GOP’s new moral monstrosity: Trickle-down lies enrich the 1 percent, as wing-nuts assert control

[kpete]

President Obama:

"The truth is, the budget they're putting forward and the theories they're putting forward are a path to prosperity for those who have already prospered."

http://www.cleveland.com/open/index.ssf/2015/03/president_barack_obama_speaks.html



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GOP’s new moral monstrosity: Trickle-down lies enrich the 1 percent, as wing-nuts assert control
Republican extremists have outlined two demented budgets loaded with phony numbers. Why won't Democrats fight back?
BILL CURRY

"The Republican budget is a fiscal, economic and moral monstrosity. If Democrats can’t unmask it they don’t deserve the support of the millions who still rely on them to act as their tribunes" .

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Defense aside, the only difference between the two Republican budgets is that the House spells out actions the Senate also necessitates. In addition to the above list of horribles, both would slash food stamps by $125 billion or more and make deep cuts to Pell Grants, aid to cities, early childhood intervention programs; anything they can find that helps anyone in real need. On the revenue side, both eliminate tax credits for the working poor while holding the rich harmless.

The human carnage contemplated by both budgets is beyond accounting. Robert Greenstein of the Center on Budget and Policy Priorities is a liberal-leaning analyst lauded for his impeccable methodology and mastery of fiscal policy. Greenstein estimates that two-thirds of the cuts come from the quarter of the budget that serves the poor and working poor. A man known to measure his words, Greenstein says it would leave the government a “shell” of its former self and make America a “coarser and less humane nation with higher levels of poverty and inequality.”

Even after slashing non-defense discretionary spending to its lowest level since World War II, Republicans can’t achieve a balanced budget– the holy grail of their rhetoric, not their policy—without resorting to something called “dynamic scoring.” In essence, dynamic scoring means that in projecting future revenue and spending you take into account the effect of your budget on your economy. All large budgets make measured bets on the economy but what Republicans do here is much more dangerous, and also dishonest.

On purely ideological grounds they say that overnight their unholy combination of miserly spending cuts for the poor and profligate tax cuts for the rich will juice economic growth by nearly 50 percent, unleashing a cascade of revenue. It’s faith-based accounting based on supply-side economics and it’s never worked. But in the spirit of Florida Gov. Rick Scott forbidding state officials from uttering the words “global warming” and “climate change,” the Republicans have ordered their formerly non-partisan budget analysts to apply the theory. It’s how their whole budget works; like a sleight of hand street hustle, a shell game with no pea.




MORE:
http://www.salon.com/2015/03/22/gops_new_moral_monstrosity_trickle_down_lies_enrich_the_1_percent_as_wing_nuts_assert_control/