Working a ton of hours but just couldn't resist addressing Iggy's latest "thoughts", which were a result of a rainy summer season. It appears Iggy has taken a page out of Dalton McGuinty's liar liar pants on fire strategy of stating something he himself knows to be untrue. It appears Iggy is boasting that if elected he will get rid of the $50 billion deficit without raising taxes. So without raising taxes that would mean one of a few things:
1. Iggy plans on massive spending cuts. But where to cut? Health care.? Maybe. Put our healthcare system through the Chretien/Martin debacle all over again. Cut funding to the arts? Oops, better avoid that one, Remember the last election Iggy? I know. Let's change the rules for EI eligibility. That could bring in over $54 billion over the years. And you could save money by cancelling that EI reform blue ribbon panel.
2. Increases in government revenues. This might be a tough one without those tax increases Iggy just promised to avoid. I suppose he might insist on balancing the budget with increased revenues, but that would be the exact opposite of what Kevin Page and TD economist and uber-Liberal Don Drummond said could happen.
3. He could save millions by eliminating the vote subsidy thingy. Oops, never mind. Just remembered that whole coalition thing that supposedly was a result of those subsidies being eliminated.
4. Phone his BFF, Barak Obama, and ask if he might be willing to add another $50 billion onto that gazzilion U.S. deficit.
5. Come up with Adscam 2, the sequel. Only this time figure out how to get the advertising agencies to give the government money for nothing.
6. Hold $500 dinners 365 days a year, with all proceeds going to the federal treasury.
7. Have John McCallum do a series of Chevrolet commercials, increasing the sales of GM cars and making it more likely to recoup that auto-bailout money.
8. Appoint Bob Rae finance minister. Iggy said he wouldn't raise taxes. He never said Bob Rae wouldn't.
9. Increase lobster sales to China, something the Conservative government has disappointingly overlooked as a massive revenue generator.
Explain something for me.
ReplyDeleteIf no tax increases means spending cuts are unavoidable, then do you think Harper is lying?
Ignatieff has not said there will be no cuts as far as I am aware, but it is Harper who has explicitly told us that the deficit will magically disappear without tax increases or spending cuts.
So without raising taxes that would mean one of a few things:
1. Harper plans on massive spending cuts. But where to cut? Health care.? Maybe. Put our healthcare system through the Chretien/Martin debacle all over again. Cut funding to the arts? Oops, better avoid that one, Remember the last election Harper? I know. Let's change the rules for EI eligibility. That could bring in over $54 billion over the years. And you could save money by cancelling that EI reform blue ribbon panel.
2. Increases in government revenues. This might be a tough one without those tax increases Harper promised to avoid. I suppose he might insist on balancing the budget with increased revenues, but that would be the exact opposite of what Kevin Page and TD economist and Don Drummond said could happen.
3. He could save millions by eliminating the tax deduction subsidy of 75% which is an even bigger subsidy as well as that vote subsidy thingy. Oops, never mind. Just remembered that without that favours the Conservatives even more and, unlike the $ per vote subsidy, it actually takes money from non-Conservatives and gives it to Conservatives. Genius that one. No way it is going.
4. Phone his BFF, Barak Obama, and ask if he might be willing to add another $50 billion onto that gazzilion U.S. deficit. Or what the heck, just keep letting Obama write his “made in Canada” policies.
5. Come up with Adscam 2, the sequel. Ooops. Forgot. Already did that. Smart of me to call it the “Marquee Events Funding Program”. I am sure that one still has him laughing.
6. Force riding associations in losing ridings to take IN money from the national party and pay it OUT immediately to the national party to circumvent campaign finance laws.
7. Have Jim Flaherty, John Baird and Tony Clement do a series of plays re-enacting how they hid the money and created a huge deficit in Ontario. The cool meta-narrative of that is the play within the play showing us how they are doing now to Canada what they did then to Ontario.
8. Assume that by now no one expects Harper to stick by any conservative principle for more than twenty minutes (and he’d probably be right, judging from the latest post from Paul) and start raising taxes or cutting spending anyway
9. Tax income trusts and hope no one notices another broken promise. Ooops. Did that, and they did.
Your problem Ted, is that Harper said the deficit would drop as the economy picked up over the next four years and federal revenues increased. Ignatieff said that was false. So did McCallum and Goodale. The PM has maintained this all along. The Liberals refute it.
ReplyDeleteSo if rising revenues won't balance the budget, as Iggy has asserted, he needs to tell Canadians what he will do to balance the budget. If revenues don't meet spending, he needs to cut costs.
How?
Ted you're funny.
