Weltall Wrote:One noteworthy thing: In the thirty years since Reagan was elected for the first time, Democrats have controlled America's legislative branch for all but 12 (1994-2006), and the Republicans really only held solid control until 2000. Perhaps coincidentally, those were the years in which we witnessed the evaporation of national debt, an accomplishment which is, for some reason, said to be the personal triumph of Bill Clinton.
Just for those who forget that the executive branch isn't the only one governing us. Almost all government spending has to make it through Congress.
I love how Republicans want to take responsibility for Clinton's accomplishments... :)
I mean, with how much they hated him you'd think they wouldn't want to, but obviously not.
Congress can sometimes do things over a President, but more often, at least from the mid 20th century on for sure, the President initiates things. For instance, the Democrats controlled the House all through Reagan's eight years, yet I don't think many people would ascribe Reagan's major legislative accomplishments to them... the same goes for Clinton. In both cases, the legislation that passed was a cooperative effort between the two parties, with the dominant party being the one with control of the White House. The other party had a say too, and got some of its way in the final bill, but the dominant party was whoever had the President.
Anyway, as you said, Republicans had congress until 2006... and what happened between 2001 and 2006, when the Republicans controlled all branches of government most of the time? Oh that's right, a surplus redirected into deficit-inflating tax cuts for the rich, unpaid-for wars, more unpaid-for tax cuts for the rich, more miniscule spending cuts on liberal social programs and building projects done to put a thin veneer of caring about the deficit over them, etc. Or are you going to say that Bush and the congressional Republicans who followed him every step of the way somehow did not agree on these things? I don't think that would work... no, Clinton was the one most responsible for the surplus.
And remember, he did it against the wishes of many Democrats too, he was cutting liberal programs as well as conservative, such as his big "cut welfare rolls" efforts... he worked with both parties to get something that would work and that would pass. But do I think for a second that Republicans would have done anything remotely similar, given their record when in power? Absolutely not!
Darunia Wrote:Is that anything like people turning to the Democrats and pleading for economic recovery, and getting a trillion-dollar health-care-bill instead? But you're right. You can't trust Republicans with the economy. Why, if only we had a congress full of Dems, they'd get the job done! Oh, wait... we do... and what's that? Stagnation? Continued unemployment? Why--by golly, it's almost as though the Dem's are full of shit. But that can't be! Where was I.. oh, yea... DAMN REPUBLICANS HAVE NO PLAN HOW TO FIX ANYTHING!
Bottom line: It is HILARIOUS to bash the right about a theoretical ineptitude for solving the economy when your boys are in power, and have been for 2 years, and have gotten nothing done. Spending a trillion on economic stimulus sure did fuck up the deficit a bunch, and return no large-scale gains. YOU, as a self-proclaimed Socialist by-proxy, have NO right to LECTURE ANYONE on how to FIX THE ECONOMY.
The economic stimulus and financial reform bills that have passed have done an incredible amount of good for the economy. Obama said last year that the stimulus bill would create or save millions of jobs. He was absolutely right, and it has. TARP, the GM bailout, etc. did at least as much good or more, in keeping the businesses so crucial to our economy's health from going out of business.
The Bush administration decided to not save Lehman Bros. as the economy collapsed, and that was perhaps the worst mistake that has been made during this whole recession. The blow that that collapse did to the economy made things much, much worse than they otherwise would have been. At least it did teach our government that they could not let that happen again, so we did save AIG, GM, etc...
I know that saving failing companies looks really bad, but letting them fail, and rip apart the stock market and our economy, is infinitely worse.
Anyway... why is unemployment so high? Because the government under-estimated the depth of the recession, and the Republicans are block-everything idiots, and the result was that the financial rescue packages were not big enough, and it is now impossible to pass more because, well, the Republicans block everything and the Democrats are too weak and scared to put a stop to it, tragically. (They have 59 seats. They could.)
