No news is good news, coming from the Gang of Six
Sen. Jon Kyl hinted on FOX News Sunday that the rightward ‘Gang of Six’ aren’t making much progress in their efforts to come up with a deficit-reducing compromise bill that will possibly cut benefits for Social Security, Medicare and Medicaid. All I can say is: Hallelujah! FOX News Sunday: Wallace: Senator Kyl, you are a member of the bipartisan congressional group that is meeting with Vice President Biden trying to work out raising the debt limit, cutting the deficit. Have you made any real progress yet, sir? KYL: We’re focused right now on things we agree on. And there are some things, but it’s pretty small ball compared to the overall job that we’re going to have to do. We’re talking maybe about, optimistically, a couple hundred billion dollars when there’s probably $2 trillion in savings that we’ve got to achieve in order to really get a handle on our out-of- control spending. If it’s pretty small then that’s a very good thing. I’d rather have no deal than a compromise that will hurt the working class of America and help destroy our social safety nets. Sen. Durbin is buying into the austerity gasbags and throwing his progressive values down the tubes. Here’s Senator Kyl saying that increasing revenues by tax increases is off the board. WALLACE: Senator Kyl, you know, I think a lot of people are looking to see is there going to be give from both sides, which I think most outside observers would think there is going to have to be to get a deal. We do have a divided government.Question: is there a single tax of any significance that you would be wiling to raise as part of a deal? KYL: No. In terms of tax rates, Republicans agree with the president that we need tax reform in order to eliminate loopholes so that we can reduce rates. But you don’t want to raise tax rates in order to try to raise revenues. That simply relieves the burden from Congress to affect the spending, savings, that we need to do and puts the burden back on the taxpayers again.When I talked about a couple of hundred — trillion dollars in savings, that’s the down payment. Over 10 years, we’ll have to do probably double that, if not more. In order to get back to the historic level of spending that we’ve had in this country of a little bit over 20 percent.The Paul Ryan budget gets us under 20 percent of GDP over 10 years. The Obama budget keeps us at levels above 23 percent of GDP. It’s about 25 percent right now. Spending is the problem. Not revenue.So, no, we will not agree to raise tax rates in order to generate revenues to prevent us from making the savings that we need to achieve. After listening to what Kyl has just said, why does Sen. Durbin get all excited over the prospect that a ” stage has been set ” for meaningful conversations? It’s utterly ridiculous. DURBIN: Well, elimination is not necessary for the critical programs, but reform is necessary. I just listened very carefully to what Jon Kyl said. And I believe he has set the stage for us to enter into a meaningful conversation. And it has to be a conversation where Democrats are prepared to talk about the future of major entitlement programs, reform that is not going to deny the basic protections, which we put in the programs, but acknowledges the fact that we have serious economic problems ahead of us if we don’t have some reform in both Medicare and Social Security. Comments like these from Durbin get me very nervous. All the Republicans in Congress, including those on the most dangerous Gang in America, are refusing to raise taxes at any level. How is it possible to have a serious negotiation on any type of reform if revenue raising isn’t part of a deal? And reforming the tax code is not the be-all-end-all solution that will save our country. WTF is wrong with Sen. Durbin? His pandering to Kyl for a deal is really sickening.
No news is good news, coming from the Gang of Six
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on May 17, 2011. Filed under