If your doctor gave you a prescription to improve your health, and it made you deathly ill, would you follow said doctor’s orders to take ever-increasing dosages?

Of course you wouldn’t. You’d label the doctor either an incompetent quack or an unscrupulous shill for the pharmaceutical company; you’d stop taking medicine that was killing you, and you’d seek alternative treatment.

It’s all so obvious: you believe that something will be beneficial, so you give it a try, but once your experience proves that your faith was misplaced — you dummy up. You learn from your mistake and move forward a wiser person.

So, why is it that what seems so obvious in a healthcare scenario, and would also apply without exception if dealing with a mechanic, a lawyer, a contractor, or pretty much anyone else, somehow winds up being lost entirely in the world of politics?

More to the point: how is it possible, after experiencing the catastrophic results of conservative economic policy, that there’s a single American (who’s not either a Republican politician or some other member of the Top 1%) still willing to give the GOP Rx for the economy another nanosecond of consideration?

When King Solomon said that “there is nothing new under the sun,” he couldn’t possibly have done a better job at describing GOP economic policy. From the plans being offered by the illustrious ranks of Republican presidential candidates to those recently articulated by House Majority Leader, Eric Cantor, their prescription is nothing but more of the same poison that crashed the American economy, blew unemployment up to historic levels, and fueled concentration of wealth not seen since the Great Depression.

The GOP Rx for the economy is ever-static and never works. Whether you’re talking decades ago or focused on today, it always consists of the same triple threat to the American people: cut taxes for the wealthy, deregulate, and privatize government along with the commons. They wrap their rhetoric up in a flag, label their plan as “job creating,” and somehow manage to sell the same warmed-over economic Vioxx time and again.

The truth of the matter is that we’ve already tried every element of the Republican plan, all to the detriment of the vast majority of Americans.

According to the GOP, we must lower taxes on the wealthy (a.k.a. the “job creators”) in order to address unemployment. Of course, tax rates today are at record lows with the total income tax burden at its lowest point since 1950 — a fact that begs the question, “Why don’t we already have the jobs?”

Well, the answer is that lowering taxes on the wealthy doesn’t create jobs. It never has and never will, yet whenever the opportunity arises, the GOP snake oil dealers come out of the woodwork offering the same poisonous tonic. Bush did it in 2001, promising 800,000 jobs from his Economic Growth and Tax Relief Reconciliation Act, but the $1.6 trillion tax cut, that gave fully half of the savings to the Top 1%, didn’t actually create any jobs. In fact, following the cuts, we lost 2.7 million jobs by May of 2003.

In contrast, Bill Clinton had the unmitigated gall to raise taxes on the rich, which if GOP prognosticators were right should have been a death knell for job creation. But instead of the Republican predictions of an apocalypse, of a market collapse and dire straits for the economy, we entered into the most prosperous peacetime economy in American history. BLS records show that 22.7 million jobs were created under President Clinton and a paltry 1.08 million under George W. Bush. It seems pretty obvious which president had the better prescription for the American economy.

Once all of the hype is pushed aside, it’s plain to see that tax cuts for the rich have little to do with job creation and instead achieve only the one thing that the average person might expect — they make the rich even richer. They lead to the banana republic style distribution of wealth that now has the U.S. ranking 98^th amongst 136 nations measured by the Gini index of income inequality — worse than Iran — worse than freaking China! But what can you expect when our top 1% now holds more financial wealth than the bottom 95% of the population?

So, maybe the GOP is wrong about tax cuts but right about deregulation. Maybe present calls to repeal Dodd-Frank to “free up Wall St.” are just the prescription for prosperity we need. Maybe there is validity in Michelle Bachmann’s claim that financial reform is “killing the banking industry.” And maybe Sarah Palin will actually run for president, there really is an Easter Bunny, and the GOP truly does give a fat flying flip about working Americans.

The deregulation story is actually scarier than the tax cut myth. It was deregulation that gave birth to the derivative market, allowed unfettered access to credit default swaps, tore down the barrier between investment and commercial banking, and created the Wall St. casino that bled the middle class for 30% of their combined wealth and sent unemployment to levels not seen since the last tax cutting, deregulating, military spending GOP buffoon, Ronald Reagan, sent the rate over 10%.

It was George W. Bush’s dismantling of the regulatory structure that gave us the housing bubble and subsequent economic collapse, allowed the Massey Mine disaster to kill 29 people, and laid the ground work of incompetence that led to the BP oil spill.

