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[ltl/fb]

Originally posted by Replaced_Texan
My argument is that if it's going to fund basic science research, yes, it should fund hESC research for lines derived after 2001.

I think it's in the public's interest to fund basic science research, medical research, and a shitload of other research.

OK, to me, this is kind of sort of analogous to how the feds enforced a national minimum drinking age of 21. They said, hey, you can have other drinking ages -- but if you do, you get no funding for highways.

Making it impossible for research institutions to use existing facilities/excess capacity/etc. is really doing pretty much the same thing.

[Not Bob]

Originally posted by SlaveNoMore
I had no idea the Dems wrote the Contract with America and that Gingrich was a Democrat? Golly.

It started in 1993, before the Republicans took control of the House. In fact, it started with a law that was passed without a single Republican vote. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Omnibus...on_Act_of_1993

It raised taxes and cut spending, and many Republicans forecast that it would lead to the end of days.

• Senator Phil Gramm, the deeply conservative Texan: "I oppose this bill because you cannot create more investment by taxing investors. You cannot create more savings by taxing savers. You cannot create more jobs by taxing the job creators.
  
  "Hundreds of thousands of Americans will lose their jobs because of this bill; Bill Clinton will be one of those Americans," he said, adding slyly, "but he will deserve to lose his job."

http://query.nytimes.com/gst/fullpag...=&pagewanted=3

[Tyrone Slothrop]

Turkey invades Iraq.

At the risk of prompting another semantic dispute, that's not good.

[SlaveNoMore]

Adder
Um, no. But Clinton (and others) regularly preached financial restraint and praised the merits of smaller government and lower taxes during that period. And since, for that matter. Which, you have to admit, is not entirely consistent with your assertion that no democrat has ever done so, right?

Actually, I dissent. Clinton was basically kept in check by the House and Senate.

Clinton was however (and as Sebby points out daily) far, far better than the average (Democrat) bear.

[sebastian_dangerfield]

Originally posted by Adder
Help out here by stating your underlying assumption. Why are there inevitably fewer jobs?

Until the cost of labor abroad meets the cost of domestic labor we are not going to create any new low skill jobs. And we're going to lose more. And more than that, less jobs will be created because business will naturally create them offshore.

And Barrack Obama can say he's going to fix it all day long, but that's impossible.

[SlaveNoMore]

Not Bob
It started in 1993, before the Republicans took control of the House. ... It raised taxes...

QED

[Tyrone Slothrop]

Originally posted by SlaveNoMore
Actually, I dissent. Clinton was basically kept in check by the House and Senate.

Try this for size:

• Bill Clinton, unlike most other recent presidents, demonstrated that he would immerse himself in the details of the budget. Despite the fact that it was not an issue that he emphasized while running for the presidency in 1992, Clinton demonstrated willingness early in his presidency to reduce the deficit. It was widely held that if Clinton was to get a handle on the deficit as he promised, he must do so in the first year of his presidency, when his political capital was at its peak (Hager and Cloud, 1993a).
  
  In a joint session of Congress on February 17, 1993, President Clinton unveiled his budget proposal that included deep spending cuts, but which relied overwhelmingly on tax increases to bring the deficit downward. At the same time, Clinton proposed to quickly boost short-term job creation by pumping billions of dollars into new spending programs. Clinton's deficit-cutting plan was the largest in history, proposing to save nearly $500 billion over four years. Of that amount, roughly two-thirds would go to reduce the deficit, while another third would be used to pay for increased job creation and long-term investment spending, making net deficit reduction at the end of the four years of the plan about $325 billion (Hager, 1993).
  
