Do you think Republicans will use their budget control power to derail the recovery in hopes it will help them win in 2012?

A classical pyrrhic victory if it were true.

The republicans don’t have that much control of the budget. Whatever they pass still has to be approved by the Democrat controlled Senate and Obama.

Anything that gets done will need to have bipartisan support.

Yes, they’ve already started it in California by announcing they won’t take part in the budget process because the Democrats have control of the legislature.

If you’re surprised, then you aren’t listening. Both parties play this game and have. Democrats are just as guilty.

Your link to the lib-loving Washington Post returns this message: We are unable to locate the page you requested. The page may have moved or may no longer be available

I cannot recall any point in my lifetime when the GOP was actually concerned about things like the future, sustainability, or much of anything else beyond ensuring profit for themselves and their cronies. That is sad really, since many of the people who support them do so out of a desire for small government, fiscal responsibility, and all of the other things that the current/recent-day Republican party is vehemently opposed to beyond giving it lip service to get votes from their base.

So yes, I could see the Republicans launching pre-emptive nuclear strikes against American cities if they honestly thought it would scare voters into voting for them in 2012, so scuttling the budget seems almost inevitable.

And before I get blasted by Conservatives, ask yourselves if the Republicans you voted for actually lived up to your ideals rather than be corrupted, enacted policies that backfired spectacularly, or such things behind your back like Reagan cutting income tax while raising Social Security tax.

@jlelandg Sad but true. Unfortunately, most people on both sides seem to think that their shit doesn’t stink :p

@ETpro I couldn’t get your link to work either. Is it working for others besides @jlelandg and me? Others have commented on it so I have to guess it’s working. What’s the date and headline? I’ll look it up..

I tried that trick once, and it backfired on me. I thought Bush II would be a one term Prez because the economy would tank on him. Instead he got 9/11 and the rest is history.

The Republicans may be stupid, but I don’t think they are that stupid. It’s a very risky strategy and you just can’t know what the future will bring. We are all on the same side, at least as far as the future of the people of the US is concerned. That is, the people as a whole, not individual sectors of it. Clearly, the R’s only care about the rich, when individuals are concerned.

Again, I don’t know why you guys are slaying Republicans only. Democrat politicians will do the same when they’re in power.

I don’t think so, but I may only be saying that out of optimistic hope.

I strongly believe their rhetoric and mis-characterization of HCR and the recession were purely for political gain, and they were able to regain the House because of it. I think it is highly likely that Fox News is responsible for deluding enough of the public into electing the GOP back in power.

What article are you all commenting about? The link doesn’t work.

If they can. It’ll be yet more proof that the Republicans care more about politics than people and the good of the country. Business as usual.

Just so that I know if I have this straight. Ya’ll believe that the best way to solve the debt crisis is to spend our way out of it. And not only do you believe that but you feel that everyone knows it and if you say otherwise, it is because you want to destroy the country. I don’t think we’re in Kansas anymore.

I assume it is totally impossible to believe that a little fiscal responsibility would be prudent. Especially since we’ve gone another $5 trillion in debt and we’re only in Obama’s third year. And it would be ridiculous to note that we’re approaching $4 gas again which looks to me like the beginning of our dreaded double dip. Which of course in your minds would mean even more spending and even bigger deficits to solve that one as well.

It may be time to set aside the pipe and clear your heads. The spending hasn’t worked because it doesn’t ever work.

@WestRiverrat It isn’t as simple as that. The Republicans in the house can force an impasse where they refuse to agree to anything in conference between the house and senate unless it includes draconian cuts that will crash the economy. If the Senate Democrats or Obama stop those cuts from going forward, the Republicans can then blame them for letting the Government default on its debt obligations and defunding the government in a time of war. Hedy political stuff. Of course, it is sheer nonsense because the Democrats showed NO interest in defunding the government when they held both chambers of Congress and the White House. But the American voters are not a highly informed electorate. They will likely believe the shortest bumper sticker out there.

@YARNLADY Yes, how unfair that the voters spoke.

