If the stimulus is a one-off, why is the projected deficit $1.56 trillion in Obama’s budget? That’s a hell of a lot more than $787 billion.
Interesting way of phrasing it. Which party was in control of Congress when the budget was balanced in the 1990s?
Regards,
Shodan
Well, you already had an ongoing half trillion deficit. And that was a year in which tax revenues hadn’t dropped dramatically, which obviously added massively to the 2009 deficit. Because when your bs ideology causes an economic meltdown tax revenues tend to collapse. And the budget deficit is (collapsing) revenues minus outlays, see?
The Democrats were in control of congress when the 1993 Deficit Reduction Act was enacted. This act actually put teeth in the PAYGO rules which was key in creating a budget surplus for the first time in living memory. In 1994 the GOP congress came along and didn’t alter anything important re. the deficit reduction work the Democrats had done and this worked out well for America with the budget surplus, paying down the national debt and everything. In 2001 the very same GOP congress then scrapped PAYGO rules and went on the biggest unfunded spending spree in history.
And here’s how the GOP Senators recently reacted to a bill that reenacted PAYGO. As a budget hawk I’m sure you’ll join me in applauding the Democratic Senators for reenacting this important piece of legislation :
Ad hominem.
I will grant that clearly partisan web sites (or partisan whatever) need to be given close scrutiny. That said if Limbaugh said the sun rises in the east I’d be inclined to accept it (although I might get up early to double check). Limbaugh has factual inaccuracies a mile long. Does Crooksandliars have the same problem?
Since you have been so keen to hold me to a word I will hold you to the exceptional standards of proof on in GD. I gave you cites…several in fact. The Crooksandliars cite is itself loaded with citations and charts if you bothered to look. The numbers being bandied about are a matter of public record and no secret. It is not a matter of opinion here but cold numbers which you have access to. Despite this I notice a distinct lack of cites on your part to refute any of it (which is odd since you were credited by another poster on your plethora of cites earlier…why the absence now?).
Attack the argument, not the person making it. I know you know this.
The ball is in your court.
Fine. I’m taking this away from you here and now. I was wrong, you are right. Not “every” bill has been obstructed. I was wrong to say so. 70% have been and of the remaining 30% we have stuff like “Kittens are cute” resolutions liberally sprinkled in there which would not likely get anyone in a fuss. It was hyperbole and I should realize making blanket statements of “every” or “all” or “never” are rarely true.
Satisfied?
Define “bi-partisan” for me please. Personally I find it bogus when Dems say they have “bipartisan support” when they net all of 2 or 3 republican votes.
Further, a point you keep evading, is how many bills are obstructed and when eventually forced to a vote do many or most republicans vote for anyway? I have already provided you examples of this. Examples where the republicans obstructed legislation or nominations and then unanimously voted for it when they had to vote.
I think the bias here is clear. You are the one lacking cites. You are the one lacking numbers to refute my assertions. You are the one clinging to a word I used as if it means everything. The bias is yours.
While the SDMB may be distinctly left leaning I am (and have numerous times in the past) engaged forthrightly with the conservatives here. If I wanted an echo chamber I’d start a “Liberals Post Here” thread.
Thanks for the end-run calling me a liar. I have answered your posts and done so clearly. I believe I have defended my assertions adequately. You may disagree but then you have brought nothing of substance to the debate in your last several posts beyond flailing around.
The facts are I am right and you are wrong. Once faced with this stark reality you are pontificating on my motives instead of the topic at hand.
I feel like this is degenerating into a “Democrats are better than Republicans/Nuh-uh, Republicans are better than Democrats” type of thing (not in those exact words).
The issue is about Republican’s as fundamentalists, but it would seem there is some unspoken bias associated fundamentalism, Christianity, and Republicanism together.
While they are most definitely connected, you can be a fundamentalist anything.
fun·da·men·tal·ism
1.(sometimes initial capital letter) a movement in American Protestantism that arose in the early part of the 20th century in reaction to modernism and that stressesthe infallibility of the Bible not only in matters of faith and morals but also as a literal historical record, holding asessential to Christian faith belief in such doctrines as the creation of the world, the virgin birth, physical resurrection,atonement by the sacrificial death of Christ, and the Second Coming.
