Tag: Dubyanomics

A Sucker Born Every Minute.

The President and his cabinet take the Dubya dividend debacle dog-and-pony show on the road. But be careful if they come to your town – as per usual when Dubya and the economy are mentioned in the same sentence, you may just find yourself working overtime. Update: Proving once again the power of the Big Lie, Dubya accuses tax cut critics of “class warfare.” And in a joint statement, Montgomery Burns, Scrooge McDuck, and the Monopoly Guy asked, “Can’t we all just get along?”

The GOP Tax Pact.

With conservatives chomping at the bit to reduce capital gains taxes, the Senate GOP craft a compromise bill that appeases moderate holdouts like Senator Snowe. As I’ve said before, any tax cut given the current state of the economy and our budget deficits is a bad idea. And given how much of the heavy lifting Senator Snowe has already done, I’m surprised more Dems aren’t kicking up a fuss right now.

Feed the Rich, or else.

What do we want? Tax breaks for the rich! When do we want ’em? Now! Brushing up on his cheerleader skills in Arkansas (as a not-so-veiled threat to Democratic Senator Blanche Lincoln), Dubya demands that Congress speed up passage of his fatcat cut. But so far, the all stick and no carrot tactics of the Bushies are only continuing to tick off GOP moderates like Olympia Snowe.

The Other Shoe Drops.

As it turns out, the new GOP-spawned hybrid tax bill mentioned yesterday offers even more to the wealthy (and less to the poor) than Dubya’s dividend debacle. Why am I not surprised? If the Republicans keep prostrating themselves before the filthy rich like this, that giant sucking sound you hear will be the GOP moderates defecting en masse a la James Jeffords, who’s now comfortably ensconced in the Democratic leadership.

Grey Poupon Economics.

Conceding defeat on the full dividend debacle (while still planning evasive maneuvers to make sure it’s as large as possible), the Congressional GOP now shift their focus to another Republican shibboleth: a capital gains cut. One way or another, it seems, the GOP are hell-bent on ensuring that the wealthiest Americans catch some kind of break from the Dubya dip.

Time Bandits.

With the House GOP prepared to make a deal with moderates, the White House unrolls a new pitch for the “future-embezzling” Dubya dividend debacle. Arguing that bigger is better on the assumption that there’s a 1-1 relationship between low taxes and more jobs, Dubya’s simplistic proposition has even ticked off GOP economists. (As one Republican put it when queried whether Dubya’s fuzzy math makes sense, “I suppose it matters whether you think economics matters.”) Meanwhile, Bill “kittenkiller” Frist takes the blame for congressional in-fighting on the size of the tax cut.

A New Enemy.

Toning down on the Syria talk, the Bushies instead decide to invoke their post-Iraq mojo to launch a sneak attack on the economy, vis a vis the now phased-in Dubya Dividend Debacle. It’s not conservative to give out tax handouts to the rich during a time of exploding deficits, y’all. It’s radical.

Blast from the Past.

With the war in Iraq wrapping up, former President Clinton derides the failures of Dubya’s amateurish diplomacy. “Our paradigm now seems to be: something terrible happened to us on September 11, and that gives us the right to interpret all future events in a way that everyone else in the world must agree with us.” He also takes time to call out the recently-lowered but still-lousy Dubya tax cut. Hopefully, this’ll serve notice to the other Dems (besides Kerry) to get off the fence and release the hounds.