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pitcrawler
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Joined: 09 Jan 2005
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Location: Oklahoma, USA
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 Posted: Wed Apr 25, 2012 6:31 pm Post subject: 1981: The year it all started to go wrong. |
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| National Debt Graph by President wrote: | In 1981, the supply siders commandeered the Reagan Presidency and employed their Voodoo economics, as Bush senior had called it in 1980. He was saying that tax cuts would not increase government revenues. As you can see above, the Voodoo failed just as Bush predicted, and the supply siders turned a 32-year winning streak into a debt disaster that continues to this day. For 20-years, under Reagan and the Bushes, the national debt increased compared to GDP every single year. In most other years it decreases. Twenty years in a row can't be just and accident, but to understand you need to learn the voodoo strategy. (Why Debt / GDP ?)
Bush senior fought against it, so the Republicans didn't support him and he lost to Clinton, who put an end to it supply-side economics. G. W. Bush brought it back full strength, with V.P. Cheney saying "Reagan proved deficits don't matter." Currently supply siders are in full control of the Republican party.
The green line shows what would have happened to the national debt if Reagan and the Bushes had balanced their budgets as Reagan claimed he would. G.W. Bush, in all modesty, claimed he would "retire nearly $1 trillion in debt over the next four years. This will be the largest debt reduction ever achieved by any nation at any time."
Conservatives are quite embarrassed by this performance, so they have invented a cover story: The Democratic Congress did it. Nice try. But for 12 of the 20 years the Congress was not Democratic. Also, presidents can veto, and when it was Democratic, Congress passed smaller budgets on average than the Republican Presidents asked for. Presidents propose the budget, and they have the most influence. |
Check the graph.
If you just make the correct observation that Obama's added more debt than others, that's fine, but if that's ALL you think about it then you're ignoring big picture. |
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rtomek
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Location: Chicago
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| Posted: Wed Apr 25, 2012 7:19 pm Post subject: |
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| I do believe that's the year Tai's Model was discovered. |
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mcgruff
Tux's lil' helper
Joined: 28 Dec 2004
Posts: 137
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| Posted: Wed Apr 25, 2012 8:10 pm Post subject: Re: 1981: The year it all started to go wrong. |
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Funny isn't it? Obama was unlucky to be in office after the financial crisis. For all their empty bluster about spending, it's always the republicans who can't keep their pants zipped. It's a win-win for them though: first they get their military toys and wars, then they get to "starve the beast" when the cupboard is bare. The rich get richer and the poor get poorer.
Still, to be fair, at least they did bring freedom, peace and democracy to Iraq and Afghanistan.
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energyman76b
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Joined: 26 Mar 2003
Posts: 2022
Location: Germany
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| Posted: Wed Apr 25, 2012 8:18 pm Post subject: Re: 1981: The year it all started to go wrong. |
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| mcgruff wrote: |
Still, to be fair, at least they did bring freedom, peace and democracy to Iraq and Afghanistan. |
that is a joke, right?
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| AidanJT wrote: |
Libertardian denial of reality is wholly unimpressive and unconvincing, and simply serves to demonstrate what a bunch of delusional fools they all are.
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Satan's got perfectly toned abs and rocks a c-cup. |
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Prenj
n00b
Joined: 20 Nov 2011
Posts: 7
Location: Mostar, BiH
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| Posted: Wed Apr 25, 2012 8:35 pm Post subject: Re: 1981: The year it all started to go wrong. |
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| mcgruff wrote: | | Still, to be fair, at least they did bring freedom, peace and democracy to Iraq and Afghanistan. |
Man... |
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flysideways
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Old School
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Joined: 20 Nov 2004
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Location: The Covered Bridge Capital of Oregon
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| Posted: Wed Apr 25, 2012 9:14 pm Post subject: |
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Both parties in Congress are responsible. They spent more than was coming in. It ain't fucking rocket science.The government was receiving twice as much tax revenue when Reagan left office compared to when he entered office. Twice as much tax revenue, yet Congress still spent more than was coming in.
