I was chatting with my cousin at a surprise party for my brother this weekend, and we were discussing why my blog frequency was way down. There are a number of reasons, but one of them is a feeling that specific factual or policy issues are largely incidental to people. It’s not the issue that folks care about, usually, it’s just an excuse to advance the interest of their tribe.
For example, Mike Kole has, with some justification, ridden me about my silence on the deficit. It’s hard telling for sure one’s own personal motivations. In my mind, it’s not because Democrats are the ones spending money, it’s because they aren’t – in my opinion – spending the money nearly as stupidly as the previous administrations. Spending money to pull the country out of a nose dive and winding down some of the past administrations’ mistakes seems reasonable to me. And, a lot of that (I think) will be mitigated by the increase on taxes that never should have been lowered in the first place when the portion of tax cuts for income in excess of $250k expires.
But, there is a part of it that’s tribal – jumping on the bandwagon of those who discovered a sham concern for deficits only when Obama took office seems counterproductive. I imagine that a similar calculus or other internal justification goes through the minds of, for example, those who have a burning passion for strict sexual morality and go silent when their favored politician is caught with his pants down.
So, if it’s tribal considerations that win the day, at some level it seems a bit useless to get too animated about this issue and that issue in the way that my particular style of blogging seems to approach things. Then again, there is something of a prisoner’s dilemma going on. If one side is focused on governing and the other side is focused on winning elections, the the side focused on winning elections is going to end up governing.
I’ll have to give this more thought. I doubt anything about my blogging is going to change though. I’m going to keep babbling on about whatever strikes my interest when I have the time and inclination. And, hopefully folks will continue to find it an inviting place to spend their time and discuss whatever comes up. Objective search for truth, partisan sparring, or preaching to the choir; conversations are still valuable.
Right, well, it’s the tribalism that has motivated my ‘riding you’ on the deficits. I’ll give credit, though. I think it was in Summer 2008, you warned that the blogging was going to be extremely partisan in the interest of doing what you could to help show the Republican Party the door in November of that year. You were perfectly up front about that.
Since I was riding the Republicans on deficits and spending ever since I started blogging myself in 2003, I get a pass on any accusations of sham deficit concerns that began for many in 2008. My take on the difference between Bush’s and Obama’s goes like this: I’ll concede that Bush’s was entirely stupid. I’ll accept that Obama’s was intended to do what you say, while not losing sight of my belief that it doesn’t work, the evidence showing it didn’t work, hasn’t made anything better, but has increased the debt on such a massive scale that begs some response, tribe or no tribe.
To paraphrase Doug Masson from Oct 2008, “Oh for the glorious days of the Clinton White House”! Alas, we may have the same formula White House (D), Congress (R), so with any luck we may have the same results- a surging economy, and an attack on the deficit.
I’m saddened by this, although I suspected it. There are many blogs I completely avoid, because they are purely partisan. I don’t need ’em. I know what I’m going to get before I even start. I don’t even read the partisan Libertarian ones, for that matter. Predictability + absence of policy = boring, as far as I’m concerned.
It’s an interesting question you pose: issues or issues as means to advance the tribe. Yeah, I’m a partisan Libertarian, but a reluctant one in this key sense: I don’t care really who moves policy in the direction I prefer. If Democrats delivered big results on civil liberties (let alone any), and dropped interventionist foreign policy, I’d be interested in going back. If Republicans delivered less spending and smaller government and not just puffy rhetoric, I’d consider going there. Since neither does, I am where I am. It’s all about the issues and the policy, for me.
Republicans say ‘just cut taxes and the deficit will go away’ This is the kind of dug-in ideology that makes any kind of discussion of issues impossible. Any rational person senses that something has been(deliberately) overlooked. If we want to hear good issue-based discussion,then tune in NPR or watch Public TV news hour.If you’re like my Illinois family then they turn to Glenn Beck who explains what the Constitution really means and what Thomas Jefferson really meant.
If we want to agree and have a family moment, we talk Fightin’ Illini basketball, the Chicago Cubs and the Chicago Bears.
