Democrats Should Focus On Jobs, Not Shirley Sherrod

1. Get rid of the dogmatic and intolerant Environmentalist regulations that tie industry down like a thousand Lilliputin threads. The eco-regs cost time, jobs and money. Business flees to a more friendly "environment".

2. Establish "right to work" laws in every state.

3. Offer tax incentives to corporations who bring out sourced jobs home. Impose tax penalties on those that don't.

4. Investment tax credits.

5. Lower capital gains taxes.

6. Raise taxes on those making over 1 million a year. They will just have to soldier on keeping only 25% over 1 million.

7. In 1970 top executives made about 20 times more than their mid-level employees. Now they make more than 150 times that amount. Either tax it out of them or let them pay their employees more voluntarily.

8. Close the border and deport all who are here less than 5 years.

9. Fines and jail time for those who employee illegals.

10. Build nuclear and hydroelectric power plants. Open more areas to drilling for oil. We need cheap energy to compete.

R.L. Schaefer of CA 9:38PM July 22, 2010

Pay as you go was passed under obama's watch. NOT UNDER BUSH.

Focus...

Every other word out of you mouth is calling tea party racist. If you are going to lie talk to someone else.

Bill Hedges of MO 8:39PM July 22, 2010

Must you always bloviate so much ? You mention the evil , dark Bill Hedges , you fail to comment on what I said , why ?

Funny how you guys always slip racism into any article about any subject these days , are these marching orders from media matters and the White House ?

Hunter of WI 8:10PM July 22, 2010

When these two post comments like this back to back it is very hard to know where to start. But here goes.

Bill accuses Democrats of passing legislation without paying for it. I seem to remember $2.5 trillion in tax cuts for the rich (this includes interest); a half a trillion dollar Medicare Part D giveaway to big pharma (2006); two wars whose cost estimates vary but a trillion each at this point is reasonable; and a $700 billion TARP program in 2008 and not one Republican EVER questioned how this spending spree costing nearly $6 trillion was to be paid for. Now that Obama wants a mere $34 billion to pay for unemployment benefit extensions for America's working families who've been out of work on average for six months, the GOP suddenly become deficit hawks and guardians of the nation's finances. This is nothing short of a hypocritical disgrace!! The GOP has no shame in openly defending its rich paymasters. I just don't get how the rest of the country is so stupid as to go along with them.

The thing is that the nearly six trillion dollar boondoggle of the Bush years which has doomed us to deficits and slow growth for years wasn't even the kind of spending that is economically stimulating. The wars, bailouts, tax cuts and Medicare prescription program all had less than a multiplier of one. They all sucked capital out of the economy that could have been used for productive investment. And, of course, none of it was fully funded. There was one thing that all four of these pet spending projects of Bush had in common; they all made his rich GOP supporters much richer. The giveaway to big pharma (which does little for retirees because of the famous "doughnut hole"); the hundreds of billions in war profiteering over the past decade (after a certain point there were much more private contractors in Iraq than troops); the tax cuts (a third of which went to the upper 1% of income earners creating no jobs-Bush had the slowest labor market recovery on record; it took four years for unemployment rates to drop back to their pre-recession levels); and the TARP bailout costing $700 billion (it is estimated that several trillions in loans, bailouts and guarantees to the banks were given so far with no real resurgence in lending but huge reported quarterly profits by the big banks) all did little or nothing for the American People.

Obama has already given tax cuts worth about $300 billion to 95% of the American people. He will renew the Bush tax cuts for all but those earning over $250,000 per year (the top 5%) who will experience a slight increase. Taxes are at a historic low point for every strata of tax payer, especially after Obama's recent cuts. The tax increase on the most affluent will not change this fact. The idea of health care reform was wildly popular so long as a public option was included which had overwhelming support. The fiscal stimulus, which includes much entitlement spending, was controlled by individual states, not the federal government.

steve of IL 7:43PM July 22, 2010