Republicans’ No-Tax Stand Unsupported by History or Facts: View

[MrScorpio]

By the Editors Aug 9, 2011 8:00 PM ET

You would think that abysmal growth and jobs data, the first-ever downgrade of U.S. debt and heart- stopping gyrations in the financial markets would impel political leaders to at least take a second look at some of their assumptions about restoring confidence in the U.S. economy.

Sadly, you would be mistaken.

President Barack Obama called again this week for a deficit-reduction plan that includes both new revenue and spending cuts, a solution that he said would require “common sense and compromise.” Alas, we have seen little of either quality from Speaker John Boehner and the House majority leader, Eric Cantor. The Republican leaders reiterated their determination to oppose any solution to the U.S. fiscal mess that involves revenue increases.

Whatever one thinks of the validity of Standard & Poor’s decision to downgrade U.S. debt, it contained an admonition that we should take seriously: Spending cuts alone won’t be sufficient to place the debt, and by extension, the economy, on a sustainable path. In a memo to his Republican colleagues, Cantor warned that S&P’s analysis put the party under “pressure to compromise on tax increases” on the ground that there is “no other way forward.” His response: “I respectfully disagree.”

As always, the Republican leaders justified their intransigence by invoking the demons of job-killing taxes that would suppress the dynamism of overtaxed Americans, hampering growth.

http://www.bloomberg.com/news/2011-08-10/republicans-no-tax-stand-unsupported-by-history-or-facts-view.html

That's right, people… Bloomberg's is calling the GOP on their bullshit.

[supernova]

1. When did facts or history

ever influence the GOP?


THey. Do. Not. Care.