Re: the debt deal reached Sunday night ...
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Comment removed (Score:5, Informative)
Re:Common Sense, anyone? (Score:5, Informative)
Well, Holland *is* a town in Michigan...
Tea party = subset of Republican party (Score:4, Informative)
Bush and Obama are both responsible for the mess we're in right now.
As is the whole of congress. What's your point? However the seeds of what we are experiencing were mostly sown before Obama was in office (not counting this current insane argument over whether or not to raise the debt limit). Obama's administration can reasonably be criticized for not being more effective in cleaning up the mess but the mess was mostly caused by or during the previous administration(s) and previous congresses. Let's not ignore the fact that parts of the private sector played a pretty big role in the fiscal crisis too.
The Tea Party is a bit too hardline for my taste, but they successfully raised a 3rd party opposition to the big-government Democrat party and the big-government Republican party.
To my knowledge there is not a single "Tea Party" member of congress who is not also a member of the Republican party. While there may be some nuance to it for all realistic purposes the Tea Party is a (somewhat irrational and militant) wing of the Republican party. They are not a third party, they are simply a vocal and somewhat extreme wing of one of the two existing parties. You pretty much never hear about a "Tea Party Democrat" but you hear about "Tea Party Republicans" all the time.
$100B in annual cuts is insignificant
Hah! Cutting $100B out of a $1400B deficit hardly counts as significant. All that does is slow the bleeding. To balance the budget (much less reduce the debt) approximately $1.5 TRILLION will have to either be cut from Medicare, Social Security and/or Defense or taxes will have to be raised by a similar amount or some combination of the two. Whatever is chosen, it isn't going to be pleasant but sooner or later taxes have to be raised and/or the big entitlements and defense have to be cut. The two parties insisting on one side that taxes cannot ever be raised and on the other that programs cannot ever be cut shows our so called "leaders" do not deserve to remain in office past the next election cycle.
Re:Common Sense, anyone? (Score:5, Informative)
His wife mentioned that the US is a land of taking advantage of people. His wife is an Israeli, Israel takes advantage of American religious loyalty ( Christians waiting for their Armageddon as well as American Jews ) to get powerful military technology which they use to take advantage of Palestinians. Part of that is brutal acts which are necessary to protect themselves, which they have a right to do, but as a country Israel also goes beyond that.
They can, because they have the power to do so. Hence taking advantage of people.
Re:St. Reagan (Score:5, Informative)
Only if you don't take inflation into account. Take a look at the US dept as a percentage of GDP, and it is clear who
1) The big spenders are: Roosevelt, Ford, Reagan, Bush Sr., Bush Jr., Obama
2) Brought the dept down: Truman, Kennedy, Johnson, Nixon, Carter, Clinton.
Under all Democratic Presidents the dept went down, except Roosevelt and Obama.
Under all Republican Presidents the dept went up, except Nixon.
And for both Roosevelt and Obama, you can say that a major part of their spending is related to things outside their control, like the Second World War, War in Irak&Afganistan and Financial Crisis.
Maybe Roosevelt shouldn't have entered the war?
Maybe Obama should have left Irak and Afganistan the day he came into office, and maybe GM, Chrystler, Goldman Sachs, Morgan Stanley, AIG, Citibank, BoA, Fanny Mae, Freddy Mac and others should have gone bankrupt?
I don't think either had a real choice in the matter. But you might see that differently.
Google it yourself, or look at an image like this: http://moneystockstycoons.com/financial-rankings/united-states-debt/ [moneystockstycoons.com]
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Personally I voted that I'm wildly happy that they reached a deal. I don't think I would have liked the economic outlook of a US defaulting on it's bonds. We have enough trouble here in Europe with Greece, something similar happening on the scale of the USA would have caused major havoc in the world economy.
Re:Darn (Score:5, Informative)
without the Bush tax cuts or wars, we would be DEBT FREE right now. Literally. Not just deficit free but DEBT FREE.
Not true, the surpluses under Clinton were largely accounting games. When issue bonds, sell them to the SS trust fund, and then list them as an asset, that is not what most of us would call debt free.
I will grant the balance sheet was better under Clinton than under our two more resent presidents. We were running surpluses (even if they were smaller than popular reporting would have you think) and had we been able to keep all other things equal we would have paid down lots of but not all by any stretch the national debt.
Re:Darn (Score:5, Informative)
The rate at which the deficit is increasing has increased in each of Obama's THREE years in office
Very convenient to ignore my points...
Here's the rebuttal of yours:
Indeed, and why are those things increasing?
- Biggest recession since the great depression. So tax receipts are through the floor. Who caused that recession? Bush and GOP policies.
- A housing bubble pushed by Bush and the "Ownership society" and completely lax oversight. GOP loves to complain about restricting corporations so lets let them regulate themselves. Oops.
- lets not forget Sen GOP leader McConnell "My number one priority is to make sure Obama is not reelected." Not the country, not jobs...to make the president fail. Nice.
When you're in recession, nobody is spending. The only entity willing to spend is the government.
If consumers aren't spending and businesses aren't spending, what do you do? Just sit there and wait it out? Thus making it worse and longer to recover?
Or does the gov't spend money to stimulate the economy? That's called stimulus. The only thing that increases economic output is 'demand'. Tax cuts do not create demand. The stimulus we did have wasn't big enough, because as we're finding out the recession was actually bigger than it was originally estimated.
But keep drinking that Fox koolaid...
9/11 may not have hapened under Gore (Score:3, Informative)