Friday, April 29, 2011

Inventive Legislators

Funny... you put a stake through the heart and it still rises up. Here's the Ryan plan back under another guise. From Robert Reich's blog:
If you can’t sell the pig, figure Republicans, put lipstick on it and maybe no one will notice. Add some perfume and maybe you’ll even attract enough Dems to get it enacted.

A Senate proposal by Republican Bob Corker of Tennessee and Democrat Claire McCaskill of Missouri would save $7.6 trillion over 10 years. How? By capping federal spending at 20.6 percent of gross domestic product within a decade. That’s down from 24.3 percent now.

This is the Ryan plan with lipstick. The Ryan plan puts spending at 20.25 of GDP in 10 years. By comparison, spending under Republican President Ronald Reagan from 1981-1989 averaged 22 percent of GDP at a time when no baby boomers had retired.
There's more. Go read the whole article.

I find it funny how magical thinking continues to have its hold on politicians in the US. Rather than face up to the fact that 30 years of tax reductions for the ultra-rich and corporations has bankrupted the public purse, they keep trying to come up with ways to tie their hands and live within the constraints that leave the super-rich fat & happy and the economy mired in recession and the bottom 90% paying taxes to support the rich in the lifestyle to which they have become accustomed under a series of Republican governments. Funny.

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