2.the beliefs held by those in this movement.
3.strict adherence to any set of basic ideas or principles: the fundamentalism of the extreme conservatives.
Both political parties as a whole are fundamentalist (by definition 3), worrying more about rhetoric and talking points than the outcomes of their positions. It’s more important to chant “pro-life” than to think of the possibility of reforming how the medical practice of abortion is instituted (and that there might be a good reason to have it available). It’s more important to chant “Yes We Can” than to question how our candidates 503 promises will actually be pragmatically implemented (and if it would actually be good, or just seems better than the alternative - which isn’t hard to do).
Those are just 2 examples and not meant as specific attacks against pro-lifers or anyone who chanted “Yes we can” at an Obama rally.
It’s all about the fundamentalism of what the party says. I don’t think these are the majority, but they are the loudest (ALWAYS the loudest in anything in life) and create this false reality that their views are "common place, “rational,” or “the only sensible/sane choice.” Anyone who opposes them are “radicals,” “extremists,” “fascists,” “communists,” “socialists,” etc etc ad naseum. Often attacks are leveled with no real content, just repeating the same “facts” that are spewed repeatedly in the political realm.
Let’s not forget bias (ESPECIALLY confirmation bias). Joe Stack, one individual who it appears made a very poor decision, happens to have rather libertarian and anti-government views. Suddenly Democratic new outlets are trying to tie him to the TEA party, militias, right-wing terrorism, etc (even though he bashes Bush in his letter, scathes corporations, knocks the war, and maintains a rather “eat the rich” type of tone). Republicans used the incident to blame the “liberal media” for demonizing conservatives, use the above mentioned exceptions to say “no he’s a leftist, see?” and ignore his rather conservative tone when it comes to financial policy, government power, and his whole rant is over taxes as a whole.
Both sides pick the parts out that confirm their bias, but ignore all the stuff that brings thier conclusion into question.
Maybe not everything in politics has to be one or the other.
When you can start thinking that way, then you begin to escape the fundamentalism of politics.
I disagree to an extent.
Definition #3 I think is the operative one here. I also agree that anyone may have things they feel strongly about.
However, Dems tend to be all over the place. Sure one will be inflexible on abortion, another inflexible about immigration and so on. But while they are passionate about an issue or two, which is normal, they are flexible otherwise.
Fundamentalism, I believe, precludes flexibility of thought. It demands adherence to a strict set of ideas. There is no allowance for gray areas.
Republicans are far less capable of differing viewpoints. Their tent is small (to wit try and count the number of non-white people at their big events).
Evidence of this can be seen in their Contract With America V.2.0 (which of course implies the 1.0 version so they keep at it). To be a “proper” republican you need to sign-on to this manifesto.
On the upside for Reps this gives them a unity Dems can never achieve. They can stand shoulder-to-shoulder to defy anything “not them”. This defiance, this total unwillingness to work with the opposition, is a hallmark of fundamentalism. If you are not with us, you are against us mentality.
This is diametrically opposed to a democracy which demands consensus and melding of ideas. Which is odd considering these same folk generally claim to be the greatest patriots and defenders of democracy.
Questioning the bias of a partisan cite is not an ad-hominem argument.
You’re giving me cites to things that have nothing to do with your original assertion, so I don’t really care. You’re trying to deflect the argument.
If you really want to get into a debate that’s more nuanced, and more about general obstructionism and the rise of partisanship, fine. But be aware that it’s a lot more complicated than just figuring out who has filibustered more often. For example, it may be that the Democrats are being filibustered more because they are trying to push legislation without reasonable input from Republicans by shutting them out of committees or gaveling down legitimate concerns. It may also be that they are being less bipartisan in the bills themselves, trying to push policies that Republicans could never agree with. Or maybe not. Maybe the Republicans are all just self-serving scum. But in any event, a debate on this issue should investigate such factors.
