RTFirefly - Your well hitched reply to my insane rant was a far cry from your seemingly childish first post.
Touche.
and you want to know why? Its because it is Congress that sets the budget, not the president. The president can only approve or veto the budget. The House and the senate ultimately gets to decide who pays what by how much and who gets whats leftover. You want to know why there is a deficit? maybe you should look into all the pork belly projects that the congressmen and Senators stick into the budget and then ask the president to approve it all or nothing. It may not be the sole cause of deficits but its certainly an unnecesary contributor to it.
If God made irrefutable of God’s existence and no one saw it, heard it, felt it, smelled it or tasted it… does God still exist?
WAAAK!!! Wrong thread!! MEa Culpa!! Gomen! Sorry!
EEEK!!
I thought you blew a gasket or something.
I’ll let you in on a secret, Jeff: Clinton raised taxes. (Caught a lot of flak for it, too.) If he hadn’t, the deficits would have continued indefinitely, even given the improvement in the economy. Instead, we had a couple years of surplus in there, before Shrubbery told us that the projected surpluses of the next decade were so real that we could give them away in advance. And now we’re back to mongo deficits, as far as the eye can see.
That’s what I mean by using (or in the latter case, not using) the wave. The economy boomed for 7 years under Reagan and Pappy Bush too, but the deficits were still enormous. Same economic circumstances as Clinton, but vastly different results.
Good luck in finding one word in my post that gave credit to anyone for either the boom times or the recession. I only contrasted the responses of different Presidents to their economic circumstances. Good times and bad times come; it’s what you do with them that makes the difference.
Thanks. I must’ve been feeling grouchy when I wrote my earlier post. (Hell, I feel grouchy a lot when discussing politics these days!)
As part of an absolutly great post, RTFirefly said: “It could also be said that the taxes the poor and middle-class do pay, affect their quality of life to a much greater extent than the taxes the rich pay, affect theirs. Or it might be said that a $100 tax cut to someone making $20K is much more likely to be spent in the American economy, than the same $100 given to a rich person, where its main effect may be to help rearrange the relative positions of various already-existing securities.” Very well put!
I’d prefer a tax cut that benefits the poor more then the middle class, and the middle class more then the rich.
Really? Care to back that up with some evidence? Something that shows that the contribution made to federal revenues in the '98 and '99 fiscal years from Clinton’s tax increases represented a significant fraction of the overall tax revenue? Keep in mind that higher tax rates will always slow down an economy, just as lower tax rates will boost an economy, so that it’s not easy to forecast the “cost” or “savings” of a tax cut or hike.
I would wager that Clinton’s tax hike was responsible for the surplus in the same way that Bush’s tax cut was responsible for the deficit - ie, hardly at all.
Jeff
Also consider what House Republicans are doing with Congress’ accounting games:
House Majority Leader Tom Delay wants to end the practice of requiring Congress to vote on raising the debt ceiling every time we approach it. By ending the vote, Bush can spend whatever he likes, increasing the national debt with no public oversight.
Will we buy our loaf of bread in the future with a wheelbarrow of cash? Apparently Delay never heard of Germany in the 1920s.
Delay has also required fuzzy-math analysis of budget bills so tax cuts appear cost-free. The “dynamic scoring” method of analyzing the potential budgetary effects of tax cuts has long been favored by practitioners of what the former President Bush called “voodoo economics.” Basically, it is a way of claiming that tax cuts will generate increased tax revenues because of economic growth. So DeLay’s House members won’t be getting very honest numbers about how much money will be lost when Bush pushes for tax cuts. With a “dynamic” approach, tax breaks for the rich will seem less painful. If this witchcraft sounds familiar, it should: It’s exactly how Reagan sold his huge tax cuts that “dynamically” tripled the national debt in eight years.
We are in for a very rough ride indeed.
Actually, Neurotik was not answering RickJay however the effect seems the same. I would add that FDR has been accused of getting into WWII in order to get the country out of The Great Depression. He knew about Pearl Harbor and let it happen.
The problem is Hazel the poor do not pay any income taxes. Many of them get earned income credits which means they get money for not earning enough to pay taxes. Some people want to increase this amount, but in no way can you reduce the income taxes of the poor.
