georgeob1 wrote:I think McCain's opposition to the tax cuts was based on his conviction that Congress would not restrain spending, and that Bush would not veto the various pork-laden authorizations it enacted. If so events proved him right. I'm all for the tax cuts, but some serious restraint on spending is a necessary accompanyment - and that did not happen under Bush.
The tax cuts proved to be as effective in stimulating the economy and prompting behavior that increased revenues as tax cuts, properly implemented, will do every time. Both Reagan and Bush 41 agreed to tax raises with agreement that Congress would cut spending. We got our taxes raised and Congress just spent more. Far better to cut taxes with the inherent benefits in that and deal with spending as a separate issue.
Quote:While you and many others may think amnesty for illegal immigrants is a horrendus thing, I wonder if you have contemplated the wholesale deportation of 10 million illegals and all that entails. The fact is our immigration & nationalization bureaucracy has been dysfunctional for several decades, and that is one of the causes of this mess.
Carter gave illegals unconditional amnesty on condition that any others arriving illegally would be denied employment, social services, etc. and put the burden on the employers to enforce that. That lasted less than a year before employers became more and more lax and the feds did not enforce it. (I was an employer then so I do know of what I speak.) And the number of illegals in the United States doubled.
Then under Reagan we got the 1986 Immigration Reform bill that allowed amnesty for the new illegals already here but with the provision that the law would then be rigorously enforced. The illegals got to stay, the law didn't get enforced, and the number of illegals has more than guadrupled.
Remember that defintiion of insanity....doing the same stupid thing over and over while expecting different results?
Any form of amnesty just installs a bigger flashing neon sign over America saying, "Ya'll come on in, and if you make it and avoid detection for just a little while, they'll let you stay forever maybe with more benefits than even citizens get."
Refusing amnesty and enforcing the law doesn't assume that there need to be mass round ups and deportations. First you put together an effective and sensible guest worker program, then you give the people a short grace period to get their affairs in order and leave with the option of coming back under the guest worker program assuming they have a sponsor and a job waiting for them. For those who choose not to leave, you pull all but critical emergency benefits and create an environment so inhospitable to illegals that sensible people will leave voluntarily. The rest will mostly be the true undesirables that you deal with as they show themselves. The true hardship cases can be dealt with on an individual basis by Congress as special hardship cases have often been dealt with by Congress. You don't make policy for millions based on the special situation of a few.
Quote:John McCain was himself a victim of severe torture in North Vietnam. (The odd way he moves his arms reflects the combined effects of an injury received when he was shot down and a torture technique the Vietnamese regularly used - tying the elbows tightly togeter behind your back and suspending you from a rafter with a line attached to them. It usually dislocated both shoulders (every time) and the repeated effects left him disabled,) I think I will give him a break on this issue and assume he knows and understands something about it far better than his critics.
So you don't do that or anything like that to people. We are better than those who do the worst kind of inhumanity to men or beasts for any reason. But you don't bring terrorists to the United States and give them every opportunity to be turned loose here either. I see these as entirely separate things. (I also respect the tremendous debt we owe John McCain for his service to this country.)
Quote:I will agree the campaign reform legislation (McCain Feingold) was a fiasco, worsening the problem it was intended to fix.
It is especially onerous when it is noted that he exempted a block of his own largest contributors to provisions of the law in McCain Feingold.
Republican Primary elections permit write-in votes.
