I'd have to say no, but it is going to take a little bit of explanation about why I say no.
First, he's a lightweight, but also he not very much of a thinker. Yes, he's come up with another proposal for dealing with taxes and limiting deficit spending, but his ideas are only a re-hash of previous suggestions going back as far as 30 years ago.
I'm tired of Republicans trying to tell me that the best I can do is go backwards. To me it represents a real lapse in the ability to do the hard thinking. I'm talking about headache time just by trying to exercise your brain cells and create new synapses.
This isn't an easy job and I realize that. But it is far easier for those who choose not to really do the job, and so they continue to regurgitate past failed policies as if they were successful.
Show me where Republicans have had a successful policy which actually worked for the people. Really, show me.
Show me how Tim Pawlenty, a governor of Minnesota who left Billions of dollars in suspended debt to appear as if he had balanced the budget can take control of this historically immense debt and do something about it.
He pushed debt down the road and suggests that his policies were good for the people of his state. But he's gone, and they still have about $5 Billion in debt that will ultimately have to be addressed.
Not only that, but his failure to support local governments in the projects for the people ended up with $5.1 Billion of personal property tax in 2002 and grew to $8 Billion in 2008.
You can move money around so that it looks like its there when its not, or you can act as if the money you have for State functions is adequate, but the amount of personal property taxes rise to ridiculous amounts.
The Republicans have been pulling these tricks on us for 30 years, moving money, cutting essential programs, supporting the growth of a military that costs us as much as any other programs for the welfare of the people, and laying down the concept that the people have to suffer in order to help the people.
You can't destroy a village or a town or a state in order to save it. Destruction has nothing to do with growth or clear methods to do so, and it never will have such a relationship. When you move money around to hide the facts, you are destroying the confidence the people have in your ability to do the job.
I'm sick and tired of people who get elected to do a specific job and then decide that they know what the people want more than the people who elected them. I'd almost suggest that we throw out the bums each election and see whether the elected get better at determining what their mandate is, but if you think government is slow now (and it was designed to be so) then we'll have representatives who are just now answering questions asked 30 years ago.
I have to admit, I called it when, in 2009 the Tea Party came upon the scene. I said there would be significant election results but that the Tea Party wasn't able to understand just how the government works, and they have indeed brought the government almost to its knees with their lack of understanding.
In fact, one could say that the Tea Party's inability to understand the function of governance is causing a lot of the stalemate in our government. They have forced the Republicans to adopt an even stronger level of "NO", and in doing so are threatening the very America they propose to support.
And although Tim Pawlenty suggests that he isn't pointing his rhetoric to the Tea Party, it is obvious that the Republicans are still afraid of their new brethren and the continued tossing of a monkey wrench into the methods of governance.
Honestly I believe that the Republicans would be a little more likely to be working across the aisle if no Tea Party members were elected, but they have no backbone and fail to do their jobs
Just as Tim Pawlenty failed to do his job by leaving his state with Billions of dollars in debt, moved out of his budget process onto the budget process of his successor.
Just as George W. Bush did in his last budget proposal, which confined President Obama to a set of budgetary requirements as he took office. If one remembers correctly George W. Bush left a massive $1.1 Trillion debt in 2008, and an additional $1.3 Trillion to follow into President Obama's administration.
We're talking about $2.4 Trillion of new debt left to President Obama to figure out.
Tim Pawlenty cannot figure out how to eliminate that debt because he doesn't seem to understand how the debt got there in the first place. He blames Obama. My understanding is that under George W Bush the debt increased $5 Trillion.
So George W. Bush inherited a budget surplus and ended up creating some $187 Billion in deficit spending in 2001. In 2002 and 2003, almost an additional $1 Trillion in debt was created. In 2004 and 2005 another Trillion dollars, and the same in 2006 and 2007. Almost a Trillion dollars every two years that George W. Bush was President. In 2008, wow, $1.1 Trillion outright in debt. If you add his 2009 budget the sum goes up by another Trillion dollars.
If Tim Pawlenty deigns to follow the same rules created in the Reagan years and followed up by the Bush43 years, then his policies are going to continue to increase the debt directly, just as George W. Bush's policies actually added directly to the debt.
There is no Republican who is actually working towards cutting deficit spending, nor are they worried about our national debt. They proved that by demanding that President Obama agree to extend the costly Bush tax cuts for two years in order for him to gain some advantages for the people.
I haven't heard Tim Pawlenty say anything positive about the Stimulus bill, but if one looks hard, fully 40% of that stimulus was in tax breaks, which was necessary to get the number of needed votes. Some $350+ Billion for tax breaks when the dollars would have been better spent to put people to work on infrastructure.
Tim has a lot to answer for if he chooses to suggest that this President's efforts to contain the depression and turn it into a growth economy. Not only Tim, but all of the Republicans.
I keep coming back to this little joke.
A Democrat and a Republican are walking down the road when they come to the end. The Republican says "We must go back" to which the Democrat says "No, we must build more road".
It is time to build more road away from the policies of the Republicans who have put us into the environment they now suggest is your fault. It is not your fault and don't you believe it.
They have manipulated things behind the scenes for years and the figures can no longer be hidden by moving debt down the road whilst they suggest they have done a good job.
They haven't. Live, learn, prosper.
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