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December 15, 2005
Another reason why they lose
It's interesting, what people latch on to in a news article.
Yesterday in its newsletter, the Democratic Leadership Council was lamenting the priorities of Republican budget writers in the House thusly:
Today's Washington Post offers two especially significant examples.
In an article detailing religious protests about the impending GOP
budget package, which targets safety-net services for the poor while
maintaining a hefty new series of tax cuts, here's the response of
the House GOP leadership:
To GOP leaders and their supporters in the Christian community, it is not that simple. Acting House Majority Leader Roy Blunt(R-Mo.) said yesterday that the activists' position is not "intellectually right." Blunt's statement, of course, reflects the hoary and economically discredited supply-side theory that tax cuts are the Philosopher's Stone of fiscal policy, benefiting the poor who are excluded from its direct benefits. |
That quote is from this article in yesterday's Washington Post.
Now, it's interesting that the DLC chose to comment on that quote the way they did, because there's a much more basic problem with Blunt's statement. In spite of what he says his party will do with those hypothetical increased Federal revenues, history says that when Treasury revenues rise, Congressional conservatives just cut more taxes, usually to very wealthy households.
If they were really honest (which I guess one shouldn't expect from a politician), they'd just admit that they don't give a rat's ass about the poor — except, of course, that kind of sentiment doesn't look good in the pages of the Washington Post.
But the most interesting thing about this is something common that happens when progressives complain about conservative ideology. They get so wrapped up in trying to dislodge the ideology that they don't seem to notice when the ideology is wrapped up in statements that are just plain lies.
That's a bit like being so pre-occupied with making the case for treating headaches with acetomenaphin over aspirin that you don't notice the brain tumor.
Posted by The Journal Blogger at December 15, 2005 08:31 AM