We need a Republican govenor in Illinois because we dont want another Chicago connection Democrat, govenor Quinn. I point out that Quinn is not from Chicago but from the suburbs, so comes a blank stare meaning:’What’s the difference?’
We got to get rid of Pelosi,but no one knows who John Boehner is.
I can’t put Indiana monikers to this conversation,but Im sure it can be done.
Every issue is downplayed for sake of this clan mentioned above. Even ‘pork’ becomes ‘investment’when it means Southern Conservative Senators and Congressmen can bring home big government contracts to Alabama or Mississippi,but we shouldnt waste government money ‘ideologically’ on a whole litany of ‘liberal stuff’.
If it weren’t for sports and a strong family history and concern for each other( our Clan) we would be strangers from different cultures.Looking at old pictures shows we all came from the same roots ain our family clan.
Our clan defines common sense for us,so common sense varies greatly clan to clan.And yes,issues are incidental.
Everyone should force oneself to watch Glenn Beck for several consecutive nights,but only if you have never seen or heard him. This would be the best learning experience anyone could get about clans and tribes in our modern world.
Mike, you certainly do get a pass on recent concern for the deficit. I think I have the Tea Party on my mind; and maybe it’s the emergence of that tribe that has me discouraged.
The prospects of a Republican Congressional majority wouldn’t bother me so much if it didn’t necessarily mean the revival of “Who murdered Vince Foster” type investigations. Somehow, Obama seems to inspire more vitriolic personal animosity from the Tea Party quarter (which will have to be catered to) than Clinton ever did. So, maybe we’ll get Congressional hearings on whether or not Obama acted inappropriately when he broke up some white girl’s chiffarobe.
Lou Said; “We got to get rid of Pelosi,but no one knows who John Boehner is.”
It would be to see the results of polls asking Republicans to identify Nancy Pelosi and Johb Boehner.
“The prospects of a Republican Congressional majority wouldn’t bother me so much if it didn’t necessarily mean the revival of “Who murdered Vince Foster” type investigations.”
Doug, I don’t believe those investigations would be any less of a waste of time than some of the investigations that have occurred in the past 4 years of a Democrat led Congress. The hearing of Roger Clemens and steroids in baseball come to mind as a good example. The fact that Roger appears to have lied to Congress, subjecting him to criminal prosecution, has left both Clemens and Congress with egg on their face.
Like Mike, I see a lot of benefit to gridlock, and having either party in control appears to mean that unfunded partisan wish lists get funded to the taxpayer’s detriment. The fact that the “Obamacare” health care entitlement was passed during the worst deficit era of our lifetimes is an excellent example of this. Meanwhile, federal tax revenues for 2010 are decreased because the Democratic super-majority in Congress couldn’t spend any time (or political capital) to address the estate tax which is abolished this year.
I know that your side is the most thoughtful, ethical, informed, and reality based, but I want you to consider the following.
Here are the federal deficits from ’04 to ’07, in billions:
2004 412.73 a
2005 318.34 a
2006 248.19 a
2007 160.94
Copy and past that into Excel. Plot it on an XY graph. Drop in a regression line. Extrapolate forward 2 years. You will see that from ’04 to ’07 we were on a trajectory to eliminate the deficit in ’09.
So, prior to ’08, why exactly would a Conservative be worried about the deficit? It was on its way to surplus.
Paul,
I used to think, gridlock was good. But that was in the 1990s before the 1994 election sweeps. That guaranteed Clinton a sweep for his second term.
And the Clinton impeachment has effectively immunized presidents for a generation from impeachment.
I wonder sometimes if the nation is moving into a period of functional ungovernability. Although both parties decry the deficit, the solutions are not credibly addressed. This deficit only needs a good recovery to bring it back to hstorical levels, at least in the near term.
We have never seen such a recession in our lifetimes. This recession was caused by a bursting of the real estate bubble and the cascade failure in the secondary morgage financing market. Economists call this recession the “Great Recession” to draw analogies to the Great Depression and collapse in the stock market and farm prices and farm values. The traditional anti-recessionary measures will be less effective than in a more cyclical recession.
