# Deficit spending is awesome!   No wait, it's dung from the anus of Satan.

**URL:** <https://boards.straightdope.com/t/deficit-spending-is-awesome-no-wait-its-dung-from-the-anus-of-satan/573645>\
**Category:** The BBQ Pit\
**Created:** [March 6, 2011, 1:45am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/deficit-spending-is-awesome-no-wait-its-dung-from-the-anus-of-satan/573645 "2011-03-06T01:45:20Z")\
**Posts on this page:** 2\
**Page:** 9

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**Author:** ![MysteryFellow63427](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/m/a88e4f/32.png) [@MysteryFellow63427](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/MysteryFellow63427)\
**Post date:** [March 17, 2011, 12:43pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/deficit-spending-is-awesome-no-wait-its-dung-from-the-anus-of-satan/573645/161 "2011-03-17T12:43:18Z")

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> [@septimus](#):
>
> Good idea! Am I correct to think that you “true fiscal conservatives” approve of the Presidencies of Kennedy, Johnson, Carter, Clinton [during whose terms the Debt/GDP ratio](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/National_debt_by_U.S._presidential_terms) decreased and disapprove of the Presidencies of Reagan, Bush-41 and Bush-43 during whose terms the Debt/GDP ratio increased?

I’m going to wade into this thread because of your utter gall in mentioning LBJ. Regardless of whatever budgets the man may have run at the time, he oversaw the enactment of Medicare and Medicaid, which represent an ever-ballooning _non-discretionary_ portion of the U.S. budget, currently above 20%.[1] Mandatory entitlement spending, which has been demographically broken for decades and politically untouchable for just as long, is the heart, brain, and lung cancer in the diseased body that is the U.S.'s finances.

I don’t disagree with your main point, however, which is that we [cannot inherently trust Republicans](http://reason.com/archives/2011/01/12/can-we-trust-the-gop) simply because they like to portray themselves as fiscally conservative. Reagan jacked up the deficit tremendously. GWB was the biggest fiscal whore in U.S. history until Obama came along and somehow managed to make GWB’s dangerously unprincipled spending look good by comparison.  
[1]see, e.g., [2010 United States federal budget - Wikipedia](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2010_United_States_federal_budget) and [Great Society - Wikipedia](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Great_Society)

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**Author:** ![AlienVessels](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/a/ba8739/32.png) [@AlienVessels](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/AlienVessels)\
**Post date:** [March 17, 2011, 6:58pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/deficit-spending-is-awesome-no-wait-its-dung-from-the-anus-of-satan/573645/162 "2011-03-17T18:58:43Z")

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> [@neuroman](#):
>
> GWB was the biggest fiscal whore in U.S. history until Obama came along and somehow managed to make GWB’s dangerously unprincipled spending look good by comparison.

Obama was handed 2 wars and the biggest recession since the Great Depression and his spending is “unprincipled”? His biggest problem is that he chose to try to work with Republicans instead of playing hardball. His healthcare program was just about taken verbatim from the GOP playbook. They rejected it for simple political expediency. Once he started supporting what used to be their ideas, they did a 180.

There’s nothing inherently wrong with spending in bad times. It’s very common in business to take out loans when times are hard to invest in the business for when things pick up.

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