Lies, lies and damned lies: The new Republican House of Representatives is insane and character disordered

I just read the following in the Statesboro (Georgia) Herald in its issue of January 7, 2014, in an article containing 36 column inches, about half a page, extolling the wonderful pageantry of the Republican takeover in Washington, with the largest majority in 60 years.

GOP takes charge in Congress, runs into swift veto threat
by David Espo, AP special correspondent:

“Hoping to smooth their path for future measures, House Republicans passed a rules change permitting congressional scorekeepers to assume that tax cuts increase revenue by the government rather than reduce it. That would make it easier to show a balanced budget with fewer painful spending cuts. The concept, known as ‘dynamic scoring’” has been an article of faith among conservatives since the Reagan era three decades ago.”

It just doesn’t get any crazier, or more unethical, than that, folks. It’s dynamic scoring all right. It’s like giving scorekeepers at basketball games the right to put whatever scores they want on the scoreboard to be believed by idiots.

This is a willful denial of reality by a majority of the US House of Representatives, an obscene instantiation of pure make-believe in the reasoning of human beings, which could cause psychological harm to the entire US culture, especially harming the minds of young and weak-minded citizens lacking economic knowledge and mathematical skills, doublespeak and duplicity unimagined by George Orwell in his Animal Farm, a political party laundering lies into truth by changing rules with a simple majority vote.

As anyone with half an ounce of intelligence knows, the Reagan Republican administration tax cuts, and all tax cuts since, have resulted in increased deficits, unbalanced budgets, and a rapidly rising pile of federal debt. Ronald Reagan’s tax cuts and increased spending set in motion a process that resulted in the US federal debt being tripled in 8 years, from $1 trillion to $3 trillion, causing budget deficits to explode. The Reagan administration added twice as much debt to the total US federal debt in 8 years, $2 trillion, than all preceding presidents added in the entire history of the US, setting a precedent for the hapless Bush II Republican administration that also caused the federal deficit and debt to explode after giving large tax cuts to large corporations and the elite rich.

The federal budget was balanced during the Clinton Democratic administration years after a tax increase, and the budget deficit has gone down during the Obama Democratic administration years, after a tax increase.

Tax cuts for the middle class and working class can cause government revenues to increase in some cases because it puts more money in circulation, increasing aggregate demand, increasing jobs and taxable income, thereby increasing federal revenues.

But this is not the case for large corporations and the elite rich in today’s world. They have more money than they can spend already, and giving them more money with a tax cut won’t increase aggregate demand, or federal revenues, one whit. Quite to the contrary, such behavior will cause federal revenues to decrease. Congress deciding to give another tax cut to large corporations and the elite rich during these economic times would be like a corporate CEO cutting the total revenue of his corporation to make more money for himself and his cronies on his board of directors.

For more elaboration and documentation see my book Business Voyages, a business bible.

Republican politicians in Washington want to cut taxes again for large corporations and the elite rich for three reasons: to pay back the campaign money large corporations and the elite rich gave them to get elected, to get more money from them for their next election, and to get a job working for them if they ever have to work again.

Richard John Stapleton writes on business and politics at Effective Learning Company and on his Facebook page.

One Response to Lies, lies and damned lies: The new Republican House of Representatives is insane and character disordered

  1. The Republicans (and many Democrats too) live under what Pope Francis calls the, “idolatry of wealth.” They have lost all sense of moral or ethical compass. They are insanely callous. They are making soup out of ordinary people. They are preparing a banquet for themselves serving as their main prime cut to our social security, Medicare, and other benefits that keep ordinary human beings alive and breathing.