{"id":4727,"date":"2011-05-02T01:48:12","date_gmt":"2011-05-02T08:48:12","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.politicsplus.org\/blog\/?p=4727"},"modified":"2011-05-02T01:49:02","modified_gmt":"2011-05-02T08:49:02","slug":"budget-gospel-according-to-st-ronnie","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.politicsplus.org\/blog\/2011\/05\/02\/budget-gospel-according-to-st-ronnie\/","title":{"rendered":"Budget Gospel According to St. Ronnie"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><font color=\"#0000ff\">Wherever Republicans gather the mere mention of St. Ronnie Reagan is enough to bring an awed hush to the crown, followed by cheers and tears of adulation.&#160; Potential candidates face off with the claim, my Reagan ray gun is bigger than yours.&#160; All claim to represent exactly what St. Ronnie would do today.&#160; However, if there is one person who actually knows what course the near deified Reagan would take, it\u2019s his former Budget Director, David Stockman.<\/font><\/p>\n<blockquote>\n<p><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" style=\"background-image: none; border-bottom: 0px; border-left: 0px; padding-left: 0px; padding-right: 0px; display: inline; float: left; border-top: 0px; border-right: 0px; padding-top: 0px\" title=\"2stockman\" border=\"0\" alt=\"2stockman\" align=\"left\" src=\"https:\/\/www.7thstep.org\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2011\/05\/2stockman.jpg\" width=\"300\" height=\"224\" \/>As Washington considers ways to rein in the deficit, Republicans have obstinately demanded that any tax revenue increases be taken off the table, claiming that raising taxes during a down economy would doom the recovery. <strong>As evidence, they often point to the presidency of Ronald Reagan<\/strong>, claiming his massive 1981 tax cuts caused that decade\u2019s economic boom. But this anti-tax position makes it almost impossible to do anything serious about the deficit, since \u2014 <a href=\"http:\/\/www.washingtonmonthly.com\/archives\/individual\/2011_04\/028962.php\" target=\"_blank\">despite GOP talking points<\/a> \u2014 the country has a revenue problem, not a spending problem. On ABC\u2019s This Week today, <strong>Reagan\u2019s own budget director, <\/strong><a href=\"http:\/\/en.wikipedia.org\/wiki\/David_Stockman\" target=\"_blank\"><strong>David Stockman<\/strong><\/a><strong>, exposed the GOP tax cut \u201c<\/strong><a href=\"http:\/\/thinkprogress.org\/2010\/11\/28\/stockman-slams-gop-taxes\/\" target=\"_blank\"><strong>theology<\/strong><\/a><strong>\u201d for the ahistorical sham it is<\/strong>. Asked by Reuter\u2019s Chrystia Freeland if the economy could \u201csustain\u201d a tax increase, Stockman said \u201cabsolutely,\u201d noting that the economy only recovered under Reagan once he raised taxes in 1982 after \u201ccut[ting] taxes too much\u201d the year before\u2026<\/p>\n<p>&#8230;Watch it:<\/p>\n<p>&#160;<iframe loading=\"lazy\" height=\"510\" src=\"http:\/\/www.youtube.com\/embed\/n73SnDJr7Xo?rel=0\" frameborder=\"0\" width=\"640\" allowfullscreen=\"allowfullscreen\"><\/iframe><\/p>\n<p><strong>Stockman also attacked Rep. Paul Ryan\u2019s (R-WI) budget plan, noting it \u201cdoes not cut one dime from the debt\u201d in the next three years<\/strong>. Indeed, in addition to being <strong><font color=\"#ff0000\">draconian and regressive<\/font><\/strong>, Ryan\u2019s budget <a href=\"http:\/\/yglesias.thinkprogress.org\/2011\/04\/paul-ryans-budget-proposal-would-increase-public-debt-relative-to-extending-current-law\/\" target=\"_blank\">fails<\/a> <a href=\"http:\/\/krugman.blogs.nytimes.com\/2011\/04\/06\/paul-ryans-multiple-unicorns\/\" target=\"_blank\">to acomplish<\/a> [sic] the only thing it sets out to do \u2014 solve the deficit\u2026 [<em>emphasis added<\/em>] <\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n<p>Inserted from &lt;<a href=\"http:\/\/thinkprogress.org\/2011\/05\/01\/stockman-absolutely-raise-taxes\/\" target=\"_blank\">Think Progress<\/a>&gt;<\/p>\n<p><font color=\"#0000ff\">There it is.&#160; Judging it by the budget gospel according to St. Ronnie, the Ryan budget is the path to hell.&#160; That shows just how out of touch with reality the Republican party has become.<\/font><\/p>\n<p><font color=\"#0000ff\">It is necessary to remove this threat to our nation before taking on the far less problematic Democrats.<\/font><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Wherever Republicans gather the mere mention of St. Ronnie Reagan is enough to bring an awed hush to the crown, followed by cheers and tears of adulation.&#160; Potential candidates face off with the claim, my Reagan ray gun is bigger than yours.&#160; All claim to represent exactly what St. Ronnie would do today.&#160; However, if <a href='https:\/\/www.politicsplus.org\/blog\/2011\/05\/02\/budget-gospel-according-to-st-ronnie\/' class='excerpt-more'>[&#8230;]<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[5],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-4727","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-politics","category-5-id","post-seq-1","post-parity-odd","meta-position-corners","fix"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.politicsplus.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4727","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.politicsplus.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.politicsplus.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.politicsplus.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.politicsplus.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=4727"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.politicsplus.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4727\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.politicsplus.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=4727"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.politicsplus.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=4727"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.politicsplus.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=4727"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}