• Quick note - the problem with Youtube videos not embedding on the forum appears to have been fixed, thanks to ZiprHead. If you do still see problems let me know.

Attention: Deficit!

200 billion? TWO HUNDRED BILLION DOLLARS IN INTEREST?

And people are saying sending a man to the moon would be a waste?
 
Of course the money lenders who stand to gain that 200 bil interest payment like things just the way they are.

BTW, Tricky, love the thread title!
 
Grammatron said:


I don't know why you only blame Bush for this; he didn't exactly make an executive order to force the spending through. The legislature passed the spending spree and they are as much if not more responsible for it. As for Democrats, they said 400billion dollars on Medicare wasn't enough. Let’s face it, Rep/Dem they both want pork and don't care how things get paid for. I don't see anyway out of this other than smaller government.
Click to expand...
With his wonderful majority in both houses and his carte blanche because of 911, Bush got practically everything he wanted. The Democrats have been in disarray since the Clinton debacle, and Bush has never been denied anything he pushed for strenuously. Especially the tax cut. That, IMO, is the main thing that has led to the current deficits. He has rewarded his rich supporters very well at the expense of our country. History will tell the final results. I truly hope I am wrong in my belief that these deficits will punish us for years to come.
 
Tricky said:

With his wonderful majority in both houses and his carte blanche because of 911, Bush got practically everything he wanted. The Democrats have been in disarray since the Clinton debacle, and Bush has never been denied anything he pushed for strenuously. Especially the tax cut. That, IMO, is the main thing that has led to the current deficits. He has rewarded his rich supporters very well at the expense of our country. History will tell the final results. I truly hope I am wrong in my belief that these deficits will punish us for years to come.
Click to expand...

They won't punish 'us', just the many.
 
Tricky said:

With his wonderful majority in both houses and his carte blanche because of 911, Bush got practically everything he wanted. The Democrats have been in disarray since the Clinton debacle, and Bush has never been denied anything he pushed for strenuously. Especially the tax cut. That, IMO, is the main thing that has led to the current deficits. He has rewarded his rich supporters very well at the expense of our country. History will tell the final results. I truly hope I am wrong in my belief that these deficits will punish us for years to come.
Click to expand...

Deficits are good. You see, when there is a deficit we won't spend as much, because we won't want a bigger deficit. Spending is bad.

There are those that think spending is bad only because it leads to deficits. They are wrong. Spending, especially social spending, is just wrong, just like homosexuality is just wrong. Social spending is spending money that doesn't belong to you on people that are too stupid or lazy to be rich, even though they had the same chance as everyone else. This is like theft, and theft makes the baby Jesus cry.

(I'd like to think that is a strawman of the admistration's stance on the deficit, but I'm not real sure. I could have sworn I heard this more or less exact argument a year ago.)
 
Re: Re: Re: Attention: Deficit!

a_unique_person said:


Only, the consistent message to the public from conservatives is that deficits make recessions worse, and if Democrats try the liberal Keynsian solution of spending your way out of a deficit, then they are sending America to Hell in a Handbasket.
Click to expand...

Never heard the first part. In any event, the last recession was very short lived - only 4Q at most.
 
Tricky said:

With his wonderful majority in both houses and his carte blanche because of 911, Bush got practically everything he wanted. The Democrats have been in disarray since the Clinton debacle, and Bush has never been denied anything he pushed for strenuously. Especially the tax cut. That, IMO, is the main thing that has led to the current deficits. He has rewarded his rich supporters very well at the expense of our country. History will tell the final results. I truly hope I am wrong in my belief that these deficits will punish us for years to come.
Click to expand...

This thread is a good place as anywhere to ask: How much did the tax cut actually cut and over what period of time? Who are the rich -- as in at what point do the people become rich?
 
a_unique_person said:


I was going for the language award.
Click to expand...

Cool. You might have a winner there!


a_unique_person said:
So tell me, which terrorists are about to rain ICBMs on the US so that it needs a new generation missile defense system? How much more secure is the US now that it has taken out a dictator who was no threat to it.
Click to expand...

It only takes one ICBM to kill hundreds of thousands of civilians. As far as Saddam being no threat to the U.S., that's only your opinion.
 
Tricky said:
Especially the tax cut. That, IMO, is the main thing that has led to the current deficits.
Click to expand...

Does not compute, as the tax cut is only costing ~ 100 billion as of 2003.
 