I believe the current deficit issue is a red herring. Major deficit reduction and lack of stimulus in a recession is fool hardy. It virtually guarantees that the recession will be deeper and more prolonged. The time to address the deficit is during recovery, when tax revenues increase and need for social spending falls. (The cynic in me believes that the Republican leadership knows that a restriction in stimulus spending will prolong the recession, giving them a better chance to defeat Obama in 2012. But I digress…)
And while the amount of the deficit is historially large, financial markets, the ultimate arbitors of a country’s creditworthiness and solvency, is not worried. US debt is cheap. A recent issue of Irish bonds demanded a nominative return of 6%, to reflect the state of the Irish economy. When US debt demands these risk premiums, then we have to really worry.
Buzzcut,
I will have to check your numbers. They are inconsistent with anything I have seen. Every look I have taken has showed no decrease in Debt as a percentage of GDP, the only figure that really means anything. When I have time, I will bring up the figures and percentages I have seen.
Ah, 2008. a Republican president, a Democratic congress and many Republicans take extraordinary measures as the economy effectively looks up and commerical paper skyrockets. I would like to hear from anyone that would like to turn back the clock and see what happens without extraordinary stimulus and asset backing measures.
The Republicans have essentially a free ride on the stimulus and TARP issues. Their orphan president, democratic and republican leadership takes courageous votes in a time of crisis, and now decry the measures that spared broader economic mayhem. They are playing with house money, losiing no political capital for supporting the measures, and gaining political capital for rejecting neccessary rescue.
$0.25 of every dollar I give to the federal government disappears as interest payments. We have to really worry now, and have needed to for some time.
Could you imagine having the debt gone, and the government EITHER giving everyone a 25% tax cut OR having a 25% boost to the amount of programs it has?
Liberal or conservative, you must agree that the debt needs to go. After it is paid off AND we have a good sized savings in place (to prevent us from going into debt when an unplanned emergency comes up, be it war or recession), then we can argue over if it is better to use the extra 25% for more programs or less taxes.
My statement was not neccessarily a normative statement on the issue of the deficit. And do not confuse deficit with debt, although deficits do require financing.
My statement was a remark directed at the debt market’s view of the deficit and or debt. I stand by the statement, although I wish to see deficits fall.
To further Jason’s comment a bit: if you pay 28% of your income as taxes (this bracket starts at $82,401 if single), you are effectively working from January 1 to April 12th just to pay your federal tax bill.
If we then say that .25 of every $1.00 given to the federal govt. is being put towards interest, that means we work for approximately the first 4 weeks of January year just to pay our portion of interest on the national debt.
Something to think about while we are shoveling our car out to get to work on January 25th.
Your points are valuable, Paul and Jason. Although there will always be some government debt, even in balanced budget years for large capital projects and temporary cash flow financing issues.
On January 25th, I will be driving my four-wheel drive Explorer. I lived through a few winters in Minnesota and the mountain trails in New Mexico. Like a Boy Scout, be prepared.
I know the difference between deficit and debt.
The thing I get more annoyed by is the word “surplus”. We don’t have a budget surplus until the debt is paid in full. However, every time we’ve had the ability to pay off debt, politicians cry how the government is taking more money than it needs with this “surplus” and “The People” should get this money back.
And Todd,
No there does not always have to be government debt! We can have a national savings to be used for such things.
Don’t spend money you don’t actually have. There is no reason that a person or a government must go into debt. Just learn to say no.
Debt is something that only makes logical sense to do when you know what the future is going to be. If you know, for a fact, that you’ll make 7% on an investment and you can borrow for 5%, sure, that makes sense. Any other time, you buying something you can’t afford and you’re paying way more for it than you care to admit to yourself. It is self-delusion.
Jesus, dude, use the Google toolbar! What is there to look up?
I got the numbers in my post from here:
http://www.usgovernmentspending.com/downchart_gs.php?year=&chart=G0-fed&units=b
Those are the numbers. The deficit in 2007 was trivial when compared to the size of the US economy. We could support deficits like that into eternity.
