Posts Tagged ‘Joe Lieberman’

Scared Democrats Admit Bush Was Right On Tax Cutting Policy

September 5, 2010

More and more Democrats are admitting that increasing taxes on the rich people who actually create jobs would be a foolhardy thing to do.

That pours a big giant can of water on the fire Democrats started in the whole blame-Bush-for-the-economic-meltdown thing.  Bush’s tax cuts were the biggest straw man for Democrats.  And now some of the most prominent Democrats are saying we need to keep those same tax cuts that Democrats were universally demonizing only months ago.

More Dems buck plan to let taxes increase for rich
By STEPHEN OHLEMACHER (AP) – 1 day ago

WASHINGTON — Congress seems increasingly reluctant to let taxes go up, even on wealthier Americans.

Worried about the fragile economy and their own upcoming elections, a growing number of Democrats are joining the rock-solid Republican opposition to President Barack Obama’s plans to let some of the Bush administration’s tax cuts expire.

Democratic leaders in Congress still back Obama, but the willingness to raise taxes is waning among the rank and file as the stagnant economy threatens the party’s majority in the House and Senate.

“In my view this is no time to do anything that could be jarring to a fragile recovery,” said Rep. Gerry Connolly of Virginia, a first-term Democrat. […]

“It’s going to be hard to resist a one-year extension for everybody, given the state of the economy,” said Clint Stretch, a tax expert at the consulting firm Deloitte Tax LLP. “That’s where I think the ball is moving.”

The tax cuts were enacted in 2001 and 2003 under President George W. Bush. They provided help for both rich and poor, reducing the lowest marginal rates as well as the top ones and several in between. They also provided a wide range of income tax breaks for education, families with children and married couples.

Taxes on capital gains and dividends were reduced, while the federal estate tax was gradually repealed, though only through this year. […]

Another freshman Democrat, Rep. Bobby Bright of Alabama, said he would like to see all the tax cuts extended for two or three years, if lawmakers cannot agree on a more permanent plan.

“Party leaders are not my directors or my boss,” Bright said. “My boss is my constituents, and I’ve heard from a vast majority of my constituents that they don’t believe in tax increases on anybody at this point in time.”

Bright is high on the re-election endangered list, one of roughly four dozen Democrats in districts won by Republican presidential nominee John McCain in 2008.

In the Senate, where Democrats need unity and at least one Republican vote to overcome filibusters, at least three Democrats and independent Joe Lieberman of Connecticut have said they want to extend all the tax cuts temporarily.

Several Democratic candidates for Senate have also come out in favor of extending them all, including Robin Carnahan in Missouri and Jack Conway in Kentucky.

“Jack Conway was in favor of the Bush tax cuts when they first passed (in 2001 and 2003), and he’s in favor of extending the Bush tax cuts now,” said spokeswoman Allison Haley.

An article in McClatchey Newspapers points out that if Democrats try to hike taxes on the rich, it will be Democrats who stood in the way:

Democrats unlikely to repeal tax cuts for the rich
By David Lightman | McClatchy Newspapers

WASHINGTON — Democrats in Congress are poised to play a leading role this month in thwarting their party’s effort to raise income tax rates on the wealthy.

Tax cuts enacted in 2001 and 2003 expire at the end of this year. President Barack Obama and Democratic congressional leaders have been eager to extend the breaks for individuals who earn less than $200,000 annually and joint filers who make less than $250,000. Those who earn more would pay higher, pre-2001 rates starting next year.

However, a small but growing number of moderate Democrats are balking at boosting taxes on the rich. Many face electorates that recoil at the mention of any tax increase. Some represent areas that are loaded with wealthier taxpayers. Further, some incumbent senators who don’t face voters this fall are reluctant to increase taxes on anyone while the economy remains sluggish.

Without their support, the push to raise rates on the rich probably will fail. […]

Many Democrats and Republicans are eager for a tax cut battle, seeing it as emblematic of each party’s economic principles.