It was the fault of Congress.
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mcgruff
Tux's lil' helper
Joined: 28 Dec 2004
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| Posted: Wed Apr 25, 2012 10:40 pm Post subject: Re: 1981: The year it all started to go wrong. |
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| energyman76b wrote: | | that is a joke, right? |
No I lack the intelligence and sense of humour to appreciate irony.
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pjp
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| Posted: Wed Apr 25, 2012 11:22 pm Post subject: |
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Excellent! You've finally recognized the need for the Dbags to stop spending beyond the country's means.
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BoneKracker
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| Posted: Thu Apr 26, 2012 12:43 am Post subject: |
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| Old School wrote: | Both parties in Congress are responsible. They spent more than was coming in. It ain't fucking rocket science.The government was receiving twice as much tax revenue when Reagan left office compared to when he entered office. Twice as much tax revenue, yet Congress still spent more than was coming in.
It was the fault of Congress. |
++
If one's insight into this problem can be summed up as "Wah! Teh Democrats did it!" or "Wah! Teh Repubicans did it!", then one is a lemming -- a propaganda victim -- a puppet of the populist demagogues.
Both parties have been responsible for bad fiscal and budgetary policy. This must become officially criminal. It's time for a balanced budget amendment.
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pitcrawler
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Joined: 09 Jan 2005
Posts: 150
Location: Oklahoma, USA
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| Posted: Thu Apr 26, 2012 3:45 pm Post subject: |
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| BoneKracker wrote: | | Old School wrote: | Both parties in Congress are responsible. They spent more than was coming in. It ain't fucking rocket science.The government was receiving twice as much tax revenue when Reagan left office compared to when he entered office. Twice as much tax revenue, yet Congress still spent more than was coming in.
It was the fault of Congress. |
++
If one's insight into this problem can be summed up as "Wah! Teh Democrats did it!" or "Wah! Teh Repubicans did it!", then one is a lemming -- a propaganda victim -- a puppet of the populist demagogues.
Both parties have been responsible for bad fiscal and budgetary policy. This must become officially criminal. It's time for a balanced budget amendment. |
Yes, no one party is at fault for all of that, but lets analyse this paragraph:
| Quote: | | Conservatives are quite embarrassed by this performance, so they have invented a cover story: The Democratic Congress did it. Nice try. But for 12 of the 20 years the Congress was not Democratic. Also, presidents can veto, and when it was Democratic, Congress passed smaller budgets on average than the Republican Presidents asked for. Presidents propose the budget, and they have the most influence. |
> 60% of the time it was a Republican congress.
> Any president has the power to veto.
> Congress passed smaller budgets on average than the Republican Presidents asked for
If this has been going on since 1981, what assurances do the voting public have that another Republican president and/or a Republican congress will do things any differently? Obama may suck, but Romney may suck just the same. You may think: "Well he's gotta be better than Oblabla." It may be true, but I don't see any clear or obvious evidence for it. |
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Old School
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Joined: 20 Nov 2004
Posts: 231
Location: The Covered Bridge Capital of Oregon
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| Posted: Thu Apr 26, 2012 8:31 pm Post subject: |
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| pitcrawler wrote: | But for 12 of the 20 years the Congress was not Democratic. Also, presidents can veto, and when it was Democratic, Congress passed smaller budgets on average than the Republican Presidents asked for. Presidents propose the budget, and they have the most influence.> 60% of the time it was a Republican congress.
> Any president has the power to veto.
> Congress passed smaller budgets on average than the Republican Presidents asked for |
>The Republicans were not in control of both houses 60% of the time.
>These bills are put together so the President cannot veto them in their entirety. That is why we need a line item veto.
>Democrats not giving the Republican President everything he asked for has nothing to do with fiscal responsibility.
