First Tuesday of November...
The upcoming election really concerns me. I'm worried that democrats will stay home and that the teabaggers will take over. We will then be doomed to the same policies and mind-sets that got us into the deep economic mess in the first place.
I wonder though, where were the teabaggers when we started two wars under false pretenses? Where were the teabaggers when unregulated spending brought our national debt four trillion dollars into the red under GWBush? That was a seventy-two percent increase, the largest increase under any president, and what did we get for it? Nothing more than special treats for the ultra rich, while the poor starved and the middle class disappeared.
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Replies to This Discussion
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Permalink Reply by Hillbilly on -
The elections should worry you. Democratic voters are waking up from a dream. The One they all believed in turns out to be an incompetent hack. Their great ideas that would change this country are failures. Maybe they can find the energy to believe "If only" one more time but I think most of them realize they were kidding themselves.
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Permalink Reply by Mary Chestnut on -
He's not up for election, but many democratic senators and reps are. I know the dream was somewhat self-induced, but to stay out of the voting booths is ridiculously dangerous. The alternative is not a dream but a nightmare.
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Permalink Reply by Hillbilly on
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The alternative is checks and balances. I'll take it over Obama's honeymoon without a chaperon.
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Permalink Reply by Charles Lane on -
Consider that from Jan. 20, 2001, to Jan. 20, 2009, the debt held by the public grew $3 trillion under Mr. Bush—to $6.3 trillion from $3.3 trillion at a time when the national economy grew as well.By comparison, from the day Honest Obe took office last year to the end of the current fiscal year, according to the Office of Management and Budget, the debt held by the public will grow by $3.3 trillion. In 20 months, Honest Obe will add as much debt as Mr. Bush ran up in eight years.
Honest Obe's spending plan approved by Congress last February calls for doubling the national debt in five years and nearly tripling it in 10.
Mr. Bush's deficits ran an average of 3.2% of GDP, slightly above the post World War II average of 2.7%. Mr. Obama's plan calls for deficits that will average 4.2% over the next decade.
Honest Obe has been on history's biggest spending spree, which has included a $787 billion stimulus, a $30 billion expansion of a child health-care program, and a $410 billion federal spending bill that increased nondefense discretionary spending 10% for the last half of fiscal year 2009. Honest Obe also hiked nondefense discretionary spending another 12% for fiscal year 2010.
Mr. Bush did move to give voters more control over their tax dollars. Both his Social Security reform ideas and the drug program he created offered templates for driving federal spending curves in the right direction, counter to what Democrats wanted to do.
Dumboocrats, for example, proposed creating a prescription drug program as an alternative to the one Mr. Bush proposed that would have cost a projected $800 billion over 10 years. The Bush drug benefit was originally expected to cost half that amount and today costs a third less than what it was initially expected to cost because it uses market forces to drive prices down.
Honest Obe claims the pork-laden stimulus package has been a success. But Honest Obe told Americans that if it were passed, unemployment wouldn't rise above 8%. It is now 10%. The president also said it would create 3.7 million jobs, 90% of which would be in the private sector. By Honest Obe's standards, the stimulus failed miserably.
Mr. Bush did sign the Troubled Asset Relief Program (TARP) into law and loaned $240 billion to banks. But those loans are being returned at a profit to the Treasury. Rather than using those funds to pay down the deficit, Mr. Obama wants to use them for new spending. What's more, he has lavished some $320 billion from TARP on car companies, union allies, and pet causes that will never be fully returned.
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Permalink Reply by Hillbilly on
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Bush's addition to the debt is inexcusable. He began with a surplus. He created a financial crisis. All this BS about Fannie and Freddie only being Barney Frank's fault is utter BS. The Republicans and Bush were in charge.
Cutting taxes increases the deficit.
Buying votes with Medicare supplements and education initiatives increases the deficit.
He was perhaps the most destructive Republican president ever.
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Permalink Reply by Charles Lane on
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On the most destructive (R) president we agree. However Bush's medicare plan was one of the few government programs that EVER came in under budget and lowered costs. I have yet to see Obamacare do that, or any government programs for that matter. Quick libs, name them.
And Bush did begin with a "surplus", however the deficit was increasing under Clinton. Even Clinton said Social Security needed to be reformed.
Spending money that you do not have increases the deficit, not tax cuts.
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Permalink Reply by Hillbilly on
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Spending money that you do not have increases the deficit, not tax cuts.
Really? Here I thought tax cuts reduced revenue. Silly me I guess.
So what were revenues in the three years after the Bush tax cuts?
Bush's medicare plan was one of the few government programs that EVER came in under budget and lowered costs.
Lowered costs? By what measure?
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Permalink Reply by Charles Lane on
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Here I will put up for you again...
Over the years, conservative economic policies have been the subject of heated attack by liberals seeking to justify punitive taxes and a bloated regulatory state. But far from failing, conservative economic values have delivered on every point.
