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WFFaithful said:
jhmd's defiicit comment is taken out of context. He's talking as if the sole reason for the current deficits are the big spending liberals.
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Well, that is true. Bush didn't veto squat. But then Obama came along and yowzaa!
 
WFFaithful said:
Continue to oversimplify things.
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Yes. It's crazy that I would think that a Dem House, Dem Senate, Dem White House and Dem budget deficits would lead to Dem accountability. I underestimated your ability to win a staring contest with reality. Congrats, I guess.
 
Revenue dropped because of the recession. We're paying for unfunded wars in Iraq and Afghanistan as well as a giant prescription drug plan.
 
jhmd2000 said:
Yes. It's crazy that I would think that a Dem House, Dem Senate, Dem White House and Dem budget deficits would lead to Dem accountability. I underestimated your ability to win a staring contest with reality. Congrats, I guess.
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Yet the same doesn't apply for Pub control.
 
PhDeac said:
Yet the same doesn't apply for Pub control.
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A) Why wouldn't it? See my comments on this thread about the Bush Admin.

B) The President's term has featured the largest deficits of any Administration in American history. When you break records, expect attention.
 
Obama's definitely at fault for a number of things. He should have done better than Little Timmy for Secretary of the Treasury. TARP should have stuck to the Congress' intention that it help out Main St as well as Wall St. Effective implementation of HAMP could have done a lot to arrest the fall of home prices. It would have been nice if he had done more recess appointments or appointed more people during the supermajority. Dodd-Frank isn't a particularly good bill and I have doubts about how well the OLA would work, or even if it would ever spring into action. He folded on the Jobs act pretty quickly and didn't even use it in the debate when it's the obvious answer to what he'd do about jobs. My problem is, I can think of a lot of good criticisms of Obama. But they're literally ALL from the left and not the right.
 
TuffaloDeac10 said:
Obama's definitely at fault for a number of things. He should have done better than Little Timmy for Secretary of the Treasury. TARP should have stuck to the Congress' intention that it help out Main St as well as Wall St. Effective implementation of HAMP could have done a lot to arrest the fall of home prices. It would have been nice if he had done more recess appointments or appointed more people during the supermajority. Dodd-Frank isn't a particularly good bill and I have doubts about how well the OLA would work, or even if it would ever spring into action. He folded on the Jobs act pretty quickly and didn't even use it in the debate when it's the obvious answer to what he'd do about jobs. My problem is, I can think of a lot of good criticisms of Obama. But they're literally ALL from the left and not the right.
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Methinks "literally" is an extra helping at the hyperbole buffet. You don't have a problem with record-setting deficit spending?
 
The government should be deficit spending during a recession to help make sure the economy doesn't collapse. Our economy/country is bigger and more complex than anytime in history, so of course it's going to be record breaking when the government actually does do deficit spending.
 
David Banner David Banner David Banner David Banner
 
jhmd2000 said:
Methinks "literally" is an extra helping at the hyperbole buffet. You don't have a problem with record-setting deficit spending?
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In what sense? I'd *prefer* it if the deficits were driven more by one-time items and less by structural issues that need fixing once we get out of the current output gap. I have some serious reservations about the makeup of the deficits, but none whatsoever with the deficits being "too big." There's a reasonable argument to make that they may be too small, or that the stimulus should have been bigger (though there weren't votes for a bigger stimulus for political reasons).
 
BeachBumDeac said:
The government should be deficit spending during a recession to help make sure the economy doesn't collapse. Our economy/country is bigger and more complex than anytime in history, so of course it's going to be record breaking when the government actually does do deficit spending.
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There is a big difference between responsible deficit spending and the out-of-control checkbook forest fire that we have going on. The vast majority of our deficit spending isn't helping our economy do jack shit.
 
BeachBumDeac said:
The government should be deficit spending during a recession to help make sure the economy doesn't collapse. Our economy/country is bigger and more complex than anytime in history, so of course it's going to be record breaking when the government actually does do deficit spending.
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That's only part of the deficits are so large. The other issues are that we weren't collecting enough taxes going into the crisis and (more interestingly) that government spending as a % of GDP should grow over time because most things governments do - the majority of government employees are soldiers or teachers - are subject to Baumol's disease. Teachers don't exactly get more productive over time, but to maintain a given caliber of teacher throughout the system their wages have to increase to roughly keep pace with other sectors that people skilled enough to be teachers could be entering.
 
2&2 Slider To Leyritz said:
There is a big difference between responsible deficit spending and the out-of-control checkbook forest fire that we have going on. The vast majority of our deficit spending isn't helping our economy do jack shit.
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My dawg, Lord Keynes: "If the Treasury were to fill old bottles with banknotes, bury them at suitable depths in disused coalmines which are then filled up to the surface with town rubbish, and leave it to private enterprise on well-tried principles of laissez-faire to dig the notes up again (the right to do so being obtained, of course, by tendering for leases of the note-bearing territory), there need be no more unemployment and, with the help of the repercussions, the real income of the community, and its capital wealth also, would probably become a good deal greater than it actually is. It would, indeed, be more sensible to build houses and the like; but if there are political and practical difficulties in the way of this, the above would be better than nothing."
 
John Maynard Keynes would never support trillion dollar deficits under any circumstances.
 
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