Dick Morris, Clinton’s advisor, said last night that there was a good reason the Democrats would never sell the public on the idea of not giving a tax break to the top 1%. He said that in a recent poll, the question was asked about who was in the top 1%. 19% said they were and over 20% said they hoped to be soon.. He insinuated that the rest didn’t vote in elections.
Kniz:
I saw the interviw with Dick Morris, and I heard him quote the statistics you cite. I might believe the 2nd part, (the 20% think they’ll one day in the top 1%), but I find it hard to believe the 1st part-- 19% think their in the top 1%. I’d like to see the actual pole. Dick Morris is a know-it-all has been. Class warfare on tax cuts works all too well in this country and he should know it.
The Dems and Repubs will work out some compromise that is ~50% between the 2 proposals, they’ll add many more layers of complexity to the outlandishly complex tax code and the rest of us will get on with our lives.
John Mace, I can’t disagree with you about Dick Morris, however his point was that the Democrats have been using class warfare to the point that it is meaningless. I, too, cannot understand how 19% could think they were in the top 1%, but that is what the man said.
I look at it this way. Our current tax system is a LOT closer to what the Democracts would want in an ideal world than what the Republicans would want. Class warfare is one of the main reasons why. But I guess that’s really just my opinion.
Dick Morris is REALLY good at making it sound like he has the inside scoop on things. It must burn him up when he looks in the mirror at night and realizes that he doesn’t. Or maybe he’d dillusional enough to think he still does.
Well, I’m dismayed by Bush’s tendency to spend money hand over fist. I don’t think anyone can claim that he’s being frugal. At a time of war and recession, it’s idiotic to introduce new entitlement spending, and tons of money for the Department of Education, all of his various initiatives, mentoring programs, freedom corps, whatever. It’s the one area where I think Bush is screwing up. Bill Clinton said the era of big government was over. George Bush is putting it back on life support.
That said… It’s important to remember that the true measure of the ‘affordability’ of deficit spending is how it compares to the country’s ability to create new wealth (GDP). While $300 billion dollar deficits may be the biggest in history in absolute dollars, they’re not even close as a percentage of GDP. Reagan’s highest deficit was over 6% of GDP. That’s equivalent to about a $600 billion deficit today.
Sam:
Bush sure had the money flowing the other night! “Therefore, I propose x billions of dollars to fight y”
Fortunately, most of these silly political programs that all presidents throw out in the SOTU address never see the light of day. We’ll see.
Deficits don’t scare me too much. Like I said earlier, they’re the only thing that seem to keep the gov’t from spending even MORE money.
Hey Biggirl ----- How come your not yelling at these guys for not addressing the OP?
I think we tend to get so caught up in the political aspect of the issues, that we can`t take a step back to look at the big picture.
Everything from the weather, to foreign policies, to interest rates, the GNP, jobless rates, morale, education, foreign trade,… all of these things play a role in the vast and dynamic economic environment that we live in. War and taxes are just a part of this huge machine that we call the economy.
The President (insert name) can only do so much. He/she relys on input from others, economic forecasts, world issues, and gut feelings, plus pressure from the American people and congress.
Only so much can be done by any one President, though they usually get the heat when things go wrong. They take credit for the good too but the negative stands out more in the peoples minds and gets more mileage from opposition.
I would not want to be President.
Having said these things I think the President has about as much direct influence on the economy as I have telling my wife how much money she should spend at Wal-mart. I offer input and some direction but in the end I never know what the reciept will say.
No, he didn’t. That’s a ridiculous conspiracy theory that’s been debunked on SDMB in the past.
Sam Stone makes an excellent point, however. In determining the actual cost of a deficit or a debt, it has to be balanced against GDP. Bush’s proposed budgets feature deficits that aren’t even CLOSE to Reagan’s. If you adjust for inflation and GDP, Reagan’s deficits were much, much larger.
Jeff this is ridiculous:
Have you been living in a hole, or has partisanship clouded your judgment so badly that you can’t see what is right in front of you.
From the New York Times
In This report the economist from economy.com has claimed that without the war uncertainty the economy probably would have grown at 3% last year instead of 0.7%
Uncertainty is even effecting international markets.Reuters
Quite frankly I don’t really care who you give “credit” vs “blame” for what, but you need to take a giant leap into reality.
Alas, this thread has gone far, far beyond my Junior Modding abilities.
I think my question has been answered though.