Republicans have been trying desperately to lie and say that the economic stimulus bill saved no jobs, we are no better off than we would be without those bills passing, etc., and some people are falling for it, but it's a total, complete lie. We are MUCH better off than we otherwise would be. If you think things are bad now, it'd be hard to imagine how much worse they'd be if we'd been following hard-line Republican policies for the last few years...
Things would be worse, much, much worse. Now if only the Democrats would grow spines, break the Republicans ridiculous, and unconstitutional, "we're threatening to maybe filibuster so you can't pass anything" idiocy, and actually get some more work done, we'd be in even better economic shape now and more stimulus money would be out there, because the money's needed. As you say, things are still bad, worse than those in government expected. The stimulus there was did what it could, but it wasn't enough to overcome the whole recession, and as some of it ran out this year and wasn't replaced with anything, things began to get worse again. That's natural; the only thing that isn't are the Republican lies about it all.
Unfortunately though, spine-growing of the sort needed seems to be something only done by Republicans. :(
Quote:First of all, this total equality of society you're toting sounds an awful lot like communism to me. While I hate rich people, I have to admit that there must be a social hierarchy. Rich assholes, and poor, dumb clots is the way the world always has been, and always will be. This dream of your's... this dream your share with Marx, and Lenin, and Stalin, and Castro, of a totally equal society is, firstly, impossible, and secondly, bad for society. You want to tax and punish the rich and hard-working to play Robin Hood with someone else's money? Communism doesn't work. "Give the poor and middle class a chance"... what kind of chance do you mean? By taxing the fuck out of the rich? What chance does this afford the poor? By giving them hand-outs? What is the end-goal here besides spitefully attacking the more fortunate? Say you get your way and tax the rich, and give it to the poor, and then we have a totally equal GDP, and everyone earns exactly 20,000 a year. Is that really the kind of crazy fucked-up world you want to live in? No reason to work hard, you'll never get ahead. No incentive to open a new factory, you can't profit from it. On the other hand, since Messiah ABF demands a totally egalitarian society, in which all are equal, if I do nothing, I still get my share.
You like talking economics? Let's talk about how grand and wonderful your Soviet economy was in 1989.
There aren't enough
s in the world for the utter delusions of this insane piece of irrelevance... Communism? Trying to have fair economic policies which do not unfairly advantage the rich is communism? That's such a crazily stupid idea that I don't know what to say... other than that it's delusional, that is. The only thing you're right about there is that communism doesn't work, and probably can't. Marx didn't account for human nature, pretty much.
But Scandinavian-style socialism? That works. So does America's system, which has some socialist elements to it as well. They do not damage private enterprise's ability to do great things. Conservatives here still seem to have a problem with socialism, for some reason... but socialism and communism are very, very different. Soviet communism as you describe it there has absolutely nothing whatsoever to do with any Democratic economic policy, and any honest thinking person knows that. What the Democrats actually advocate is for having economic policies that don't persecute poor people for being poor and that don't reward rich people for being rich; instead, you tax the rich person more because they have more, and the poor person less because they have less. Of course people who work more or are better should and do get paid better, they just shouldn't be able to exploit their workers, the environment, and the political process simply because they have money. Poor people are people too, and have rights. The Democrats try to make it so that the people who can most afford to actually pay the bills, and the people who can least afford to don't have to. That's always difficult, the rich have the money and thus much more political power than the poor, and many Democrats listen to that money too, but that is, I think, at least the supposed goal.
Oh yeah, and raising taxes is sometimes necessary. You must pay for government somehow.
On a related note, I know, many conservatives have a theoretical hatred of government... it is funny, though, how quickly they forget that once in power.
I mean, many Republicans have been in office since Social Security and Medicare were adopted. When they were passed, the Republican party railed against them, called them communist, said they would repeal, etc, etc, all the things the Republican party did this year over health care reform... and yet once passed, the programs stayed, because people realized that they were good.