@jlelandg & @bkcunningham Sorry about the broken link. I was trying to circumvent the obligatory ad, but no such luck. THey are now on to that trick. Here’s a working link, and just click to skip te ad. http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2011/02/15/AR2011021505223.html?wpisrc=nl_pmopinions

@wundayatta I don’t believe that. I believe that today the Republicans in particular and the Democrats all too often as well are only on the side of the Banksters and the Multinational corporations that fund them The five most profitable corporations on Earth are all oil companies, and have been for years. In a frenzy of budget cutting that looks at destroying pensions, increasing the retirement age for Social Security, slashing Medicare, and cutting food inspectors and even IRS agents—making it easier for tax cheats to get away with being scofflaws. But the are adamant about keeping the F35 engines the Pentagon says are unneeded, and in preserving the 440 billioin in tax credits to big oil. The 5 most profitable corporations on Earth for the last 5 years have all been oil companies, but they need out help and seniors don’t. No, I don’t buy that “They’re all the same” moral relativism.. It isn’t true. Democrats stink too, but not nearly as bad as that.

@cockswain Healthcare Reform is another area where the glaring differences show. As flawed as what came out of the sausage making process was, it is a substantial improvement on the status quo. The Republicans are in a pitched battle to preserve a heartless industry’s “rights” to cancel paying customers if they get seriously ill, to exclued preexisting conditions, to set annual and lifetime caps on benefits, and to routinely deny claims for covered expenses in hopes that less affluent subscribers won’t have the ability to parse through the fine print or hire the legal help needed to collect what they are legitimately owed.

@Jaxk Unfortunately, yes. We can look at what happened under Hoover and then under FDR. Spending worked., Austerity did not. Note that the second “Recession with the Depression” in 1937–38 was when FDR gave heed to Republican howls about being fiscally conservative and cut back spending.

Spending will run up more debt, and the time will come to pay it back down. But the time for austerity is not when you are still trying to get the economy back in full operation. We can definitely comb through the budget and cut everything that is not stimulative. But that appears to be the opposite of the direction the Republicans are taking, and that is what leads me to think this is deliberate sabotage of their own country in favor of a handful of oligarchs who may actually profit from the fire-sale prices on assets that a second deep recession will bring.

@Jaxk Given the true cost of the alternative, I would say that it’s a counter-intuitive fact backed by history. Then again, I don’t know of many Conservatives who look at the long term (>2 years down the road) or at the past either; they tend to look at short-term gains and that is it.

BTW, how is it that Obama is demonized for having the same ill effects on the deficit and national debt as Reagan and the two Bushes and yet the GOP not only gets a pass, but are canonized as the epitome of fiscal leadership? Or are you willing to concede that there is a double standard there?

FDR programs have us in “global warming hockey stick theory” style increased spending. This thread seems to indicate the US is on it’s way to even more government control of our lives. WHEEEEE.

@ETpro

I can’t help but giggle when you guys bring up FDR as an example of what worked. Hell FDR kept us in depression for a decade and you call that success. When after 4 years of his tax and spend policy we had brought unemployment down from 20% to 15% and you guys hold that up as an example of success. Then just like Obama wants to do he raised taxes (afterall we had been so amazingly successful) and guess what, we turned back and unemployment rose again. Your highly touted drop in government spending in 1938 was insignificant.

The tax increases were however very significant and we should look to the kinds of things that FDR (and Hoover) did and try to avoid them. Hoover raised taxes significantly taking the top tax rate from 25% to 63%. Even with that burden on the economy we were recovering the day FDR took office. That is, by the way, before his New Deal. But the economy was struggling against an incredible headwind of taxes and financial idiocy.

FDR was a big ‘Soak the Rich’ fan (sound familiar). He was also a huge union guy guy giving preferential treatment to union workers (again sound familiar). Union wages increased throughout the recession but jobs did not. That’s because all the extra money went to higher wages rather than more jobs. The economy actually grew at a fairly brisk pace (over 9%) but it didn’t result in jobs nor did it reduce the deficit since all the new money went to taxes and government programs (this is getting scarily familiar). Then in ‘36 he decided to increase taxes again, taking the tax rate to 79%. Hell, we needed more headwind. And of course lets not forget the Social Security tax in ‘37 that put another 2% on everybody. And I won’t even go into his excise taxes and corporate taxes or windfall profits taxes (it’s just to close to the Obama plans to think about). And of course lets not get into the bank regulation that forced them to retain more capital on thier books at a time when lending would have been more productive (again the similarities to Obama are striking). That took a struggling economy right back down the toilet.