I do. Do you? Saying that your statement is wrong is not ad-hominem. Saying that your cite is extremely biased is not ad-hominem. Calling me a liar IS.
Taking this away from me? I see. You’re doing this for tactical advantage. Whatever floats your boat.
I’ll accept your retraction of the EVERY comment. But if we’re going to debate Republican obstructionism, I’m going to have to take issue with your numbers above. See, I actually went and checked to see if Republicans really had filibustered over 100 times in the last Congress. Turns out, it’s not true. What IS true is that Harry Reid has invoked cloture more than 100 times.
Now, a cloture vote can be used to stop a filibuster - OR it can be used to shut down legitimate debate. Your partisan cite chose to equate a cloture vote with a Republican filibuster, but that’s not the case. In some cases Reid used it to forestall a* threatened* filibuster, and I’d grant you that as a ‘filibuster’ sinice we’re being generous and understanding and all.
So you can interpret a cloture vote as a response to Republican stonewalling, OR you can interpret it as a Democratic hard-ball tactic to shut down debate and force votes before the opposition has a chance to debate it or get the opinions of their constituents on it.
For example, the Obamacare plan was unveiled by Reid on a Saturday, and a cloture vote was taken an hour after midnight on Sunday. There was no Republican filibuster - in fact, support for the bill was collapsing, and Reid wanted to ram it through before anyone had a chance to debate it at all. Yet your cite counts this as a Republican filibuster, not as Democratic strong-arming.
On the other hand, cloture votes have been invoked to stop the stonewalling tactics of Mitch McConnell, and rightly so.
The reality is just a little more nuanced than what you get when you only read highly partisan cites. In fact, this Congress has been broken by both sides. Republicans have tried to stonewall, but Democrats have also strong-armed Republicans, shut them out of conferences, refused to let them read bills until the last minute, etc. Both sides are behaving like children.
Do you recall the results of the roll call tally I posted a few messages ago? of 30 bills, 18 passed either unanimously or with no more than 10 ‘nay’ votes. Yet you insist on portraying this as just a handful of Republicans voting with Democrats, and only on trivial bills. It’s just not the case. Over half of all bills had near-unanimous support. That’s just a fact.
Yep. And I never said this was a good thing. But it’s also a common tactic - go back and look at how many judicial nominees were obstructed by Democrats in the last Bush administration. Often the obstruction comes not from opposition to the particular bill, but because the bill is used as leverage against something else. I don’t like it either, and I’ll grant you that Republicans have been worse in this regard this year, but it’s a tactic both sides have used.
Lacking cites? Showing bias? Not only have I cited everything, but the cites I’ve been using are The Hill, the U.S. Senate records, and OpenCongress.org. Your cites have been rabid anti-Republican partisan blogs and web pages. I posted hard numbers which contradicted your assertion and linked to the source.
I am completely baffled by how you can say this stuff. It’s bizarre.
I did no such thing. I explicitly said that I believed you were NOT lying. The point I was making in that paragraph was that when people hurl accusations of lying around, it forces everyone to hunker down and refuse to ever say they were wrong.
This kind of crap does not help the debate. I disagreed with your entire line of argumentation, because it had nothing to do with the original statement you made. I called you on trying to deflect the debate onto something other than what you said. And you were.
You might want to be careful here, lest I go off and dig up every cloture vote and see whether or not it was to stymie a threatened filibuster or whether it was a strong-arm tactic used to shut down legitimate debate. I already linked to one example where it clearly was used in that way. Reid’s handling of that health care bill was an abomination. The biggest legilative change in 50 years, and he rams it through under cloture after allowing ONE DAY (a Sunday, no less) for reading and debate. It was a “Screw you guys, we’re doing what we want and you can suck it.” move.
You also might want to be careful with a statement like “I am right and you are wrong” in the same message where you already admitted to being wrong.
Late for me so I will deal with the rest later. I will respond to this though.
Where did I call you a liar?
You did not say my statement was wrong. You said my cite was bogus because it was from a partisan cite. You attacked the source and not the substance of the argument. The very definition of an Ad Hominem attack.
I will reply to the rest later (sorry but super late for me).
