Obama proposes "pay as you go" law to Congress

Great Debates
21

I know the people attacking Obama like a pack of rabid wolves would find fault anywhere so their criticism should be rightly ignored.

Obama never said that deficits were good, it was simply due to the massive economic recession left to him by Bush and the war that was conducted off the books that required massive spending and stimulus to fix. To his credit, non-partisans have warily noticed a slight stabilization of the economy, and this slow march to another depression seems to have stopped.

With that framework in place, now we can turn back to fiscal responsbility, something Obama’s been working hard to establish but had to deal with, you know, the massive global recession that was coming at us like a tidal wave.

So what if it makes exceptions? Rome wasnt built in a day and no one should expect sudden and cataclysmic changes to come suddenly and without warning. Huge financial policies like this must be eased into law, with bits and pieces put into place slowly. No one, not even Republicans, would be in favor of suddenly stopping all extraneous spending to reduce the deficit that they suddenly seem to care about. Neither would you, those who mock Obama’s attempt at reducing the deficit. Not many of you would be happy tomorrow if public services were cut, public workers laid off, schools go into ruin, mail stopped.

So seriously, get a clue and let the man do his job. I love that he’s talking about fiscal responsibility because he has the approval rating to ram it through Congress. He’s the only one, not Republicans, that can do it, and it seems everybody’s against him for even trying

22

Obama is the master bullshitter that he is precisely because Obamabots, who are the majority, happily swallow every ounce of the manure. Happy eating!

23

Please cite this, please.

24

I know Obamabots who deifies Obama at every turn would find something to praise in whatever he does, no matter how stupid he acts. They should be rightly ignored.

See how that works? :smiley:

25

Why should the fact that deficit spending was deemed necessary by a majority be a valid reason for blindly borrowing up to $787 billion? You can say you need to borrow money and at the same time also demonstrate how you plan to pay it back. Deficit spending and fiscally responsible budget planning are hardly mutually exclusive.

Pay-as-you-go provisions are neither sudden nor cataclysmic; they are already supposed to be an active provision in government budgeting. They were implemented in 1990-2002. They were again adopted in 2007, but were never properly enforced.

Who here is advocating that we cut public services tomorrow to immediately balance the yearly budget? We’re in the midst of a severe recession, and some deficit spending is entirely appropriate. Sure, the size and nature of the spending can (and should) be discussed. But there’s nothing inherently wrong with borrowing money today because it’s been deemed necessary to do so. However, the point of the pay-as-you-go rules is that you then should specify how you will pay back the loan at some point in the future through some combination of tax increases and spending cuts. Pay-as-you-go rules do not require that you have a balanced budget each and every year; they require that you have a balanced budget over time. In this particular case for instance, Obama is proposing that average mandatory spending should be balanced against average revenues over a ten-year period. This again leads back to my initial concerns of why only now should fiscally responsible budgeting be a concern, and why only portions of the budget should be subject to pay-as-you-go rules instead of the entire budget.

Government spending should be fiscally responsible. The fact that there are rather urgent situations to be addressed should not be used an excuse to behave in an irresponsible manner that fails to implement proper planning.

26

right. Which is why unemployment is now worse than the “what will happen if we don’t pass the stimulus” number advanced by Obama a few months ago.

I’d settle for Obama proposing a balanced budget by 2015. Instead, his own proposals and projections have the deficits getting bigger, not smaller, by then.

I’m not a Republican, but yeah, I pretty much would. Provided we could keep congress from interfering with how the budgets get trimmed, I’d love to tell just about every single federal agency that their budgets will be shrinking 10% a year over the next three years.

27

Jeebus…will this particular rant never die?

The current spending is necessitated by the economic crisis. Those who like to snipe at Obama keep wanting to paint a picture of a typical tax-and-spend democrat. That true to liberal form he waltzed into the office and started writing checks just cuz that’s what democrats do. If only Republicans were in control then we’d see fiscal restraint!

It has been pointed out before that it is the opinion of most* economists that the government needs to spend its way out of the recession. Know who else wanted to spend his way out of the recession? President Bush. $700 billion went to Wall Street under Bush and approved by a Republican controlled Congress. No one can seem to account for what happened to the money after that yet you have the balls to call Obama to the mat for bullshitting people?
*

28

I love the particular meme that the Stimulus was runaway spending. It was understood by most economists who weren’t hyper-partisan that a stimulus was necessary.

Why exactly is a necessary stimulus runaway spending? Why is actually putting the Iraq war in the budget instead of lying about it like the Bush administration a bad thing?

The casual stupidity of the republican base is amazing.

29

It is runaway spending because there are no plans to pay off the debt incurred by the stimulus spending. Charging a purchase to a credit card is fine as long as you intend to pay off the balance at some point. Obama has no intention of paying off the balance. Even his office’s overly-optimistic budget projections (overly-optimistic as judged by the Congressional Budget Office) show yearly budget deficits through 2019, deficits that display a trend of rising over time, not falling. The CBO’s deficit projections are even more severe. Obama has not outlined any kind of plan to generate a budget surplus. His pay-as-you-go proposal does not even begin to take a step in this direction since it places no true limitations on overall government spending.

