an easy reply to why economy hasn't improved faster: stimulus was half full of GOP "solutions"

[yurbud]

Tax cuts don't create jobs when no one is buying your product.

If you directly create jobs, people have money to buy stuff, which creates demand, which creates jobs.

Do the businesses who now have customers care if their customers got the paycheck their paycheck from the government as long as they are buying?

I don't think so.

What is so damn hard about saying that?

[The Magistrate]

1. Has The Advantage Of Being True, Too, Sir

[mike_c]

2. greater than 90% of the recovery was captured by the wealthiest 1%....

Ultimately, partisan politics is a smoke screen and a distraction. This is class war.

[yurbud]

3. yep--but you can move your family into the box that the rich guy's new big screen TV came in

[Agnosticsherbet]

4. That's because there are too damn many Gop's in Congress... n/t

[yurbud]

5. how few does there have to be before Democrats stop giving away the store to them?

and how was it that Bush was able to do whatever the fuck he wanted without Democrats in Congress getting in his way?

[Agnosticsherbet]

7. A filibuster proof majoirty in each house would help be the minimum...

If they have to get Republicans to pass a bill, they will always have to give up something.

[yurbud]

8. How many Dems were in Senate in Bush years? What did they block?

[Agnosticsherbet]

9. Democrats thought differently than Republicans...

Throughout the Bush years, they felt that a functioning government was better than locking up government and refusing to let it function. That was the traditional way that government worked until 2008. They did not block bills, but under Kennedy they did work to try and get bills that did some good, such as No Child Left Behind and the expansion of the Medicare drug benefit.

In 2008, Republicans no longer were willing to compromise, they entered an era where the blocked whatever they could and changed the nature of the way our government worked.

One weakness with our form of winner take all government is that compromise is necessary. If you have a party with big majorities, such as the Democrats had in the Congress almost constantly between WWII and 1996, then a lot could be done. Hell, the civil Rights Act of 1994 would not have passed with just Democrats, many of whom hated the bill. Republicans, especially of the Rockefeller variety of Fiscal Conservative Socially Liberal Republicans were necessary for that bill to pass. You will also find the same true of medicare and Medicaid. Back then, each party had its more liberal, centrist, and conservative members. That is no longer true of Republicans.

Since 2008, and especially since 2010, Republicans chose not to compromise at all. They stressed ideological purity that became the norm under Gingrich. Unless they go back to a policy of governing and compromise rather than ideological purity, it will require a super majority in both houses of Congress to get anything big done.

[sadbear]

6. Republicans wouldn't just step aside and let the adults talk.

[yurbud]

10. Dems could at least SAY it, even if they couldn't get around doing a half-assed job

although in this case the ass is an elephant.