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Please, neither party is remotely the party of fiscal responsibility....the Dems pay off their voters with welfare checks, food stamps, wall street bankers, etc. and Republicans increase defense spending.
I agree we didn't get where we are by just one party being irresponsible but this sums it up. You cannot increase spending, increase government and hope for miracles. Welfare and food stamps are not balancing any budget, but defense spending is most definitely a prime consideration.
Quote:
So it would certainly be false to claim that Democrats are perfect fiscal stewards and that Republicans are all profligates. Yet it’s just as false to claim that the parties aren’t fundamentally different. One party has now spent almost 40 years cutting taxes and expanding government programs without paying for them. The other party has raised taxes and usually been careful to pay for its new programs.
How? He could not get the Republicans to even pass a budget for him to vote on, and he was trying to deal with a country pourig money into large wars while undergoing a major financial event. And despite all of that the deficit fell almost every year, down to 500 billion...Trumps instantly blown that out of the water.
Country pouring money into large wars? LOL That's his wars. He owns them. Every single one. He could have ended by bringing the troops home. That's on him. He's the one who has the power to do that.
So this discussion is about which of the bad presidents are the least offensive?
Please, neither party is remotely the party of fiscal responsibility....the Dems pay off their voters with welfare checks, food stamps, wall street bankers, etc. and Republicans increase defense spending.
Military spending is where the most abuse occurs. Not necessarily the defense spending. Not that you're saying one way or the other.
I would say that increasing taxes would be fiscally responsible and addressing projected short falls in things like social security. Congressmen hate to give out bad news and we love them for their lack of action.
To be fair, presidents can't control events. Bush had to deal with 9/11. Obama had to deal with the economy collapsing. There was a huge spike during WWII. All of these events required increased federal spending.
There is no party of fiscal responsibility. And the reason is simple: electability.
Nobody wants to feel the sting of higher taxes and lower benefits. We want to keep kicking the can as long as we can. Politicians want to stay in power and being actual fiscally responsible is unpopular. The only way it works today is by a politician taking a risk that they'll be responsible by not hurting YOU but by hurting other people with higher taxes. And even that isn't a plan that works.
For whatever reason, the logic we'd apply at home doesn't apply at the national level. If you came home today and told your spouse that you had to take a job for 20% less pay, you'd work out a budget. You'd make tough decisions. Maybe you need to keep your car (tank) another year. Maybe we can't fix the roof (highway system) this year. Maybe we go on one less vacation this year (Social Security). From a national perspective, we take all those things in parenthesis and say "well, maybe we need these tanks, but instead of 10000, we need 9000. Let's prioritize these highways this year, and the lowest 10% of highways have to wait until next year before we fix them. Cut a few percentage points from social security checks. Increase taxes a few percentage points.
We all need to feel the sting together. Higher taxes, lower benefits. Take a little from everyone. But, it won't happen. No politician would get in office if they did that.
To be fair, presidents can't control events. Bush had to deal with 9/11. Obama had to deal with the economy collapsing. There was a huge spike during WWII. All of these events required increased federal spending.
There is no party of fiscal responsibility. And the reason is simple: electability.
Yet, Bush passed his tax cuts (the 2003 version) while we had two wars going on. Yes, the congress went along for the ride but it was largely a party line vote. GOP for and the Democrats against.
From the article:
"The CBO just released its latest report on federal finances over the coming decade. As the agency politely put it, “projected deficits over the 2018-2027 period have increased markedly since June 2017.” The rise was almost entirely the result of the spending and tax bills approved last year: Uncle Sam will be spending a lot more while taking in a good bit less in the future. That is, the Republican-controlled executive and legislative branches went wild and abandoned even the pretense of fiscal responsibility. It wasn’t the first time, of course: In the early 2000s, President George W. Bush and the Republican Congress spent money faster than even Lyndon Johnson and his Democratic congressional majority."
"Unfortunately, big spending and massive deficits have negative economic impacts. More resources will be channeled into interest payments, reducing resources available for other uses, private and public. Moreover, explained CBO, “because federal borrowing reduces total saving in the economy over time, the nation’s capital stock would ultimately be smaller, and productivity and total wages would be lower.” That is, people would earn less while being forced to pay more."
If Democrats were fiscally responsible they wouldn't have screamed bloody murder about the sequester, which saw overall government spending still rise.
Both parties can point to stats that favor them...these are just distractions for the hyper-partisans...while both parties rob our future.
This ^
Neither party is fiscally responsible. The GOP was between Coolidge and Ike and the Democrats were not too bad under JFK, but that was all a long time ago.
Neither party is going to reform Entitlements or reduce the military to pre WWII levels.
And that's that.
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