ReplyDeleteMichael St.Paul's
And if I remember right, the government tried to hold the line on pay increases for civil servants, and the opposition had a coniption.
ReplyDeleteTed, I guess you missed the memo that McGuinty admitted the last full year the Tory's were in power they balanced the budget. Then that Sars thing hit, and the federal government, headed by Liberals, offered Ontario $150 million to make up for the $2 billion hit.
ReplyDeleteNot to mention that the deficit McGuinty claimed to have been left with included debt never included in any Ontario budget before.
Or the fact McGuinty got $330 million from the feds and then applied it to the following years budget. Kind of like letting the interest build on your credit card while the cash sits in your pocket.
And using Ontario might not be the greatest idea now, what with eHealth, the OLG, millions for cricket clubs.
Ignatieff (same as harper) is counting on the tar sands to pay off the deficit same as last time.
ReplyDeleteIf Great Britain is willing to give a convicted terrorist a get out of jail free card to let BP exploration access to Libya then the tar sands don't even have to pretend to cut emissions and the world will be lining up at the end of the pipe line.
Canada is NOT a manufacturing nation nor banking nation nor peace keeping nation nor particularily good at nuclear energy however it is an OIL SUPER POWER.
As someone who believes Canada would be best served with a CPC majority I will be answering any polls from now until the election is called with unmitigated support for Ignatieff and all things Liberal.
ReplyDeleteThe apparent lack of vision and politcal accumen leaves the only thing that can save the Liberals is forcing a leadership review (instead of an election) if they find out how poorly they are polling.
Come on, you mean people here don't know the lieberals by now? Mikey knows that an improving economy will shave the deficit to zero, it is common sense. He wants to make it look like he has some secret plan up his ass but while in office depend on conservative practices to save his butt. Same old liberal trick, but it makes sense to keep hammering him on the details cause lieberals hate details. (real conservative)
ReplyDeleteOur host is obviously a Harpo guy! Why don't you ask the PM how he plans to repay the budget blow-out he's offered up to Canadians, present and future???
ReplyDeleteTed:
ReplyDeleteIgg-head said he would "eliminate it without raising taxes".
When pressed for details by the press, he did not provide any.
Just as Dion did with the carbon tax, leave out the details and someone else will fill the void.
To balance the books you either raise revenues, or cut spending on government programs.
Iggy said he would not raise taxes, that leaves program cuts.
It won't just be the conservatives running with this meme, the Bloc will be targeting Iggy to admit he's going to cut a program that is in "Quebec's interests". The NDP will hammer him by choosing any government program that favours their base.
The CPC will merely say "NEP II".
The media will lap it up as the story writes itself.
I'll recap so you don't get off topic.
Iggy has said the liberal party will eliminate the deficit (not taxpayers).
What expenditure do the liberals have their eye on? Is it defence spending? Social programs? Raid the EI fund? Download on the provinces?
They you need to know so they can save this liberal platform from the same fate that befell the carbon tax.
"To balance the books you either raise revenues, or cut spending on government programs."
ReplyDeleteThat's my point in a nutshell, gimbol.
If you don't believe him, then you must think Harper is outright lying or stupid since Harper has said he won't do either.
Or you believe Harper that the economy will take care of the deficit all by itself, in which case the criticism of Ignatieff is quite hypocritical.
So, do you think Harper is lying or stupid, or do you think Ignatieff is right?
All Iggy has done is copied the strategy Harper has been trying to follow in a minority gov't... unfortunately the colision of losers last election forced Harper to go into deficite spending...even though unemployment is lower than it was in the 80's and our economy is slowly stablizing and on the mend with over 2 dozen free trade agreements the Harper Gov't has managed to put in place withni Latin America and Europe in the last few years and their slow and steady approach to managing our country and cleaning up the mess left from almost 35 years of Liberal and Red Tory rule...
ReplyDeleteThe economy, when it recovers, (as long as there is no extra spending on silly programs like universal state run day care or such) will take care of itself.
here's the very simple math ...
say you work in sales and make $10 for every $100 you sell...on a normal month you sell $1000 ...that means you have $100 in your pocket at the end of the month...
can you follow that or am I being to advanced?
say business picks up so now you're selling $1500 a month...now you have $150 at the end of the month...
still with me?
to make that extra money you didn't really need to do anything extra because people were spending...but you now have the extra $50 you didn't have before...
There was no pixie dust involved and no fairies were injured in the process of creating that extra $50
now say you're the gov't and you tax people who are urnig money at a rate of 50% between income and consumer taxation...
before you were making $50 a month...now that things picked back up you're colecting $75