Obama 6(...66)

[ScoobyDoo]

Re: Obama 6(...66)

You're a Don Quixote type, eh?

No, I'm a realist.

http://news.thomasnet.com/IMT/archi...astructure-make-the-grade-not-even-close.html

You think spending is bad? How about spending with no results? I didn't vote for Obama because I didn't think he would fix the problem and I'm amazed at how we've spent the last 28 years ignoring the problem.

 

[MinnFan]

Re: Obama 6(...66)

I didn't argue that. In both my posts I indicated that tax cuts were stimulus. If you guys want to argue about what kind of stimulus we should have, or should of had that's fine and I would have remained silent. What's got my dander up is the whining over the deficit during a recession. The time to whine about that is when the economy is good.

My point was that you considered tax cuts the same thing as spending.

The best way to get rid of a deficit (especially during a recession) is to cut gov't spending. That will give you lasting results.

 

[Rover]

Re: Obama 6(...66)

I beg to differ. I've been complaining loudly about spending for many years. And more and more loudly as it's gotten progressively worse.

Then its a bit hypocritcal for conservatives (not necessarily you in particular, but 99% of them) who were universally opposed to Clinton's Presidency to now whine about fiscal prudence, when he was the once in a generation President (even better than Reagan OMG!!!) to bring about the necessary discipline in spending & taxation.

I can't take anybody seriously who won't step up to the plate and admit they were wrong about that era. If they can't, they are the very people that Scooby is calling out. Why should we give Clinton all the credit? Simple - Congress stayed the same when he left office. Not so mysteriously though, they went on a spree when a like minded President as the Congress took office. The one thing that changed was the person in the WH, and good budget management went with him.

 

[ScoobyDoo]

Re: Obama 6(...66)

My point was that you considered tax cuts the same thing as spending.

The best way to get rid of a deficit (especially during a recession) is to cut gov't spending. That will give you lasting results.

No it won't. Private enterprise does nothing to improve infrastructure. If I was driving the stimulus I would spend most of it on that. Private business doesn't build roads, doesn't clean water, doesn't fix bridges, doesn't improve transportation or schools. The list goes on and on.

 

[dropthatpuck]

Re: Obama 6(...66)

The volume has increased mightily since the stimulus/Obama regime.

The volume has increased proportionally with additional spending. Doesn't matter who's in office.

What is striking, for instance, is the silence of the left regarding Iraq, Gitmo, Afghanistan, et al. You know, the things we heard endlessly about less than a year ago.

Striking as well is your current silence about the barking back then.

 

[Bob Gray]

Re: Obama 6(...66)

Then its a bit hypocritcal for conservatives (not necessarily you in particular, but 99% of them) who were universally opposed to Clinton's Presidency to now whine about fiscal prudence, when he was the once in a generation President (even better than Reagan OMG!!!) to bring about the necessary discipline in spending & taxation.

I can't take anybody seriously who won't step up to the plate and admit they were wrong about that era. If they can't, they are the very people that Scooby is calling out. Why should we give Clinton all the credit? Simple - Congress stayed the same when he left office. Not so mysteriously though, they went on a spree when a like minded President as the Congress took office. The one thing that changed was the person in the WH, and good budget management went with him.

Since you're not a serious poster, I won't again explain to you how fortunate Clinton was to have all the capital gains flowing into the federal treasury during his years. Not that he was bad on spending, just not as good as you make out (big surprise there).

 

[dropthatpuck]

Re: Obama 6(...66)

No it won't. Private enterprise does nothing to improve infrastructure. If I was driving the stimulus I would spend most of it on that. Private business doesn't build roads, doesn't clean water, doesn't fix bridges, doesn't improve transportation or schools. The list goes on and on.

Why should the Feds be collecting taxes from your fellow Minnesotans then redistributing the same back to MN for bridge repairs on a state road in Eden Prairie?

Your state DOT takes care of the roads and bridges, your municipality takes care of the water and as you have sufficiently stated in the past, the Feds have no business in education and unfunded mandates - so why defer to them now? Why can't our states take care of this on our own and collect and distribute tax $ more efficiently?