Republican style deregulation strips government of its power to carry out it moral mission to protect the people and replaces it with a charade of profit-focused companies pretending to police themselves. It assigns henhouse security to the fox by binding and gagging the farmer. It leads to companies monitoring safety requirements, as it did at Big Branch and in the Gulf, and leaves drug testing to the pharmaceutical companies, as was the case with Merck and their Vioxx pain reliever that caused tens of thousands of heart attacks and strokes, and killed nearly 3,500 Americans.

There are no doubt regulations that do place an unnecessary burden on businesses, and they should be addressed, but they are in the minority. Most regulations serve a vital purpose to protect the citizenry from those who would exploit people and planet in order to add to their bottom line.

Government regulation is as necessary as our system of criminal and civil law. It ensures the safety of our food, infrastructure, medicine, energy, transportation system, consumer products, water supply, and workplace — without regulation we cannot have a functional society. Regulatory reform may indeed be essential, but it must be accomplished intelligently and without compromise that sacrifices the moral mission in exchange for the profit motive. Such reform cannot be achieved through GOP “starve the beast” tactics, where funding for the FDA, SEC, FAA or FEMA and OSHA are indiscriminately cut, nor will it happen through attacks on unions, the NRLB or the EPA as proposed by Eric “Corporate Shill” Cantor and his ignorant mob of Tea Party ideologues.

The Republican plan for America is simple: starve government of necessary funding, cripple government by axing regulations, and turn whatever’s left of government over to private enterprise to milk for profits. They ignore the reality that our economy is stalled because of lack of demand stemming from concentration of wealth not seen since the Great Depression. They ignore science, clutching onto the desperate notion that 98% of climate scientists are wrong about global warming in order to justify their loyal support of fossil fuels. And they ignore the selfish drain on the economy presented by the Wall St. casino and fat-cat government contractors who provide services at rates averaging 183% of the costs to simply hire federal workers.

Sadly, none of this matters to the GOP. When facts get in their way, they just invent another marketing phrase, regurgitate more of their distorted talking points, and spin their poison in populist labels like “liberty” and “freedom.” But in spite of their flag waving and lip service for working Americans, the truth of the GOP is that their core mantra remains “government is the problem,” and they will stop at nothing to deliver on their self-fulfilling prophesy.

Make no mistake about it, the GOP Rx is effective. The problem is that the America it’s intended to serve is comprised of only the top 1 to 2% of Americans. The strength of our nation depends upon both a strong democracy and a healthy capitalist economy. Sadly, the Republican Party is willing to trample the rights of the People and decimate that democracy in order to feed the greed of the economic elite.

Americans need to wake up before it’s too late. They need to smell the burning apple pie, and realize that the parasitic capitalist machine is killing its host. Republicans may still talk about jobs and small business, but it should be obvious to the most casual observer that high unemployment and the lower wages it brings are nirvana for GOP strategists, and real small business is anathema for their vision of an American corporatocracy.

The GOP Rx for our economy deserves a grade of “D” for “Death” of the American Dream. And any working American who subscribes to their prescription and believes that the policies that are destroying the middle class will somehow magically start producing a different result deserves a great big “F” for “Fucking Insane!”

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President Obama sent his budget proposal for 2012 to Congress yesterday, and before the ink was even dry, Republicans were swarming like piranha. According to Rep. Paul Ryan (R-WI), “It would be better doing nothing than if we were to actually pass this budget.” Sen. Jeff Sessions (R-AL) said that the budget was based on “gimmicks,” and claimed that passing it would “be a national tragedy.”

White House estimates put the savings of the proposed budget at $1.1 trillion over 10 years, with two-thirds of the savings coming from spending cuts. Republicans have unanimously rejected that total, with Sen. Richard Shelby (R-AL) labeling it a “timid response to a grave challenge.” Shelby added that the proposal “ignores the will of the American people,” which is more than a little odd coming from somebody who supported the extension of the Bush tax cuts for the rich and openly shared his lunatic idea to fix Social Security by increasing the retirement “age every several years” — both positions being opposed by the majority of Americans.

But it’s easy to understand why Republicans are so vehemently opposed to the President’s budget proposal. While it does make substantial cuts, actually eliminating or reducing the funding for 200 federal programs, the spending reductions total only $33 billion for 2012, which is far less than the Republican’s draconian proposal to cut $60 billion in 2011. But more importantly, the White House budget also ends the Bush tax cuts for the rich, increases taxation on multinational corporations, eliminates $46 billion in subsidies for oil, gas and coal interests, and cuts $78 billion from the right’s most sacrosanct bucket — the Pentagon.