  The deficit-reduction package proposed a cut of $493 billion over four years, $247 of it coming from spending cuts and $246 billion from tax increases, almost exactly a 1-to-1 ratio. The ratio of tax increases to spending cuts quickly emerged as the major conflict point in congressional reaction to the plan. Republicans and conservative Democrats were upset that the ratio of cuts to taxes was much less than the 2-to-1 ratio that Panetta had advocated during his confirmation hearings. Though the deficit-reduction plan made notable spending cuts, its heavy reliance on tax increases displays the difficulties the Clinton economic team had coming up with acceptable spending cuts.
  
  Clinton's call for a tax increase was a direct repudiation of the economic philosophies of his two Republican predecessors. By aiming the taxes primarily at corporations and the well-off, Clinton was suggesting that the programs of Ronald Reagan and George Bush, which were designed to stimulate economic growth through tax cuts, came at the price of high deficits. Clinton believed that he could convince the American public--and a majority in Congress--that the economic expansion of the 1980s held negative consequences in the long run. Clinton proposed to raise most of the new revenue with an array of higher taxes on upper-income Americans and corporations, including $126.3 billion over six years mainly through a new top income tax bracket of 36 percent and a surtax on income over $250,000. Overall, more than half of the new taxes were projected to fall on families making more than $200,000 a year (Cloud, 1993). Table 1 shows the distribution of tax burden by income group.
  
  President Clinton's proposed budget faced its biggest obstacle in Congress with the vote on the budget reconciliation bill. The budget resolution only locked in the broad deficit-reduction numbers, but left virtually all of the specifics to the reconciliation process. The reconciliation bill was designed to reconcile tax and spending policy with deficit-reduction goals outlined in the budget resolution. The measure was the heart of Clinton's plan to reshape the nation's economic policy.
  
  In the end, Clinton's economic plan emerged victorious, though just barely. The Omnibus Budget Reconciliation Act was approved in August 1993 without a single vote to spare in either chamber: it passed 218-217 in the House and 51-50 in the Senate (with Vice-President Al Gore making the tie-breaking vote). The measure passed without any Republican votes, the first time in postwar congressional history and possibly the first time ever that the majority party has passed major legislation with absolutely no support from the opposition (Hager and Cloud, 1993b).

[SlaveNoMore]

Replaced_Texan
I think it's in the public's interest to fund basic science research, medical research, and a shitload of other research.

Where do you draw the line?

Isn't the private sector - biotech, the pharma industry - better suited to do this?

Eta: fix typo

[ltl/fb]

Originally posted by SlaveNoMore
QED

. . . and cut spending by an almost equal amount. Which your buddies seem unable to do. Perhaps this is called "compromise"?

[sebastian_dangerfield]

Originally posted by SlaveNoMore
Where do you draw the line?

Isn't the public sector - biotech, the pharma industry - better suited to do this?

Her point was they won't sink in the massive up front R&D cash. The govt basically has to subsidize the start-up portion and then private industry will kick in. Which is a good point I can't quibble with.

[sebastian_dangerfield]

Originally posted by ltl/fb
OK, to me, this is kind of sort of analogous to how the feds enforced a national minimum drinking age of 21. They said, hey, you can have other drinking ages -- but if you do, you get no funding for highways.

Making it impossible for research institutions to use existing facilities/excess capacity/etc. is really doing pretty much the same thing.

Yeh, I had no idea the stem cell thing worked like a ban. That's fucking creepy.

[taxwonk]

Originally posted by SlaveNoMore
Where do you draw the line?

Isn't the public sector - biotech, the pharma industry - better suited to do this?

That would be the private sector. and no, they aren't better suited. As RT has pointed out, basic research can take decades to yield relatively small advances. These small advances are expensive to achieve, and they are not, in themselves, commercially exploitable. However, without such advances, commercially viable developments would never take place for want of the basic research that went into moving the knowledge base forward to the point where commercial applications were foreseeable.

