Harper sets stage for Commons showdown

Maybe this is Canada's chance to get rid of this scumbag?

I sure businesses set capital investments plans based on projections of growth of consumer spending for their product. How a corporate tax break would make it's way to an increase in consumer spending I don't quite follow.

Don't you all wish it was a real 'showdown'? Harper coming out of the bar, his spurs ringing. Iggy in the middle of main street, sixguns on his hip. Layton takes out Duceppe on a rooftop, because he was going to snipe a sheap shot at them both when they weren't looking and steal their wallets.

Unbelievable!

We've got a $50 billion deficit and they want to cut taxes by $10 billion per year! How about eliminating the deficit first...

Amen

Haha. That's a film I would pay to see!

Well, the gov't seems to think we live in a perfect world. In a perfect world, the corporations would lower their product prices by an amount close to what the tax break for them was, and thusly, people will buy more because products will be cheaper.
Or how about this delusion? Stockholders/investors will see an increased ROI and instead of reinvesting it, will spend the increase just because their dividends are paying more than they used to.

The only thing I can think of that comes close to making sense is, if the breaks were actual cuts done to encourage new industry to start up, or existing ones to expand, or foreign ones to expand into Canada, there'd be more jobs, more product choice and possibly more competition.

However, if I had a pic of me holding my breath, I would place it here.

Maybe the PM could cut even more from the transfer payments to the provinces. It seemed to work so well for Chretein and Martin.

It did work well. It worked EXTREMELY well. The budget was cut to balance in 1997 and that, combined with a strong economy, led to budget surpluses every year from 1997 to 2007. When you look at operating surpluses, the government was in a positive position as early as 1995. Of that surplus, the Chretien and Martin governments promised 50% would go to restoring the programs affected by the fiscal 1997 cuts. In reality, they only turned about 20% of the surplus back towards affected programs, with most of the rest going to debt reduction. But it’s not really a “download”, when you download it, but then un-download it the very next year with a portion of the surplus. And, of course, debt was reduced (which sounds like Conservative policy, doesn’t it?). So you can say “Chretien and Martin cut transfers to balance the budget", but that’s a half truth. The transfers that were cut in 1997 had been restored by 2003 AND something like $40B had been cut from the national debt. The over-all result, as of 2004 was that services and transfers had only been TEMPORARILY reduced. By the time the Liberals left office, the country was in a better position, in terms of debt AND federally funded services, than when Chretien first balanced the budget. That’s not to say that this achievement was, in any way, based on great leadership. The economy was so strong that any government could have made out well. But to call what Chretien and Martin did “cutting transfers” is simply untrue, unless you look solely at fiscal 1997.

I don't get conservatives bitching about cutting transfers. I thought conservatism was about cutting spending - cutting transfers is one way of doing that. In turn it forces the provinces and municipalities to cut spending as well - or raise taxes. Should Martin have cut only federal programs, like say defense, but kept shipping money to the provinces so they can keep spending at no political cost?

At one time this stuff would have got me all fired up. Am I alone in finding our current politics very boring and the same shit every day?

Yawn.