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BoneKracker
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| Posted: Thu Apr 26, 2012 8:48 pm Post subject: |
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| pitcrawler wrote: | | 60% of the time it was a Republican congress. |
That's not true. Someone is cherry-picking a narrow period and pivoting on multiple meanings of the word "Congress", which is often used to refer to the House of Representatives alone or both houses of Congress together. Throughout the vast majority of the time since the Great Depression, Democrats have dominate one or both houses of Congress.
All three areas are important legislatively and bugetarily: the House; the Senate, and the Presidency. Here is a very easy-to-read chart; you will notice that it is far more Blue than Red. You can use this to refer to as you read the rest:
http://uspolitics.about.com/od/usgovernment/l/bl_party_division_2.htm
Republicans have been pretty much left out in the cold when it comes to the Legislative branch, particularly when it comes to the House of Representatives, which is where the details of the budget are worked out. The exception was a single ten-year period, 1995-2005, after Democrats had started to fuck things up for the previous 15 years (which includes your "when it started to go downhill" and the 14 subsequent years.
While Democrats and Republicans have both had their share of Presidents, Democrats have dominated the legislature, except for the brief period of '95 - '05.
Also, the only time significant change really happens is when one party controls all three and can run amok with little interference. You will notice that this has only happened for Republicans ONCE (for four years during the Bush Administration), whereas it has happened for Democrats for twenty of the past 65 years.
In other words, Republicans have had unobstructed control of the Government only once, for four years, while Democrats have had unobstructed control of the government one-third of the time in modern history.
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pitcrawler
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Joined: 09 Jan 2005
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Location: Oklahoma, USA
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| Posted: Thu Apr 26, 2012 8:56 pm Post subject: |
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| Old School wrote: | | >The Republicans were not in control of both houses 60% of the time. |
I'm just going by the numbers. It says it was not a Democratic congress for 12 out of the 20 years. I assumed it meant overall control was with the Republicans in those 12 years. If my assumption is wrong then please correct me.
| Old School wrote: | | >These bills are put together so the President cannot veto them in their entirety. That is why we need a line item veto. |
Then why haven't Republicans in congress already done what they wanted if Obama cannot veto them? And why is all of the blame for the countries ills pushed so much on the president? You can't have it both ways. i.e. Blaming a Democrat congress when there's a Republican president, but then blaming the Democrat president when there's a Republican congress.
| Old School wrote: | | >Democrats not giving the Republican President everything he asked for has nothing to do with fiscal responsibility. |
In the context of the national debt graph, it does seem fiscally responsible. |
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mcgruff
Tux's lil' helper
Joined: 28 Dec 2004
Posts: 137
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| Posted: Thu Apr 26, 2012 9:32 pm Post subject: |
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| pitcrawler wrote: | | You can't have it both ways. |
I think you'll find he can. 
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Old School
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| Posted: Thu Apr 26, 2012 9:38 pm Post subject: |
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| pitcrawler wrote: | | Then why haven't Republicans in congress already done what they wanted if Obama cannot veto them? |
Because the Senate is controlled by the Democrats, and they refuse to offer their own budget proposal (well over a thousand days now), and table any GOP proposal that come their way. The Senate even refused a vote on the President's budget, because the Dem leadership knew it wouldn't even pass a Democrat Senate.
When I say the POTUS cannot veto, by that I mean that the Congress ties a bunch of bills together, (things the POTUS likes along with something he opposes) and that forces him to either veto a bunch of stuff he wants, or allow some things he doesn't like to become law. As I said earlier, the POTUS needs a line item veto.
| Quote: | | You can't have it both ways. i.e. Blaming a Democrat congress when there's a Republican president, but then blaming the Democrat president when there's a Republican congress. |
I believe I have blamed both parties in Congress, as well as the President.