There is an absolute fact that liberals don’t want to think about. The measure of GDP is based on all the goods and services we produce. Guess what, the government doesn’t produce anything, it creates additional cost. In some cases I would even agree that it is a necessary cost but it is a cost nonetheless. When industry invests in new equipment or new employees, the anticipated result is more product or better product. When government takes that money and creates a new agency or more regulation, nothing more gets produced, no products get improved. It merely adds to the cost of products already produced.

OK, I’m sure you’ll go back to the age old, worn out story about roads helping the economy and I’ll admit they are a better use of funds than another regulatory body but still less productive than than would be otherwise used for private industry. The only way out of this mess is to turn industry loose and let them grow. Not hamstring them with more taxes, more regulation and more government bureaucracy. FDR already tried that and it didn’t work. The Great Depression was not a success story.

@jerv

I can’t help but wonder if you have any idea at all what the true cost of either the current programs or the alternatives might be.

“how is it that Obama is demonized for having the same ill effects on the deficit and national debt as Reagan and the two Bushes”

Hell, I would applaud Obama if he had the same effects as the two Bush’s and I would literally kiss his ass if he had the effect of Reagan. Remember that Reagan not only pulled us out of a severe recession (double digit unemployment, 20% inflation, etc., etc.) but he ushered in 20 years of prosperity. Where exactly have you been and what history are you reading?

The only double standard I see are those that cry about Bush’s $500 billion deficit and applaud Obama’s $1.6 trillion deficit. Hell at this point I long for the days of the deficit being measured in billions. I never thought I hear myself say that. See what you’ve driven me to say.

@Jaxk That’s not how I remember it. Hey, isn’t Social Security one of (if not the) biggest drains on the economy? Who was it that kept that old clunker going and raised taxes a fair bit to do so? The Gipper! And I think we have slightly different ideas of prosperity.

I long for the days of no deficits at all, but it seems that the Republicans are the kings of deficit spending and debt generation. I’m not saying Obama has ben great (he hasn’t) but his failures don’t make Republicans perfect, nor do they revise history. But Reagan got canonized for…

Screw it; not worth the time. We’re both stubborn, so I’ll just stop there.

@Jaxk We’ve been through the discussion about the Great Depression before. The record of what happened from 1929 to 1933 under Hoover is quite clear, as is the recovery that began in 1933 when FDR took office. You tried to claim that Hoover raised taxes and that’s why his approach was such an abysmal failure. Remember, I pointed out to you that the fact is his tax increase did not take effect till after he left office. You claimed that federal spending didn’t help the Depression, even though I showed you that the GDP recovered fully BEFORE Pearl Harbor. You claimed that the New Deal Spending made things worse even though the facts show the opposite. You claimed federal spending didn’t end the depression, WWII did. And I pointed out that WWII was federal spending on a previously unheard of level. But none of that makes a dent in your conviction that only austerity produces growth. Clearly facts and figures are subservient to ideology for you. Believe whatever you wish. If you are ever able to show me proof, I will actually look at it. I am not a tax and spend Ideologue. I am a true conservative. Conservative means believing in tried and true solutions when ever they fit, and that’s what I believe in.

@ETpro

A couple of points here. First I don’t think that taking the budget back to $3 trillion is exactly austerity. You love to isolate your facts and ignore the bigger picture. By the mid to late ‘30s the rest of the world had already recovered from the depression. We did not. Somehow you want to twist that to show how great FDR’s policies were. I’m sorry twelve years of depression is not a story I’d like to replicate.

Here’s an article that doesn’t seem to have any political slant but talks to many of the problems and actions during the ‘30s. They are eerily similar to what has happened today and many of the actions are quite similar to what Obama has done. The adversarial relationship between government and business, the push to give unions more power, the increase in requirement for bank reserves, housing, regulation, etc.

For all your effort to isolate spending as the savior, it simply doesn’t pan out. Can government spending have some impact on the economy, of course it can. But you need to spend way more than necessary and the effects last no longer than the spending. As soon as you stop, the economy reverts back to whatever the market is doing. Government spending is a trap that gives the appearance of doing something without really accomplishing anything. And the downside is disastrous.

You want to believe that we pushed spending to previously unheard, of levels but ignore the fact that we also pushed taxes to previously unheard of levels. We pushed regulation to previously unheard of levels. We manipulated the economy in ways never tried before. You want to credit FDR for ending the depression but it appears he should be blamed for delaying the recovery. And our current policies are doing the exact same thing.

If you consider FDR’s policies as tried and true solutions then we can expect another 10 years of recession. Frankly I was hoping for something better.

i love threads with @Jaxk , @ETpro , and @jerv. For real.

