That blurb is a little over the top pro-socialism but some good points are made. There is no pure capitalist society that has EVER worked either. The answer lies somewhere in the middle.
It was the Bush administration that sent the national debt into the stratosphere and choked off federal revenue to the point of asphyxiation. Bush and Cheney decided to fight two wars without even accounting � let alone paying � for them. Rather than raise taxes to cover the cost of military campaigns in Afghanistan and Iraq, Bush opted to maintain unreasonable and unnecessary tax cuts.
So far, the wars and the tax cuts have cost the Treasury between $6 trillion and $7 trillion. If Bush had just left income tax rates alone, nobody except Ron Paul would be talking about the debt.
When he was campaigning for the White House in 2000, the government was anticipating a projected surplus of roughly $6 trillion over the following decade. Bush said repeatedly that he thought this was too much and wanted to bring the surplus down � hence, in 2001, the first of his two big tax cuts.
Bush was hewing to what had already become Republican dogma and by now has become something akin to scripture: Taxes must always be cut because government must always be starved.
The party ascribes this golden rule to Ronald Reagan � conveniently forgetting that Reagan, in his eight years as president, raised taxes 11 times. Reagan may have believed in small government, but he did believe in government itself. Today�s Republicans have perverted Reagan�s philosophy into a kind of anti-government nihilism � an irresponsible, almost childish insistence that the basic laws of arithmetic can be suspended at their will.
The Bush administration also pushed forward Reagan�s policy of deregulation � ignoring, for example, critics who said the ballooning market in mortgage-backed securities needed more oversight. When the 2008 financial crisis hit, Bush did regain his faith in government long enough to throw together the $800 billion TARP bailout for the banks. But he failed to use the leverage of an aid package to exact reforms that would ensure that the financial system served the economy, rather than the other way around.
Faced with similar circumstances, would today�s Republican leadership react at all? Or is it the party�s view that the proper role of government would be to stand aside and watch the world�s financial system crash and burn?
This is a serious question. The Republican majority in the House threatened to force the United States government to default on its debt obligations � a previously unthinkable act of brinkmanship. Everything is thinkable now.
The Bush administration took Reagan�s tax-cutting, government-starving philosophy much too far. Today�s Republican Party takes it well beyond, into a rigid absolutism that would be comical if it were not so consequential.
We face devastating unemployment. Many conservative economists have joined the chorus calling for more short-term spending by the federal government as a way to boost growth. But the radical Republicans don�t pay attention to conservative economists anymore. The Republicans� idea of a cure for cancer would be to cut spending and cut taxes.
Look at what Obama was up against. You might want to cut him a little slack.