Quote:Explain yourself. Don't just make accusations, child. I thought we were talking politics, but if you want to fling mud about (of all things) economics, back yourself up. Where have I demonstrated such ignorance? Your argument seems to be, that if I don't agree with you, I know nothing about economics and am not worth talking to. Is that it?
Here are two examples.
Quote:I'm amazed that with all of the federal spending from 1982-1992, you were, miraculously, able to localize that the federal debt increased solely because of this legislation. The sheer number of manhours you must have spent going through tomes immemorial of numbers and figures... the numbercrunching you must have done to have been able to conclude, "of all gov. spending 1982-1992, it was tax cuts that increased the deficit, a deficit which otherwise would have (what, fallen? you tell me).
Read a few sentences sometimes about the crash of the early '90s that was caused by the Reagan tax-and-spend policy of tax cuts for the rich and massive military buildup. You might learn a few things.
I mean, did you think that Bush I lost to Bill Clinton for no reason? That's not at all true, in fact the economic recession of the early '90s caused by Reagan's cut-taxes-and-massively-increase-spending policies of the '80s was a big reason why. Bush II used similar policies but worse, to even more disastrous results.
Quote:Ostensibly that does seem to be the way the graph looked, but neither you nor I understand what was spent on what, and like it or not, 9/11 happened and threw the budget into chaos. Just because you don't like me using that as a reason doesn't make it invalid.
Yes, but they could have been responsible. Bush could have come out and said, we have a huge amount of new spending that we need. We need to postpone our tax cuts because of the vast sums we'll need to now fight fighting terrorism. Americans will have to sacrifice. But Bush did the exact opposite, and encouraged Americans to go out, spend, and run up their credit card bills, while the nation did the same thing and put the entire war bill on our credit line while we reduced revenues at home by cutting taxes. Blaming the whole thing on 9/11 is a bad excuse, and a false one.
Quote:And earmarks are wrong no matter who does them.
Earmarks are spending on local projects that directly help local American communities. The only thing even potentially "wrong" about them are how many are passed with little knowledge; I agree that earmarks should be more obvious and shouldn't be as easy to hide. Are earmarks in general good, though? Yes, absolutely. Earmarks help local communities, states, and America in general.
Quote:Miniscule social programs? Welfare (which I assume is what you're referring to) is slated in 2010 to cost 762.3 billion (with a B) dollars. That makes it the biggest over-all price-item after Defense, Education, Health Care and Pensions. You don't help your argument by minimizing something as big as 3/4ths of a trillion dollars. And earmarks are wrong no matter who does them. I feel more and more like I'm arguing with a sarcstic little teenager than anything else, because so many of your arguments are poised in a pseudo-Republican form, as if coming from then lips of an arch-Republican. Sarcasm doesn't help your argument.
I wasn't talking about that kind of social program there...
See what I said above about how Republicans do not, in fact, actually cut very much out of those social programs. They are too popular and help too many people, and even many Republicans come to accept and even like them.
No, what I meant there were things like how both Reagan and the Bushes liked to cut arts programs, public broadcasting, and things like that... cut little bits from the edges of liberal social funding, and call that "helping the deficit" while in fact their military and homeland security spending increases were so massive that the tiny (in dollar value, in comparison) cuts really didn't matter much. Classic misdirection, and for conservatives in this country at least, it works. (Note that for the programs cut, the cuts are often massive; it is only in comparison to America's mind-bogglingly huge military and homeland security spending numbers that they can look "small".)
I think that Ron Paul actually is consistent about this and actually does want us only to use what military power we can actually pay for, but that's perhaps because the Tea Party seems to come out of the isolationist wing of the Republican party, the part that doesn't really want us to be entangled abroad... that wing had minimal voice during the Cold War, but now they're back. At least he is talking about the idea that military cuts might be necessary, though; I agree, they are. You can't have a double standard and make military and homeland security inviolate, particularly considering how much we're spending on them.
As for the wars, I personally always strongly opposed Iraq, and reluctantly supported Afghanistan. That is still true.
![[Image: File:USDebt.png]](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:USDebt.png)
