Republicans Say "No" to Unemployment Benefits for the Working Class But "Yes" to Tax Cuts for the Rich.

For weeks, Senate Republicans have filibustered an extension of unemployment benefits on the grounds that Democrats aren't willing to cut spending or raise taxes to pay for them. At the same time, the Bush tax cuts are set to expire, and Republicans want them to be renewed. For two days, Senate Minority Whip Jon Kyl has raised eyebrows by insisting that emergency aid to unemployed people -- what he called a "necessary evil" -- be paid for through either tax hikes or spending cuts, while the tax cuts (which mostly benefit wealthy people) not be offset in any way. Yesterday claimed that this view is shared by "most of the people in my party."

He was correct. "That's been the majority Republican view for some time," Minority Leader Mitch McConnell told TPMDC this afternoon after the weekly GOP press conference.

TPJ: This is a classic case of "Do as I say, not as I do" from the Republicans. This is the exact same ideology that they pursued under George W. Bush, so they obviously haven't learned anything from being out of power. Nor from the crash of the economy that started under Bush--Obama simply inherited it. Granted Obama hasn't done as much as he could but he wasn't left with much to work with after "W." This is yet more evidence to bolster my theory that the Republicans have no new ideas. They are simply counting on the impatience of the American people because we've become a country that demands immediate satisfaction. We aren't use to having to face hardship for a long period of time. It's hard to unravel 30 years of Reaganomics in the short 2 years that Obama has been in office.

I have become a bit impatient of the president myself but I think it's important we remember that he has more major crises on his plate than any president since perhaps FDR. So, I think he deserves a bit of a break from our impatient, somewhat unrealistic expectations on how much a president can do to change the economy, and on how fast we think an economy the size of ours can rebound.

"That's been the majority Republican view for some time," Minority Leader Mitch McConnell told TPMDC this afternoon after the weekly GOP press conference. "That there's no evidence whatsoever that the Bush tax cuts actually diminished revenue. They increased revenue, because of the vibrancy of these tax cuts in the economy. So I think what Senator Kyl was expressing was the view of virtually every Republican on that subject."

The CBO and other budget experts strongly disagree. And Democrats want to preserve the Bush tax cuts for people making less than $200,000-$250,000 a year -- but only for them. Allowing them to expire for wealthier people would raise hundreds of billions of dollars over 10 years, which could allow them to offset the spending Republicans currently decry.

TPJ: Reaganomics has been a failure but it's taken this long to fall apart because it works for a bit but eventually collapses under it's own weight of the greediness built into it. That's because in order for Reaganomics (also know as "trickle-down economics") to supposedly work it requires the big corporations and uber-rich to allow some of their windfalls to fall down to the masses. However, what ended up happening was the rich just did what they know best--greedily hording their money and using it to make MORE money FOR THEM, rather than let it trickle down.

Reaganomics also called for looser regulations on money, which led directly to the downfall of Wall Street and by extension, the American economy that we've seen in this Great Recession. The Reaganomics school thought that loosening big business from the "shackles" of regulation would loosen up for money for everyone. The problem is that without regulations people manipulate the system--it's human nature unfortunately. Regulations are like the police of the economy to make sure that everyone is following the rules so that capitalism can flourish but also provide guidelines so that down times in the economy aren't as deep.

Sure we won't have the DOW up in the 16,000 mark but with extreme growth comes extreme economic crashes. Regulations make it so that if private corporations make bad business decisions the rest of the country isn't dragged down with them. So they want to extend the Bush tax cuts to the affluent--like that worked under Bush the first time!! Those tax cuts really trickled down to the blue collar guys and gals. Remember how those tax cuts helped keep the economy from collapsing under Bush? Me neither--that's because they didn't help anyone but the rich who kept most of them in their fat bank accounts or used them to invest in some company overseas--probably in China. If you think you'll see any of that tax money come back to you just remind yourself about the first round of Bush tax cuts to the rich. How much did YOU get trickling down from them?

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