Examine this graph; then repeat your claims with a straight face.
The biggest “non-discretionary” items include Social Security (provided under a covenant to those who pay into it) and Interest on Treasury Debt. Again, I can’t fathom “government can raise or lower spending in any category any time it wants to” unless you’re making some kind of joke.
That paper advocates that a very small portion of payroll taxes be diverted into accounts like 401(k). It specifically advocates against larger-scale privatisation.
That is the most clueless sentence about federal spending I think I’ve ever seen. I’d wager this statement would be true for any president in the past 50 years.
This graph shows that Reagan not only increased spending during his term, he increased it more than Carter, and far more than Clinton - or Bush I. Due to inflation and the rise in the number of Americans, clearly spending is going to increase for each administration. If this is the only way you can defend Saint Ron, you don’t have much of a case.
(On preview - I hope the graph Septimus has is different from mine!)
ETA: It is.
Are you unaware that U.S. population has increased since the end of Reagan’s term? Are you unaware that per capita GDP is also up? Do you claim that government spending should not increase as population inncreases?
Perhaps this graph will help fight your ignorance.
I don’t have a strong economics background but my rough theory:
Reagan cut taxes (at least initailly)
Reagan increased defense spending
Economy improved
Conservatives assume that cutting taxes is the answer.
Liberal assume that spending is the answer.
The real answer is some spending is the answer. If the government buys something that a vendor can cover - perhaps with overtime - there is limited impact. If the government issues a contract that allows the vendor to confidently expand staffing levels, there is a ripple effect.
In a sound-bite environment, people make a judgement on a multivariable problem based on a partial derivative.
Indeed there is, if slashing spending would depress the economy, which it would.
Bear in mind that in economic terms, government is not some kind of parasitic growth on the private sector; it is a productive sector in its own right.
With six years of his Presidency with a Republican controlled Congress and a full two terms with a phenomenal economy (that presidents have precious little to do with IMHO) it’s hard to know if Clinton should get credit, Congress should get credit, or American business / labor / just pure timing. I usually vote ‘C’ on this discussion.
I do remember just about falling off my chair when Clinton proclaimed the era of big government over though!
That let me repeat what I wrote: Eliminate deficit spending and you can either have the same amount of government services for less taxes or a higher amount of government services for the same amount of taxes. Either way we come out ahead of how our current system works.
Your chart talks about deficits, it says nothing about the level of spending. I would rather the government spend 2 trillion and have a large deficit than spend 4 trillion and have no deficit. It is the level of spending that is important not the size of the deficit. Deficits are only important because debt must enventually be paid back, increasing the burden of taxes in the future. Deficits are not bad things inherently.
Even so that is a horrible graph. 2 year deficit reduction as a % of GDP? Why is that meaninful at all. All it shows was there was a huge deficit two years ago because of the great recession and tax payments cratering. Spending shot up as a result of a horrible crisis. That crisis level of spending has become the new normal. The economy has started to recover and tax payments have gone back to near normal. It does not show any fiscal restraint whatsoever. In fact the deficit from last year was 50 billion dollars larger than the largest three years of Reagan’s deficits combined.
2. Interest on the debt at 6.23% is one of the smaller items in the budget. Social Security is based on a law. Like any law it can be repealed or changed at any time. If the congress and president wake up tomorrow and have a change of heart, social security will be gone by Monday. Saying it is a “covenant”, changes nothing. It has been changed before and they can change it again anytime they want to. Calling the spending mandatory is just a dodge they use to avoid responsibility.
3. The article discusses a partial privatization because a full one would be so politically difficult. Everything that applies to a partial privatization is applicable to a full privitization. I support a transition time to privatization because old people have made plans based on the current system and it would not be fair to the old people to change without adequate notice.
The counter-argument is that when George W. Bush had a Republican controlled Congress and two full terms he was unable to match Clinton’s phenomenal economy.
Technically, it was President Bush who started on the path to balancing the Federal budget.
Remember, “Read my lips, no new taxes!” Well he ended up raising taxes in order to start getting the budget balanced. Point in fact, he so wanted to balance the budget that when congress wouldn’t let him do so in any other way than by adding taxes, he agreed to it…and hence got booted from the office by the American people.
Clinton’s contribution was basically to leave well enough alone.
Why should government increase as spending increase? The largest non-entitlement category is defense. How much bigger does an army protecting 350 million people than one protecting 300 million. The US spends 41% of the worlds spending on arms. The cold war is over, the Iraq war is over. Spending should match the threat faced not the amount of people in the country.
Likewise another core government function is the courts. Crime has been going down for 24 years. Spending needs to match the threat faced, not the amount of people.
The US is richer than ever before, richer people need less help than poor people. As GDP increases government spending should go down not up.
Government builds roads, but highway miles traveled has gone down for six consecutive years. Why should we be spending more money on roads people use less?
True, but ostensibly, he was actively trying to increase the debt as much as he could with the intention of getting the USSR to try doing the same, under the belief that they would bottom out first and their economy crumble. Obviously, their economy did bottom out and crumble, but I’ll make no claim that Reagan’s gamble had anything to do with it (since I haven’t really investigated the issue).
It’s a bit unfair to slam a president for creating debt when creating debt was his very goal, and particularly not when his VP, after taking over, immediately set about undoing all of that and balancing the budget.
This is the crux of my ‘economic ideologues and not economic conservatives’ argument. To my mind - and this is why I consider myself an economic conservative - minimizing deficits should be a strong consideration in the government’s budgeting process. What you’re laying out isn’t remotely conservative.
Ask a silly question, get a silly answer. The House of Representatives originates all spending bills. Reagan had Tip O’Neill and Clinton had Gingrich. O’Neill and Gingrich deserves as much credit or blame as the presidents they negotiated with.
Size of the economy has as much to do with the size of government as the people in charge of the government. Historically governments have only been able to tax people less than 25% of GDP. Even if they wanted to spend more they had a constraint. So even if Carter had wanted to spend more than Reagan, it is unlikely he could have.
The President is one man, the economy is hundreds of millions of people interacting with each other. To lay all the blame or credit on the president is just silly. Thus ranking presidents by how the economy is doing is like ranking them based on how good the weather was during their presidency. It is a silly exercise. Each president faced a unique set of circumstances. Reagan was fighting the evil empire, Clinton was fighting a warlord in Somalia, to compare them soley based on spending ignores all that.
