David Stockman supports letting tax cuts expire

David Stockman was President Reagan's OMB Director. What he says in a nutshell is that we couldn't afford the Bush tax cuts when they were enacted, and we can't afford them now. He says the Republican Pledge is half right and half-baked. He also says they AND Obama are being disingenuous in their approaches to the economic problems we are having. Interesting interview by Guy Raz for NPR:

http://www.npr.org/templates/story/s...ryId=130126335

This may be the first time I've agreed with anything from the Reagan administration. You never know...

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Originally Posted by gazhekwe

David Stockman was President Reagan's OMB Director. ......
This may be the first time I've agreed with anything from the Reagan administration. You never know...

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Less than a full year into Reagan's first term, Mr. Stockman was quoted as saying: "None of us really understands what's going on with all these numbers." That episode led to the OMB Director's infamous "trip to the woodshed" with the President. Stockman never believed in the Reagan Administration's embrace of supply-side economics, so it's no surprise that he doesn't support the Bush tax cuts.

Geesh! Read the article.

"Dr. LAWRENCE HUNTER [[Senior Fellow, Americans for Prosperity; President, Social Security Institute): My name is Lawrence Hunter, and I was a minority staff director of the Joint Economic Committee during the writing of Contract with America. And I had a responsibility for writing one piece of it.... It was clearly understood that the point was to win back the House. There is no doubt about that. But the thing that was unique about it[the Pledge to America], I believe, is that Gingrich and army actually used policy as the mechanism that in their mind that we could use a policy-centric contract agenda and present it to the country as a Contract with America, and use that to rally voters around electing Republicans... "

It isn't just about Stockman.

Yes, it pretty much points out the whole smoke and mirrors thing. I liked how Stockman laid out the reasons the Pledge won't work. We have a dearth of reasons and a whole boatload of slogans on both sides of the aisle.

It's a shame that they didn't listen to any of his other ideas.

This was sent to me a while back:

"As Stockman explains why Bernanke should be fired immediately—along with Treasury Secretary Timothy Geithner and President Obama’s chief economic adviser, Larry Summers—he sips a cappuccino at The Little Nell bar in Aspen, Colorado, site of the Aspen Institute’s weeklong Ideas Festival, which ended on Sunday.

“Summers,” Stockman continues, dispatching his next victim, “has had in his whole life only one idea—and it’s wrong. The idea is: No matter what state we are in the cycle—you’re entering a recession, coming out of the recession or facing one down the road—stimulate the economy, add to the federal debt, basically borrow from the future in order to create false gains today.”

As for Geithner, “he has basically been a bag carrier for Wall Street—in fact, his shoulders are a little stooped,” Stockman says. “I don’t think he’s really fit to occupy the office he’s in. He has no real philosophy. I don’t see any evidence that he’s understood financial history or public policy going back decades and decades. It’s all seat-of-the-pants, make judgments on the fly: Try something, and if it doesn’t work, try something else…He might make a third-rate investment banker, but he certainly shouldn’t be Secretary of the Treasury.”

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Mikeg: Stockman never believed in the Reagan Administration's embrace of supply-side economics, so it's no surprise that he doesn't support the Bush tax cuts.

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Is it any wonder given what he had to deal with.

http://query.nytimes.com/gst/fullpag...pagewanted=all
TO illustrate the problem of cutting Government spending, David A. Stockman, then director of the budget, gave President Reagan a multiple-choice quiz. In about 50 spending categories the President could choose a 'nick,' a moderate cut, or a 'whack.' This wasn't at the beginning; this was two years into the Administration, when the deficit was running over $100 billion a year. 'The President enjoyed the quiz immensely,'' Mr. Stockman writes. ''He sat there day after day with his pencil.' But in the end, thanks to too many nicks and not enough whacks, the President's report card showed a projected five-year deficit of $800 billion. Yet when Mr. Stockman then suggested it was time to think about a tax increase, President Reagan pounded his fist on the table. 'I don't want to hear any more talk about taxes. The problem is deficit spending!'' ..."

Reagan probably had the most successful presidency of the last 150 years. Obama is doing almost everything opposite of what Reagan would do.
You don't turn a country around by scaring employers with higher taxes, regulations, telling companies what to make, people what to buy, eat, wear, drive, smoke, etc etc. Or by ruining the best health care system ever, by forcing people to buy health care they don't want.

What IS and most likely will [[like Greece) bankrupt this country is the 40 TRILLION or so of unfunded soc. security, 30 TRILLION +- of unfunded Medicaid Medicare; Trillions of unfunded pensions and trillions of entitlement spending on people who don't want to pay for what they want or need. In other words, government spending and promising what it can't afford.
I now how to spend my money better than some ivory league tower bureaucrat with his head in his ass.

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Originally Posted by gdogslim

Reagan probably had the most successful presidency of the last 150 years. Obama is doing almost everything opposite of what Reagan would do.
You don't turn a country around by scaring employers with higher taxes, regulations, telling companies what to make, people what to buy, eat, wear, drive, smoke, etc etc. Or by ruining the best health care system ever, by forcing people to buy health care they don't want.

What IS and most likely will [[like Greece) bankrupt this country is the 40 TRILLION or so of unfunded soc. security, 30 TRILLION +- of unfunded Medicaid Medicare; Trillions of unfunded pensions and trillions of entitlement spending on people who don't want to pay for what they want or need. In other words, government spending and promising what it can't afford.
I now how to spend my money better than some ivory league tower bureaucrat with his head in his ass.

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"Ivory league tower bureaucrat?" Are you for real, or is this just satire flying straight over my head?

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Originally Posted by gdogslim

I now how to spend my money better than some ivory league tower bureaucrat with his head in his ass.

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Shit. You don't even KNOW how to spell the word "know".

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gdogslim: Or by ruining the best health care system ever, by forcing people to buy health care they don't want.

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The healthcare system was in a tailspin with premiums rising and people being denied coverage because they didn't report trivial ailments like headaches and yeast infections. And that all began with the HMOs in the Nixon admin.

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I now how to spend my money better than some ivory league tower bureaucrat with his head in his ass.

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And no doubt, you are prepared to pay all your own medical bills without any need for insurance.