Again, the fact that the stimulus was deemed necessary is no excuse to borrow and just blindly hope for the best. If Obama was truly serious about fiscal responsibility, he should have held himself to his own pay-as-you-go standards from Day 1. The fact that he is only now bringing up the issue of fiscal responsibility implies to me that he is only willing to follow spending guidelines when it suits him rather than holding all spending, including his own, to the same standards.

30

This is so full of holes, it is hard to know where to start. $700 billion was approved under TARP but has not been spent. It was also not approved by a Republican controlled Congress; the senate was tied 49 / 49 with 2 independents that caucused with the democrats while the house had 236 democrats and 199 republicans.

The money can also be easily accounted for by simply looking at the treasury department’s website: PDF Link. As can be seen, through the capital purchase program, $199 billion was invested in various banks with $1.9 billion paid back to date. Further, an additional $68 billion was approved by the government to be repaid today by ten of the nineteen largest banks. The government has also received $4.5 billion in dividends on the preferred stock resulting in a net outlay of $125 billion under the capital purchase program. $85 billion has gone to the automotive industry. $70 billion went to AIG. $20 billion went to some consumer lending initiative. $40 billion went to Citibank and Bank of America in a targeted investment program, and an additional $5 billion was used to guarantee certain Citibank assets. $15 billion went towards a home loan modification program.

Therefore, a total of approximately $360 billion has been spent under the $700 billion TARP program so far with a sizable chunk not going to Wall Street. Also, when you check the date of the various TARP investments, you will find that a significant percentage was made after Bush left office.

31

Rants and insults belong in the BBQ Pit. If you want to post a thoughtful criticism of the views of a person or group, that is fine. Catcalls and broad-brush accusations that are intended to rile up other posters does not belong in this forum.

Knock it off.
[ /Moderating ]

32

Jeebus … will this particular idiocy never die? **Obama wants to run record deficits long after he himself says the economic crisis will be gone.
**
Look at this graphicand let it sink in. That’s deficits bigger than anything Bush ever ran, all the way to 2019. According to Obama’s own numbers – his scenario if he gets what he wants and everything goes well – the deficit will be growing larger a full decade from now.

You misspelled “some.” There are hundreds of economists, including nobel laureates, who have opposed massive spending

Read slowly:

George W. Bush was fiscally reckless and irresponsibly spent money we didn’t have in order to advance his political agenda.

Barack Obama is fiscally reckless and is irresponsibly spending even more money we don’t have in order to advance his political agenda.

90% of the people in congress for the last 40 years, from both parties, have been fiscally reckless, irresponsibly spending money we don’t have in order to advance their political agendas and careers.
Notice how the argument is based on an actual principle rather than slavish partisanship. Now you try it: Tell me why the fiscally prudent Obama initiated a massive, long-term spending increase, running long after the current crisis will be over, and then, after it was passed, took up the cause of balanced budgets? Your choices include:

  1. It was always his intent to jack up taxes dramatically to pay for a huge permanent expansion of government.

  2. He never really thought about it before now.

33

Which proves that vegetarianism is evil? What exactly does this have to do with the price of tea in China?

34

Since government isn’t something that has any particular need of growth from year to year, there’s no obvious reason for it to run on a deficit. If there’s an emergency then sure, decide how much the emergency is worth, borrow that amount, and be done with it.

35

It’s an analogy: Both are being hypocritical. But I think you really knew that, and were just pulling my leg…TRM

36

What does hypocrisy have to do with the merit of a proposed law?

37

Just as the recession of 1982 occurred at the beginning of the “Reagan recovery.” Steering the economy is like steering a supertanker: some movements are going to occur, (or continue to occur), regardless how much one spins the wheel.

I am not arguing that we are following the correct course, but your statement to which I have responded is not meaningful.

38

Everyone knew that Obama was a tax and spend president even before he was elected, so people fall into two camps.

  1. Obama is the right person for the job because we need tax and spend to get out of the recession

  2. Obama is using the recession as an excuse to tax and spend.

For those of you in camp number 1, a few questions:
a) How long did the Depression last after the New Deal was implemented?
b) How did the money given to the banks and/or auto makers prevent their collapse?
c) How long will the Feds take to pay off the debt?
d) Do you think it is fair to make the taxpayers foot the bill considering that the speculators that made tons of $ because of their unwise practices contributed to the problem?
e) If PAYGO passes, what is to prevent it being emasculated like the Gramm-Rudman Bill?
f) Is it possible for Obama to do anything wrong in your eyes in regards to the economy? If he ate a roasted baby on live TV, would you somehow spin it in that he is showing confidence in the meat packing industry?

39

Nice dodge. We know who we gave the money to. We are not clear on what was done with that money.

40

This is meaningless unless you show that Obama is just spending money willy-nilly as opposed to it being an outgrowth of economic stimulus. There is no doubt we are digging a big hole. But why is that hole being dug?

You have that backwards. “Some” economists are opposed to the stimulus. “Most” are in favor of it (although they of course disagree on how the spending is best applied but that is a different argument).

So far you have ignored quotes and evidence to the contrary. Slavish devotion to “principle” is great for the classroom and theory debated over a beer. It is not so great in the real world. Certain realities necessitate doing things we’d rather not but are forced to. Devotion to your economic principles, noble as they may be, are not much good if they doom us. Yes we will be paying for this for a long time but the alternative is worse.