There is a choice to be made regarding the future of our nation, and the American people need to wake up and pay attention. Our national debt is currently over $14 trillion. The interest alone on that debt amounts to around $250 billion per year. The simple truth is that it doesn’t matter if we cut the deficit by $30 billion or $60 billion, or even the $100 billion promised by Republicans, or more — we will still be diving deeper into debt.

Take your pick, the President’s budget or whatever counter is offered by the Republicans — it doesn’t really matter, the spending cuts you’ll find will be largely symbolic. Arguing the merit of either proposal based on the depth of cuts is pure political theater. Either option will be kicking the can down the road. The substantive difference, the criteria upon which the proposals should be judged, lies in their differing methodologies.

Republicans contend that our economic problems are all the result of excessive spending, and their budget proposals reflect that belief. Democrats counter that the issue is more complex and propose a solution that addresses both revenue and expenditure. The result is that, while both parties talk about the sacrifice that will be needed going forward, only the Democratic position strives to ensure that it’s shared.

The fact of the matter is that adherence to the Republican method for addressing the debt will place ALL of the sacrifice on those who can least afford it. Their solitary focus on spending cuts combined with their unwillingness to address a bloated defense budget leaves no alternative. Those fortunate enough to remain wealthy in post-Recession America will not suffer from the proposed federal spending cuts. They only share in the sacrifice by paying higher taxes. And with military spending off the table, cuts to the remainder of the discretionary budget will only harm the poor, impede upward mobility and further weaken the middle class.

President Obama’s budget proposal may not go far enough, but at least it presents a method for shared sacrifice that can be expanded. It combines cuts to social programs with a slight trimming of defense and adds a bit of revenue through modest tax increases. The Republican alternative is more an effort best represented by an M.C. Escher impossible reality. The bottom line being that the budget simply cannot be balanced solely within the proposed Republican framework.

The situation may be complicated, but the math really isn’t. With a $14 trillion hole, only about $440 billion in discretionary spending outside of defense, and annual interest payments of $250 billion, the Republican plan set forth by Rep. Ryan doesn’t balance the budget until the 2060s and piles on $62 trillion in debt during the process. Republican fiscal responsibility is a fairy tale, sort of a contemporary version of the Goose that Laid the Golden Eggs.

But as insane as this GOP plan may appear, like an iceberg, there’s more to it than what we see on the surface. As House Majority Leader Eric Cantor (R-VA) promised, the Republican budget will be “a serious document that will reflect the type of path we feel we should be taking to address the fiscal situation, including addressing entitlement reforms.” In GOP parlance, that means more pain for everyone but the wealthy, pain that will include a full frontal assault on our nation’s social safety nets.

The writing is on the wall. Because the Republicans refuse the responsible path of both increasing revenue and putting ALL spending on the table, they must attack the entitlements. This is possibly the GOP’s most egregious tactic and without doubt one of their favorite arenas for yarn spinning (a euphemism for telling bald-faced lies). Republicans would have everyone believe that Social Security is seriously broken, and that it’s partially to blame for the deficit — sadly, it doesn’t matter to them that both assertions have no basis in reality.

Republican spin on Social Security is nothing but more fable peddling. As evidenced in economist Dean Baker’s letter to Sen. Richard Shelby, sent after the Senator told a nice whopper about the program, even “if nothing is ever done, then Social Security would pay full benefits through the year 2037.” It would also be able to pay around 80% of benefits well into the second half of the century. With small tweaks, the program will remain vibrant for its entire 75-year horizon and beyond. But this narrative doesn’t fit the GOP model for fueling Wall St. profits through privatization, so the truth must be set aside and a tale must be spun.

Part of that Republican tale is the myth of a broken system, but even more disingenuous is their contention that we must fix Social Security in order to address the deficit. This is pure, unadulterated hogwash — grade-A falsehood — a freaking lie! The fact of the matter is that Social Security is not included in the deficit. It is both funded and expensed outside of the budget; it is an off-budget program, and it has a surplus balance of some $2.5 trillion. The truth of the matter is that Social Security hasn’t negatively impacted the deficit — it’s actually helped to mask its true magnitude.

