What VA said - you can find polling that support the ideas at pretty high rates, even among republicans. I am not sure they capture the cost in those polls very well, so the “how to pay for it” is probably being ignored.
At the end of the day, we need to decide a level of taxes, and a level of spending, and how that spending should be allocated. Republicans don’t offer much in terms of how the government could function, they only offer that it by definition can’t, and take the fight to other issues that rally up the base to turn out a vote. Those base issues (guns, abortion restrictions, etc) I don’t think are nearly as popular as the ideas proposed by Democrats, so they have to rely on liberal hate to break down the popularity gap.
Just want to break down this second paragraph…
First sentence - I agree with totally. Great start!
Second sentence before second comma - isn’t this true really on both side? One example would be some Democrats offering to pay off all student loans. Where would that money come from? Seems to me that would be the definition also of “not offering much in term of how the government could function” because there was never a plan offered as a way to pay for all that. Kinda like Mexico paying for the wall. That was also not a feasible plan.
Third sentence before comma - Guns and abortion are pretty popular where I live so maybe it is just a geographical thing that you don’t think those ideas are very popular
Third sentence at the end - Isn’t the main reason Biden won was because he “was not Trump”? I believe that would be running off conservative hate to increase the popularity? No? Most (but not all) of the ads I saw were showing all the bad things Trump did and not about all the good Biden was going to do
Isn’t a basic principle of conservatives that they think everyone but the federal government can do most things better than the federal government? Sure, you can pick examples where they both propose things that aren’t paid for and they sound good, but I think this is not balanced on both sides.
They are polarizing issues that turn out voters where little is actually done by congress. They are positions, not ideas.
I think Biden won because Trump was handling the pandemic horribly. Trump could have continued being Trump and won if COVID never happened. There is certainly a lot of “Trump hate” and I think that has carried over to a group of Republican’s that continue to defend him because it helps them politically.
No one ever asks about the required taxation. And as we can see taxation is required even when we don’t pass any taxes. We pay it in higher grocery prices, home prices, and making millionaires out of crypto honks. That’s the problem, there is no such thing as a free ride and there never will be. We can all only share in what we all produce.
General democratic answer is to “raise taxes on the rich and corporations” and not worry too much about exactly how much “extra” revenue is generally created when the “rich” adjust their game plans to keep their total taxes at the same level (or less); or that some companies decide to keep a large part of their operations in other countries because they offer lower tax rates.
TBH, I think the one thing that needs to change (if not outright eliminated) is Congress working off of a “10-year expenditure” philosophy for budgets. I know many conservatives look at “$700M of planned expenditures over 10 years” and worry that “$650M is spent in year 1 and expect it to be ‘paid off’ over the next 9 years” and then see in 4 years that more expenditure is going to be presented.
I don’t discount the value in having a long-term plan like that passed to help guide things; but I think that a fiscal year budget is the focus and spending is constrained to that one-year agreement.
Sadly this is a good prediction. The conservative media interwoven with the gop has changed politics.
The Russia Ukraine issue won’t involve the US beyond sanctions and the shifting of more budget dollars to the MIC so they can help fight the good fight as usual.
In the next 6 to 10 years China is likely to take over as world leader. If the gops internal shift of control from neocons to nationalists holds as it looks like it will. The government will continue its grifting at home leaving the international grifting to the Chinese
Well as a believer in Modern Monetary Theory it really doesn’t matter whether you tax or not. There will be a price. Wherever the money comes out of it’s pipe an infrastructure of money collecting will be built around it. Something will inflate and cost more as a result. That inflation is our tax. Government pays for most healthcare, all healthcare gets more expensive and everyone buying it has to keep paying more and more. We create money supply by the Fed buying securities on the open market and everyone on Wall Street gets richer and richer as their asset prices inflate. We throw trillions of $'s at the working class to cope with a pandemic and groceries, gas, car, and clothing prices go up. If we don’t remove money from the system with thoughtful taxation then the system will devalue the money put into it with inflation. Based on polling no one wants to pay more taxes or deal with inflation so thoughtful spending is important.
If you mean some Ds are happy if the large print says “higher taxes on the rich” while the small print keeps all the loopholes open, I’ll agree. However, I think some would really like to close the loopholes. Many of them supported eliminating step-up, for example. Re corporate taxes, there seems to be a strong push for the international agreement on minimum corporate tax.
I agree the 10 year window gets played. Front load the spending and back load the taxes. Remember, also, that the TCJA also did this by assuming the tax cuts for middle class would really disappear.
Yep. But, polling also shows that nobody wants spending cuts on the programs that impact them directly. And, every program impacts someone. So I’m not optimistic about “thoughtful” spending.
3/state shouldn’t make it any more difficult if the House is increasing by (almost) the same ratio. You still have the same percentage of Senators from each state.
If anything the finer cut in the House will help the D’s slightly since the Ds will probably get a greater share of the extra. Like Wyoming won’t get any more Representatives, but bigger states will get a disproportionate share.
It does decrease DC’s say in the POTUS election. Maybe give them 5 votes, so 805 total / 403 to win.
But you’re right in that it does not disrupt the fact that small states still get an equal vote in the Senate.
I’m trying to stay in the realm of what’s possible to change and it’s certainly not going to happen that you’ll ever get rid of that. At least, not short of armed revolution, which is NOT what I’m proposing.
They aren’t a magic elixir that fixes every problem. But it does reduce the influence of each member of Congress, which I think is good. And gets rid of weird Senate class issues, which should result in a Senate that is slightly more representative of the population.
Agree. Along with that… stop letting them claim they’re going to drop Medicare reimbursements. We all know they’re never going to do that… CBO should not be allowed to score as such.
And an equal number of years of revenue and expenses. You can’t say “raise taxes by X per year starting now and raise spending by 2X in 5 years” and then claim that’s budget neutral.
Don’t really understand your point here? The UK pays for the NHS, ie universal healthcare, and our spending on healthcare per head is much lower than in the US.
You’re also not nearly as fat as we are, which has a lot to do with that. And your doctors are paid a lot less. And your wait times a lot longer.
US obesity: 36.2%
UK obesity: 27.8%
US GP pay: $234,000
UK GP pay: $81,000
US wait for cancer treatment: 27 days
UK wait for cancer treatment: 71.9% start treatment within 62 days
So yeah, when we have a sicker population and we actually treat cancer and we pay our doctors more than double (triple when you account for PPP) big surprise that we spend more.
It’s the argument that that purchasing healthcare is like purchasing a new “fill in whatever product you want”. We can solve our healthcare cost problem by denying healthcare to those that can’t afford it (reduce demand) and making people think about whether their cancer screening is worth the cost. I think the US has moved a long way in that direction with high deductible medical plans.
If I have to choose between majority rule and minority rule, I’ll pick the first.
Democracy doesn’t give us the “right” decisions. It gives us decisions that most people are willing to live with. One reason they are willing is that they can see that they are in the minority.