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With all due respect to Speaker Hastert, trying to eliminate the IRS by adopting a national retail sales tax is a very dumb idea.
Bruce Bartlett -
Morally it was wrong to do so in this situation and certainly misleading to the officer...
Bruce Bartlett
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He was the safe choice, somebody with unquestioned qualifications. They needed somebody that everybody, including the financial markets, would react positively to.
Bruce Bartlett -
The total amount of debt that foreigners have bought this year is $66 billion, which is about the amount of the total federal deficit during the same period of time. So in other words, we benefit by basically eliminating the burden of the debt on domestic capital markets.
Bruce Bartlett -
And that worked for quite a while. But it was a shortsighted point of view, ... The Impostor: How George W. Bush Bankrupted America and Betrayed the Reagan Legacy.
Bruce Bartlett -
There's bound to be a recovery in capital spending sometime soon. We have had basically no capital investment for about year. At some point, machinery wears out, and you've got to replace it.
Bruce Bartlett -
And no other think-tank has shown any interest in hiring me - for a variety of reasons. I think they're afraid of the White House. They're afraid of losing access. I think they're afraid of losing contributions. And some simply disagree with some aspects of my argument.
Bruce Bartlett -
I think perhaps Mr. Hoadley is experiencing remorse for his failure to become involved.
Bruce Bartlett
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The conservative side of our political spectrum has had an outsized voice over the last few years. I think especially since the establishment of Fox News, which has created an echo chamber in which people just hear the same ideas repeated ad infinitum. And you know, it's just basic advertising, basically. You hear the same idea over and over again. Or you can call it propaganda if you like.
Bruce Bartlett -
So I think we shouldn't be overly concerned about the decline in personal saving at this particular moment and time, but it's something we certainly need to keep an eye on.
Bruce Bartlett -
You're starting to see the beginnings of a shift in the center of gravity away from Bush and his agenda toward the next agenda and the next leader of the party.
Bruce Bartlett -
It's obvious that a lot of Tea Party members tend to be elderly. You've seen that famous sign, 'Tell the government to keep its hands off my Medicare.' And I think as long as the government does keep its hands off their Medicare, they're fine with talking about low taxes. But once they start to realize that the Republicans really do want to not just cut Medicare, but essentially abolish it, you know, I just think those people are not going to be part of the Tea Party. They're going to be over with Occupy Wall Street.
Bruce Bartlett -
The significance of that is that there are a number of people that may view Intel as having reached peak margins and will view that as a negative.
Bruce Bartlett -
I think that that's something that the Japanese are very concerned about and they're going to have to do something about in the near term. I think it's good for the world economy to have a strong Japanese economy. And their situation has been not very good for quite a long time.
Bruce Bartlett
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The growing inequality of wealth and income distribution is both a moral and economic problem. If the wealthy are unwilling to pay more taxes, then this is going to lead to spending cuts. And if you put off the table things like national defense, then you're going to end up cutting more and more out of programs that aid the poor. So, I think there are consequences to this idea that tolerance for inequality requires us to - to just do nothing to make the wealthy contribute a higher share of resources to fund the government.
Bruce Bartlett -
Democrats will play the old Washington game of calling reductions in the rate of growth of spending for any program a 'cut'.
Bruce Bartlett -
When your team is on a losing streak, you schedule a game with a cream-puff opponent. Then you go with the hot hand.
Bruce Bartlett -
People are increasingly concerned about unemployment, but Republicans have nothing to offer them.
Bruce Bartlett -
A lot of conservatives have had reservations about him for a long time, but have been afraid to speak out for fear that it would help liberals and the Democrats.
Bruce Bartlett -
Overall, I think what the sales number is telling us is that the consumer is starting to take up some of the slack we're seeing in the trade sector and inventories.
Bruce Bartlett
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They were obviously covering up for each other on the fight, both sides covering up the fight.
Bruce Bartlett -
It's been my experience that these violent felons are not released.
Bruce Bartlett -
Realistically, it's going to be very, very hard to extend existing tax cuts under current circumstances...
Bruce Bartlett -
It's absolutely stunning. It certainly shows that the economy is continuing to show very strong growth.
Bruce Bartlett