Medicare is another story. Being included “on-budget,” shortfalls in Medicare funding do impact the budget, and program solvency will require much more than tweaking. But even in the case of Medicare, the Republican position is fraught with dishonesty. The problem with both Medicare and Medicaid is not inherent in the government programs but rather a function of the rising cost of healthcare. With Medicare the problem is exacerbated by the increasing number of elderly Americans, but unless we’re okay with just denying them medical services, we still need to seek a real solution.

Of course, a real solution for skyrocketing healthcare costs runs headlong into the Republican priority of maximizing corporate profits. So, never mind that nationally our spending on healthcare is approaching one-fifth of our GDP; forget about the fact that we spend more than double the OECD average yet achieve far worse health outcomes — and whatever you do, please ignore the man behind the curtain — the one atop any of the 10 largest medical insurers who saw their profits leap by 250% during the past decade. This is all SOP for the GOP. Their response to this upside-down scenario is not to reduce costs but to limit access with Medicare vouchers. Hurray for the red, white and blue!

Americans need to pull their heads out of the sand, open their eyes and come to grips with the fact that we’re being plundered by our nation’s economic elite. The Democrats are definitely complicit, but the Republicans are the soothsaying demons of the illicit extraction. Regardless the issue, they have but one position: protect the monied interests. Healthcare costs are soaring, so limit access. The defense budget expands 250%, from $333 billion under Clinton to $847 billion in 2010, and it’s off the table. Federal revenues drop from 21% of GDP in 2000 to 15% in 2010, and the answer is to cut taxes.

The Republican position is always simple because it is single-minded. It doesn’t have to consider the complexities of the economy, the nuances of trade policy, the impact of spending cuts, the most effective means to stimulate job growth, or the ethical implications of any of the above. No, the Republican Party’s laser-like focus on fending for the wealthy makes all decisions easy.

If they were truly concerned about cutting spending, they’d put their knife to defense: the largest and most wasteful of discretionary programs. If they really cared about healthcare costs, they strive to create competition with solutions like a public option. If they were truly concerned about jobs, they’d drop the nonsense about job-killing taxes and admit that tax cuts don’t create jobs. If they gave a flying flip about the average American, they’d drop the charade about having “a spending problem” and tell the truth about taxation.

That truth would include sharing the fact that in spite of a record $1.66 trillion in profits for 2010, revenue from corporate taxes was a meager $191 billion — a rate of around 11%. In full honesty, the GOP would also have to fess up about how overtaxed we aren’t. They’d have to admit that federal taxes are at historic lows. In fact, as a share of our nation’s economy, they’re at their lowest level since 1950. And if they really sought to inform instead of manipulate, they’d make sure that everyone understood that we have the third lowest total tax burden of all OECD nations, higher than only Mexico and Chile.

But honesty is far from being the GOP’s strong suit, and the wellbeing of average Americans is low on their list of priorities. So, we can all expect more distortion of facts, more narrowly focused policies, and more pain for the American people. But cheer up, there is a bright side: so long as you’re in the top 1 or 2 percent of Americans, you can rest assured that the GOP has your back. Of course, if you belong to the other 98%, watch out — because your back makes a real nice target for their budget knife.

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Article first published as GOP vs. Dems; No Compromise Equals No Solutions on Technorati.

Politics can be very complicated, or at the very least confusing. Case in point: what is it about the Republican pronouncement of “NO COMPROMISE” that President Obama and the congressional Democrats don’t understand?

Did they miss it when John Boehner, the presumptive Speaker of the new Republican controlled House, announced that, “This is not a time for compromise?”  Perhaps they misunderstood high-ranking Republican House member, Mike Pense of Indiana, when he said, “Look, the time to go along and get along is over,” even though he reemphasized, stating, “If I haven’t been clear enough yet, let me say again: No compromise.”

Is it possible that the President took Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell’s statement that, “The single most important thing we want to achieve is for President Obama to be a one-term president” as some sort of conservative jest?

It’s hard to tell what the President hears when congressional Republicans throw down the gauntlet and demand that he move in their direction. But, in response to the wave of emboldened Republicans taking intransigent positions against any sort of compromise, President Obama told the nation, “I believe there’s room for us to compromise and get it done together.”

The saying goes, “Fool me once, shame on you; fool me twice, shame on me.” Fool me over and over again, and maybe the people who believe I’m actually being fooled are the ones being hoodwinked. Is President Obama really so foolish as to believe that the Republicans will engage in open, good-faith negotiations, or is he merely a performer in a stage show written and produced to convince the American people that somebody in Washington wants the status quo to change?

