From Pine View Farm

The Compromise-on-the-Budget Myth 1

Jonathan Chait exposes why the “both sides need to give” is a myth and explains why the Republican demands for spending cuts are rooted in ideology, not in any practical problem-solving or analysis.

A nugget:

Reporters are presenting this as a kind of negotiating problem, based on each side’s desire for the other to stick its neck out first. But it actually reflects a much more fundamental problem than that. Republicans think government spending is huge, but they can’t really identify ways they want to solve that problem, because government spending is not really huge. That is to say, on top of an ideological gulf between the two parties, we have an epistemological gulf. The Republican understanding of government spending is based on hazy, abstract notions that don’t match reality and can’t be translated into a workable program.

(snip)

There really isn’t money to be cut everywhere. The United States spends way less money on social services than do other advanced countries, and even that low figure is inflated by our sky-high health-care prices. The retirement benefits to programs like Social Security are quite meager. Public infrastructure is grossly underfunded.

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1 comment

  1. George Smith

    December 12, 2012 at 10:24 pm

    The election didn’t change much. The Republican Party never flinches. It’s turned Michigan into a right-to-work state,  igniting a civil war there. You read my blog, and see how they continue to try to ram through the most nonsensical bigot’s legislation before they lose power. It fits the mold of an authoritarian party which accepts no legitimacy of democracy. If it cannot get the popular vote, it matters not. If it controls local power it will use it to immediately attack its perceived enemies. If it does not have local power it will … well, everyone knows. Too many people still don’t get they’re faced by fascists. WhiteManistan has an iron will.