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sperrico87 on 26 April 2012
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richardhutnik said:
SamuelRSmith said:
Kasz216 said:

That's really the annoying part of the whole debate.  Democrats have shit they want to cut, they just for whatever reason aren't saying "hey lets cut this stuff."  Likely due to purely political motivations.

There are 3 reasons for this:

1) Many Democrats, including the President, simply do not believe/understand the financial crisis. If you're a suscribed Keynesian, which most politicians (on both sides of the isle) are, then, really, there is no argument for cuts.

2) Democrats, like all politicians, have one priority: getting re-elected, this usurps all other responsibilities. While Republicans, for the most part, are elected by those who favour smaller Government (although Republicans don't deliever on this promise, most voters don't look past the rhetoric), Democrats are not. This means that some Republicans will vote for cuts that they do not believe in (as pointed out in number 1), and some Democrats will vote against cuts that they do believe it.

3) Democrats and Republicans need to keep up an image of being different parties. They're not - on 90% of the policies, including all the most important, they are fundamentally the same . So they need to blow up that remaining 10% of difference to almost cartoonish levels. This means that the Republicans are the party of "cuts" (reducing the level of increase in the future...), and the Democrats are the party of "tax" (and with every new dollar collected in tax, a new loophole or subsidy put in...) - and they absolutely, 100%, can not stray from those positions.

I'm aware that you're probably away of these points, this post is more of a PSA, than anything else.

All individuals in congress get elected based on what pork they bring back to their district.  This is true even for Dr. No, Ron Paul, who would earmark everything his distrct wanted.

The reality is that the GOP tends to run more on shrinking the size of the government.  The reality of this shrinking is that people will support smaller government support for everyone else, except themselves, and government controls on everyone they don't like, and less for themselves.  

What you do see, on the Democratic presidential side is periodically commissions being run by the president to see if they can cut waste.  Al Gore headed up one under Clinton.  It is just done, not campaigned on.

You misunderstand earmarking.  Earmarking is not necessarily a bad thing.  If the money is not allocated for certain districts or projects, than the money all goes to the Executive branch who get to spend it.  So, in that situtation, you would actually want MORE earmarks, because it would mean those taxpayer funds are going back to the people rather than being used by the government.

And Ron Paul does earmark.  In fact, he wants everything to be earmarked, because that means states and local communities get the money instead of areas within the federal bureaucracy.  If Paul had his way, there would be nothing to earmark because there would be no money left over from basic government functions.  Taxes would be much lower, there wouldn't be an income tax, and what little revenue that came in would come from tolls and excises from usage fees and not from the IRS.  So, to suggest that Paul is no different than any other politician and just gets elected to bring money into his district is a gross distortion, and you do yourself a disservice by not looking further into it.