@ETpro

Sorry, but I missed one point. I have never claimed that WWII ended the depression. It was the post war manufacturing boom that ended the depression. Without it, those 12 million men in uniform would have gone right back on the unemployment roles and we would have continued where we left off.

@Jaxk I think it is you. my friend, who is fond of isolating facts and ignoring the big picture. The big picture is so wildly dramatic that only by ignoring it altogether can you arrive at a conclusion diametrically opposed to what it shows.

Here is the graph of how well Hoover’s “fiscal responsibility” restored confidence to the markets, and how the GDP recovered after Hoover left office and FDR came is. The GDP line is a distinct V, with it plummeting precipitously under Republican rule and immediately and dramatically climbing under Democratic rule. That is the big picture.

I quote from the rebuttal of FDR prolonged the Depression for 7 years “Between the crash of 1929 and the election of FDR in 1932 wages had fallen by 40%. Global and domestic economic output recovered steadily under FDR after plummeting under Hoover. By the time FDR took office the economy was in ruins – it had been in free-fall for three years and it took until WW2 to recover. Since it was the first modern depression one can expect that mistakes were made and the policies were imperfect. ”

That is the big picture, not dissembling and snatching bits here and there to try to obscure the big picture.

Further, as I have shown you repeatedly, the US GDP did recover back to where it would have been if there were no Great Depression, and it did so before Pearl Harbor. We recovered right along with the rest of the world. Bear in mind the US is the nation that dragged the rest of the world into the Great Depression.

@ETpro

Well, I’m convinced. If those dummies back in the 30’s had only had a few liberal bloggers to point how well we were doing they wouldn’t have been so miserable. Unfortunately they thought they were unemployed. Ah yes, the forgotten statistic. As I’ve said earlier, the economy did grow, it just didn’t translate into jobs. Unions did well, government workers did well, it was just the average slob on the street that didn’t do so well. Kinda like today.

In fact the economy bottomed out in ‘32. Kinda like today where the economy bottomed out in 2009. If we want a jobless recovery as we had in the 30s, we’re on the right track. Hell who needs jobs anyway. As long as we have a recovery that makes the statisticians look good, the general public can learn to accept it. You just need to be a little selective on your statistics.

“Trailer for sale or rent,
Rooms to let fifty cents.
No pool, no phone, no pets,
I ain’t got no cigarettes.
Ah but two hours of pushing broom,
buys an eight by twelve four bit room.
I’m a man of means by no means
King of the road.”

I guess Roger Miller had it right.

@Jaxk I thought one of the biggest justifications for trickle-up economics was that the uber-rich would then invest and give companies enough capital to grow. The top tier has seen their wealth grow while the other 90% has stagnated in the last decade, so something tells that that part of the plan is flawed, otherwise there would be jobs aplenty.
Now you are trying to say that the way to create jobs is to gut the only part of the economy that seems to be working, if slowly? I might agree if the billionaires out there were creating enough jobs to reduce the need for a lot of government spending like EUC, but they aren’t so someone else (in this case, the government, and therefore taxpayers) has to pick up the slack

I read something to the effect that the rich just throw the bulk extra loot on the pile (no source, so take it with a grain of salt, can’t remember where) Warren Buffet in a 60 Minutes interview recently said that it doesn’t help either.

When you get enough money, I’m guessing you get sick of trying to find ways to put it to innovative use.

@jerv

Sorry but again, I can’t follow your point. What part am I trying to gut?

@cockswain

I’m not sure how you figure that. If your’re rich you typically put the money somewhere other than the mattress. Whether it is in stocks or banks, it goes to help the economy.

@Jaxk Austerity has it’s place, but now isn’t the time at least not for some of the cuts you seem to support. I think we both support spending wisely and keeping the budget as lean as possible without jeopardizing our nation though.

I hate having a thought and not being able to put it into words :(

@jerv

Here’s my problem and the point where you and I miss each other.

Clinton’s last budget was $1.8 trillion. Eight years later Bush’s last budget was $2.9 trillion. One year later Obama budget was $3.8 trillion. Now we all think Bush was over the top on spending but really $3.8 trillion? You may make a case for TARP and I won’t argue. You could even make a case for Stimulus and I’d think you were duped but understand your thinking. You could make a case for the unemployment extensions and I’d give you some slack on the first few but not indefinite. Where we must part company is the expansion of government. Obama has expanded government (employees, wages, etc.) by 25%. What the hell did we get for that? And even after his initial surge of spending (Tarp/Stimulus/cash for clunkers/mortgage bailouts/unemployment/etc.) he is still running a $3.8 trillion budget. I thought it was supposed to be an injection of cash not an ongoing spending spree.