You know, a very good case can be made that the mortgage crash, Lehman, etc. were symptoms, not the cause of, the Great Recession. Guys like Scott Sumner at “The Money Illusion” and elsewhere make the case that the recession was caused by bad monetary policy. The economy needed an injection of liquidity, and the Fed did not provide it.
So a scenario where the Great Recession didn’t happen, and we eliminated the deficit in 2009, is plausible.
No, I don not believe that a good case can be made that the morgage collapse was a symptom of the Great Recession. In the mid 2000s, GDP growth was inflated by real estate equity withdrawals. We probably had negative growth in years where GDP appeared positive. I blogged about it back then.
I cannot recall any liquidy problems in 2005 to and 2008. I was daytrading then and watching fed policy and interest rates and blogging about it. I would argue that the nation was awash in cash, some of which inflated real estate values.
Finally, Buzzcut, I try to take a respectful tone with everyone. I am aware of the site you refer to. But it is a private site that says it uses CBO numbers. I want better verification and try to go to original sources where possible. If those numbers are correct, I will agree with you on them.
This not my site, so I don’t make policy. But please try to be a little more polite.
Jason,
I stand by my point that governments, people and organizations can, do and should use debt if it has the ability to service that debt and a value proposition can be made to borrow the neccessary funds.
I think most every corporate treasurer and governmental unit treasurer would probably agree with that.
Todd: like corporations, governments can use debt if necessary, no doubt. For example, very few would argue that we should not have gone into debt to finance WWII. However, most would have to agree that our government goes into debt a bit too frequently. We need to generally save during good times, and spend during bad times. However, nobody in Congress wants to be the one to save. Saving reduces the economy, and makes you less likely to be (re)elected.
What I don’t understand, is how it can be constitutional to deficit spend during X’s lifetime, and then pay it back during Y’s lifetime. That seems a bit unfair (equal protection problem), no?
Todd, there is very good evidence for a lack of liquidity. You just need to look. You can start at http://www.themoneyillusion.com/
The dude is a macroeconomist, albeit far from a mainstream one.
Just on a common sense note, you almost never get mass failures of banks without a liquidity crisis. That’s just speaking from a global and a historical perspective.
As for my tone, I apologize, I get incredulous when someone actually makes as argument, in the age of the Google Toolbar, “I think your data is wrong, but I’m too lazy to actually do a search and prove that it is wrong.”
Todd, look at the corporations that were bailed out by the government, and the fact that the government is racing into deeper debt.
The idea that most of those people would agree with you doesn’t help your case as we keep wasting 25% of our money.
Paul, I agree, I would go into debt for WWII as well. However, my hope is that we would have enough cash on hand to pay for emergencies like that.
Could you imagine if our we had a trillion dollars in savings? We would be the bond holders for other countries instead of the other way around. If we had the same amount of savings as we do debt today, every American would get 125% of what they pay in taxes returned to them in government services, rather than 75%.
There is simply no good reason we can’t start paying off the debt, slowly, and take our savings to pay it off faster. If we get to the point where we’re down to 20% of the budget is interest, now we can use 5% to keep paying on the debt and it wouldn’t cost us any more than it does today, but the debt keeps getting smaller. Once the debt is gone, we could keep saving 10% of the budget towards a national trust, and be the strongest nation on earth without firing a shot.
Buzzcut,
I checked the CBO figures and your numbers look be accurate. But do not infer that I am “too lazy” to check. I said I did not have time to do it when I posted.
And the is much merit your argument that if one were monitoring deficits from 2004 to 2007 you would have noticed a trend downwaerds. As a percentage of GDP, the curve was trending down from 2004 to 2007, but ramping back up steeply from from 2007 to 2008. This analysis comes from the website you cited.
http://www.usgovernmentspending.com/downchart_gs.php?year=2000_2010&view=1&expand=&units=p&fy=fy11&chart=G0-fed&bar=0&stack=1&size=l&title=US Federal Deficit As Percent Of GDP&state=US&color=c&local=s
I will look at the article you posted. Your argument that bank failures are triggered by lack of liquidty seems true as far as it goes. But when a bubble collapses, value of assets and collateral plummet, causing the lack of liquidity. Panic drives the loss of liquidity.
