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Paul Ryan's Record On Science and Government
sciencehabit writes "U.S. Representatives Paul Ryan (R-WI) and Dennis Kucinich (D-OH) don't have much in common when it comes to politics. Kucinich is a very liberal Democrat who's leaving Congress this January after being defeated in a primary election by a more moderate colleague. Ryan is a conservative leader and now the Republican Party's presumptive candidate for vice president. A dozen years ago, however, the two men found one thing they could agree on—killing the National Ignition Facility, a multibillion dollar laser fusion project at the Department of Energy's Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory in California. The article goes on to explore other impacts Ryan could have on science as VP."
Nearly everything our government does is important to someone but it's clear from our high taxes and massive deficit that we just can't afford it all.
What're you, poor or middle class?
All sardonic social commentary aside, tax rates, at least on the wealthiest of Americans (that's not you nor I, BTW), is the lowest it's been in over half a century.
Not to say the government of today isn't chock-full of waste and bloat, just pointing out facts.
An enigma, wrapped in a riddle, shrouded in bacon and cheese
So what you're saying is that the tax rates in the 90's, one of the more prosperous times in this country's history was what? Last I checked our economy has grown since then. During that time not only could we afford most of these programs but we had projected surpluses had we stayed on target. It doesn't take a genius to realize that when times are really tough and you're too far in the whole simply cutting back isn't enough, you'll need a second job until you recover.
Let's also probably not mention that companies can write off expansion expenses negating the tax burden. At 39.2% according to your own link, that would be pretty high, care to see how much taxes corporations actually pay? Tax rates are manipulated so much in the political landscape that its no wonder it makes most people's heads spin.
Consider Japan, they lowered their corporate tax rate but use value added taxes to make up the difference. There are incredibly few businesses that actually pay 39.2% in taxes.
Cuts are indeed necessary, but they need not be nearly as severe as the Republican party would have you believe. When asking for sacrifice you should probably make sure that everybody is sacrificing instead of young women who no longer have access to planned parenthood to get birth control pills because they have had so much of their funding taken away that they are only open a few hours a week if at all in certain states. These types of cuts only cause additional problems and more importantly expenses as you then have more women getting pregnant and needing assistance in other ways since they don't have health insurance that covers birth control.
Look at California for trying this method. They have vote mandated spending and their constitution requires that taxes can only be increased through a voter iniative. So people vote for a program and then when it comes time to pay for it they opt out and then you run out of money. The programs would not have been proposed to begin with if there wasn't some problem that needed to be solved. So the answer is to raise taxes and pay for the programs that fix the problems that ravaged this country at the start of the 20th century. All the assistance programs out there were created for reasons, all the regulatory bodies were created for certain reasons. If they aren't working then the answer most often isn't to throw them out entirely, it's to fix the process so that it actually accomplishes the stated goals. Cutting food assistance programs isn't going save the country any money, people need to eat, what is someone that is starving going to do when they can't afford any food? We are seeing already with crime increasing in almost every part of the country.
There is a difference between being a bleeding heart liberal that wants rainbows to shoot out of everyone's butts and a compassionate person that understands that we are all part of a community and that you can help the people in your community and all prosper or leave people to their own devices and end up needing a police state to keep those like myself with means safe.
Every branch of government and every government funded project wastes money
The same can largely be said of the private sector as well.