The obstructionists want you to forget history. Do you remember 2001? Was that ancient history? Let us review.
Starting in 2001, Republicans got everything they wanted. They got the deregulation of Wall Street, banks, commodity markets and by 2004 increased borrowing leverage of 40 to 1. They blocked states from banning the outsourcing of state government jobs to India.
They got mega mergers of energy, banks and health insurance companies, while not bringing a single antitrust action in almost eight years while the bankers and brokers rode the economy into the dirt. Trillions were stolen from the value of the economy, most notable our home values, trillions that ended up in Republican pockets in offshore bank accounts.
The Republicans were handed huge projected surpluses that would have left us debt free by 2011. On top of the Clinton surpluses, they got huge tax cuts which they claimed would create 24 million jobs and create an economy so good, that we would be debt free of the national debt by 2011. Do you remember all those promises? Go back to the archives of news interviews, they promised all that and more.
For over ten years they did not enforce EPA regulations. The Republicans deregulated everywhere, privatizing the military and much of government saying this would reduce cost. Then they doubled the size of government over eight years.
They got an unfunded PRIVATE Medicare Part D drug program w/o cost controls that locked all Americans into paying five times more for the same drug as in the rest of the world, that cost annually as much as the paid for Obamacare which reduces the deficits while their Drug program is 25% of the remaining deficit.
They got Private Medicare Advantage HMOs, which instead of costing less as promised were paid 15% more while they paid Doctors 30% less than regular Medicare, and if not fixed under Obamacare was going to bankrupt Medicare by 2016.
Defense spending more than doubled. To accomplish all of this they quickly did away with the policy of ‘Pay as you Go’ which had resulted in the surpluses they were handed, with Republicans saying Reagan had proved deficits don’t matter. Do you remember them saying that on all the news shows? Go look it up.
The result? American energy prices increased 400% and food 300% as speculation in the commodity markets increased 400%. Health insurance increased 300%.
Ronald Reagan ran the national debt so high that the economy suffered from 1983 to at least 1995!
The tax cuts did not produce 24 million jobs, but minus one million private sector jobs and an economy losing over 800,000 jobs per month. The Republican tax cuts did not make the economy boom as they promised nor increase wages and increase payments into Social Security and Medicare. As a result of the Republican mismanagement, jobs dried up, wages went down and deregulation hurting American programs and the citizens who depend on them.
Surpluses were changed into massive deficits. The privatization in EVERY case resulted in higher costs not lower. They continued their assault on Unions and pro outsourcing signing 32 free trade agreements as 60,000 factories closed and ½ of high tech jobs were outsourced. The ones making the money were the wealthy Republicans and their mega-rich donors.
The economic results (after the Republicans got everything they wanted but the complete killing of Social Security and Medicare) was the WORST economic performance in 100 years. Heck, maybe the worst one ever!
They want us to engage in their same economic ideas that killed a world economy in 2008-20011. Now, they even want to turn the hands of the clock back even further to 1890, doing away with public schools and universities, an EPA , a safety net that prevented this from being a Great Depression and etc..
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