{"id":24407,"date":"2011-11-16T12:00:32","date_gmt":"2011-11-16T18:00:32","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/?p=24407"},"modified":"2011-11-15T22:33:46","modified_gmt":"2011-11-16T04:33:46","slug":"its-the-integrity-stupid","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/?p=24407","title":{"rendered":"It’s The Integrity, Stupid"},"content":{"rendered":"

With the Tea Party putting the wind in its sails, the GOP scored a historic reversal last fall, turning the Obama “revolution” back on its heels.<\/p>\n

Is the GOP establishment about to completely blow it?<\/p>\n

Well, not if I have anything to say about it. \u00a0Needless to say, I’m going to need some help.<\/p>\n

———-<\/p>\n

An article in the Lehigh Morning Call<\/a> indicates that the conservatives on the “Supercommittee”, including Pennsylvania’s Pat Toomey, are pondering a compromise on the deficit that would cut taxes (good), combined with eliminating some loopholes (not so good):<\/p>\n

At the proposal’s core is Toomey’s economic belief that simplifying and lowering taxes will grow the economy, and in turn, a growing economy will produce more revenue. It would cut the deficit by a bit more than the $1.2 trillion required of the supercommittee, with about $700 billion coming from spending cuts. It would lower the top tax rate for individuals from 35 percent to 28 percent, and generate around $500 billion in new revenue from closing unspecified tax loopholes and reducing tax deductions….<\/p>\n

Toomey, whose plan was presented verbally to his colleagues and not in written bill form, did not specify which spending or tax deductions to cut. In a phone interview Friday, he said his preference would be across the board reductions in deductions as opposed to eliminating any entirely.<\/p>\n

His plan equates to $1.50 of cuts for every $1 of new revenue, he said. It’s a huge concession for Republicans, he said, considering the bipartisan National Commission on Fiscal Responsibility and Reform had recommended $3 in cuts for each $1 of new revenue.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

This is not a place for compromise.<\/p>\n

Hugh Hewitt has some challenges – pronouncing names seems to vex him – but on this sort of subject, he’s as good as they come. \u00a0And he’s not happy<\/a>:<\/p>\n

What is crucial is that this approach be loudly and quickly rejected by the House GOP and key GOP senators as any such plan is an enormous breach of faith with the voters who sent back a new GOP majority and who will be asked in less than a year to do so again and to add enough GOP senators to make a working majority for a new Republican president. Any deal like Toomey’s would greatly injure the chances of gathering the sort of energy necessary to recreate the 2010, 1994 or 1980 sweep because it would be an obvious indictment of the credibility of the House and Senate GOP, not one member of which ran on such a platform last year.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

I’m not the first to say that this – if it actually happens – is another “Read My Lips” moment; a compromise that depends on the integrity of the Democrats in keeping up their end of a bargain. \u00a0They have none, and they won’t. \u00a0Ask George H. W. Bush (and, for that matter, Ronald Reagan).<\/p>\n

Hewitt:<\/p>\n

Both [Jeb Hensarling and Pat Toomey] seem to have forgotten that they were not sent back to D.C. to re-engineer the government or “reform” the tax code so that millions would pay more and millions would pay less and more total revenue would flow into it, but so that spending would be drastically cut.<\/p>\n

They were not sent there to be part of the all-knowing, all seeing Committee of Oz.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

Which is, by the way, exactly what may of us knew the “Supercommittee” was going to turn into.<\/p>\n

It’s time to bum-rush the Capitol switchboard again.<\/p>\n

If you’re in Minnesota,<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

With the Tea Party putting the wind in its sails, the GOP scored a historic reversal last fall, turning the Obama “revolution” back on its heels. Is the GOP establishment about to completely blow it? Well, not if I have anything to say about it. \u00a0Needless to say, I’m going to need some help. ———- […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[16,69,123],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-24407","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-conservatism","category-socialism","category-taxes"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/24407","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=24407"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/24407\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":24410,"href":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/24407\/revisions\/24410"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=24407"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=24407"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=24407"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}