From the day Bush was inaugurated until the day Obama was inaugurated, the debt increased by 5.1 trillion dollars. In less than three years Obama has racked up almost 4 trillion dollars in extra debt with no end in sight to the red ink if he has his way. It is only the Republican takeover of congress that is causing us to hopefully put an end to this irresponsible orgy of spending before it destroys the country.
The attempting elision between "red ink" and "spending" is noted, there. Deficits walk on two legs: spending and revenue. Spending hasn't increased all that much - what's happened is that revenue has fallen off a cliff, due to the destruction that years of GOP policies have wreaked on the US economy. Had Republicans used their power responsibly - and so, not ran massive deficits even during fat years - we'd have enough cushion in the debt to borrow our way out of this downturn, and wouldn't have suffered so severe a recession to begin with.
The Republicans have not taken over Congress, but disabled it. There's a difference. And they are doing nothing of any significance about spending. So far, their sole issue has been preventing the restoration of the former taxation regime imposed on rich people - under which the US was reasonably solvent. That's a lie. I'm sorry, but it's been refuted to your face often enough. It's not a mistake any more. That chart is also dishonest, which has also been shown to your face several times. Not only does it assign responsibility irresponsibly (the wrong years, etc), but it treats W's official budget as reality. W's dishonest manipulation of the "budget deficit", by financing his wars and bank bailouts and the like "off budget", is not controversial or up for discussion. He did it, everybody knows he did it, and he knew what he was doing when he did it, and so did most people who bothered to pay attention, and so do we now. Do you? Are you lying, again, or are you stupid?
It is funny how you can see that George II was not resposible for his first 9 months of spending, but don't see the same with Obama...funny how that works. Please Register or Log in to view the hidden image! Two you numbers are just flat out and seriously wrong again. But that has never been a problem for you. Has it? That is probably why you never offer proofs, because you know no credible evidence will back up your numbers. I suggest you visit the US Treasury website, and get the real numbers. The Republican take over of Congress has done just the opposite of what you claim. And if the Republican Congress causes this nation to default, it will make the previous fiscal disaster created by these very same Republicans several orders of magnitude worse than the current state of affairs.
As compared to the Democrats who didn't even bother to pass a budget their last year in control, thus abdicating their primary responsibility. How is that a lie? The Democrates won control of both houses of congress in the 2006 election and took control in 2007. If you somehow can't remember that far back, here is a New York Times article from 2006 proclaiming that the Democrats had taken contol of both the Senate and the House for the first time since 1994. : http://query.nytimes.com/gst/fullpage.html?res=9B0CE5DA1F3FF933A25752C1A9609C8B63 Now you please show me how that's a lie or a mistake?
They had the numbers on paper, but they did not have control. Democrats don't even agree with each other on many things.
The 2007 Senate had 100 members: 49 of them were Democrats, 49 Republicans. The VP, who breaks ties, was Republican. Even if the Dems had had a majority in the Senate, that would not have been enough for control - it takes 60 votes, enough to break a filibuster, to have actual Partisan control of the Senate. That is not a technicality any more - we have seen this fact have powerful influence, ever since the Reps lost their majority, as they used their superior Party unity to set records for filibuster and threat of filibuster. All this has been presented to you before, multiple times, on this forum. It's a simple, basic fact. You know that. You have been told that already. You are therefore lying, repetitively and purposefully, as a troll lies, every time you post the falsehood. Yes, as compared to the Democrats. It was "the Republicans" who saw to the removal of proposed cost controls on Medicare Plan D, for example - a huge increase in spending - and continue to fight their introduction.
I'm unsure we can count on madanth having actually followed and read responses to his posts. I've been noticing a certain "drive-by" style to his interactions in the past months - not sure how it applies in this particular case, but if you don't have an instance of him explicitly aknowledging some piece of input, it may be unwise to assume he ever read it.
I have to take issue with what you're attempting to present. First off, let's talk about a percentage of increase. What % did the debt increase under bush? Almost 100%. Second off, Bush signed the tax cuts--you remember, to stimulate the economy, right??--that have now cost our government massive amounts of money. That money was--in turn--handed back to mostly millionaires and billionaires who never missed it to begin with. Third off, the economy collapsed not in small part due to massive deregulation (under the last three POTUS's), defunded programs and oversight (at Republican behest) and catastrophic dereliction of duty on various government posts by officials as far back as Reagan. This economic collapse cost the government any hope of a balanced budget. Those are things that, at the very least, you should be taking into consideration. Really? Honestly? Then, why was the national debt never reigned in under the 100% Republican controlled Congress and POTUS during Bush's first six years? I will grant you, that were it not for the divided Congress right now, the debate would not be as intense and, more than likely, we wouldn't be seeing the level of attention needed, but at some point Republicans need to accept that raising taxes on the top 1% isn't the worst thing in history. We made it through the 60's with a tax burden of over 50% on the top 1% of society without the economy collapsing. ~String
I still don't get it.... is there something more than the Bush/Obama reversal that relates to the poisoning the well fallacy .... something I am missing, or am I thinking too much about this and ruining the whole joke for myself Please Register or Log in to view the hidden image! This happens when I work too much.....
