THEREFORE BE IT RESOLVED, that the Republican National Committee identifies ten (10) key public policy positions for the 2010 election cycle, which the Republican National Committee expects its public officials and candidates to support:

(1) We support smaller government, smaller national debt, lower deficits and lower taxes by opposing bills like Obama’s “stimulus” bill;

(2) We support market-based health care reform and oppose Obama-style government run healthcare;

(3) We support market-based energy reforms by opposing cap and trade legislation;

(4) We support workers’ right to secret ballot by opposing card check;

(5) We support legal immigration and assimilation into American society by opposing amnesty for illegal immigrants;

(6) We support victory in Iraq and Afghanistan by supporting military-recommended troop surges;

(7) We support containment of Iran and North Korea, particularly effective action to eliminate their nuclear weapons threat;

(8) We support retention of the Defense of Marriage Act;

(9) We support protecting the lives of vulnerable persons by opposing health care rationing and denial of health care and government funding of abortion; and

(10) We support the right to keep and bear arms by opposing government restrictions on gun ownership; and be further

RESOLVED, that a candidate who disagrees with three or more of the above stated public policy position of the Republican National Committee, as identified by the voting record, public statements and/or signed questionnaire of the candidate, shall not be eligible for financial support and endorsement by the Republican National Committee.

The survey found 62 percent of voters say tax cuts will create jobs and fight unemployment. Only 21 percent say spending can do that. This cuts against the long-standing economic theories that have guided the White House and Democrats since the beginning of the Obama administration. More good news for Republicans; 51 percent believe canceling the rest of the stimulus money would create more jobs, and only 32 percent — rather less than the Democrats’ base vote — want to keep spending it.

By that standard, what else do the American people have no confidence in? Well, Chief Justice John Roberts only got 78 votes for confirmation, so it’s not clear whether or not President George W. Bush should have nominated him. The 2003 ban on “partial-birth abortion” only got 64 votes. The 2001 Bush tax cut only got 58 votes, and the 2003 Bush tax cut only got 50 votes, with Vice President Dick Cheney casting the tiebreaker; surely, Enzi or Grassley will work on repealing all of this, because such partisan legislation has no right being passed by the Senate.

In a research note that’s been making the rounds of economics blogs this week, Berner declares that “America’s long-awaited fiscal train wreck is now under way.”

By “train wreck,” he means out-of-control federal budget deficits that he’s sure will finally drag the economy under — as if we weren’t already feeling badly enough about its shaky state.

Berner, you’ll remember, sounded the alarm about the first round of deficit spending that followed the tight budgets of the final Clinton years:

[T]here are those who argue that tax cuts alongside falling interest rates are the proper pick-me-up for the economy. Federal Reserve Chairman Alan Greenspan seems game. He has endorsed tax cuts and took the benchmark Federal Funds rate down to 4% from 6.5% last December. … Adds Richard Berner, chief U.S. economist at Morgan Stanley: “These tax cuts are a big deal. The tax-cut train has left the station, and it is clearly going to be stimulative.”

I’ll quote Paul Krugman:

[The 2001 tax cuts] didn’t seem to help all that much. Formally, the recession ended in late 2001, but most labor-market indicators continued to worsen into mid-2003.

At the White House meeting — Cantor was the last of the Republican leaders to arrive — Obama … noted that not a single House Republican had backed his economic stimulus bill. According to a firsthand account of the meeting, Cantor took exception: “With all due respect, Mr. President, we offered you ideas on the stimulus plan directly, and they were ignored completely.”

Cantor suggested that if he were to view the stimulus negotiations through a partisan lens, he would argue Democrats started the “party of no” name-calling about the same time that Obama was meeting with House Republicans to discuss the stimulus plan.

A January meeting between the Republicans and Obama produced, you’ll remember, reports that the president dismissed Cantor’s qualms about tax cuts for people who didn’t pay income taxes because “there’s a philosophical difference, but I won.” That was the White House’s reporting of the conversation; earlier reports, more friendly to Cantor, quoted Obama as simply saying “I won,” as if he was bragging for no reason. So the same spin is happening, but three months of Republican antics and “no” votes have really shifted the burden onto Cantor.

Workers earning less than $150,000 a year are eligible for a rebate totaling $400 both this year and next. The AP does the math so we don’t have to.