When the President spoke in Cleveland in September, he came out swinging. He artfully painted the Republicans as the champions of the very wealthy and articulated a plan for the extension of the Bush tax cuts that drew a line in the sand, defining $250,000 of taxable income as the divide between the middle-class and upper-crust. It was the perfect issue for the closing weeks of campaign 2010, but cowardly Democrats backed away in fear that the Republicans would paint them as tax-and-spend liberals.

Well, not only did the Democratic retreat fail to impress any independents, but it also ensured that there would be no resurgence of enthusiasm within progressive ranks. In fact, the real story of Election 2010 wasn’t the great turnout of Republican supporters, but rather that blacks and young voters stayed home. If even half of those who poured out to the polls in 2008 had been moved to vote, the election results would have been much different.

But whatever the case, the 2010 election is over, the Democrats got their collective butts kicked, and the Republicans have already started Campaign 2012. Republican leaders now insist that the election was a refutation of President Obama’s policies and promise a Republican led Congress that will focus on jobs and the deficit.

Americans rightfully rejoice that the promised focus is exactly where it should be, but in what has become the united chorus of one-trick-pony conservatives, the legislative remedy being offered is the extension of the Bush tax cuts for the wealthy. In fact, fed by their new found sense of power, Republicans have become more intractable regarding any compromise on the wealthfare benefits and now insist that the extensions for the rich be made permanent.

Prior to the election, Republicans seemed amenable to a potential decoupling of the cuts along the lines suggested by President Obama. The notion was that cuts for the top 2% might be extended for a limited time period while those for the bottom 98% were made permanent. But according to House Minority Whip Eric Cantor, there will be no such compromise. In a recent interview, Cantor told Greta Van Susteren of Fox News that the election gave the GOP a mandate to hold fast and accept only an extension of all cuts.

Just how the Republican leadership can reconcile their position on the tax cuts with their promise to focus on either jobs or the deficit is the subject of some serious snake oil peddling.

According to Cantor, it’s all about clearing up that “uncertainty“ the Republicans keep talking about: “We’ve got to put certainty back into the game and get these tax rates to stay the same.” But of course this is complete nonsense, since whichever way the cuts are decided, once the decision is made, the uncertainty is removed.

To the man, each of the Republican leaders has also associated the cuts for the top 2% with small business, claiming that 50% of small business revenue will be affected. Sadly, the small businesses they’re referring to are large hedge funds, law offices, and billion dollar companies like Bechtel and Koch Industries. These are the clients of the Republican Party, not the 98% of all small businesses that make less than $250K.

The sad truth is that no respectable economist believes that cutting taxes for the rich will do anything to create jobs. That horse just doesn’t run anymore — not since the results of 8 years of the Bush presidency where such cuts were a mainstay were tabulated and found to be severely lacking. The worst job creation record since the 1940s and the first decline of median household income of any cycle since 1967 are not sound arguments for repeating the policy.

And where the tax-cuts-create-jobs argument is no more than a con-job, even that bar is too high when discussing the impact on the deficit. Virtually all reputable economists agree that tax cuts are the worst form of economic stimulus, and cuts for the rich the worst of all. The Republicans are essentially without even a distorted con to explain away the $700 billion cost of the tax cuts for the top 2% over the next 10 years.

The cuts the Republicans are fighting for won’t create jobs but will add significantly to the deficit. These “fiscal conservatives” espouse fiscal responsibility and feign help for small business and middle-class America but willingly sacrifice both for the wellbeing of their corporate overlords. And the Democrats respond by offering compromise.

Just what part of slam dunk, hanging curve, lob-ball pitch do the Democrats not understand?

The Democrats need to go back on November 15 and work to pass the extension of the Bush tax cuts for those making under $250K during the lame duck session. It’ll be interesting to watch the Republicans argue why the very rich need the cuts and explain to the American people why increasing the deficit for those who don’t need the money makes sense. Their argument promises to be a mind-numbing spectacle of double-talk and diversion.

This is a win-win for the Democrats — any compromise is just once again playing into Republican hands and allowing them to set the agenda and color the conversation. The Democrats need to accept the fact that the Republicans who would not negotiate in good faith while in the minority are certainly not going to do so now. They need to figure out that the Republican campaign for 2012 has already begun and launch their counteroffensive. If they’re not willing to do so, they might as well just start packing their bags now.

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