Comments on: Oh No, Not Him Again

By: Terry Cowgill » Still the One

Terry Cowgill » Still the One — Tue, 26 Aug 2008 15:45:54 +0000

[...] what the DNC wants to do? Remind us the Carter years? By almost any objective measure, he was a lousy president. Worse, perhaps, than [...]

By: Steve Barlow

Steve Barlow — Wed, 23 May 2007 03:33:40 +0000

Let me get this straight:
Who was the worse president, Carter or Bush?
Who are the bigger spendthrifts, Democrats or Republicans?
Isn’t this like arguing over who’s the bigger fathead, Rosie O’Donnell or Donald Trump?

By: Tom Cowgill

Tom Cowgill — Wed, 23 May 2007 03:08:05 +0000

The Fed Budget ends up in the Congress, but the process begins in the White House with the president. He proposes a budget and Congress passes it or amends it. In the 1980â€™s, the Dem congress passed every balanced budget that Reagan sent them. That would be none. Every budget passed was at about the same level of spending as the budgets he proposed. There was no need for any histrionics. All he had to do was submit a balanced budget to begin with.
To suggest that we had to choose between a balanced budget and defeating communism is a false dilemma. We have no way of knowing that we could not do both.
Since when is a â€œpretty goodâ€ economy an excuse for massive deficits. Sound economics says that that is the time to pay down the debt, not expand it.
The tax cuts were certainly a big factor in the deficits.

By: Terry

Terry — Tue, 22 May 2007 22:11:06 +0000

Marshall, No credit to the GOP Congress in those years? I think they and Clinton complemented each other quite nicely.

By: Marshall Miles

Marshall Miles — Tue, 22 May 2007 22:03:43 +0000

Simply put…

the proof is in the pudding

Bush…….no surplus in 6 years

Clinton 4 surplus budgets in 8 years (the last 4 in a row)

point, game, set and match!

By: Terry

Terry — Tue, 22 May 2007 21:18:59 +0000

Peter,

I don’t know what the percentage of culpability is. I do know a president cannot pass a budget. Congress alone does that. The executive branch does have the bully pulpit, however.

If, for example Reagan had been serious about balancing the budget when he came on board in 1981, he could have shown some leadership in that regard. He could have forced a showdown with Congress and shut down the government to make a point that deficits do matter.

But alas, the Gipper had other priorities such as defeating the Soviet empire. I suppose if it had to be one or the other I would take the defeat of communism.

And Bush and the GOP Congress have spent (to borrow a phrase from Mike Huckabee) like John Edwards in barber shop. But the executive and legislative were of the same party riding a pretty good economy.

So what’s their excuse for deficit spending? I’m not convinced it’s the tax cuts, fashionable though that assumption may be. I don’t have the numbers in front of me but I know spending has increased during Bush’s first six years at a rate much higher than it did in the Clinton/GOP congress years.

Simply put: It’s the spending, stupid.

By: Peter Halle

Peter Halle — Tue, 22 May 2007 19:43:40 +0000

There is some truth to that, but it is hardly 50/50. The President gets credit in history for keeping the financial house in order, or not. Who, besides academics, remembers the budgetwork of the Congress years later? The deep hole we are in now (remember that shovel analogy!) is the handiwork of GWB, and not some pork project in West Virginia.

By: Terry

Terry — Tue, 22 May 2007 19:14:27 +0000

Hmm … I think there was a Democratic Congress in there that passed a lot of those budgets, too, like from 1950s until 1993. It takes two of the branches to balance a budget or create a deficit.

By: Tom Cowgill

Tom Cowgill — Tue, 22 May 2007 18:45:12 +0000

I have not become a deficit hawk. I feel the same way about deficits that I always have. I am basically a Keynsian. Sometimes deficits are needed and sometimes not. Running massive deficits the way the GOP has done in the last 25 years is fiscally irresponsible and totally unacceptable.

By: Terry

Terry — Tue, 22 May 2007 10:50:16 +0000

One of the great consequences of the Bush 43 presidency is that so many on the left have become deficit hawks. See, even GWB has some redeeming value.