[SlaveNoMore]

Tyrone Slothrop
Try this for size:

• Bill Clinton, unlike most other recent presidents, demonstrated that he would immerse himself in the details of the budget. Despite the fact that it was not an issue that he emphasized while running for the presidency in 1992, Clinton demonstrated willingness early in his presidency to reduce the deficit. It was widely held that if Clinton was to get a handle on the deficit as he promised, he must do so in the first year of his presidency, when his political capital was at its peak (Hager and Cloud, 1993a).
  
  In a joint session of Congress on February 17, 1993, President Clinton unveiled his budget proposal that included deep spending cuts, but which relied overwhelmingly on tax increases to bring the deficit downward. At the same time, Clinton proposed to quickly boost short-term job creation by pumping billions of dollars into new spending programs. Clinton's deficit-cutting plan was the largest in history, proposing to save nearly $500 billion over four years. Of that amount, roughly two-thirds would go to reduce the deficit, while another third would be used to pay for increased job creation and long-term investment spending, making net deficit reduction at the end of the four years of the plan about $325 billion (Hager, 1993).
  
  The deficit-reduction package proposed a cut of $493 billion over four years, $247 of it coming from spending cuts and $246 billion from tax increases, almost exactly a 1-to-1 ratio. The ratio of tax increases to spending cuts quickly emerged as the major conflict point in congressional reaction to the plan. Republicans and conservative Democrats were upset that the ratio of cuts to taxes was much less than the 2-to-1 ratio that Panetta had advocated during his confirmation hearings. Though the deficit-reduction plan made notable spending cuts, its heavy reliance on tax increases displays the difficulties the Clinton economic team had coming up with acceptable spending cuts.
  
  Clinton's call for a tax increase was a direct repudiation of the economic philosophies of his two Republican predecessors. By aiming the taxes primarily at corporations and the well-off, Clinton was suggesting that the programs of Ronald Reagan and George Bush, which were designed to stimulate economic growth through tax cuts, came at the price of high deficits. Clinton believed that he could convince the American public--and a majority in Congress--that the economic expansion of the 1980s held negative consequences in the long run. Clinton proposed to raise most of the new revenue with an array of higher taxes on upper-income Americans and corporations, including $126.3 billion over six years mainly through a new top income tax bracket of 36 percent and a surtax on income over $250,000. Overall, more than half of the new taxes were projected to fall on families making more than $200,000 a year (Cloud, 1993). Table 1 shows the distribution of tax burden by income group.
  
  President Clinton's proposed budget faced its biggest obstacle in Congress with the vote on the budget reconciliation bill. The budget resolution only locked in the broad deficit-reduction numbers, but left virtually all of the specifics to the reconciliation process. The reconciliation bill was designed to reconcile tax and spending policy with deficit-reduction goals outlined in the budget resolution. The measure was the heart of Clinton's plan to reshape the nation's economic policy.
  
  In the end, Clinton's economic plan emerged victorious, though just barely. The Omnibus Budget Reconciliation Act was approved in August 1993 without a single vote to spare in either chamber: it passed 218-217 in the House and 51-50 in the Senate (with Vice-President Al Gore making the tie-breaking vote). The measure passed without any Republican votes, the first time in postwar congressional history and possibly the first time ever that the majority party has passed major legislation with absolutely no support from the opposition (Hager and Cloud, 1993b).

Again, and?

As expected, the Democratic party unilaterally raised taxes and spending - which the GOP House and Senate immediately tried to fix when they overwhemingly swept into power in the '96 midterm elections.

[SlaveNoMore]

ltl/fb
. . . and cut spending by an almost equal amount. Which your buddies seem unable to do. Perhaps this is called "compromise"?

If you honestly think that Obama or Hillary or Pelosi or Reid will "cut spending", you need to change your meds.

[Adder]

Originally posted by SlaveNoMore
As expected, the Democratic party unilaterally raised taxes and spending - which the GOP House and Senate immediately tried to fix when they overwhemingly swept into power in the '96 midterm elections.

You know, you could simply have answered yes to the coma question.

Newt would be so disappointed to know that you missed two of the best years of his life.