From HP:
"The deficit this year is a trillion dollars for the second year in a row ... The American people have had it with runaway federal spending, deficits and debt, and they want to see men and women in Washington, D.C. make the hard choices."
Meanwhile, regarding tax cuts for the rich...
"The reality is that as you study -- when President Kennedy cut marginal tax rates, when Ronald Reagan cut marginal tax rates, when President Bush imposed those tax cuts, they actually generated economic growth, they expand the economy, they expand tax revenue," Pence said.
Except when they didn't. Except for the fact that the Bush years NEVER felt like we ever recovered from the recession of 2001. Except for the fact that Pence's argument is selfishly, indifferently based on a premise that DOESN'T work but DOES put more money in the pockets of his greatest donors.
Republicans like Pence ad Kyl can continue to push this lie as long as they like. All it illuminates is how well-off and removed they are from mainstream America and how clearly they see the unemployed as those who are lazy and need to be punished. Pence, a former frat boy, an attorney and an evangelical Christian, has had few challenges in his own life, which, under the republican mindset, makes him the perfect person to comment on what's right and wrong in this world.
I mean, hey, THEY'RE not unemployed. Obviously those that are are inferior human beings. Survival of the fittest, right?
Well, good for them for being so "macho." They do understand, however, that there are KIDS INVOLVED. Kids who's parents are losing everything they ever worked for. Kids who, for the first time in their lives, have to worry about what'll be stolen from them in the shelter they now have to live in. Kids who's innocence could be maintained by a few sympathetic, unbiased republican senators who could easily afford to be sympathetic.
Nobody said life is easy. No one claimed money is for nothing (except Dire Straits). It would be easy to pass this bill and the money would work it's way right back into the economy. But no. These assholes want their pound of flesh -- and it's the flesh of the people they represent (not their lobbyist partners) that they would like to gouge it from.