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BoneKracker
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| Posted: Fri Apr 27, 2012 12:27 am Post subject: |
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| pitcrawler wrote: | | Old School wrote: | | >The Republicans were not in control of both houses 60% of the time. |
I'm just going by the numbers. It says it was not a Democratic congress for 12 out of the 20 years. I assumed it meant overall control was with the Republicans in those 12 years. If my assumption is wrong then please correct me. |
You assumed wrong, and I did correct you. See the chart I linked to.
| pitcrawler wrote: | | Old School wrote: | | >These bills are put together so the President cannot veto them in their entirety. That is why we need a line item veto. |
Then why haven't Republicans in congress already done what they wanted if Obama cannot veto them? And why is all of the blame for the countries ills pushed so much on the president? You can't have it both ways. i.e. Blaming a Democrat congress when there's a Republican president, but then blaming the Democrat president when there's a Republican congress.
| Old School wrote: | | >Democrats not giving the Republican President everything he asked for has nothing to do with fiscal responsibility. |
In the context of the national debt graph, it does seem fiscally responsible. |
How can you even let those words bubble up into your consciousness, much less percolate out of your mouth? Obama's deficit spending is unparalleled in the history of the country. Furthermore, up until the emergence of the Tea Party movement, neither Democrats and Republicans have been fiscally responsible over recent decades. They both spend excessively; the only difference is what they spend on, and whether the economy turns that spending into a deficit by shrinking revenues. Clinton was no less or more fiscally disciplined than Bush or Obama; they just had different economies.
But, that's what IS, not what SHOULD BE.
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mcgruff
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| Posted: Fri Apr 27, 2012 12:37 am Post subject: |
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| BoneKracker wrote: | | Clinton was no less or more fiscally disciplined than Bush or Obama; they just had different economies. |
Clinton spent what he could afford. How can you possibly claim that was undisciplined?
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BoneKracker
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| Posted: Fri Apr 27, 2012 2:28 am Post subject: |
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| mcgruff wrote: | | BoneKracker wrote: | | Clinton was no less or more fiscally disciplined than Bush or Obama; they just had different economies. |
Clinton spent what he could afford. How can you possibly claim that was undisciplined? |
Clnton guessed at what he could afford, just like they all do. He spent what the guy before him was spending, and didn't make any major changes (other than trying and failing to institute communist health care). Moreover, he got it wrong -- he ended up taxing people too much and gave some back (which he should have snatched and applied to the national debt). He benefited fiscally from a boom cycle of the economy which was just natural timing although catalyzed by conservative deregulation (in which he was fully complicit), which popped just as he was handing it over to his successor (there are many in here who remember the 2000 dot-com bubble bursting and the ensuing recession). Clinton also played his part in planting the seeds of the financial disaster Obama has had to deal with, by fully supporting deregulation of financial markets and expansion of the housing bubble through the Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac institutions and associated programs. He also bears responsibility for the economic consequences of 9/11 and the "War on Terror" by doing nothing about Osama bin Laden when al Qaeda could have been nipped in the bud.
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dmitchell
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| Posted: Fri Apr 27, 2012 2:36 am Post subject: |
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| Old School wrote: | | >These bills are put together so the President cannot veto them in their entirety. That is why we need a line item veto. |
Have to disagree on these points. The bills may be crafted to make it politically difficult to veto, but the president can still do it. All it takes is courage. As for the line item veto, I think it is too close to giving the president legislative power. The president should nut up and just veto the damn bills. Line item veto will probably just turn every bill into even more of giant clusterfuck than it otherwise would have been.
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pitcrawler
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Joined: 09 Jan 2005
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Location: Oklahoma, USA
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| Posted: Fri Apr 27, 2012 2:38 am Post subject: |
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| BoneKracker wrote: | | pitcrawler wrote: | | Old School wrote: | | >The Republicans were not in control of both houses 60% of the time. |
I'm just going by the numbers. It says it was not a Democratic congress for 12 out of the 20 years. I assumed it meant overall control was with the Republicans in those 12 years. If my assumption is wrong then please correct me. |
You assumed wrong, and I did correct you. See the chart I linked to.
