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Top Dem: Republican Budget Will ‘Haunt’ Mitt Romney

May 8, 2012 RSS Feed Print

The ranking Democrat on the House Budget Committee promised Tuesday that former Massachusetts Gov. Mitt Romney and the GOP will pay a political price for their attempts to avoid mandated defense spending cuts by slashing social safety net programs.

Monday night, the House Budget Committee passed a "Sequester Replacement Act," which would cut roughly $380 billion, mostly from programs like food stamps, child tax credits, and Medicaid, in order to forestall scheduled cuts in defense spending. You will recall that the defense cuts came as a result of the failure of the so called super committee which was supposed to come up with a long-term deficit plan.

[See a collection of political cartoons on the budget and deficit.]

Democrats are, correctly, pressing the argument that the GOP budget favors the rich and moneyed interests over the middle class.

"That's going to be a powerful argument that the president can make—after all Mitt Romney has said that the House Republican budget is—quote—'wonderful,' and I think that that's going to come back to haunt him," Maryland Rep. Chris Van Hollen, the ranking Democrat on the Budget Committee, told reporters Tuesday morning. Van Hollen was very careful how he framed the argument, making sure to talk about it in terms of the middle class rather than the poor—in other words setting it up as an appeal to swing voters rather than something which could inspire ire from them over the freeloading poor.

[Read the U.S. News debate: Will the New Ryan Budget Plan Hurt the GOP in 2012?]

"It's not just going after the poor, it's going after middle income voters. It's going after seniors and ending the Medicare guarantee," he told reporters at a press breakfast organized by the Christian Science Monitor. "Their proposal to Medicare would give seniors a much worse deal than members of Congress get," he said, noting that members of Congress have a fixed portion of their medical costs covered, whereas under the Ryan plan the portion covered for seniors would decrease.

"People do want to close the tax loopholes and they want to end a lot of the tax breaks for the wealthiest Americans and they recognize that if we don't ask the very wealthy to share more of the responsibility, then result is that everybody else and everything else gets hit a lot harder" Van Hollen added. "That's very clear from the Republican budget, that's very clear from what we saw yesterday."

Tags:
Chris Van Hollen,
deficit and national debt,
2012 presidential election,
federal budget,
Mitt Romney

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brucetee writes "the free ride that those on the upper rungs on the income ladder have had need to come to an end"

My you have a BLIND EYES to facts I've been giving:

“According to the non-partisan Congressional Budget Office (CBO), the Bush tax cuts actually shifted the total tax burden farther toward the rich so that in 2000-2004, total income tax paid by the top 40% of income-earners grew by 4.6% to 99.1% of the total.”

http://www.americanthinker.com/2010/03/lying_about_bushs_tax_cuts.html

Your links not found.

Notice I give my points THEN give link. How I, smarter than Yale PHD do it.

IN THE PAST:

In “Ted Nugent, Hilary Rosen Sheltering Obama from Scrutiny” you wrote “In fact average workers during that period,lost ground, due to stagnant wage increases,and reduced purchasing power". Did not find proof of that in your two links. Prehaps you can quote as I do... For sure, your earlier quote “the economic growth,of which he speakes, benefited, by a wide margin,those on the upper rungs of the income ladder. very little ,if any, trickled down to the folks on main st” __ is NOT substantiated __ ... What he spoke has nothing to do with your two articles...

In the first link it says “Experts point to some of the usual suspects -- like technology and globalization -- to explain the widening gap between the haves and have-nots”

Also says “One major pull on the working man was the decline of unions and other labor protections, said Bill Rodgers, a former chief economist for the Labor Department, now a professor at Rutgers University”

Also says “International competition is another factor. While globalization has lifted millions out of poverty in developing nations, it hasn't exactly been a win for middle class workers in the U.S.”

Also says “While average folks were losing ground in the economy, the wealthiest were capitalizing on some of those same factors, and driving an even bigger wedge between themselves and the rest of America”

http://money.cnn.com/2011/02/16/news/economy/middle_class/index.htm

YOUR SECOND ARTICLE SAID ___ Second says “The latest census data depict a middle class that's shrinking as unemployment stays high and the government's safety net frays. The new numbers follow years of stagnating wages for the middle class that have hurt millions of workers and families

http://www.newsobserver.com/2011/12/16/1713834/census-1-in-2-americans-are-poor.html#storylink=cpy”

YOU WROTE __ Don’t see how this, as you wrote, “In fact average workers during that period,lost ground, due to stagnant wage increases,and reduced purchasing power" MATCH UP as proof.

__

As I have quoted before (Reason for recession and high unemployment. Nothing to do with tax cuts for rich):

"It’s important to keep in mind that the recession had nothing to do with the tax cuts. The recession was brought on by destructive federal intervention in the subprime mortgage market, irresponsible funding and securitization of subprime loans by Freddie Mac and Fannie Mae, unsound Federal Reserve monetary policy, a lack of oversight by the Securities and Exchange Commission, greed and fraud committed by certain large banks and investment firms, and consumers who bought homes they really couldn’t afford."

http://www.mtgriffith.com/web_documents/taxcutfacts.htm

Bill Hedges of MO 5:31PM May 09, 2012

Just a couple of tidbits on the negative effects of the "bush tax cuts" on the economy.

-------------------------------------------------------------

usbudget.blogspot/2011/01/ effect_of_bush_tax_cut_on revenues

r. davis

-------------------------------------------------------------

www.epi.org/publication/webfeatures

-snapshot-20051026

-------------------------------------------------------------

the free ride that those on the upper rungs on the income ladder have had need to come to an end.

bruce b of NV 7:54AM May 09, 2012

Correction

$$$ 1/2 billion...

Bill Hedges of MO 12:44AM May 09, 2012

Robert Schlesinger

Robert Schlesinger

Robert Schlesinger is managing editor for opinion at U.S. News and World Report, overseeing all opinion editorial content. He is the author of "White House Ghosts: Presidents and Their Speechwriters." E-mail him at rschlesinger@usnews.com. Follow him on Twitter: @rschles.

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