You all revere Clinton. Hell he had a $1.8 trillion budget. Was that so bad? What services were we shortchanging during that time? You all scream about the Iraq war and what it cost. Well it’s ending, where the hell are the savings from that?

As long as you use vague generalities to make your points we will continue to miss each other. Neither the Clinton nor the Bush eras were austere, and getting the budget back to the exaggerated levels of the bush years is not “as lean as possible”. Hell, it’s not lean at all.

@Jaxk We must part company on the expansion of government? Says who?
There are quite a few things that I think we should not have spent money on. I am no fan of “Cash for clunkers”, much of the Homeland Security waste, and quite a few other things. Unemployment out to 18 months and increasing the head count to deal with the added work that entails to keep backlog closer to 2–4 weeks than 8–10 as it is in some states is actually about the only part of the Obama budget that I am 100% for without reservation or holding my nose, and that is only because unemployment is about double what it has been for most of my life. TARP and the stimulus were a bit of a stretch, but I have seen stupider things done.

I don’t revere Clinton. He was a politician, but my opinion of him is neutral. In that, he is relatively better than any president in my lifetime. However, I do have to bash Bush-43 a bit partly since I feel that if he had either stayed out of Iraq or gone in there the right way the first time, it would not have dragged on so long and would’ve saved a lot of heartache and taxpayer money in the long run as opposed to being a festering wound in our wallets.

I knew in 2008 that this presidential term was going to suck one way or the other though :D

@jerv

OK, let me try a different approach. My whole intention here is to get the budget back to some reasonable, sustainable financial plan. Clinton increased his budget from $1.5 trillion (his first) to $1.8 trillion (his last) over 8 years. I have my criticisms of Clinton but the budget increases are not one of them. Bush increased the budget to $2.9 trillion again in 8 years. I do criticize Bush for that budget increase. Prescription drugs were a bigger budget problem than the Iraq war but there were plenty of other wasteful projects as well. Now we are up to $3.8 trillion under Obama. I understand the idea of stimulus. I don’t agree with the way it was done and I think it is fairly obvious that it hasn’t worked. But OK, he tried.

Now here we are going on three years later. The TARP has been spent ($700 billion) and about half has been repaid. Stimulus has mostly been spent. Cash for clunkers, mortgage bailouts etc. all spent and done (a few stragglers aside). So if we needed $3.8 to do all this stuff, why are we still spending at that level after it is all done?

Here’s my opinion. Bush had the war spending ‘Off-Budget’. That is, the war spending required a separate appropriation to fund it. That made it easy to track and easy to eliminate (you simply didn’t do the appropriation to stop funding it). Obama decided it should be put into the budget. At that point it is no longer easy to track nor is it easy to remove. It is part of the budget and to remove it you need to go through the entire defense budget and endure the long standing fight to reduce it. A complex nightmare for what should have been easy. I don’t know if it was malicious intent or just his lack of business experience that made him make such a stupid move. But that is not only the way he handled the defense spending but also the way he handled Stimulus and everything else he’s done. It was all wrapped into the budget. The departments that handled the stimulus spending saw huge budget increases.

Now that stimulus is (mostly) over, those budgets are still huge. You can’t just pull them back down because they’ve been used for salary increases, hiring, new programs, it’s all mixed together. So the only way to get this back in line are huge budget cuts. Immediately everyone thinks we’re cutting essential services but really all we’re doing is cutting the programs that are already over. It’s a frigging shell game because the pea isn’t really under any of those shells. It’s in his pocket. And all this noise about cutting the budget is misdirection. It’s only removing what was a temporary influx that is now finished.

@Jaxk “So if we needed $3.8 to do all this stuff, why are we still spending at that level after it is all done?”
I don’t think the entire additional $980 Billion in spending over Bush-43 is justified. Some of it is, but there is also a bit of room to trim; just not where (or at least to the extent) that the Republicans want, and in some areas the GOP won’t touch.
Then again, there are a lot of things that were supposed to expire but haven’t; certain parts of the Bush tax cuts and Patriot Act for example.

