If you repeat a lie often enough, then people will believe you. That’s the only possible reason that anyone today believes that Republicans are the party of fiscal responsibility, and the three Republican presidential candidates of note (sorry, Mr. Paul) are destined to continue the policies of economic destruction.
A recent study by the independent, non-partisan US Budget Watch shows that the proposed budget policies of Mitt Romney, Rick Santorum, and Newt Gingrich would all add to the national debt through tax cuts that would not be balanced by spending cuts. This should be a surprise to no one since the over-riding trickle-down economic scheme that has dominated the political landscape since 1980, with the exception of Bill Clinton’s eight years, has resulted in mushrooming national debt.
The rising debt has nothing to do with wars or unforeseen economic downturns or the growing expense of entitlement programs and healthcare: It’s simply because it’s a flawed economic theory that Republicans will fight to the death to keep using because it benefits the richest Americans and large corporations.
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By the numbers, Gingrich is the most Republican of the three major presidential candidates since his proposal would increase the national debt by $7 trillion by 2021, but maybe we could lower that some if we could only get those child-labor laws changed. I can’t believe that it’s 2012, and we still have children who aren’t paying taxes for the right to empty the garbage and clean toilets.
Rick Santorum’s plan would increase the debt by $4.5 trillion by 2021, but I doubt that plan includes the extra debt that would be accumulated by the attack of Iran, which would likely begin during the first days of his presidency. Oh, wait. That’s right–Republican Presidents wage preemptive wars of aggression without accounting for them in their budget plans (see W), so not counting it here only seems fair.
The Mitt Romney budget plan was originally analyzed to result in a modest $150 billion debt increase by 2021, but that has changed in recent days. In his attempt to get more to the right than the other candidates (good luck with that) has resulted in an adjustment to his plan. His revised plan, which includes a 20% across-the-board tax cut that would greatly favor those with the greatest wealth, means that his plan would result in a $2.7 trillion debt increase.
Even though Ron Paul is not a serious candidate, it should be noted that he is the only one of the Presidential candidates whose budget plan would decrease the national debt. Of course, he is much less hawkish about wars and military spending, and he also thinks that we should eliminate the departments of Education, Transportation, Energy, and the Interior, as well as the Transportation Safety Administration, which is largely responsible for airline safety. That might seem reasonable–to the anarchists of the world.
Let’s just hope that enough Americans are paying attention rather than believing the same lies that they’ve been told for generations.