 

[ScoobyDoo]

Re: Obama 6(...66)

The volume has increased proportionally with additional spending. Doesn't matter who's in office.

What is striking, for instance, is the silence of the left regarding Iraq, Gitmo, Afghanistan, et al. You know, the things we heard endlessly about less than a year ago.

Striking as well is your current silence about the barking back then.

Who's silent about Afghanistan? Seems to be in the news a lot lately. I don't know what they can do about Iraq/Afghanistan to get out of it. I really don't. Seems to me were handcuffed to both of them with no real good solutions. Hindsight is 20/20 but if we had picked one and only one in the beginning we probably could have a pretty nice set up finished right now for one of those countries. Instead there wasn't enough butter to cover the bread.

Gitmo? Another quagmire. Not really sure what you do there either. I'm sure some of the best minds in the country are working on it.

 

[geezer]

Re: Obama 6(...66)

Then its a bit hypocritcal for conservatives (not necessarily you in particular, but 99% of them) who were universally opposed to Clinton's Presidency to now whine about fiscal prudence, when he was the once in a generation President (even better than Reagan OMG!!!) to bring about the necessary discipline in spending & taxation.

I can't take anybody seriously who won't step up to the plate and admit they were wrong about that era. If they can't, they are the very people that Scooby is calling out. Why should we give Clinton all the credit? Simple - Congress stayed the same when he left office. Not so mysteriously though, they went on a spree when a like minded President as the Congress took office. The one thing that changed was the person in the WH, and good budget management went with him.

I'm partly with you on this one. My view is that of the two party options, gridlock is the best answer - The less they get done the better for us. The absence of accountability from the simpering worshippers in the legislative is one of the enablers that allowed BO to drive the country down the sewer.

 

[ScoobyDoo]

Re: Obama 6(...66)

Why should the Feds be collecting taxes from your fellow Minnesotans then redistributing the same back to MN for bridge repairs on a state road in Eden Prairie?

Your state DOT takes care of the roads and bridges, your municipality takes care of the water and as you have sufficiently stated in the past, the Feds have no business in education and unfunded mandates - so why defer to them now? Why can't our states take care of this on our own and collect and distribute tax $ more efficiently?

LOL. The Feds collect too much money and they need to give it back somehow. I would love for the local/state and Federal Governments to actual define what their fiscal responsibilities are and stick to it. Do you have a platform or a party that runs for office? I'd vote for it in a heartbeat.

 

[Rover]

Re: Obama 6(...66)

The volume has increased proportionally with additional spending. Doesn't matter who's in office.

What is striking, for instance, is the silence of the left regarding Iraq, Gitmo, Afghanistan, et al. You know, the things we heard endlessly about less than a year ago.

Striking as well is your current silence about the barking back then.

You need to turn off the cartoons then and watch the news instead. "The left" as you put them is getting what they want on Iraq (a drawdown of forces letting the Iraqis, you know, take care of their own country for a change ), and on Gitmo (which is being emptied as we speak - I can live with it if the timeline for doing so extends a few months after January). Afghanistan is a more complicated problem, but I don't recall as much opposition over the mission over there as in Iraq so that sounds like a typical straw man argument out of you. Must be harvest season (or manure season) up in NH.

 

[Kepler]

Re: Obama 6(...66)

Then its a bit hypocritcal for conservatives (not necessarily you in particular, but 99% of them) who were universally opposed to Clinton's Presidency to now whine about fiscal prudence, when he was the once in a generation President (even better than Reagan OMG!!!) to bring about the necessary discipline in spending & taxation.

I can't take anybody seriously who won't step up to the plate and admit they were wrong about that era. If they can't, they are the very people that Scooby is calling out. Why should we give Clinton all the credit? Simple - Congress stayed the same when he left office. Not so mysteriously though, they went on a spree when a like minded President as the Congress took office. The one thing that changed was the person in the WH, and good budget management went with him.