Grammatron said:

This thread is a good place as anywhere to ask: How much did the tax cut actually cut and over what period of time? Who are the rich -- as in at what point do the people become rich?
Click to expand...
You might ask that. You might ask the philosophical question "What is rich". You might ask everyone to go out and provide links. That is fair. But I'm lazy. I don't want to go out and find links. But I think it is common knowledge that the Bush tax cuts favored the high-income brackets. Without question, they reduced the government's income. Whether or not they were "good for the country" is debatable, but I personally feel that they were short-sighted attempts to pump up the economy at the expense of long-term economic health.

It is not surprising that people tend to think in terms of "what have you done for me lately". It is one reason that the Republicans put such effort into destroying Bill Clinton. He had done a lot for people lately. Maybe it wasn't his doing, but it was obvious that the public must be distracted from how good things were. So they used whatever tactics they could, since they could hardly attack him on issues.

Bush learned from this. He learned not to get involved in things that might be personally embarrassing. He learned that you can do anything you want as far as taking money from rich people goes, so long as you don't rent out the Lincoln bedroom. He learned to keep his hands clean. If dirt is to be done, it must be done by others. And if deficits are to be agreed upon, well hey! Congress did it! Not him!

Bush is not a smart man. But he is the figurehead of one of the most clever and well financed political machines of all time. It should not be surprising that his political machine has raised so much money that they don't even need the government mandated campaign funds. They have plenty of money. It didn't come from ordinary citizens like you and me. But you and I will ultimately pay for it. We will have to deal with the deficit. We will have to deal with health care costs. We will have to deal with pollution. We will pay for it in dollars disproportionate to our income, but that is not the ultimite cost. We will pay with our lives. But that's okay, because we're not rich.
 
Tricky said:

You might ask that. You might ask the philosophical question "What is rich". You might ask everyone to go out and provide links. That is fair. But I'm lazy. I don't want to go out and find links. But I think it is common knowledge that the Bush tax cuts favored the high-income brackets. Without question, they reduced the government's income. Whether or not they were "good for the country" is debatable, but I personally feel that they were short-sighted attempts to pump up the economy at the expense of long-term economic health.

It is not surprising that people tend to think in terms of "what have you done for me lately". It is one reason that the Republicans put such effort into destroying Bill Clinton. He had done a lot for people lately. Maybe it wasn't his doing, but it was obvious that the public must be distracted from how good things were. So they used whatever tactics they could, since they could hardly attack him on issues.

Bush learned from this. He learned not to get involved in things that might be personally embarrassing. He learned that you can do anything you want as far as taking money from rich people goes, so long as you don't rent out the Lincoln bedroom. He learned to keep his hands clean. If dirt is to be done, it must be done by others. And if deficits are to be agreed upon, well hey! Congress did it! Not him!

Bush is not a smart man. But he is the figurehead of one of the most clever and well financed political machines of all time. It should not be surprising that his political machine has raised so much money that they don't even need the government mandated campaign funds. They have plenty of money. It didn't come from ordinary citizens like you and me. But you and I will ultimately pay for it. We will have to deal with the deficit. We will have to deal with health care costs. We will have to deal with pollution. We will pay for it in dollars disproportionate to our income, but that is not the ultimite cost. We will pay with our lives. But that's okay, because we're not rich.
Click to expand...

I'm amazed at your response. You should be a politician if you answer all direct questions like this! Not only did you not even come close to answering my question but your rant somehow included bashing Republicans for going after Clinton, insulting Bush's intelligence and insinuating that his efforts are only for the rich.

Any time you want to actually answer my question, though, it would be appreciated.
 
Grammatron said:
I'm amazed at your response. You should be a politician if you answer all direct questions like this! Not only did you not even come close to answering my question but your rant somehow included bashing Republicans for going after Clinton, insulting Bush's intelligence and insinuating that his efforts are only for the rich.

Any time you want to actually answer my question, though, it would be appreciated.
Click to expand...
You're welcome! Do I have your vote then?

But to answer your question, let's say "rich" is the top 1% of total wealth. The tax cuts benefitted this group more than any other. You might say, "Well of course. They pay more taxes", which is often (but not always) true. They also get the most benefit out of the infrastructure that makes them able to amass such wealth. They should pay more and should pay a higher percentage. I'd guess that if they had a choice of paying higher taxes or having a lot less wealth, they'd pick the former.
 
Grammatron: I don't know why you only blame Bush for this; he didn't exactly make an executive order to force the spending through. The legislature passed the spending spree and they are as much if not more responsible for it. As for Democrats, they said 400billion dollars on Medicare wasn't enough. Let’s face it, Rep/Dem they both want pork and don't care how things get paid for. I don't see anyway out of this other than smaller government.
Click to expand...
True. Indeed, both parties want to spend money, it's just that one wants to raise taxes while the other runs deficits.

