Let the hypocrisy begin, or Harper takes office

Great Debates
61

While you retracted the comment, I just wanted to remind us all of a central fact of government finances:

Deficits are a result of too much spending, not too little revenue.

Governments generally are ALWAYS making more money. You know how they blame the U.S. deficit on Bush’s tax cuts? Horseshit. Bush runs a deficit because he’s a spend-happy nut. The U.S. federal government is enjoying record revenues.

In 1995-1996, the first fiscal year under Harris, Ontario revenue was ~$47.5 billion, and expeditures were ~$56 billion.

In 2003-2004? $70 billion in revenue, $75 billion in expenditures.

So in point of fact;

  1. Ontario revenue from 1995 to 2003 went UP, even accounting for both inflation and population growth.

  2. Spending stayed about the same.

  3. The deficit in fact did go down in relative terms, though it wasn’t eliminated; by the end of the Conservative mandate in was substantially lower than it had been when the NDP were through with us.

I still don’t think they performed well because A) they failed to cut spending as much as they obviously could have and B) they promised to get rid of it, not just reduce it.

62

But the actual MINISTER of that department does. Does Menzies even deal with the public or just serve Verner?

63

Spoken like a true all-government-is-bad ideologue.

I think you’ll find instead that, in any country, deficits are the result of spending and revenue not matching. If the popular will is that certain things need to be added to or subtracted from the list of things they want done collectively and universally, that has to include the effect on taxation or other revenue collection. Deficit-generating imbalances are caused by considering only one side of the equation, as you have just done.

So you’re prepared, I hope, to list exactly what you want your government to stop doing for you so the deficits can be eliminated, instead of the standard whine about simple “government spending”?

64

The point is this: If your government has a habit of spending every nickel it has, and then borrowing as much as it can, regardless of its level of income, then by raising taxes you will solve nothing. You’ll just grow the government faster. So blaming deficits on lack of revenue is beside the point. The analogy is a person who has their Visa cards maxxed out because they can’t resist every sale they come across and can’t defer pleasure, ever, saying that the real problem is that they don’t make enough money.

Michael Jackson managed to rack up huge debts. Does Michael have an income problem?