“Now the administration is calling for a massive tax hike on small businesses in the middle of a recession,” said Senate Republican leader Mitch McConnell of Kentucky, who maintains that higher rates on the wealthy would hit small business hard, a point the Obama administration disputes.

“So it’s no surprise,” McConnell added, “that most Americans think the country is on the wrong track and that Democrat policies have failed to do anything to fix their top concern, the economy.”

Democratic leaders are convinced that voters won’t buy that argument. Not only will the public back higher taxes for the rich, but “we have an opportunity to generate $700 billion that could go to deficit reduction and badly needed programs,” said Rep. Raul Grijalva, D-Ariz., a co-chairman of the House Progressive Caucus.

The middle class-only extension is thought to have strong support in the House, where Democrats have a huge majority, but some Democrats are reluctant.

Rep. Gerald Connolly, D-Va
., represents the northern Virginia suburbs of Washington, one of the nation’s wealthiest districts. Median family income there in 2008 was $117,892, well above the national average of $63,211. He said that repealing the top rates would have political consequences.

“Sometimes we forget how we became the majority. We did it by winning some affluent districts,” he said.

The bigger problem for Democrats looms in the Senate, where Majority Leader Reid’s immediate problem is getting the 60 votes needed to cut off debate on the measure. Democrats control 59 seats, and at least three of them — Bayh, Ben Nelson of Nebraska and Kent Conrad of North Dakota — have signaled that they won’t back a permanent repeal of the tax cuts for the wealthy.

They suggest a way out of a stalemate — temporarily extending all the expiring tax rates — but so far the leadership isn’t going along.

Sean Neary, a spokesman for Senate Budget Committee Chairman Conrad, said the senator backed such an extension “for now.”

“The general rule of thumb is that you do not raise taxes or cut spending during an economic downturn. That would be counterproductive,” Conrad said.

Nelson also offered what’s become the centrist Democratic mantra. He, too, said he’d back extending the tax breaks for the wealthy “for at least a period of time because raising taxes in a weak economy could impair recovery.”

That stand could be even more popular with Democratic candidates for the Senate who aren’t incumbents
. The hottest races are in conservative states, such as Kentucky, where Republican Rand Paul and Democrat Jack Conway are battling for the seat now held by Republican Sen. Jim Bunning.

Of the expiring tax cuts for the wealthy, Conway spokeswoman Allison Haley said that he “believes we should extend them now, especially when so many Kentucky families and small businesses are struggling under this recession.”

In Missouri, Republican U.S. Rep. Roy Blunt and Democrat Robin Carnahan are in a tight race. Despite a welcoming embrace with Obama at a Kansas City fundraiser in July, Carnahan said last week that she wanted to extend the Bush tax cuts for everyone.

“Now is not the time to raise taxes,” she said.

In Indiana, U.S. Rep. Brad Ellsworth, D-Ind., who’s seeking to replace Bayh, told the Evansville Courier & Press this summer that all the Bush-era tax cuts should become permanent
.

That position makes sense, said Brian Vargus, a professor of political science at Indiana University-Purdue University Indianapolis, because Indiana is “an overwhelmingly Republican state … and there is never support for taxes or public goods.”

So from this article we see the term “moderate.”  And the moderates are those Democrats who see a compromise to the looming war over tax cuts: keep them all for now.  Don’t hike taxes on the only economic class of Americans who have the wherewithal to actually create jobs.  Keep the the tax cuts for at least a year, if not 2-3 years.  But the hard-liner Democrats are willing to see the tax cuts end for EVERYONE in order to maintain their Marxist class warfare principle of punishing the rich for being successful.

Democrats offered two reasons in their unrelenting demagoguery of George Bush: 1) they said the tax cuts caused the economic disaster; and 2) they said Bush’s refusal to regulate caused the economic disaster.

But 1) is now blown apart, given DEMOCRATS’ current acknowledgment that the Bush tax cuts – yes, even for the rich – weren’t the bogey man Democrats have been saying.

And 2) suffers from the flaw that Bush DID try to regulate the entity most responsible for the meltdown that befell the economy in 2008, and the ONLY reason that entity was not reformed and regulated was because DEMOCRATS blocked Bush at every turn.