With 39 weeks left in the year, the credit will increase workers’ take home pay by about $10.25 a week. In 2010, when the credit is spread over the entire year, it will amount to about $7.70 a week.

Not sure if that’s going to save Detroit, but it will get you a cold Bud or two.

Cheers, Congress.

Under current policy, debt held by the public soars to the improbable level of more than 800 percent of GDP (though the economy would crash well before this level were reached).

There are more serious short-term Republican proposals, which bring together ideas that the party has pushed since the stimulus debate began.

• A cap on spending “as a percentage of GDP at the spending levels projected to result from the this legislation.”

• Ending the estate tax, permanently.

• Cutting the corporate income tax from 35 percent to 25 percent.

• A one-year moratorium on earmarks “until a commission reports reforms.”

• A simplified tax code of “10 percent on adjusted gross income up to $100,000 for joint filers, and $50,000 for single filers; and 25 percent on taxable income above these amounts.”

• More oil drilling after “a review and streamlining of environmental laws and regulations that apply to energy production,” with some of the gains put into clean energy research funds.

• Reforming Social Security by reducing the 15-percent Primary Insurance Amount bracket by 0.25 percentage points per year.

The plan is notably vague about entitlement spending, which takes some of the heat off Republicans who could be accused of backing big Medicare and Medicaid cuts.

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The curious thing is that, as House Speaker Nancy Pelosi’s (D-Calif.) office describes it, the rebates were reduced at the request of GOP negotiators.

“To gain the support of the needed Senate Republicans, the amount of Make Work Pay Tax credit has been scaled back, the [alternative minimum tax fix] has been added, and several business tax incentives have been added (cancellation of debt income),” the speaker’s preliminary summary reads.

To which we say, “Huh?”

It might just be that the provision targeting the alternative minimum tax — which would otherwise hit millions of upper-middle class families — took precedent over the rebates, which target lesser-income folks. But insights are welcome…

Senator John Thune today introduced an across-the-board middle class tax rebate amendment (S. AMDT #538) to the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act of 2009. Senator Thune’s amendment would strike the entire $936 billion Senate stimulus bill and replace it with a $936 billion across-the-board-middle-class tax rebate for 182 million Americans. The amendment would result in a tax rebate of $5,143 for single filers and $10,286 for married couples who file jointly. Eligibility is capped for all tax filers at 2007 adjusted gross income of $250,000.

“There seems to be a great deal of discussion over how to spend American taxpayers’ money and future earnings. Instead of investing billions in wasteful government programs that won’t provide immediate help to our troubled economy, my amendment invests in the American people.”

DeMint’s bill at least contained some targeted tax cuts that he’d been looking at for years. This is just a stunt: it makes Art Laffer’s napkin look like the A Monetary History of the United States.

So to remedy this, the Republicans keep pushing … tax credits to encourage people to buy more homes.

Economist’s View has a roundup of reactions.

From Tyler Cowen:

I’m not sure I understand the proposal, but here is what the NYT says:

The Senate on Wednesday voted to expand the economic stimulus package with a tax credit for homebuyers of up to $15,000, a provision championed by Republicans as addressing a root cause of the recession.

Like Arnold Kling, I wish to shift the economy out of housing, not into it again. I also believe that the supply of homes is relatively elastic right now.  The tax credit will subsidize the new buyers without propping up the price of homes.  Demand will go up, supply will go up, price will stay more or less on the same trajectory, and banks won’t be any healthier.  The subsidy goes to new home buyers and why should we be helping them above all others?  Aren’t they relatively wealthy on average?  (Not that there’s anything wrong with that.)  Aren’t some of them the dreaded “flippers” and speculators for that matter?  (Can we really enforce the primary residence requirement?)  Do we really want to push people into being less diversified and less geographically mobile in the labor market?

And from Ed Glaeser in the Wall Street Journal:

We are in the ruins of a housing market made worse by subsidized lending. The government has no business egging people on to borrow as much as possible to bet on housing prices. There is plenty of room to criticize the current stimulus plan, but Republicans need to adopt Ronald Reagan or Dwight D. Eisenhower, not Harold Ickes, as their intellectual role model.

It’s possible the only thing that may fix the housing market will be the pain of its correction. Bubbles have to burst eventually. Stimulating housing demand makes no sense, yet Republicans cling to tax cuts as if they are some magical cure-all. They are about the last thing a housing market that remains overpriced and overbuilt needs right now.