Once again, I think you and I agree in principle but disagree on details.

I can see why Obama put the Iraq war into the budget, though I don’t see why it was put in in the way as it was. I mean, I kind of like to have all of the things that come out of our joint account rolled into our household budget so I can just glance at it and say, “We are spending $xxx” as opposed to some lower, more publicly acceptable number. In that, I feel that 43’s $2.9-trillion dollar budget was a lie.

“It’s a frigging shell game…”
I disagree. I think it’s politics as usual :D

As for removing what was a temporary influx, I think it goes a bit beyond that. There are some things there that you and I could agree on, but there are also some things that were supposed to be temporary but, because life didn’t turn out the way it was supposed to, are still at least partially necessary.

Now, trying to get a sustainable budget is going to be tricky with the trickle-up nature of the system we’ve had for many years. Yeah, Reagan did a good thing with the way he cut taxes, but there comes a point where doing the same thing Reagan did won’t improve things and may actually cause harm. And the only people I hear trying to justify deficit spending are Conservatives; intelligent people (including those Conservatives that have brains) prefer balanced budgets.
For a sustainable budget, we need to allow enough money to hit the lower brackets (those earning less than about $60k/yr) in the form of income from employers rather than from government programs like EUC, welfare, etcetera. And if allowing the rich to get richer to the extent that they did/do leads to job creation then why is unemployment still so high? Revising the tax code so that the big companies pay taxes and take the burden off of small businesses (those that actually create most of the jobs) would also be nice.

Somehow, I think part of the problem is that you and I are used to the Republican parties we grew up with. You grew up when they were still somewhat in-line with Conservative thought; small government, fiscal responsibility, yadayada while I grew up after they had turned into greedy, hawkish bastards no better than the Democrats, and am watchng them evolve into a party full of fanatical nut-jobs whose only chance to retain some semblance of dignity is to allow the current internal schism to become a full-fledged split with Conservatives on one side and Zealots on the other. Unfortunately, that wil never happen since that sort of split would allow the surprisingly more cohesive Democrats control; neither side wants to turn this into a three-way fight until they are sure that they have the numbers to beat the Dems without the other’s support.

@jerv

Just about the time I think we’re getting closer you throw in some statement that I can’t follow.

“And the only people I hear trying to justify deficit spending are Conservatives; intelligent people (including those Conservatives that have brains) prefer balanced budgets.”

Trying to get to a balanced budget is what this fight is all about. There has not been a single Democrat that has proposed anything that would take us in that direction. Which conservatives are advocating deficit spending? Hell they’re try to cut spending and that’s what this fight is all about.

Let me go back to the budget issue for just a second and try and relate it to your personal budget. If you are doing a house remodel, it is a one time expense. If you’re smart you set that money aside and use it only for the remodel. Typically you would even put it in a completely separate account. That way you can track how much you’ve spent and insure you don’t use for other non remodel things. When the job is done the account is also done. If you mix it in with your normal bank account, it is in danger of being used for normal expenses and is much more difficult to track. How much is left, how much has been spent, where did the money go, all become problems. Keeping these accounts separate is a normal part of business but something that Obama doesn’t really get.

“there are a lot of things that were supposed to expire but haven’t; certain parts of the Bush tax cuts and Patriot Act for example.”

No it was not certain parts of the tax cuts, it was all the tax cuts. The idea that only part were target for expiration is simply not true. The Democrats wanted to keep part of them and the Republicans wanted to keep all of them. But all were set to expire.

As for the split in the Republican party, that is a media manufactured story. It is no different than it has ever been and no different than the split in the Democratic party between the far left and the not-so-far left. The recent influx of conservatives to congress is a good thing. Not all will be great congressmen and not all will be bad ones. Same as the influx of Liberals 4 years ago.

The big difference here is that I believe we are at a tipping point. The decisions we make right now will set the course for our future and leave little or no time to reverse course. The debt is approaching 100% of GDP. Interest on the debt is piling up so fast that without an immediate reversal it will consume all discretionary spending and leave us nowhere to cut.

Under Bush the spending was bad and it pushed us toward this tipping point but we weren’t there yet. Now we are. To make matters worse the price of gas is escalating fast. That worries me a lot. The amount of money that the cost of gas pulls out of this economy is staggering. Much worse than the tax increase and certainly more than we get from the tax cut extension. Business owners large and small see all this coming down the pike and they are hunkered down for the long run. Same as most of the public.

