if the Congress and the majority of the States disagree with the Court, they can always amend the Constitution.
Meanwhile, the Justices that Bush is said to most admire, Scalia and Thomas, have absolutely no business being on the bench. When Scalia says "you want a right? Pass a law!", he's completely ignoring the Ninth Amendment in our Bill of Rights. And when he said "people who believe that the U.S. constitution is a 'living document' are idiots", he was ignoring the fact that our Constitution has built right into it the means for it to be amended as times change.
Reading the Constitution, with the Federalist Papers as background, it's clear that the Constitution was intended first and foremost to LIMIT Federal power, not enumerate it. Any right not specifically granted to the Federal government within its text is supposed to be expressly forbidden to the Federal government, and it is sadly left to the reader to determine what, of the rest, is supposed to be a state's right and what is supposed to be a citizen's right. But for a Supreme Court Justice to say that citizens don't have rights unless laws are passed granting them those rights means that that Justice has not really understood the Constitution, and as such, should not be entrusted with ensuring that it is followed.
And Alito seems no better, although the jury (pardon the pun) is still somewhat out. But if he in fact supports the Unitary Executive theory, as seemed to be the case from a number of his answers during his confirmation hearings, then he essentially supports fundamentally changing the balance of power in this country from what the Constitution framers envisioned to more of a temporary monarchy. Nixon was wrong when he said "If the President does it, it's legal", but that's the basis of the Unitary Executive theory. The reason the framers wrote the Constitution to be so restrictive on Federal (and especially Executive) power was because they wanted to avoid replacing King George with another monarch.
The President still has to follow the rules. Under our laws and rules, he can not simply decide that he doesn't like my criticisms of him on my blog and order my killed or thrown into some secret prison somewhere. That's not to say he couldn't actually DO it, but if he did, he'd be violating our laws, and if he was caught, he would most certainly deserve impeachment and a long jail term. Oh, but wait, he already did that to one American citizen, Jose Padilla. And yet a lot of people don't seem concerned that our President employed a tactic that twenty years ago we were decrying as the worst of the abuses in the old Soviet Union.
So in the end, I guess we're just going to have to agree that we see the world in different ways and that we are just not going to understand each other's points of view, because to me this President has been damaging to this country in ways which will have far reaching and long lasting consequences. I honestly believe that history will ultimately regard him as one of the worst Presidents in our history, in terms of the lasting damage done to the country, its standing in the world and to the environment.
You obviously don't see it that way, and so on this, at least, we have to simply agree to think each other fools, each thinking the other just isn't seeing what seems to us to be blindingly obvious.
Liam.
Tuesday, March 07, 2006 1:34:00 AM
Amen!
Tuesday, March 07, 2006 8:40:00 AM
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