Have you heard about Tim Pawlenty's promise? I'm sorry, I'm over-eager. Have you heard about Tim Pawlenty? He is some doofus who serves as governor of Minnesota and now he has decided to run for president. Now that you know who Tim Pawlenty is, let's talk about his promise.
In a speech Tuesday, described by aides as a - get this - "major economic policy address" Tim Pawlenty promised economic growth of five percent while simultaneously cutting spending and taxes!! Can you believe that!? Why haven't we thought about this plan already? Tim Pawlenty can make the economy grow at 5% annually while cutting spending and taxes!? It's like Ronald Reagan hadn't already tried this and failed! What a fresh idea for America! I'm voting for this doofus! In case you aren't familiar with the term, a doofus is someone who is "relatively low performing."
Regardless, Tim Pawlenty has some good ideas...and by good I mean ideas that failed when Reagan was president, but that's not the point. The point is that Pawlenty has some ideas and ideas are good, except when they are not good and Tim Pawlenty's ideas are doo-doo.
For some reason, it is still in vogue to use magic math to explain away a deficit. Clinton balanced a budget and oversaw economic expansion while raising taxes, Reagan ran away with the deficit and Bush cut taxes while fighting two wars, and yet somehow, Republican ideas still carry some weight. In magic math world, we can not only cut taxes but basically eliminate them and still pay for...the Army! In magic math world, we don't care about Americans but we care about taxes and there is no room for taxes in magic math world because in magic math world you can pay for things without having the money to afford them.
Problematically, Pawlenty's magic math world (and it's not fair to put all the blame on Pawlenty) does not exist and even worse, it has been linked to the survival of the free market. In magic math world, failure to cut taxes and make the deficit worse is not only unpatriotic, it's Communist. That's right, in magic math world, doing the right thing makes you Stalin. For some reason, simple economic policy and the American way are not congruent in the minds of Republicans. We can't fix the economy and still believe in American values. We can't help put people back to work and help stimulate demand unless the government takes over the economy and all that jazz. It has become unacceptable to believe that anything but "the market" can fix America's problems and so we fail to address things because when left alone, things tend to work themselves out. Sure and in the meantime we will watch Americans suffer without jobs and America slip as other countries out educate us and invest in their future. Meanwhile, unemployment benefits = communism. You would think the government was taking over EVERYTHING. You would think that there was someone out there advocating for that! But there isn't. There are Democrats who want the government to be a tool to make the country better while leaving entrepreneurial Americans to innovate and create and push our nation forward for the benefit of all. There are also doofuses who think that any involvement by the government in our lives is a bad thing and who would rather have average folks suffer so rich people can pay less in taxes. And even though rich people know that is a bad idea, those doofuses...eh, Republicans...are dead set on running the nation's economy even further into the ground than they've already managed to drive it.
So Tim Pawlenty has a promise, a promise rooted in failed ideas and a promise with no vision for America's future except what failed in America's past. It is a promise of high deficits, high unemployment and a goshdarn impressive military. It is a promise for rich people who will pay less in taxes and have more to spend on leer jets and a promise for poor people and a shrinking middle class who will find themselves stripped of benefits so that we can eliminate capital gains taxes. But it's a promise and it's an idea and Tim Pawlenty isn't just any doofus so why not?
Because America deserves better and Tim Pawlenty isn't just any doofus, he is a specific kind of doofus, one who believes in a failed system and one who wants to watch America slip away. America is a country of free people and fee ideas. Our country has been driven by the innovation of individuals and no one wants to change this. But one party wants to empower individuals and make the country a sustainable and vibrant place for everyone; the other party wants rich people to pay less in taxes...
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