In one sense, I see the Great Recession as analagous to the “Panics” of the 19th century.
Jason,
I think we are closer in positions than we think. I do not support large deficits or unservicable debt loads. But I do not see interest as a waste of money. If interest is used to finance valuable assets and services, it is a wise method of asset procurement. Continually financing day-to-day operations through large deficits is more questionable.
And let me pose a question? Is the interest that the average person, perhaps you, pays for a car, college education, or house or business assets a waste of money?
Your last point about government maintaining a huge pool of savings would be very problematic to most taxpayers, I believe. But who knows?
Todd,
Short answer: Yes, yes it is. I’m down to only owing for my house, and had I had the chance to do it all over again, I would have waited until I had the cash before I bought anything, including a house.
That is only if you know for a fact that those valuable assets and services will make you more money than the interest will cost you. The interest is a fact, you sign paperwork in advance agreeing that the interest will be paid at a definite percentage. Profit is always a variable, and you might *think* you know how much profit you will get, but it is not certain. Therefore, using debt is gambling, pure and simple. Things like houses are pretty safe bets, but the recent housing bubble burst should be proof enough that it is not a certain bet.
I don’t get why people would find the government earning money from other countries for the benefit of US citizens problematic, yet have no problem with the interest money being vaporized today. However, most people also use debt, and waste a good chunk of their own money. It makes sense that they would want the government to behave like they do, I suppose.
Jason,
We will have to respectfully disagree on all these points.
Thanks for sharing your ideas.
I think it’s a bet either way. If you lock in now, you are saying that the present and continuing value to you of the asset exceeds the principal and interest. But, if you defer until you have cash in hand, you are gambling that the time spent with the asset from now until you accumulate the cash is less valuable than the principal and interest.
Todd,
Yes, the deficit did increase in ’08, dramatically so. But we were in a recession that year. It was understandable.
But half of ’09 and ’10 are recovery years. Why do we continue to have these massive and increasing deficits.
Getting back to my original point, liberals who ask, “Where were you tea party types when Bush was running up the deficit” are not asking a question in good faith, or are ignorant of the actual numbers. You simply can’t compare a $160B (and falling) deficit and a $1.3T (and rising) one.
I question anyone who favored the Bush tax cuts which were passed while we were still paying down our National Debt. Here is a graph of debt as percentage of GDP from 1930-1910. The debt increased a great deal during World War II, Reagan, and both Bushes. But, in the past two years it’s suddenly become a pressing problem?
It’s been an interesting discussion so far, after doing a little more reading myself, I have to wonder at the figures given by Buzzcut regarding the deficit. The reduction in the deficit that Buzzcut defers to is not the total government deficit (which has continued to increase), but the portion that the government has borrowed from “outside sources”. Those numbers do not take into account the increased contributions to the budget from the social security which will have to be repaid at some time in the future.
See here for a better explanation: http://zfacts.com/p/519.html
So Doug, you’re not convinced by my deficit numbers? The deficit was going down, in great contrast to today. That’s the difference.
The other big diffence is that revenues were growing after the tax cuts, as they always do. That little thing called the Laffer curve, which libs like to laugh at, but which is a real phenomenon.
The deficit was going down under Bush II? The *debt* was going down under Clinton before Bush II took over. So, yeah, if you turn your head and squint just right, maybe Bush II was bringing down his own deficits to some extent. But that doesn’t change my general thinking.
Doug, I agree with your statement that people should have disliked the Bush 2001 tax cuts if they were concerned about the deficit.
However, we should recognize that the deficit problem has actually become more pressing over the past three years. Many economists think that the current debt level (as a percent of GDP) is just about at the point where any future increases would make insolvency the only option. I hope I’m wrong.
Doug, I’m still trying to understand where you’re coming from, and trying to communicate why conservatives were not concerned about the debt in ’07.
The first step to getting a balanced budget is to cut the deficit, right? After the ’03 tax cuts, which were supply side tax cuts (unlike the ’01 cuts), revenues were growing well and the deficit was decreasing, despite the costs for the war.