That entity was the Government Sponsored Enterprise, or GSE, commonly known by the brand names of Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac.

It was Fannie and Freddie that expanded and ultimately exploded using dangerous subprime loans (see also here).  It was also Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac who bundled thousands of bad and good mortgages together into instruments called “mortgage backed securities” and sold them to the private sector.  And when no one could separate the good from the bad, uncertainty paralyzed the banking system and led to the crash.

A brief history of the mortgage meltdown reveals how it was the GSEs acting under Democrat policies that created the housing bubble – (and even Obama economic shill Christina Romer admits “the popping of the housing bubble had serious consequences” which “destroyed $13 trillion of wealth in 2008”) – and the corresponding mortgage crisis which imploded our economy:

In 1999, under pressure from the Clinton administration, Fannie Mae, the nation’s largest home mortgage underwriter, relaxed credit requirements on the loans it would purchase from other banks and lenders, hoping that easing these restrictions would result in increased loan availability for minority and low-income buyers. Putting pressure on the GSE’s (Government Sponsored Enterprise) Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac, the Clinton administration looked to increase their sub-prime portfolios, including the Department of Housing and Urban Development expressing its interest in the GSE’s maintaining a 50% portion of their portfolios in loans to low and moderate-income borrowers.[10]

As noted, subprime mortgages sky-rocketed during the initial era of loosening of terms throughout the 1990’s. From a low of 5% of mortgages in 1994, to 14% in 1997, to 23% in 2005, subprime mortgages continued to boom in the early 2000’s. Following the 2004 initiative policy change spearheaded by a U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) decision to allow the largest brokerage firms to borrow upwards of 30 times their capital, subprimes became an even greater investment vehicle for investment banks and institutions in the U.S. and around the world. Since 1994, the securitization rate of subprime loans has increased from approximately 32 percent to nearly 78 percent of total subprime originations.[11] This further exposed the financial community to the effects of the coming housing bubble.

Democrat policies created the housing bubble that Christina Romer acknowledges was the cause of the destruction of the US economy.

And the refusal of Democrats to reform and regulate Fannie and Freddie exploded that bubble.

Bush warned SEVENTEEN TIMES that we needed to reform Freddie Mac and Fannie Mae or have an economic disaster on our hands.  John McCain urged action to avert an economic disaster.  And Democrats refused to budge to deal with the monster they created.

Again, Bush was right.  Democrats were profoundly wrong.

The mainstream media propagandists refused to report the truth.  They kept broadcasting a lie, and naive and frankly stupid Americans rewarded the Democrats who created the economic disaster with total power.

And we’ve been paying for that stupidity for the last two years.

As of today, Obama is at a dismal 42% approval, and in danger of plunging into the 30s.  45% of Americans now strongly disapprove of Obama, versus only 24% who still strongly approve of the job he’s doing “fundamentally transforming” our economy into a pre-industrial barter system.

Obama is in full meltdown mode as all of his campaign rhetoric is being revealed for the lies it always was:

And Democrats are deservedly going to meltdown right along with him.

Civil War Within GOP? Democrats Ignore Log In Their Own Eye

November 4, 2009

I occasionally turned on CNN last night during the elections.  They couldn’t go three consecutive minutes without somebody mentioning the “civil war” within the Republican Party.

Particularly as it became more apparent that the Democrat in the NY-23 race was poised to win the district – as the ONLY Democrat victory in an otherwise complete smackdown by the GOP – pundits speculated on the “fracturing” in the Republican Party.

And, of course, we should listen to these people.  After all, they correctly predicted that the Republican Party was clearly dead after the 2008 elections.  I mean, they obviously know what they’re talking about, right?