Look, why don’t we just put the personal stuff to rest completely? I’m really tired of it, and I’m sure everyone else is too. How about from now on we just debate the issues, and give each other some respect and the benefit of the doubt? We all get hyperbolic some times anyway - it’s a passionate subject. I’m sure I’ll do it again in the future, and you probably will too.
We’d save us a lot of time and effort if we just responded to hyperbole with something more civil like, “Well, I think that’s a pretty extreme characterization, but I understand what you’re getting at.”
Perhaps in fevered dreams, but not in real life.
The “debate” is nonsense, and we both know it. When the “debate” on the measure began, there was no one in that chamber who didn’t already know how they would vote. No new facts are revealed in debate.
Sen. Throckmorton (R-Citigroup): I have here conclusive evidence that as a result of Democrat policy, hamster abuse is up twenty-seven per cent!
Sen. Foggybottom (R-Exxon) What! I did not know that! I am now convinced to pass the measure!
Come now. We’ve been debating health care for near as long as I’ve been of voting age, I believe sufficient time has been made available for Senators to get a pretty good idea of their constituents opinions. Indeed, enough time to individually interview each and every one.
Mr Reid does indeed want to “ram it through”, in the sense that he wishes to apply the socialistic communist tactic of majority rulership. You’ve heard of it, the “up or down vote” so favored by patriotic Americans. Until lately.
Your effort to paint a picture of equal responsibility requires more leaps of faith than a nun on a trampoline.
I see. I guess all that talk of transparency, and putting bills online for the people to read so they could give their representatives their opinion, and all that stuff was just for show, huh? Debate is for the other side. Once your guys have power, just shut it down and ram through whatever you want at 1 AM on a Sunday. Is that right?
Reid’s cloture vote on the health care bill came 30 hours after he released a 300 page amendment - on a Friday night. No one had time to read it, let alone debate it. And you’re cool with that? And of course, if a Republican majority did it, you’d still be cool with it, right?
In any event, even if you think it’s right, it has nothing to do with what I said, which was that the existence of a cloture vote is not the same as saying there was an attempted filibuster, like the partisan cite linked above tries to claim.
But don’t take my word for it. Let’s see what the Congressional Research Service has to say:
Using cloture for the ‘routine flow of business’ is exactly what Harry Reid has done. Googling for his cloture votes, I turned up a number of cases where cloture was invoked in order to meet an arbitrary deadline, such as passing a bill before a holiday or a recess.
Sam, what you quoted also indicated that extended debates are a tactic of delay.
It’s not as if there had been talk of anything else in the Senate besides health care for months. Do you honestly think anything new was about to be presented? Do you really believe that more than a handful of constituents were familiar with the 5,000 pages of the bill? Without looking it up, can you tell me now what changes were made in those 300 pages? I don’t recall. Maybe you have kept up with all of it.
The Senators also have aids to assist them in the reading and summation of the content of any changes. They knew – or had the opportunity to know.
The only person who called you a liar in this thread is a newbie and he was promptly warned for it.
If someone from a far away place were to come here and judge each party by the content of the posts of each side, what would she or he make of it all?
Which I pointed out myself, and said the Republicans were wrong for doing. Why do you guys keep coming up with straw man arguments? The simple point I was making was that the statistic that Republicans had filibustered over 100 times is simply not true. There were over 100 cloture votes, which is not the same thing at all. And I cited an authoritative source to back me up.
I swear, getting even the simplest point across around here is like pulling teeth.
What does that have to do with anything? And what’s your point? It sounds like you’re saying the same thing Luci is - the Republicans can be automatically assumed to be obstructionist, so you might as well just pass bills in the dead of night without any debate and save time. Is that about it?
This is beyond ridiculous. Are you seriously suggesting that it’s okay to unveil a 300 page amendment to a bill on a Saturday, then force a cloture vote on it Sunday morning? If Republicans do that next time they have the majority, you won’t say a peep about it? Do you remember Obama’s promise that every bill would go online for five days before a vote is taken on it, to allow the people to read it and let their representatives know how they feel about it?