The issue for conservatives was spending. Ask yourself why Republicans lost in ’06 and ’08, and part of the answer has to be that Republican voters were very apathetic. We were pissed off at the party over spending, I remember it at the time.
Anyway, I have shown you that the deficit was going down from ’04 til ’08, and it doesn’t seem to have changed your mind. Why isn’t this a sufficient answer for you?
Because I don’t understand the logic behind the time frame. Why weren’t the 2001 tax cuts a problem? Why was’t it a problem when the Bush and the Republican Congresses started up the deficits again? Why wasn’t the spending from 2001-2004 a problem? You have to understand that, from where I sit, the only variable that really seems to have changed is that a Democrat took the White House. That’s when the real table pounding started. When Clinton was in office, they were balancing budgets, and the conservatives impeached him. So, from where I’m sitting, it looks like conservatives will cudgel a Democratic President with any blunt object that’s close to hand.
Doug, I’ll ask it again, why did Democrats win in ’06 and ’08? Because Republicans were very apathetic? Why was that? Besides the fact that in ’06 the Iraq war was going very badly, spending was out of control. It absolutely had an effect on Republican turnout, and Democrats won big.
And then they went on to spend even more, and run up the deficit to unprecedented levels, which more or less brought Republicans home.
Now, I’ve given you evidence that deficits were declining. That’s the answer to your question. You can choose to accept that answer or not. But if you don’t, we can dispense with the notion that your side is the most informed, most reality based side there is.
I don’t accept your explanation because I find it difficult to believe that deficits have been a primary motivator for Republican voters over the past 30 years. It’s been 40 years since a Republican President presided over a balanced budget. It seems that if balanced budgets were a main concern of the GOP base, one of those 20+ budgets would have been in the black.
As soon as policies conservatives don’t like are successfully gutted, I anticipate concerns about deficit spending to be forgotten.
Doug, there is a rather large difference between $400 Billion and 1.2 Trillion, regarless of who is President.
Doug, do you remember the 1992 election? Remember the hand grenade with a bad haircut names Ross Perot?
How did Clinton win? He did not get the majority of votes, after all.
Perot peeled off Republican and Blue Dog Democrat votes, people who were concerned with the deficit. He focused like a laser beam on the deficit (remember his charts?).
So deficits do matter to Republican voters. When they hit a certain level, like in ’92 and ’10, they can be the primary issue, but in general they’re probably mid-pack in the list of issues that motivate Republicans.
Now, you can go back to the issue of the tax cuts, but we’ve already established that raising taxes doesn’t increase revenue, just as lowering taxes doesn’t increase the deficit (the declining deficit from ’04 to ’07 being just one example).
It’s all about economic growth. Economic growth throws off tax revenue, so to the extent that tax cuts generate economic growth (and supply side cuts like in ’03 do so), they can increase revenues. Over time, they generate more revenue than was lost to the cuts in the first place.
this is getting absurd.
buzzcut would have us believe that republicans truly care about deficits, but can only make the case by completely ignoring the left side of the chart he cites: the deficits that bush was reducing in ’04-’07 were deficits that bush himself created!
under clinton, we had negative deficits. we were actually paying down the debt. bush came into office and insisted on massive tax cuts. the deficit ballooned. did republicans complain? on the contrary, they rejoiced.
so the question stands. where were you tea party types when bush was running up the deficit?
stAllio, there was a recession in ’01. It started in March of 2001. Bush was in office for exactly one month.
That recession caused the early Bush deficits, along with 9/11, of course. And the Iraq and Afghanistan wars.
But despite all that, the deficits were going down once those ’03 tax cuts started working their magic.
So, again, I’m going to point out that in ’07 the deficit was $164 billion. The deficit this year is 8 times that! There is a difference in degree between then and now.
so the 2001 recession caused 2003’s deficit to be higher than 2002’s, and also caused 2004’s deficit to be higher than 2003’s? give me a break.
bush’s policies — tax cuts and (thank you) preventive war — racked up major deficits. republican’s didn’t care at the time; they only care now that a democrat is in office.
likewise, most economists agree that letting the bush tax cuts expire would go a long way toward reducing the deficit. so you’d think that if republicans truly cared about deficits, they’d at least be willing to consider allowing at some of those cuts to expire. but they aren’t, because they don’t.