| pitcrawler wrote: | | Old School wrote: | | >These bills are put together so the President cannot veto them in their entirety. That is why we need a line item veto. |
Then why haven't Republicans in congress already done what they wanted if Obama cannot veto them? And why is all of the blame for the countries ills pushed so much on the president? You can't have it both ways. i.e. Blaming a Democrat congress when there's a Republican president, but then blaming the Democrat president when there's a Republican congress.
| Old School wrote: | | >Democrats not giving the Republican President everything he asked for has nothing to do with fiscal responsibility. |
In the context of the national debt graph, it does seem fiscally responsible. |
How can you even let those words bubble up into your consciousness, much less percolate out of your mouth? Obama's deficit spending is unparalleled in the history of the country. Furthermore, up until the emergence of the Tea Party movement, neither Democrats and Republicans have been fiscally responsible over recent decades. They both spend excessively; the only difference is what they spend on, and whether the economy turns that spending into a deficit by shrinking revenues. Clinton was no less or more fiscally disciplined than Bush or Obama; they just had different economies.
But, that's what IS, not what SHOULD BE. |
I just looked at the chart. Here's an unbiased analysis:
For the congress period 1981 - 1991, there was a Republican president. Congress was split between Republicans and Democrats from 1981 - 1985. Congress was controlled by the Democrats from 1987 - 1991. The debt went up at a steady pace from 1981 - 1991. Say for the sake of argument there's a true balance of power between the president and congress, there are an equal number of red boxes and blue boxes, meaning blame for the debt rise between 1981 and 1991 is shared equally between both parties.
For the congress period 1993 - 1999, there was a Democrat president . From 1993 - 1995 there was a Democrat congress, during which time the debt balanced out. Democrats take the credit for stopping the debt rise from 1993 - 1995. There was a Republican congress from 1995 to 1999, during which the debt went down. Again, assuming there's a balance of power, the Republican congress takes most of the credit for reducing the debt from 1995 - 1999.
From 2001 - 1009 there was a Republican president. 2001 - 2003 congress was split between Democrats and Republicans. From 2001 the debt began a steady rise. Republicans take most of the blame for the 2001 - 2003 debt rise.
From 2003 - 2005 Republicans controlled the senate. The debt kept rising. Republicans take all the blame for the 2003 - 2005 debt rise.
For the 2007 period, the debt rises at it's fastest rate. Democrat controlled congress takes most of the blame.
For the 2009 period, debt rises, but not quite at the fastest rate.* Democrats take all the blame.
For 2011 perios, congress is split between Democrats and Republicans. Democrats take most of the blame for the continuing debt rise.
If you're being fair to both parties, it would not be right to blame the Democrats for all debt rises since 1981.
*Using graph from: http://zfacts.com/p/318.html |
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Muso
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| Posted: Fri Apr 27, 2012 2:42 am Post subject: |
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pitcrawler, why do you think it's your job to defend the democrat party? You aren't a US citizen. It would be like me defending the UK Labour Party, and doing so poorly 
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BoneKracker
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| Posted: Fri Apr 27, 2012 2:46 am Post subject: |
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| pitcrawler wrote: | | If you're being fair to both parties, it would not be right to blame the Democrats for all debt rises since 1981. |
That's correct. But what we were discussing here was the claim you cited that Republicans are to blame, and that were it not for their "supply side economics", all would be rosy. That's a load of crap.
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mcgruff
Tux's lil' helper
Joined: 28 Dec 2004
Posts: 137
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| Posted: Fri Apr 27, 2012 2:53 am Post subject: |
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@spam
Probably because he's interested in the truth and thus doesn't have a blinkered, party-political affiliation which obliges him to spin any facts which might favour democrats.
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petrjanda
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| Posted: Fri Apr 27, 2012 3:06 am Post subject: |
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SUMMARY:
Both parties are bad with public money, but Republicans are maybe 5-10% less bad(at least the last 30 years)
On a counter weight, Republicans have the neo-cons and social conservatives controlling the party.
In the end they are both very similar.
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