There are several things I need for my business. I need the parking lot repaved, I need new nozzles, but there is no way I will undertake these upgrades until I know what the economy will do. I can’t leave myself strapped for cash in this environment. You think business is not investing because they are greedy. I think they are not investing out of the survival instinct. You think the people that want to fix the economy are fanatical nut jobs. I think the people that want to prolong this insanity are fanatical nut jobs.

I guess we’ll just have to disagree. Sorry for the rant.

@Jaxk “You think business is not investing because they are greedy. I think they are not investing out of the survival instinct.”
It depends on the business. Small businesses are a bit different from large ones in ways other than magnitude.

“You think the people that want to fix the economy are fanatical nut jobs. I think the people that want to prolong this insanity are fanatical nut jobs.”
I think that anyone who spends millions of dollars to get a job that only pays thousands is a nutjob anyways. However, I feel that insanity is defined as trying the same thing over and over again and expecting different results. I am also a believer in Hanlon’s Razor and the old saying that “The road to Hell is paved with good intentions”, though I often tweak it to “Heart of gold, brain of shit”.

As for mixing the money, I personally see numbers different than a lot of people, so I only see it as an issue for those that are disorganized…. like government. Maybe it’s just the savant in me that allows me to keep it separate when it isn’t, or maybe it’s the OCD way I itemize things.

I still want to see the two-party system go where it belongs (in the history books as a failed experiment) and a coalition-style government take it’s place. Yes, I can already see problems there, but I don’t see them as being worse (or, in fact, even different) from the issues we have now. You are correct that the Republican split is no different from what the Dems have had for decades and is a bit over-hyped though.

Now, to balance the budget at this point would require a lot more than the band-aids and tweaks we’ve been doing for so long. It would require some pretty dramatic changes in both tax structure and spending, and that will likely piss a lot of people off. Changes I think Congress lacks the brains or the balls to enact, and that may send voters into the streets with torches and pitchforks. Actually, I’ve been expecting that for >20 years…)

The price of gas…. Let us get the patent on large-format NiMH batteries away from Chevron and implement a proven technology. I could go on for quite a while about that, but the short version is that we already have what we need to get Americans around but just won’t use it because Big Oil (and the Congress-critters they support) needs their money.

BTW, I should’ve written that remark about the tax cuts and Patriot Act the other way around but went dyslexic. D’oh!

@jerv

I can’t believe you’re one of those “We’ve had the solution but GM and the Oil companies won’t let it happen” guys. We don’t have a solution your NiMH batteries not withstanding. And when we do get a solution it is unlikely to be electric cars. The electric grid won’t handle it. Nor do we generate enough to handle it and given our reluctance to allow any electrical generation of size (Nuclear) it won’t happen. Electric cars don’t go far enough and take too long to recharge. Can you imagine the brownouts and blackouts at 6pm when everyone gets home and plugs in their car? It all looks good in the movies, though.

@Jaxk I am not that big of a conspiracy nut. There is quite a bit more to the NiMH patent encumbrance than that, so I put it in a nutshell for brevity’s sake. The truth is far more bizarre, and I don’t feel like getting into it, so here is a link. Suffice it to say, I think that it’s more a coincidence than greed that Big Oil has those patents.

However, the average motorist drives 60 miles a day or less and spend a lot of time parked at home. The old Toyota Rav4EV had a range of about 100 miles, so many people could get away with charging it every other day. The Tesla Roadster gets as far on a charge as I do on a tank of gas in a week (~240 miles) but uses expensive LiON batteries to do so as opposed to the cheaper, longer-lived NiMH.

Some things (like trucking) will still require gas/diesel (at least for now) but I’ve seen numbers from may places that show that our power grid actually can handle it. Using existing technology and minimal change to infrastructure to mitigate a problem until we find a full-on solution doesn’t seem like a bad thing to me.

I agree that electric cars are not the solution to all of our problems. I agree that we need more electrical generation to meet future needs. I am actually a fan of nuclear power; I know too much about reactors to be afraid of them (except RMBK-type reactors; those are scary!). It’s jsut that, for once, you are teh cynic here, and now I feel my job security threatened!

Even without NiMH, what about 65MPG diesels like the Ford Fiesta? Europe has many diesel cars that are fast, economical, and clean, yet us Americans are stuck in the mindset that all diesels are slow, thirsty black-cloud-belching contraptions.