To stAllio!’s point, if the Republicans were fiscally conservative, they would have sold war bonds and cut spending on 9/12/2001. Just as there was the political will to go to war, I’m convinced that had the president asked this country to sacrifice in terms of government programs, most Americans would have been eager to do so. Patriotism was so strong at that point that most of us were asking “What can I do to help?”
I hardly think that it is only the Republican’s problem that they think that they can fight a war and not ask for anyone to sacrifice for it. We haven’t had that kind of sacrifice since WWII, and you will recall that we fought wars in Korea and Vietnam, in addition to Iraq and Afghanistan, in that time. You will also recall that these war started under Democrat administrations.
I don’t see how raising taxes on some people indicates that “we” are doing anything to “help”.
FYI, federal tax revenue hit a trough in ’03. It rose in ’04 and grew from there. So much for tax cuts causing the deficits.
BTW, I have no problem with letting the tax cuts expire, as long as ALL the tax cuts expire. That will bring in an additional $2.7 TRILLION to the treasury over the next 10 years.
Let’s set the clock back to 1999. I’m surprised that the D’s aren’t running with that meme, rather than simply playing the class warfare card. If I were them, I would be trying to recapture that Clinton magic.
Buzzcut, that is the most amusing thing you have written for weeks. Equating being in office with “starting American involvement in 20th century wars”, if I’m paraphrasing closely enough (although I really think you meant to equate Democrat with warmonger).
Let me just take a moment here. Hahahahahahahahahahaahahahahahahaahahahahahaahahahahaahahahahaahahaahahahaahahahaahahahaahahahahahahahaahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahaha.
OK. So much for being polite. If you really wish to promulgate such utter rubbish as inferred “fact”, then I will stop taking anything else you write (in earnest) seriously. Your meaning is so beyond the pale, that it doesn’t deserve the thesis I could give you as refutation.
You’re reading waaaaay too much into that post for what was a throwaway line.
Although… now that you mention it, LBJ was a warmonger, wasn’t he?
Truman was in the wrong place at the wrong time. But he didn’t ask for any sacrifices on the home front, did he?
The USA should have never gone to Vietnam. But, that is a bit of hindsight. FDR should have been a bit more forthcoming about his postwar ideas, and we should have shut the colonialists out from reasserting themselves in Asia. Would have been lots less pain all around that way in the 1950-60s.
Korea was only a “war” within a certain context. It was serious warfare for those directly involved, but hardly compares to WW2 in scope. Still, at least it was in our national interest to commit to that.
stAllio, this is probably a dead thread, but any reality based folks interested to see that, yes, we were still in a recession in ’03, take a look at this:
http://global.nationalreview.com/dest/2010/10/13/image001.jpg
Those are the monthly job creation/ destruction numbers, graphed over the Bush years. We were still losing jobs in ’03.
It wasn’t an “official recession” at that point, but that’s a pretty academic detail.
But after those ’03 tax cuts, things ramped up quite nicely.
Another interesting thing to notice is that the most recent recession really started in summer of ’07. I bought my house then, an I remember that you couldn’t get a jumbo mortgage at that time.
It was a pretty mild recession until Lehman failed. Milder than ’01 until that point.
Final thing to notice is that Bush started with a recession. Feb ‘0`1 had job losses. It seems to me that the “uncertainty” about the ’00 election results were the catalyst for the recession.
No, but now we’re in a “who sucks more” debate. Doug’s point was that if you’re against big government spending now, where were you before?
Claiming that the Democrats are just as bad at thinking you can spend on one thing and not cut back on another actually reinforces main point. Both sides suck at overspending, and there is no high ground for Republicans to claim in this debate.
Just to clarify, it was the sham concern for deficits that I specified. Spending is one part of the deficit equation. Revenues are the other.