Yes, there were only 49 members who were officially Democrats, but the Democratic Caucus had 51 members, and that's all that matters. That puts the Democrats in control. Harry Reid was and remains the majority leader of the Senate. That means the Democrats are officially in control of the Senate. Now it is true that the nature of the rules in the Senate allow the minority party to have significant influence. But nevertheless, to everyone but you, the party of the Majority leader is the party in control of the Senate. Your basic and simple fact is basic and simple bullshit. You're right. Bush did a crappy job on spending as well. In his defense, much of that was fighting wars, and wars are temporary. Eventually they end, then the spending stops and you can pay off the debt. Obama's spending has no such natural end and the red ink has reached critical levels under his management. You might recall that he instituted those tax cuts to stimulate the economy following the most devastating attacks on US soil since the civil war and that they were effective in stimulating the economy. Can we say the same for anything that Obama has done? The causes of the collapse were many and there's plenty of blame to go around . Low interest rates which fed the bubble. Government policies pushing banks to make loans to those unable to pay. Corruption in Fannie Mae. However, it should be noted that Bush did repeatedly push to increase regulation of Fannie and Freddie and was rebuffed by the Democrats. Still, he could have and should have done more. I believe Joe made reference to the fact (in another thread) that the wealthiest 400 people in the US pay something like a 17% tax rate. I've also heard that GE pays no corporate tax at all. So long as we have an overcomplicated tax system full of loopholes and special favors, this kind of crap will continue. We need a simplified tax system without loopholes. As to your 50% tax rate in the sixties, what rate did the wealthy actually pay? I'll bet it was way less than 50%
? A majority-by-a-hair caucus is just that (the system is not strictly majoritarian, as has been pointed out to you here), and anyway it only works if the D's actually act like a caucus - which they frequently don't. The fact that it's called a caucus can mislead. Purely semantic points here? There are details, and implications, to be addressed here. They've already been pointed out to you. Again, irrelevant word games. Bush introduced the largest expansion in non-defense spending in US history. He is right up there with LBJ for expansions of mandatory, non-defense spending. The unfunded Medicare Prescription drug expansion alone is a permanent hole in the budget that costs as much as a war. And neither of said wars has ended, we should note. The war spending doesn't stop when the wars end - it stops when the last of the troops who fought in it dies. We promise all our troops lifetime medical care, and then they get systematically injured by warfare. Then we have to pay for all of the medical costs of that for decades. Much of that is stimulus spending - which is actually transitory, unlike war spending. And the deficit is more a product of revenue shortfall - that recession your guys caused, remember? - than spending. Yes we can. You may recall Obama pushing a bunch of stimulus, including the extension of those exact tax cuts, in response to the economic collapse your party's corrupt politics caused. And plenty of deserving Republicans and libertarians to spread it over. Fortunate, that. So, you agree that we should raise taxes, then. Good.
Obama's spending is out of necessity. Indeed, much of the stimulus is actually TAX CUTS. His stimulus projects kept (most of) our money in the USA, unlike Bush's spending. For one thing, the economy collapsed under Bush, so there's that. Also, Obama has done plenty of tax cuts on his own. I got an extra refund on my returns thanks to him, and I didn't even need it. Yet, interestingly, you fail to mention the most important reason, wall street bundling of mortgages. That means you are clueless and only recite Republican talking points. . As long as we are slinging blame around, the revolving door of Republicans and lobbyists is legendary. That's all lobbyists do is push for tax loopholes. Republican also block any attempt to limit lobbying influence in congress.
No. We were speaking of mistakes made by the various governmental entities and more specifically by the those in power among the two major political parties.. Clearly the mortgage backed securities and more specifically those put together by companies such as Magnitar that were designed to fail so the companies that sold then could make money by betting against their own products via credit default swaps played a huge role. The government's role was in failing to stop such transactions in in not prosecuting anyone for them after the fact. .
It wasn't just that, it was the fact that no mortgage company managed the mortgages they sold, so there was no interest in the qualifications of the borrowers. Also lack of regulation is a distinctly Republican philosophy.
Wait? So, the pointless invasion of Iraq just gets a pass as "temporary". Boy, what I would do for that $1 trillion right now! You're also forgetting the massive handouts to large corporations and--yeah--the expansion of medicare (unfunded). Facile argument. I wasn't defending Obama. Not sure I believe that the tax cuts are directly responsible for the economic growth between 2002-2008, though we are certain of one thing: They are hurting us now! Shit, we're talking a few percentage points. It's not like we're moving in the direction of Sweden with 60% income tax. The US economy ROARED with top tax brackets above 50% through the fifties and sixties. No there's not. The blame is solidly on the feet of liars and theives and I see no point in muddying the water just to pull a "Austin-Powers-signs-the-receipt-for-his-Swedish-penis-pump-just-to-get-things-moving-along" maneuver. And, even more importantly, throwing out bon mots just to distract away from one's culpability in order to blame another is really immature. If you want to talk about XYZ's contribution to the mess, let's start a discussion on that. You wont get any argument out of me, but as it stands, your point was a glaze-over on the effects that Bush and the Republicans have had on the economy, which have been--to say the least--horrific. The good news is: All of the super-rich that got the tax cuts are doing great! The tax code was way simpler back then. As to what they actually paid, I don't care. It was sure-as-shit a lot more than they pay now, and the net effect on the economy? Not too bad. ~String
You don't even have to go back that far. The last 20 years will do: Clinton raises taxes -> economy is awesome and deficit disappears. Bush slashes taxes -> economy is crap and deficit explodes. It's hardly rocket science.
