Pete's BLOG-Day 26,368. Republicans don't study history

Today is Sunday, January 27, 2013. No stats today. My weight was 162.6 pounds.

QUOTE from 1000lifelessons.com: "Five Simple Rules for Happiness: Free your heart from hatred. Free your mind from worries. Live simply. Give more. Expect less."

My THOUGHTS today have to do with politicians not knowing history. Iowa has a 800 million dollar surplus in the state treasury. The Republicans in the legislature want to give nearly all of it back to the people of Iowa to the tune of about $750.00 per  household in Iowa. The Democrats want to invest some of it in education, mental health and health care and some tax relief for lower-income Iowans. Branstad wants to use it kick-start his K-12 school reforms and to reduce property taxes.

Todd Dorman writes a column in the CR Gazette - he had some pretty thoughtful words. He said the lawmakers record of dealing with surpluses is not good. They usually end up blowing the whole thing and then when things get tought again and tax revenue drops we don't have any left for emergencies. Dorman suggested the state send every Iowa household a menu of surplus options and we could choose what we want. His final words were: "If the state is going to play Santa, the least you can do is ask us what we want. Just pretend we're lobbyists."

I remember the last time we had a big surplus, it was in the late1990's - the Republican controlled state legislature gave it all back to the taxpayers of Iowa. So when the financial crisis hit in 2008-09 we had to lay off  teachers, cut school programs, cut funding for our 3 state universities, cut funding for our 15 junior college-vocational schools, etc. And now the Republicans want to do the same thing. Why don't they learn from our history? They don't learn because I swear they never read anything or don't want to know the truth.

It reminds me of the Republicans in Congress. Reagan and his wonderful tax cut, trickle-down economic theory in the early 1980s did nothing but triple the national debt - from less than one trillion dollars to 3 trillion dollars. (By the way, his key economic theorist was a guy named Professor Laffer - quite an appropriate name, wouldn't you say?) So what does Bushy Boy and Cheeney and the Republican controlled Congress do in the early 2000s? Clinton handed them a quarter of a trillion dollar surplus. So "W" and Cheeney and the Congress believe that tax rates must be cut in order to simulate the economy. They were repeating the same economic theory as Ronnie Reagan. And the results were the same - massive deficits. "W' and Cheeney increased the national debt from around 6 trillion to nearly 12 trillion. And when Obama and Biden took office, instead of receiving a quarter of a trillion dollar annual surplus they were handed a 1.2 trillion annual deficit from "W" and Cheeney. Those tax cuts really worked, didn't they?

Do any Republicans read the history books? I don't think so. For some reason they think their economic theory is right and it is going to work this time around. Like Romney and Ryan promised in the campaign.