America, let me break it down in real simple terms.
All these bailouts we're reading about, like Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac, are costing the U.S. government money. A lot of these companies are folding because of a lack of oversight by the Bush administration over industries like the mortgage industry. Speculators ran wild and made a lot of money selling things like bad mortgages that did not add up on paper.
McCain says he won't raise your taxes, not even for the richest Americans. Fair enough, but these bailouts have to be paid for... and where is the money coming from?
Well, it's not coming from anywhere because we're not raising the money to pay for these bailouts. It's just contributing to our growing deficit.
Former Fed chairman Alan Greenspan takes McCain's economic plan to task:
From Associated Press:
Alan Greenspan says the country can't afford tax cuts of the magnitude proposed by Republican presidential contender John McCain — at least not without a corresponding reduction in government spending.
"Unless we cut spending, no," the former Federal Reserve chairman said Friday when asked about McCain's proposed tax cuts, pegged in some estimates at $3.3 trillion.
"I'm not in favor of financing tax cuts with borrowed money," Greenspan said during an interview with Bloomberg Television. "I always have tied tax cuts to spending."
Read more here
Click here to watch Greenspan's interview on ABC News.
Folks, we are teetering on Great Depression time, here. We need an FDR-type of presidency where we are helping create jobs for the American people otherwise we're going to see those soup kitchen lines they saw in the 1930s.
It's going to take massive spending to create American jobs. Spending like repairing our crumbling infrastructure, roads and bridges.
Spending like giving tax incentives to companies that would create AMERICAN jobs. Spending like Obama's plan for new green economy and retraining workers in this economy.
The manufacturing jobs we shipped off to China are never going to come back. We can't fight the force of globalism and the low wages those manufacturers can pay in the Third World. Once China has run its course, those companies will move to Africa, Latin America... wherever there are people willing to work for $1 a day. (Hey, maybe some day those jobs WILL come back, when Americans are working for $1 a day, too!)
Capital can move across borders, but people cannot.
People also need to understand that those who are calling themselves "fiscal conservatives" are in reality anything but.
People don't want their taxes to go toward "helping" the poor, or investing in good schools or healthcare.
But we end up paying MORE in the long run. It's like a house that keeps deferring maintenance, deferring maintence, deferring maintenance.
So we don't pay for schools, but we pay for prisons. We don't pay for healthcare, but citizens who are uninsured end up in the emergency rooms for routine care, which drives up your and my healthcare costs AND even shuts down hospitals in our communities.
You pay on the front end, or you pay on the back end... but you still pay!
What the government can't cover in revenue, it just goes into the deficit... to be paid at a later date?? When?... How?
Here's Obama's statement:
Democratic presidential nominee Barack Obama said Monday the upheaval on Wall Street was "the most serious financial crisis since the Great Depression" and blamed it on policies that he said Republican rival John McCain supports.
"This country can't afford another four years of this failed philosophy," Obama said after the shock-wave announcements that financial giant Lehman Brothers was filing for Chapter 11 bankruptcy while titan Merrill Lynch was being bought by Bank of America for about $50 billion.
Obama's statement, issued as he prepared to fly to Colorado to begin a swing through contested Western states, was intended to serve two purposes: to link McCain with the unpopular presidency of George W. Bush and to express sympathy with the anxiety of most Americans who say the economy is issue No. 1 in the election.
"The challenges facing our financial system today are more evidence that too many folks in Washington and on Wall Street weren't minding the store," Obama said in a statement. "Eight years of policies that have shredded consumer protections, loosened oversight and regulation, and encouraged outsized bonuses to CEOs while ignoring middle-class Americans have brought us to the most serious financial crisis since the Great Depression."
Read more here Sphere: Related Content
9 comments:
McCain = Hoover, Obama = FDR.
The Great Depression followed a boom times in the 1920s overseen by lassez-faire Republicans Warren Harding and Calvin Coolidge. Bush has played essentially the same role, overseing a gutting of regulatory oversight throughout the financial system. Coolidge replaced by a Republican of the same ilk, Herbert Hoover, in 1929. He does nothing as 10,000 banks fail and America falls into the great Depression. That's what McCain-Palin would do.
McCain wants lower taxes for the rich, less regulation, and less from government, not more. No universal health care. Palin told Charlie Gibson that the answer to America's economic troubles is less government. That's the Herbert Hoover approach.
FDR invested heavily in public works to keep Americans working and programs such as Social Security and Medicare to catch people when they fall. Obama wants to invest in green-technology jobs that can't be exported, and provide a safety net under Americans with universal health care. He'll enforce the laws and put teeth back in the regulatory system. Government is like the cops, nobody likes them until they need them. That's how we ended up with the housing mess and debacles like Katrina. Obama believes that good government has a role to play in making people's lives better.
That's why Obama = FDR. McCain and Palin = Hoover.
Actually, Palin = Hitler.
If McCain kicks the can be prepared for book bannings and a right-wing evangelical agenda.
Wow - it is hard to imagine a more self-serving quote than that line from Greenspan, roughly: "I have never favored tax cuts without corresponding cuts to expenditures".
What a sanctimonious sack of s**t. The McCain tax cuts are nothing more than the Bush tax cuts - which were only set to expire in 2010, to make their budget impact appear less draconian. Greenspan testified before both houses of Congress every year through 2005 and he not once called for either the 2001 tax cuts to be prevented - unless tied to spending cuts - or for their repeal.
Now that he is at a remove from office as the Chairman of the Federal Reserve, he has redeveloped a spine. Paul O'Neill resigned rather than support these excessive Bush tax cuts; would that Greenspan has even a modicum of the courage that act showed.
THANK YOU for actually talking about the issues, and what's really important in this election -- the personalities, the dirty politics... I've had enough!
Unless you are making 604k a year or more which is a very slim percentage of the population your tax bill remains basically the same. On top of that if you are part of the US majority making less than 112k/year they will be getting more back each year. When you look at the ultra rich 2.9mill/year and higher is where they will take the biggest hit. Alomost a million dollar difference between McCain (lowering their tax bill by almost$270k) Obama (raising their tax bill by 700k). Once again Republicans for big businesses and the rich. How is that going to solve the problem with todays middle America?
Republicans sell their message to two camps:
1. Really rich people; and,
2. Really poor people.
The rich people like Republicans because Republican fiscal policy tends to focus on reducing taxes for the rich. Budget deficits don't make a scrap of difference to rich people because they're not worried about how government is going to fund their pensions, healthcare, etc..
The poor like Republicans because they're uneducated and have simplistic views on social issues like abortion and crime. By speaking to their simplistic understanding of these complex social issues, Republicans make poor people feel like there really is a way to cut through the snooty educated class and gain meaningful power.
Trouble is, in reality Republicans hurt poor people. Less income redistribution through the regressive Republican tax code means poor people pay more tax than they ought to. By running large deficits, social security is put at risk. And let's face it, the poor need social security far more than the rich.
To get at the poor Republicans and convert them into Democrats, a simple message is needed:
Tax cuts for the rich mean you end up with less money in your pocket at the end of the day. Vote for Obama and he'll help you personally.
LOL, no we cannot. We cant afford his LIES either. The last eight years of lies have been enough!
Jiff
www.privacy.cz.tc
Okay so "LET'S SPREAD THE WEALTH", ha..what a joke. Obama is a joke. If elected it will be the end of the US. He will create socialism. I guess that's what democrats want.
New Rule: people who do not know what socialism is (as evidenced by those who think returning to the tax rates of the 1990s is socialism) are not allowed to use the word in their senseless diatribes.
Post a Comment