A divided party: Progressives threaten Democratic lawmakers
By: Byron York
Chief Political Correspondent
11/03/09 2:39 PM EST

MoveOn.org is sending out emails today seeking more contributions for its campaign to defeat any Democratic senator who does not fully  support Obamacare. Yesterday the left-wing activist group asked members to contribute “to a primary challenge against any Democratic senator who helps Republicans block an up-or-down vote on health care reform.” Today, MoveOn reports that it has received $2 million in pledges in less than 24 hours. “It’s a clear sign of how angry progressives would be at any Democrat who helps filibuster reform,” MoveOn executive director Justin Ruben writes in the new email.

“The larger the war chest we can offer a potential challenger, the stronger the signal we’ll send to conservative Democrats,” Ruben continues. “So we’re setting a huge new goal: $3 million in total pledges by the end of the week. That’s plenty to launch a serious primary challenge.”

MoveOn is already planning radio ads targeting Louisiana Democratic Sen. Mary Landrieu and Arkansas Democratic Sen. Blanche Lincoln over the health care issue.

MoveOn’s new campaign comes amid much discussion in the political world of divisions among Republicans, with many analysts reading the presence of third-party candidates in New York’s 23rd District and in New Jersey, and coming primary battles in Florida and elsewhere, as proof of deep, and perhaps disastrous, divisions inside the GOP. One publication recently dubbed it a “nightmare scenario” for Republicans. But MoveOn’s new threat of primary attacks on Democratic lawmakers suggests that the story might be a bit one-sided. Democrats who stray from progressive orthodoxy might be in for big trouble — and the divisions inside the Democratic party might be just as big a deal as the problems inside the GOP.

And other names, such as Joe Lieberman’s, need to be added to the list.  Democrats publicly threatened to strip him of his chairmanship if he blocked the liberal agenda.

NY-23 wasn’t so much a civil war within the GOP as much as it was an example of the stupidity of the 11 county Republican apparatchiks who seemingly chose Scozzafava’s name out of a hat, rather than choosing a candidate who in any way reflected the makeup of the party within the district.  And I personally believe that Hoffman’s defeat will cause both the Republican Party and the conservative movement in general to learn some lessons.

Lessons that the morning after clearly reveal that Democrats will not learn.

Barack Obama won Virginia by six points in 2008.  Virginia hadn’t elected a Republican for governor in 12 years.  And both Virginia Senators are Democrats.  It wasn’t a “purple state”; it was a state that was deeply into the process of becoming a BLUE state.  And yet the Republican candidate walked away with the governorship by an 18 point spread.

In New Jersey, it was even worse.  Obama won that state by 16 points.  New Jersey has been a reliably Democrat state for decades.  Republican Christie’s cheat-proof 5-point win is like a political earthquake.

To make the defeat even more alarming for Democrats, the Republican in Virginia won independent voters by a 66-30 margin, and the Republican in New Jersey won them by a 60-30 margin.  Independents are becoming more conservative, not more liberal.

Let’s see.  When was the last time anything like this happened?  Oh, yeah – 1993 – the year before the worst political defeat for either party in history.

Republicans get paranoid about the prospect of an Orwellian 1984 scenario occurring as big government liberals usurp more and more power away from the people and into the government.  If they are halfway smart, Democrats will start getting paranoid about the 1993 scenario happening again.

Update, November 10, 2009:

Kos and Effect

Daily Kos blog founder Markos Moulitsas is telling his fellow liberals to ditch the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee because the money could be going to moderate Democrats who voted against the House health care bill.

Moulitsas writes: “Skip any donations to the DCCC. Their first priority is incumbent retention, and they’re (necessarily) issue agnostic. They’ll be dumping millions into defending these seats. Instead, give to those elected officials who best reflect your values.”

The Politico calls it “a dangerous little challenge to the Democratic establishment… the GOP is loving the Kos post.”

DCCC Chairman Chris Van Hollen tells Fox News, “It would be a mistake to take any measures that would jeopardize a large and vibrant Democratic majority.”

And, yeah, I’m sure the GOP IS loving the Kool-aid Kos post.  I know it brings laughter and merriment to my heart.

Just another little tidbit to lay to rest the mainstream media-created propaganda that the Republican Party is the one on the verge of meltdown.