Of course, we also think we need as much space in our cars as we have in our living rooms and refuse to trade our Lincoln Navigators in for something that gets more than 15MPG, so that doesn’t help. I mean, remember how people went to smaller cars a few years ago when gas was $4–5/gallon, but the instant gas went back down, we all went back to guzzling gas like such a thing could never, ever EVER happen again?

I think that diesel and electric cars are more practical than trying to get Americans to smarten up though :/

@jerv

I’ve read that about the batteries before. I just don’t buy it for a whole bunch of reasons. Your numbers on the average driving distance seem persuasive but realistically it not that simple. Nothing worse than being caught on a country road with a dead battery (and needing 8 hours to fill it up).

The rest of this gets a little more complex. It’s easy to get high mileage in a very small light vehicle. It harder to get good mileage as the size (and weight) increase. If you are an average schmuck with 3 kids, you need a bus to fit all the car seats. and the car seats are required until the kids are 8–10 years old. How ya gonna do that in a Tesla.

And as far as diesels, they are slow, thirsty black-cloud-belching contraptions. :-)

Since we already have a problem with brown-outs, I’m not sure where the statistics come from that say we could handle the extra load. My guess is, you’d be able to tell 6pm from outer space as the country dimmed under the load.

@Jaxk I have seen them charged much quicker, though it takes some serious amperage to charge them in mere seconds. You might want to look at the Tesla Model S, either from the manufacturer’s site or on wikipedia . Charge times from 3–5 hours normally, with a 45-minute quick charge possible froma 480-volt station, or you could just swap the battery in five minutes. A 160-mile pack is standard, though optional 230-mile and 300-mile packs will be available. It is comparable in size and weight to aa BMW 7-series, which is neither small nor light, and accelerates like an EV should; briskly.

That said, the Tesla Model S is a different beast from the Tesla Roadster. I mean, how many people do you know that use a Lotus Elise as a family car? But what you are thinking may be more along the lines of reviving the Toyota Rav4 EV. Tesla Motors and Toyota teamed up to buiild 35 second-gen ones for evaluation purposes, so we’ll see. And that doesn’t even get into what other companies are doing.

But as I said, EVs are not a one-size-fits-all solution, at least not with current technology. I will ignore for the moment that there actually was a time where electric cars outnumbered the loud, finicky, delicate, slow gas-burners. Even if only 25% of our fleet were replaced by EVs with a moderate range capable of hauling 1–2 people (the type of driving that many Americans do) the resulting drop in oil demand would be notable.

As for the brownouts, I admit that it would be nice if we had some sort of magical device that could delay charging until off-peak hours and switch on in the middle of the night unattended while we sleep. Some sort of automatic timer…

You should also look at the Audi R10 and R15. Technology has come a long way since you were a kid. For instance, we now have indoor plumbing and doctors don’t just stick leeches on you any more :D

In case you didn’t notice, I am a hella car geek, and I have also done a little bit with the Seattle Electric Vehicle Association on top of my own hobbyist interest in electronics and (electric) R/C cars.

@jerv

All interesting stuff but they still are toys, much like the Lotus Elite.

Apparently we have different doctors and it’s not nice to throw your indoor plumbing in my face :)

@Jaxk I disagree. The SMART car is a toy, as is the White Zombie, a ‘71 Datsun that runs mid-10s on battery power alone. An electric version of, say,a Corolla our other family car is different. Hell, I’ve seen Explorers and S-10s converted to electric too; are you calling Ford Explorers “toys”?

At least I’m not throwing what I deposit into that indoor plumbing in your face :D

@jerv

I’ve seen them running on chicken shit as well. It doesn’t make them viable.

And there are only a few on this site that don’t throw that in my face :)

Did you guys ever see Who Killed The Electric Car? Interesting documentary.

If the US would get cranking on utilizing our solar potential (like Europe and China are), we could power “a lot” of these cars. I went looking for an article I read about the terawatt potential in southern Colorado, but can’t find it now (I’m working).

Hey @jerv , if you like tinkering with electronics, maybe you can offer me a hand with this orphan I asked a few days ago.

@Jaxk There isn’t enough chicken shit to put a dent in our oil consumption, and even if there was, it would require too much R&D and added infrastructure compared to something we already have commercially available that relies on existing infrastructure that needs some expansion anyways.

@cockswain I know a guy with his own wind generator that sells power to the grid and has his own electric truck.