GOP Senator Offers To Raise Taxes

Posted on November 29, 2009 by Matt Osborne
Your eyes do not deceive you. In making the case to delay health care reform, Senator Richard Lugar (R-IN) is willing to discuss a tax increase:
“I believe there will be a separate accounting,” Lugar said. “I think we will have to pay for it. I would just make this suggestion: that in the three weeks of debate we still have ahead of us, we really ought to concentrate in Congress on the war, on the overall strategy of our country and the cost of it. And we ought to be on the budget, passing appropriation bills in a proper way. In the course of that, we may wish to break out that. We may wish to discuss higher taxes to pay for it.”

Get that? The GOP is opposed to the health care reform bill because it will raise your taxes (wrong), but they’re willing to raise your taxes for permanent war. Because it’s the patriotic thing to do.

See how that works?




About Matt Osborne

Veteran blogging the culture wars from Alabama. Video journalist, mash-up artist, aspiring novelist, and metalhead. Expect bunnies, geekery, dark humor, and snarky empirical analysis to annoy idealists of all stripes. You can follow me on Twitter, but be ready 'cause it might get loud.
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  • Alisa Rosenbaum

    Perhaps not all Republicans are fiscal conservatives, as it would behoove them to be.

    Who is John Galt?

  • Matt Osborne

    Or, fiscal conservatism has nothing to do with political conservatism. For example, if a health care reform bill reduces the deficit, bends the cost-curve, and stops premiums from doubling, then one might call it fiscally conservative but not politically so.

  • Alisa Rosenbaum

    "fiscal conservatism has nothing to do with political conservatism"

    My claim differs. They are overlapping concepts, for certain.

    "if a health care reform bill reduces the deficit, bends the cost-curve, and stops premiums from doubling, then one might call it fiscally conservative but not politically so"

    First, a bill of this magnitude which has yet to be thoroughly studied, carefully considered for any of the measures you state above (by this, I mean consistently reported as such) could not possibly promise all that you claim. Second, if it did (which is a very dubious if), then taxation would rise to the level of government confiscation on a scale equal to nothing that we have ever considered possible. Hardly fiscal conservatism. No?

    Who, again, is John Galt?

  • Matt Osborne

    "A bill of this magnitude which has yet to be thoroughly studied" — by that, I'm sure you mean a bill that has been examined to death. Sorry, no death panels in it. The claims have been thoroughly documented in this blog, and no, your total costs would be lower. Ask the Canadians.

    John Galt is a fictional character with an absurd sci-fi premise.