You didn’t read very closely. Dick Dastardly also did, and elucidator did so in a backhanded way, as did Hentor (who has a habit of following me from thread to thread and calling me a liar whenever he can). Dick Dastardly also received a mod warning for it, so I’m not sure how you missed that.
I’ll let them decide that. I’m perfectly happy letting the record stand for itself.
But I am getting sick and tired of every thread I enter turning into a personal attack. It’s a constant hijacking of the subject. I’ve asked the people who keep doing this to please open a pit thread instead if they have a problem with me so threads don’t get continually crapped on, but for some reason they refuse to do so - perhaps because they might just find out what some of the lurkers think of this nonsense.
The irony is strong in this one.
You haven’t addressed the point - if the $787 billion was a one-off, and Obama is not spending any money that isn’t accounted for with tax increases or offsetting cuts, how does the deficit increase from $1.3 trillion to $1.56 trillion?
You do realize, do you not, that Clinton vetoed the Republican balanced budget? Cite. Clinton wanted to balance the budget by postponing the cuts until after he was out of office. The Republicans forced government shut downs to compel him to actually balance the budget - your characterization of who was responsible for the first balanced budgets since 1969 is misleading to the point of being false.
Almost the first act Clinton took upon becoming President was an attempt to increase the deficit (cite).
Again, false as to fact - the biggest unfunded spending spree in history is being led by none other than Barack Hussein Obama and his compatriots in Congress, who propose to increase the national debt more than every other President in US history - combined.
Regards,
Shodan
Beautiful. I applaud your chutzpah here. Hopefully I can still say that someone has chutzpah in Great Debates.
You threaten to get evidence to support your argument, if we are not careful! The horror of a fact based argument! Yikes. Please do rely on your anecdote entirely!
Oh no! Please don’t, in a post hoc fashion, check to see if you are correct!
I would actually very much prefer that you checked your facts before posting, rather than merely threatening to do so.
So, you have implied that the Republicans have not used Rule 22 a record number of times, but instead the problem is Harry Reid invoking cloture to stymie the will of the minority. Please do get evidence of the number of Republican uses of Rule 22 to threaten a filibuster, the number of times Reid has invoked cloture, and a comparison to the past use of these practices. Then we might have an actual discussion.
Is calling someone a stalker somehow not a personal attack that impugns the motivations of the poster? So “liar” is verboten, but “stalker” is okay? Hmmm.
Please cite where I called you a liar in this thread, or retract your claim.
Please cite evidence (or provide a retraction) for your statement:
After I posted that, I DID go and look for evidence, and immediately found two cases where Reid invoked cloture without the threat of a filibuster. I’m sure there are more. I also linked to the Congressional Research Service explicitly stating that a cloture vote is NOT always in response to a filibuster or the threat of a filibuster, but is increasingly used as a simple procedural tool to manage debate times.
This rather conclusively shows that saying there is over 100 cloture votes is not the same as saying Republicans have filibustered over 100 times. Which is all I said.
Are you sure you know what you’re talking about? Rule 22 is the rule that was created to allow a cloture vote. It’s the Democrats who are invoking Rule 22, not Republicans.
And I don’t have to show how many times Republicans have done this or that, or how it compared to the past. Because the only point I was making is that cloture <> filibuster. I’ve proven that, with cites from the CRS and two examples of a cloture vote taken to simply stop debate when there was no explicit threat of a filibuster made.
I said you did “in a backhanded way”, when you responded to the mods admonition of another poster for calling me a liar by questioning the right to attack the truth of a statement, but on re-read it looks like a general question, and not one directed at me. So I’ll retract that with my apologies.
I already cited this. You don’t like the Amazon cite, that’s your problem. Other posters, including at least one on your side of the aisle, had no problem with it.
The United States budget, following the customary procedure, consists of two parts.
Expenditures.
Revenues.
Revenues are not constant in a recession. They decline. Which is just another reason why it’s important for the government to balance its books when the economy is growing. Any shortfall that exists during boom times will expand many-fold during the downtown. Which is, of course, exactly what we’re seeing right now.