[If] you take a trillion dollars…out of the…federal budget, that would shrink GDP over 5%. That is by definition throwing us into recession or depression.
Assistant Professor | Finance, Real Estate, & Law | Cal Poly Pomona
[If] you take a trillion dollars…out of the…federal budget, that would shrink GDP over 5%. That is by definition throwing us into recession or depression.
The ironic thing is we now have the two front-runners: [Newt] Gingrich, the new contender, having favored an individual mandate for the entire country, and Mitt Romney, the former or maybe current front-runner nationally, having supported a mandate for his state of Massachusetts.
— Karl Rove, on the centerpiece of “ObamaCare” (Fox News)
So what’s that you say, Galileo? The sun is stationary and the earth travels around it? You must be kidding! Why any child can tell you that the sun rises in the east and moves across the sky every day and then travels beneath the earth at night to reappear in the east the next morning. And you expect anyone in his right mind to believe otherwise. What? It’s the earth rotating on its axis? Are you possessed of demons? And you say that the earth is round? If the earth were round, how could anybody stand at the bottom of the earth and not fall off? Galileo, you are a raving lunatic. And you, Mr. Einstein, you say that there is something called a space-time continuum, so that time slows down as the speed one travels approaches the speed of light. My God, where could you have come up with such an idea? By that reasoning, two people could not agree on which of two events happened first if one of them was stationary and the other traveling at half the speed of light. Away with you, and don’t ever dare speak such nonsense again, or, by God, you shall be really, really sorry.
— David Glasner, parodying Stephen Moore’s latest WSJ article (Federal Trade Commission)
In retrospect, [Washington] now [sees] what should have been obvious: Increasing the political leverage of the Republican Party made a Grand Bargain less, not more, likely. Moreover, the deficit hawks who represent the center of Washington establishment thought badly underestimated the danger entailed by tying high stakes negotiations involving the Republican Party to a cataclysmic event. Happy visions of Bob Dole and Tip O’Neill danced in their heads, oblivious to the reality of what they were facing.
— Jonathan Chait (The New Republic)
Here are a few examples of Obama’s effective conservatism:
— Bruce Bartlett (The Fiscal Times)