Boehner held a press conference about the fiscal cliff Thursday morning, and he used this chart to illustrate how much spending the government does versus how much tax revenue Washington takes in. You see, our taxes are simply not enough to keep up with their spending. Here's how Boehner addressed it, though...
BOEHNER: Republicans want to solve this problem by getting the spending line down. The president wants to pretend the spending isn't the problem. That's why we don't have an agreement. The chart depicts what I've been saying for a long time now. Washington has a spending problem. That can't be fixed with tax increases alone.
Alone? Just when you think he's getting somewhere, a concession is made...
RUSH: Now, let me parse that, because there are two things in that statement. You might have heard only one. You might have heard Boehner say, "We have spending problem," and about that he's correct. But then he said, and his last words in this bite were, "Washington has a spending problem. That can't be fixed with tax increases ALONE." Thereby accepting the premise that there will be tax increases.
He's accepting the proposition -- the premise, the idea, the notion, the fact. We can't fix the problem "with tax increases ALONE." There are going to have to be spending cuts. What we need are spending cuts and tax cuts, folks. If we really want to fix this -- if we really want more money to the Treasury, if we want to generate more economic growth and more jobs -- you cut spending and you cut taxes.
But that's not what Obama is about.
There's no desire to cut governed government. There's no desire to cut spending or entitlements. There's none of that. So there's no common ground here.
And that's so, because for Obama, this is not simply about winning a fight. No, it's about forcing Boehner and Republicans to confess, to concede, that what we know to be economically true -- that tax cuts (genuine economic stimulus) combined with spending cuts (minimized government) is the only thing that can get us out of this mess -- is what the Democrats want them to say caused all of our current economic problems. Yep, it's still Bush's fault...and Reagan's too for that matter. Never mind Obama's last four years of economic stagnation and ruin. We need to go back to the bogus Clinton surpluses, because tax cuts (and spending cuts) don't work. Ludicrous, ain't it? Well, Obama's spokes-idiot confirmed it...
RUSH: There you have it, folks. They're just now admitting it. The Bush tax cuts of 2001 and 2003, that's why we're in this mess, and it's Boehner's fault. He has to admit it. His record is "abysmal." He predicted those tax cuts would lead to economic growth and high employment, and it didn't happen. But it did. It did! These guys are purposely, and everybody else is purposely, forgetting what they lived through.
Just like everybody apparently has forgotten the absolute most robust economic recovery in the history of the world, which took place in the eighties. That economic recovery lasted 25 years, the Reagan recovery. It was an expansion of the US economy which nobody had never been seen before.
But now the revisionists want Republicans to admit that none of that ever worked. That's what's going on, friends.
