Saturday, July 21, 2012

Republican have an Incurable Spending Disease


It's no secret that Republicans are notorious big spenders. In fact, the Republicans spent more than the Democrats they replaced when a new crop of Tea Party Republicans got elected to Congress in 2010.

The Tea Party Republicans Spent More Than the Dems They Replaced

For years, Republican friendly broadcast, print and blog media just ignored Republican spending and simply spun every fiscal nightmare into a problem caused exclusively by the Democrats.  While it may be a convenient lie to support the Republican 'fiscal conservative' mantra, the truth is far more sinister - Republican voters really don't care about the spending, the deficit or the debt so long as they are in control.  Some in the Republican universe are beginning to take notice of the stone cold reality that Republicans are addicted to spending.

NetRightDaily.com, a site that generally focuses on bashing Obama and the Democrats, took the Republicans to task and exposed their big spending habits.

The House GOP has a spending problem

Republicans are also responsible for vastly expanding existing entitlement programs and creating new entitlements (Medicare Part D is a multi-trillion dollar senior prescription drug program created by Bush and the Republicans).  On a more ludicrous note, the mouthpieces for the Republican Party are on a rant accusing President Obama of being the Food Stamp President.  The truth, however, proves otherwise.

Bush is the REAL Food Stamp President
It’s true that the most recent figures from the Department of Agriculture’s Food and Nutrition Service (provided to Factcheck.org/USA Today) show that a record number of people—some 46.2 million—are enrolled in the program. But the same data shows that more individuals were added to the program while George W. Bush was in office than have enrolled under Obama’s presidency: Under Bush, the program grew by 14.7 million individuals; under Obama so far, it’s grown by 14.2 million, and, as of October, was declining.

So Bush wins on volume, and Obama wins on velocity: In just a few years, President Obama managed to expand the program by nearly as much as Bush. But Obama didn’t do it without some help from his Republican predecessor, who approved policy changes that set the stage for the program’s current growth.

To some extent, the food stamps expansion the country has seen under Obama is how food stamps are supposed to work: It’s a countercyclical program, meaning that as the economy declines, enrollment grows. Typically, then, the program grows in recessions and declines in economic boom times. But with the 2002 farm bill, President Bush dramatically expanded eligibility, restoring benefits to nearly a million individuals at the beginning of 2003, and paving the way for the program to expand as it did during the rest of presidency. As a result, Bush managed to oversee unprecedented growth in the program even as the economy grew. Obama then followed up on this with an eligibility expansion of his own in the 2009 stimulus package.
Republicans in Congress continue to vote for all kinds of taxpayer funded corporate welfare, including:

NASCAR and Formula One are Welfare Queens

Congress Loves Corporate Welfare Queens - Votes to Keep $1.9 Billion in Annual Sugar Subsidies

Republicans never saw an entitlement program or a corporate welfare program they didn't like.  In the District of Crime (DC) it's all about wheeling and dealing with defense contractors and America's fascist oligarchs to fill campaign coffers.

As a fiscal conservative who used to vote Republican, I just got to the point where I could no longer even hold my nose and vote Republican, not even if I was drunk out of my mind and under the influence of every pharmaceutical known to exist.  In many ways, the Democrats are far more honest than the hideously disingenuous Republicans.  The Dems will tell you upfront that they fully intend to plunder you, deny you the right to earn a living, seize every asset you own, take away your liberty and force you to live in totalitarian hell.

What the Democrats do outright, the Republicans do by stealth.

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