Biden Calls Republicans ‘Absolutists’ As His Party Vows to Punish Joe Lieberman

November 2, 2009

Vice President Biden once again proved that he is the intellectual compatriot with Ruprecht the Monkey Boy in his statement about Republicans being “absolutists” even as he attacked conservatives such as Sarah Palin in a quintessentially absolutist manner.

Biden stumps for Owens, takes dig at Palin

(CNN) – Vice President Joe Biden challenged Republican voters in New York’s 23rd congressional district to teach conservative “absolutists” a lesson in the special House election Tuesday by voting for the Democratic candidate in the race.

“We aren’t asking you to switch your party,” Biden said at a rally for Democrat Bill Owens in Watertown, New York Monday morning. “We are just saying join us in teaching a lesson to those absolutists who say no dissent is permitted within your own party.” […]

“This is a different ideology,” Biden continued. “This is different than anything I’ve known in my 45 years of being familiar with this district. You know, they may have any room for moderate views in the Republican Party upstate anymore, but let me assure you, we have room, we have room.”

Later in his remarks, the vice president couldn’t help but return to the subject of the former Alaska governor when the issue of energy came up.

“Sarah Palin thinks the answer to energy is ‘Drill, baby, drill,’ he said, leaning into the microphone. “It’s a lot more complicated, Sarah, than drill baby drill.”

First of all, Ruprecht, you total waste of a human brain, it wasn’t the Republican Party that displayed “absolutism.”  A group of “eleven county GOP committee apparatchiks” selected Dede Scozzafava in a form of “absolutism” that was clearly idiotic, but hardly ideological.  There was no election; the people in the Republican Party of NY-23 did not get to express their voice.  Secondly, it was hardly the Republican Party that displayed “absolutism,” apart from the “so-open-minded-their-brains-fell-out” form of idiocy mentioned above; GOP establishment figures such as Michael Steele and Newt Gingrich endorsed Scozzafava in spite of a whole host of reasons not to.

It was the fact that the conservative majority of the NY-23 district deserved better than Scozzafava, just like the country as a whole deserves better than you, Ruprecht.

The PEOPLE you so demagogue and despise rose up and rejected this abortion-supporting abortion of a Republican.  And they chose in place of this apparatchik-foisted pseudo-Republican candidate an actual conservative, which is what they SHOULD have had in the first place.

With Scozzafava no longer clogging the vote as a Republican-In-Name-Only, Hoffman has a huge lead.  In fact, he apparently had a huge lead regardless of WHAT Scozzafava did:

In a three way contest with Democrat Bill Owens and Republican Dede Scozzafava Hoffman leads with 51% to 34% for Owens and 13% for Scozzafava. In a head to head contest with Owens Hoffman holds a 54-38 advantage.

Instead of Republicans learning some fictitious lesson about their “absolutism,” why don’t Democrats learn about just how massively unpopular the radical policies of the Democrats are becoming in the minds of more and more of the electorate?

Meanwhile, Ruprecht, you self-righteous hypocritical fraud, Democrats are “vowing unity,” with “Democrats everywhere are uniting for change.” How is it that you can have unity, but Republicans are evil for wanting the same damn thing?

And while we’re talking about “absolutism,” why don’t we contemplate what happens if a Democrat decides to stop goose stepping for a second and actually voices a dissenting viewpoint?

One of the leading Senate Democrats on healthcare reform legislation fired a warning shot in Sen. Joe Lieberman’s direction yesterday, previewing the possible consequences of joining a GOP filibuster.

Sen. Tom Harkin (D-Iowa), chairman of the Senate HELP Committee, told reporters that Lieberman (I-Conn.) ought to consider the benefits of his membership in the Democratic caucus before he decides how to vote on healthcare reform.

“[Lieberman] still wants to be a part of the Democratic Party although he is a registered independent. He wants to caucus with us and, of course, he enjoys his chairmanship of the [Homeland Security] committee because of the indulgence of the Democratic caucus. So, I’m sure all of those things will cross his mind before the final vote,” Harkin said in a conference call.

Just who do you damn Democrats think you are to lecture ANYBODY about “absolutism”?