I see nothing wrong with a publicly held debt. In fact, I not only consider it necessary, I also consider it healthy. Just as the average U.S. citizen has debt (any or all of: mortgage, car payments, credit cards, student loans, etc.), the federal government sometimes needs to borrow to fund its programs.

Deficit spending, on the other hand, is not always a good thing to have. The cyclical nature of the economy dictates that even if government spending was fixed (or rather, followed exactly the rate of inflation), we would still run deficits some times, surpluses other times. It would depend on the economic strength and corresponding tax revenues.

What is being done now is irresponsible spending, and I do put a good portion of blame on the Bush administration. He didn't need to sign every spending bill that came to his desk, but he did. He is in no way a fiscal conservative, which is what he campaigned as. To get the funding he wanted, he simply approved all the spending the Democrats wanted as well. It's what happens when the two parties scratch each others' backs.

That said, I see no indication in any of the candidates for '04 (Bush or the Dems) of a willingness to trim government spending. They just keep promising more programs. More health care, more prescription drug benefits, more education spending, more everything. How exactly does this stuff get paid for?

But we don't care. As long as the government tells us we're doing alright, there's no need to suspect we're actually shooting our collective foot with massive deficit spending and an out-of-control public debt.
 
Tricky said:
Is it time to do something about this?

Budget office projects U.S. deficit to hit $477 billion



Is the sheer size of these numbers causing people to become numbed to them? How long can we continue to rack up such debt before we hit the wall?

Hard to believe that we had a surplus when this decade started. And it's getting worse. The projected deficit for the next decade has nearly doubled since August. Oh, but consumer confidence is up, so we're okay.
Click to expand...

For better or for worse, the deficit issue has always bored voters.

Ross Perot was as close as anyone ever got to actually dealing with the issue. As I recall, he got 18% of the popular vote and about 2/3 of those supporters were seriously concerned about the deficit.

Do the math. 2/3 of 18% is 12%, so 12% of the voters (about one in eight) were concerned enough about the deficit to cast a vote for a real outsider.

That says a lot!
 
Tricky said:

Rolling back the tax cuts would do a lot towards reducing the deficit. I'm not aware of the "spending plans" the Democrats have that would erase that.
Click to expand...
Have you read any of their policy statements on their election web sites? New spending galore.

The only criticism the Dems had about the $80 billion medicare drug benefit was that it wasn't nearly enough! That stance alone would overshadow any tax increase they propose. (And yes, repealing the tax cuts is a tax increase!)

Now I have a lot of disagreement with how Clinton reduced the govenment. I thought some of his cutbacks were unnecessarily cruel and poorly thought out.
Click to expand...
Please show examples of any gov't reduction in spending during the Clinton years. I suspect you're one of those who call a reduction in spending increases a reduction in spending. How much do you think the gov't should grow every year? Won't this demand an ever-increasing amount of taxes to be collected? When will it ever be enough?

And it should be pointed out that tax increases do not necessarily equate to more taxes being collected. Too low a rate and not enough taxes get collected, too high a rate and it stifles growth thus reducing taxes collected. Somewhere in ther middle is the optimum tax rate - high enough to pay for gov't but low enough to encourage growth.

Since everyone wants to put the blame on the POTUS for deficits, why not give him a tool to actually manage said deficits? One that nearly every state's Governor has? I'm talking about the line-item veto of course. Would require a Constitutional Amendment, but I for one would support it. Would keep Congress from tacking on billions of $$ in pork to the "Stop Child Rape Act of 2004" as a hypothetical example.
 
Tricky said:
Is the sheer size of these numbers causing people to become numbed to them? How long can we continue to rack up such debt before we hit the wall?

Hard to believe that we had a surplus when this decade started. And it's getting worse. The projected deficit for the next decade has nearly doubled since August. Oh, but consumer confidence is up, so we're okay.
Click to expand...

Hard to believe that back in the 80s, the left was screaming about Reagan's deficits and how our grandchildren would be working off the debt 100 years from now. But like you said, we started this decade with a surplus.

Now how did that happen?
 
Re: Re: Attention: Deficit!

Luke T. said:


Hard to believe that back in the 80s, the left was screaming about Reagan's deficits and how our grandchildren would be working off the debt 100 years from now. But like you said, we started this decade with a surplus.

Now how did that happen?
Click to expand...

We elected a Democrat. :p

(too easy, had to do it)
 
You must log in or register to reply here.

Back
Top Bottom