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This is a democracy. The People (indirectly)are the Gov't. The "some, not all" you reffered to in your post could more accurately be stated as "most, not all". And in a democracy "most" gets its way. The Gov't is not some fully independent entity, it is an expression of the common will of the majority. And that majority has been perfectly ok with massive public debt.
Face it - as a collective this country has been happy to live beyond its means for the last 20 years and kick the can down the road to the next generation. (I give Reagan a pass because his spending won the Cold War and had some justification) For the past 2 decades in American electoral politics - as Cheney once famously (and sadly,correctly) once said - "deficits don't matter"
Well they did, people just did'nt want to hear it. Now the bills are coming due.
Hmmm really I thought it was suppose to be republic.
Democracy is just that majority rule and that was not the intent of the constitution and the founders which is why the government is not suppose to be so big that majority rules over the entire nation.
This is a democracy. The People (indirectly)are the Gov't. The "some, not all" you reffered to in your post could more accurately be stated as "most, not all". And in a democracy "most" gets its way. The Gov't is not some fully independent entity, it is an expression of the common will of the majority. And that majority has been perfectly ok with massive public debt.
Face it - as a collective this country has been happy to live beyond its means for the last 20 years and kick the can down the road to the next generation. (I give Reagan a pass because his spending won the Cold War and had some justification) For the past 2 decades in American electoral politics - as Cheney once famously (and sadly,correctly) once said - "deficits don't matter"
Well they did, people just did'nt want to hear it. Now the bills are coming due.
"deficits don't matter" is a famous quote from Reagan, not Cheney.
But of course many politicians after him have repeated it, so it wouldn't surprise me if Cheney had said it too at some point.
WHEN DICK CHENEY SAID, "Deficits don't matter," economists took that as proof of the economic illiteracy of the Bush administration. But it turns out there is a case to be made that Cheney was onto something
Hmmm really I thought it was suppose to be republic.
Democracy is just that majority rule and that was not the intent of the constitution and the founders which is why the government is not suppose to be so big that majority rules over the entire nation.
It is a republic, but a democratic republic where the gov't reflects the will of the majority of the people -which was my original point
There's no excuse for Obama making a bad situation even worse with his record-breaking out-of-control deficit spending.
Americans don't like alot of things, but we only really balk at a few of them hard enough for it to translate into political action. Deficits have never been one of those things. Democracy does not mean the policies exactly track every peak and valley of public opinion, but over time it does result in in policies that generally reflect the majority will. When we have had an issue that has lingered for 20+ years that means we as a nation have not cared enough to do anything about it.
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Hmmm... I don't remember ANY President campaigning on the promise to increase the national debt. Do you? And I certainly don't remember Obama campaigning on the pomise to increase the national debt by $9.3 trillion. I must have missed that. Please provide a source.
Paul Tsongas ran for POTUS as a deficit hawk in 1992 and got almost no traction. The GOP's talk on fiscal resposibility has always been one of its most attractive positions and a key part of its "brand". Its betrayal of those principles over the last 8 years is one of the reasons it is imploding.
Again we (collectively) have not taken the issue seriously enough and now its biting us in the butt.
I'll take your word for it. Bottom line is that during Regan years US went from being the world's largest creditor to the largest debtor nation, and not one president after him tried to correct the situation.
Proverbs 26:11 - As a dog returns to its vomit, so a fool repeats his folly.
Again - short term/individual, specific legislation (even big, single vote issues like the bailout) you are not always going to get an accurate reflection of the collective will.
But 20 years of negligence on an issue - over multiple elections of every branch of gov't involved - can not happen in a democracy w/o the implicit approval of or intentional neglect by the electorate.
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