What might be the most delicious thing of all was the way that Sarah Palin, having only Facebook to respond to the White House’s massive communications advantage, nevertheless further pulverized the nectarine mush that is surely stuffed inside the brainless wonder’s skull:

Palin’s Latest Facebook Note

As the vice president knows, I have always advocated an all-of-the-above approach to American energy independence. Among other things, my alternative energy goal for Alaska sits at 50 percent because Alaska reached more than 20 percent during my term in office. The Obama-Biden administration, on the other hand, recently announced a renewable goal of only 25 percent. However, domestic drilling should remain a top priority in order to meet America’s consumption and security needs.

The vice president’s extreme opposition to domestic energy development goes all the way back to 1973 when he opposed the Alaska pipeline bill. As Ann Coulter pointed out, “Biden cast one of only five votes against the pipeline that has produced more than 15 billion barrels of oil, supplied nearly 20 percent of this nation’s oil, created tens of thousands of jobs, added hundreds of billions of dollars to the U.S. economy and reduced money transfers to the nation’s enemies by about the same amount.”

This nonsensical opposition to American domestic energy development continues to this day. Apparently the Obama-Biden administration only approves of offshore drilling in Brazil, where it will provide security and jobs for Brazilians. This election is about American security and American jobs.

There’s one way to tell Vice President Biden that we’re tired of folks in Washington distorting our message and hampering our nation’s progress: Hoffman, Baby, Hoffman!

– Sarah Palin

They say Sarah Palin wasn’t “experienced” enough to be the Vice President.  Sure, she had more executive experience than Barack Obama even counting his ten months as president.  Sure, she could change the entire health care debate with a Facebook entry while on vacation.  Sure, she could demonstrate what an idiot Barack Obama’s pick for V.P. was with a couple of paragraphs.  What matters most of all is that even after Sarah Palin is no longer a candidate for Vice President, and even after she has stepped down as Governor of Alaska, Democrats still become emotionally unhinged at the very thought of her.

I have long-since become sick with Democrats – who have become the biggest demagogues since Joseph Goebbels – routinely pointing fingers of blame when they are five times more guilty of whatever they are accusing the Republicans are doing.

 

Joe Lieberman, Independent, Urges Nation To Back McCain

September 3, 2008

Joe Lieberman – at great cost to himself – has thrown his support behind his fellow Senator and friend, John McCain.

Lieberman is the kind of Democrat who didn’t leave his party, but was rather abandoned by his party.  On many of the issues, Lieberman is well to the left of even so-called “moderate Republicans,” but believes that Democrats are terrible on national defense and national security.

Democrats are already sharpening their knives to stab Lieberman.  The words “traitor,” “punish,” and “stripping” are angrily being exchanged.  And Joe Lieberman – in some way like the John McCain who refused to break with the honor system of his fellow POWs even when it meant more captivity and more abuse – knows it.

Joe Lieberman didn’t betray the Democratic Party.  Rather, he called upon Democrats to honor the commitments they had made to support their President and their troops in time of war.  To punish him, they not only didn’t back him for re-election, but actually ran a candidate about him.  Lieberman lost in the primaries, but it was only liberals who rejected him; not his state.  Lieberman ran as an Independent and handily won re-election.

Lieberman – who agrees with Democrats “on 95% of the issues”, believes that John McCain has been right about Iraq.  For that departure:

“If the Democrats are in control in terms of leadership next year, a Democrat should chair that committee,” he said, in reference to the Homeland Security panel. “Clearly, he’s not a Democrat.”

So don’t you buck the Democratic leadership.  Don’t you dare.  They are vindictive, angry people, and they will exact their revenge.  They have held back their retribution only because they have needed Lieberman’s vote, but if they pick up the seats they believe they’ll get in the Senate, they are already vowing to come after Lieberman, drive him out of his committees, and destroy him.

Joe Lieberman has voted on his conscience.  Apparently, following one’s conscience is the unpardonable sin in the Democratic Party.

Here’s the speech that so enrages Democrats: (more…)