Shove this down the throat of your Bush Lovers

[Ugnmoose]

A summary of "accomplishments" of the Bush controlled Congress and The Administration:

As Congress brags about its 2003 accomplishments, many analysts fear its biggest legacy will be a soaring budget deficit that will last as far as the eye can see, ultimately inflicting severe damage on the U.S. economy.

Economists and budget analysts have expressed increasing concern about what they termed a lack of fiscal discipline on the part of Congress and the White House in this year's session.

They said mounting federal debt is a fiscal time bomb that could ultimately result in higher taxes, inflation and a lower standard of living.

<snip>

My view is that this is the most fiscally irresponsible Congress we have had in years," said Bob Bixby, executive director of the Concord Coalition, an organization that monitors the federal budget. "But the White House is very much a co-conspirator."

<snip>

Wall Street analysts also expressed concern about the fiscal situation.

"There's going to be a collision down the road," said David Wyss, chief economist at Standard & Poor's. Long-term interest rates could be headed up if Congress does not try to rein in spending, and that could harm future investments by businesses and raise mortgage rates, he said.

<snip>
Gary Bass, executive director of OMB Watch, a budget watchdog group, said spending is not the main problem. Bush's tax cuts have cut the revenue base too deeply, he said, just as defense and homeland security needs arose. Revenues have dropped to 16.7 percent of the economy, the lowest since 1959, he said.


http://www.smirkingchimp.com/article.php?sid=13914&mode=nested&order=0

[Ecotopian]

1. What tax cuts have done in Cleveland

I'm sure that there are other cities out there with similar woes. The city of Cleveland has a $60 million dollar budget shortfall next year. Because of this, they will have to cut $4 million from the struggling inner-city schools and lay off over 600 city workers: 450 safety workers (police, fire, ems) and 150 support workers (leaf clean ups and very late city pool openings). Right now our safety workers are already over-worked and over-extended where they'll typically work either 12-hour days or double shifts without a reduction in their labor force. I have no doubt that crime will rise next year and things will just get worse (unless of course they focus their attention on neocon property). It's sad because Cleveland really started to dramatically improve in the 90's.

Right now everyone is blaming our mayor for this gaping hole in the budget talking about her Ford Expedition as if that's the important issue. I have no doubt that the true culprit is Bush and his neocon fascist bed-fellows with their tax cuts, unfunded Homeland Security mandates, the outflow of our Muslim community (with its tax revenues), and job losses due to free trade - the conservatives sacred cow that's killing the economy in our rust belt region.

The only question I have right now is WHAT THE HELL IS WRONG WITH DEMOCRATS RIGHT NOW?!!!!! We've let the neocons bully us for too long! We need to smash their ideological position in the media and take our country back. What we need is a left-version of Rush Limbaugh. Someone who takes crap from no one, insults the other side without giving a damn, has the acerbic wit of Michael Moore, and the intelligence of Noam Chomsky. I'm tired of the American Likud Party (neocons) trancing on our values while we stand by and act like stupid idiots. Their strategy doesn't work in Israel and it sure as hell won't work with our foreign policy here. They're like bold thieves who walk in the front door and rob our house while we eat our dinner. What they're robbing are our family jewels, heirlooms, and children in the form of our freedoms, liberties, our democratic process (they're changing the rules of the game so that soon it will no longer be a democracy), and our sons and daughters who go off to fight their illegitimate and immoral wars.

STAND UP AND SMACK THEM DOWN!

[NewJeffCT]

2. What we have to do

Is tie the national budget deficit and Bush tax cuts to the fiscal crisis so many of our states have had... why is it that Bush gets no blame for the national deficit or bad economy, while Gray Davis in California gets recalled for their budget woes, which are at least partly to blame on the national situation?

Why - because we can't get our message out.