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Tuesday, October 24, 2006
David Limbaugh :: Townhall.com Columnist
Without conservative help, Democrats shouldn't bet the farm
by David Limbaugh
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Will the Dems' health care Christmas Present to America be an improvement or detriment to our health care system?


The real question facing voters in November is whether Democrats will be able to do to the entire legislative branch what they've done to their party. The agenda-less party has become infected with a paralyzing negativity born of its singular hatred for President Bush. Will that mindset be permitted to seize control of our legislative branch? Will disgruntled conservatives collude to make this happen?

How many times have you heard Democrats decrying the Bush administration for having no plan to win the peace in Iraq? We might have executed the initial phase of the war masterfully by removing Saddam, they now grudgingly concede, but we didn't anticipate and plan for the problems that would arise after his removal.

Putting aside a debate over that assertion, let's apply the same standard to their agenda for America today. Shouldn't we ask: "Democrats have a potentially masterful plan for removing Republicans from majority control, but what is their plan for action if they win?

Let's just look at the most important issues: the war on terror, including Iraq, the economy, social issues and immigration. In each category, they either have no plan or are unwilling to publicize it for fear that Rovian Republicans will pick it apart and expose its flaws.

On immigration, no matter how poorly Republicans have performed, the Democrats' approach would be significantly worse. They would open the borders wider, discourage assimilation further and promote amnesty harder.

On the economy, they would increase domestic spending even more. And in their compulsion to punish the "rich," they would raise their taxes at the inevitable expense of choking the life out of our robust growth and increasing the deficit and national debt. Though the middle class and poor would be hurt, the rich would feel it, too -- and that would be almost as gratifying as hating President Bush.

On social issues, Democrats and the mainstream media are engaged in an elaborate scam. I've been saying for years that they have undisguised contempt for traditional values voters. They are proving it daily through their concerted drive to suppress the values voter turnout.

Their inconsistent pretense to represent this very block of voters was revealed as the fraud it is by recent comments of Newsweek's liberal Jonathan Alter, who said, "I hope this election is going to mark the demise of values voters ... that they don't determine the election the way they were seen to have the last time around." Continued...

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About The Author
David Limbaugh, brother of radio talk-show host Rush Limbaugh, is an expert in law and politics and author of Bankrupt: The Intellectual and Moral Bankruptcy of Today's Democratic Party.
 
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Lydia wrote something dumb:

"It is unconstitutional to tax people on their income."

Except of course that it's not. The 16th Amendment:

"The Congress shall have power to lay and collect taxes on incomes, from whatever source derived, without apportionment among the several States, and without regard to any census or enumeration."

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Patlanta wrote:

"In 2004 the Employment Policy Institute studied the impact of raising California’s minimum wage by $1. They found that approximately 18,600 Californians would lose their jobs and in the process would miss out on $220 million in total income."

Seems high to me. BLS reported that there were 520,000 minimum wage jobs in the entire country, out of 129 million jobs (http://www.bls.gov/cps/minwage2004.htm, http://www.bls.gov/oes/oes_dl.htm). In November 04, California had 14.6 million jobs, or 11.3% of all jobs. If this percentage held for the minimum wage jobs, California had 58,850 minimum wage jobs. I find it highly unlikely that a 19% increase in the minimum wage would cause 32% of those jobs to disappear.

So I looked into the source a little, which appears to be anything but unbiased. No surprise, of course. Bias is everywhere.

I guess I'll have to read up on this fairtax thingy. I'll give you my guess as to what the impacts are without even having looked: taxes on the rich go down, taxes on the middle class go up. There's no other way to make the tax system less progressive.

"We already have the Earned Income tax credit which subsidizes minumum wage."

But the EIC also distorts the low-wage end of the labor market. The government adding to low-wage workers' earnings reduces the natural pressure for higher wages at the bottom. Because of this, the minimum wage may actually be artificially low.

There are many variables at play in the economics of the minimum wage. It is no simple question.

"Be honest if you are going to take more money to give to the poor and don't say it's Wal-Marts fault."

You won't find me blaming Wal-Mart for anything; one look at the McKinsey study reveals how poor an argument that is.

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