The first part is true, although the set of people with Clinton Derangement Syndrome and the set of fiscal conservatives don't overlap 100%. Many of the people with CDS were social conservatives who would be perfectly happy to see huge spending and deficits as long as they were by a God Fearin' Man (c.f. Bush, Dubya).

The second part I really want to agree with, but IIRC the Clinton Surplus didn't project out to future surplus -- there were going to deficits as existing commitments kicked in. (Dubya did make these much worse with a combination of ideologically idiotic tax cuts, ludicrously expensive wars, and oversight negligence that gave us the recession.)

So yeah, there was a Clinton Surplus, and yeah, a Gore Presidency would have resulted in far smaller deficits than Dubya, but it isn't exactly as cut and dried as your analysis.

Close enough for government work, though.

 

[Kepler]

Re: Obama 6(...66)

No, I'm a realist.

http://news.thomasnet.com/IMT/archi...astructure-make-the-grade-not-even-close.html

You think spending is bad? How about spending with no results? I didn't vote for Obama because I didn't think he would fix the problem and I'm amazed at how we've spent the last 28 years ignoring the problem.

I am curious, if you don't mind telling, whom you did vote for. Not a call out -- just can't figure out who you are for, since you are vociferously against both the Dems and the GOP.

Who was the Realist candidate last election?

 

[geezer]

Re: Obama 6(...66)

a Gore Presidency would have resulted in far smaller deficits than Dubya

based on.... his campaign promises, I imagine? Or his not-so-secret desires to get rid of the internal combustion engine and tax every breath we exhale? If the former, is there any reason to believe his promises would have been remembered any better than BO's have been? Or Bush's were, for that matter?

 

[Bob Gray]

Re: Obama 6(...66)

I am curious, if you don't mind telling, whom you did vote for. Not a call out -- just can't figure out who you are for, since you are vociferously against both the Dems and the GOP.

Who was the Realist candidate last election?

The better question is: When have we ever had a realist candidate?

And I agree that it's a big assumption to think that Gore would spend less than Bush did.

 

[ScoobyDoo]

Re: Obama 6(...66)

I am curious, if you don't mind telling, whom you did vote for. Not a call out -- just can't figure out who you are for, since you are vociferously against both the Dems and the GOP.

Who was the Realist candidate last election?

There wasn't one. I wrote in a name.

 

[Rover]

Re: Obama 6(...66)

There wasn't one. I wrote in a name.

And I appreciate the vote Scooby, but I'm a little too busy right now to run for President.

Regarding Bush vs Gore, you would have had far smaller deficits under Gore. First, no massive gimmicky tax cut which left a big hole in the budget. Next, he pledged to eliminate the public debt by 2016. Not saying he would have gotten there, but it was a better campaign promise than "paying back campaign contributors" that was Bush's stated aim (which he delivered on, to the detriment of the rest of us). Lastly, no Iraq war under Gore and the 1T that's cost the Treasury.

 

[Jon]

Re: Obama 6(...66)

There wasn't one. I wrote in a name.

And I appreciate the vote Scooby, but I'm a little too busy right now to run for President.

Halloween came early. *shudder*

 

[joecct]

Re: Obama 6(...66)

And I appreciate the vote Scooby, but I'm a little too busy right now to run for President.

Regarding Bush vs Gore, you would have had far smaller deficits under Gore. First, no massive gimmicky tax cut which left a big hole in the budget. Next, he pledged to eliminate the public debt by 2016. Not saying he would have gotten there, but it was a better campaign promise than "paying back campaign contributors" that was Bush's stated aim (which he delivered on, to the detriment of the rest of us). Lastly, no Iraq war under Gore and the 1T that's cost the Treasury.

That's like saying, if the South won the Civil War, you'd be president now. A false premise always yields a true result.

You have no idea what Academy Award Winner Gore would have done, you can only guess. We know what Pres. Bush43 did, because he was in the big chair.

 

[geezer]

Re: Obama 6(...66)

you would have had far smaller deficits under Gore.

Also, this entrenched recent history debate is getting boring. Can we fight over Eisenhower vs. Stevenson, or something? Lincoln / