Surrendering to the Left "Won't Work"

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In 1946 there hadn;t been any serious civilian housing or auto production for five years; following a decade of depressed production during the first two FDR terms; there was a huge influx of demobilized soldiers into the labor force; and the Nanny state was at relative rest.

Oh I see, so in essence you say "propose new ideas as long as they're not tax cuts".  LOL sure.  I'll offer a more 'nuanced' view: Bush's big problem was that he cut taxes without cutting spending or offering regulatory relief.  So I'll be happy to offer a new idea which doesn't repeat Bush's mistake.

1. Cut all corporate taxes and capital gains taxes to zero for 1 year.  Then, reinstate them at half their current rates for the next two years.

2. A six-month payroll tax holiday for everyone.  Then, once the holiday is over, creation of individual private accounts within social security for ~1/8th of everyone's future contributions.

3. Extension of Bush's tax cuts for an additional two years beyond the 2010 deadline.

4. An immediate hiring freeze and salary freeze for the entire federal government.  All top officials get a 10% pay cut.

5. An across-the-board budget cut of somewhere in the neighborhood of 5%, and larger budget cuts for agencies which are non-essential, such as things like NASA, foreign aid, bee insurance and provision of condoms.  Don't get me wrong, I like NASA, but in tough times it's a luxury not a necessity.

6. An immediate 1-year moratorium on any new regulations.  During the moratorium, every department will be tasked with reviewing every single regulation under their purview and subjecting them to scrutiny by an independent, non-governmental advisory board appropriate for each department.  All of this work would of course be public and public comments would be welcomed.  I would even consider some incentive system for departments which reduce and/or streamline the most in their regulations, perhaps a bigger restoration of budget cuts or something like that.

7. Reform of health insurance by removing the tax deduction for businesses for providing health insurance, requiring businesses to count health insurance as a taxable benefit for their employees, and then creating the same tax deduction for individuals.  So, there should be no net tax consequences for individuals who have health insurance already through their companies, but it would open up entrepreneurs and small businesses to receive the same tax treatment as large companies for their health insurance.  Moreover it will drive down costs of insurance as a lot more individuals enter the marketplace.  Also, allow competition among states for health insurance plans, so that I have the opportunity of purchasing the equivalent of Geico for health insurance as well as with car insurance.

8. Infrastructure spending?  Sure, but only for projects that can demonstrably show they are ONE-TIME KEYNESIAN STIMULUS.  That means moderate-to-large scale infrastructure projects that have only maintenance costs as long-term expenses.  So, no ongoing social welfare programs that have large perpetual recurring costs.  I would also favor projects that are closely connected to energy independence.

9. And for God's sake, no cap-and-trade global warming nonsense, no punishing businesses for success, no bailing out failed businesses, and NO MORE SOCIALISM.

These are just a few ideas off the top of my head.  I"m sure with more than 15 minutes' thought I could come up with more.  Hope these constitute new enough ideas for you.

Chem-It would seem that the best place to start would be on a defense budget so bloated that we spend more annually than every other country in the world combined. Completely ridiculous. Cut it by half yesterday!

Wow.  Wanting to cut the defense budget by HALF in the middle of TWO WARS?  And liberals wonder why they get the reputation of not liking the military very much.

Second thing I would do is means test Social Security and Medicare.

In other words, completely destroy the pension aspect of Social Security and turn it entirely into a middle-class entitlement.  Presumably you also favor nationalized health care, which, over time, just like Social Security in your model, would turn into a means-tested middle-class entitlement.  I'm just wondering, is there anything in your political calculus that warns against individuals becoming too dependent on the state?

The next thing to do would be mandate that the states can only get reinvested federal funds in proportion (relative to all other states) to the amount of federal taxes paid by their citizens and businessess. Here in Alabama we have very low state and local taxes because we get so much from the feds. No fair! Make the states carry their own weight and tax their citizens appropriately.

Now that's an interesting proposition.  So let me see if I understand you correctly.  Let us suppose, for the sake of argument, that a particular state's budget is balanced (as most state constitutions require), but that it receives a disproportionate share of its revenue from the federal government.  You would advocate that the state raise its taxes anyway, even though the state governmnet doesn't need the money and the budget is balanced?  Would this new state tax revenue replace the disproportionate federal revenue, which would now go away?  If that's the case, then there is no need to force states to raise their taxes, which undermines the entire concept of federalism anyway.  Instead, the federal government can simply stop redistributing so much money; in other words, it can decentralize some of its power.  So states can decide how they want to make up the shortfall.  Maybe they don't want to raise taxes, maybe they'd rather forego some spending.  Or maybe they would rather generate more revenue by lowering taxes in other areas.

But you can't have it both ways: you can't believe in progressive taxes and centralization of power in DC, and then complain when tax revenue is redistributed from rich states to poor states.  One follows directly from the other.