Liberal economists frequently claim that tax cuts -- the centerpiece of effective conservative economic policies -- harm revenues and contribute to deficits. But this claim is patently false. Out-of-control spending, not tax cuts, causes huge deficits.
President Reagan cut the top tax rate to 28 percent for joint filers during the eighties. During the Reagan expansion, total revenues jumped nearly one hundred percent.
President Kennedy cut the top rate for joint filers to 70 percent from the confiscatory level of 90 percent under his predecessor. Real revenues in the sixties following the Kennedy tax cuts grew by 60 percent, or 30 percent minus inflation.
Although blasted in the mainstream media -- often without factual validity -- the Bush tax cuts achieved comparable success to the Kennedy and Reagan cuts. The terrorist attacks and the 2001 recession were obviously huge blows, but revenues quickly recovered, helped by pro-growth economic incentives. In 2003, revenues were $1.6 trillion. In 2007, revenues were $2.1 trillion, adjusted for inflation. Revenues increased.
Liberals like Ezra Klein at the Washington Post often rely on CBO budget calculations as a means of undermining tax cuts as a valid economic model, since the CBO always counts tax cuts as revenue losses. But annual federal budget data on actual receipts clearly demonstrates that revenues rise substantially when tax rates are cut and that revenues stagnate, or even fall, in response to increases in the level of taxation. The Bush 41 tax increase resulted in documented revenue loss. Why the heavy emphasis on historically inaccurate CBO calculations instead of easily accessible revenue data published annually in the U.S. Budget?
Revenues aside, income disparity remains a popular target for critics of conservative economic policies. A widely used template for the income disparity argument is the Reagan expansion. Many in the media have contended that the rich got richer and the poor got poorer[i] in the eighties, citing as proof the large gap between the highest and lowest income quintiles at the close of the decade. But this claim is a gross misrepresentation of available data.
The fact is that a lot of poor people got richer in the eighties. According to the Census, those making an average of $50,000 or more in the eighties increased by 60 percent, those making an average of $75,000 or more increased by 83 percent, and those making less than $10,000 decreased by 5 percent. Similarly, the Federal Reserve Bank of Dallas, using data gathered from tax returns, found that between 1979 and 1988, 85 percent of those in the poorest quintile moved into a higher quintile.
Furthermore, it is known that the rich pay a larger share of the tax burden after tax cuts. As the incentive to invest and grow business expands, so do incomes, and as incomes expand, so do revenues from "the rich."
During the Reagan years, the share of income taxes paid by the top ten percent of earners rose from 48 percent in 1981 to 57.2 percent in 1988. The "rich" pay more, not less of the tax burden.
The same principle can be observed in the Bush expansion.
Liberal economists frequently claim that conservative economic policies cost jobs.
Again, the numbers to support these fictitious assertions are lacking. The Reagan expansion boosted employment by nearly 20 million.
And despite the persistent claim that the George W. Bush tax cuts resulted in net job loss, the household survey at the Bureau of Labor Statics (BLS) shows strong job growth for the Bush years. Furthermore, self-employment and small business employment increased to over fifty percent of total U.S. employment during the Bush years,[ii] breaking old economic paradigms and invalidating outdated methods of measuring job creation. Regardless of survey discrepancies, it is a fact that America attained a 4.6 percent unemployment rate during the Bush years -- nearly as low as that achieved during the late nineties.
On this note, liberal economists consistently tout the Clinton years as a successful example of tax-and-spend economics. But in reality, the revered expansion of the nineties was built on tried-and-tested conservative economic principles. Much of the growth in the Clinton years was attributable to the widely acknowledged "dot-com boom," in which speculators and venture capitalists enriched themselves by investing in internet start-up companies. In addition, other financial and service industries experienced similar growth during this time. This growth was arguably influenced by the Republican capital gains tax cut of 1997, which President Clinton admirably signed into law [iii]. Therefore, any growth during the Clinton years can be traced to conservative economic policies.
In conclusion, if the goal is more jobs, a rising standard of living, and increased revenues for coveted social programs, then the obvious solution is conservative economic policies. Conservative economic policies offer nothing but prosperity. What have liberal economic policies done for America lately?
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Permalink Reply by Hillbilly on
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I'm sorry but I only skimmed your post. What did you say Federal revenues did in 2002, 2003 and 2004, after the Bush tax cuts in 2001?
They were higher right?
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Permalink Reply by Che Pancho Villa on -
That reply was simply awesome Hillbilly - ROFLMFAO! You wiped out Charlie's diatribe in one sentence!
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Permalink Reply by Charles Lane on
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Bush tax cuts achieved comparable success to the Kennedy and Reagan cuts. The terrorist attacks and the 2001 recession were obviously huge blows, but revenues quickly recovered, helped by pro-growth economic incentives. In 2003, revenues were $1.6 trillion. In 2007, revenues were $2.1 trillion, adjusted for inflation. Revenues increased.
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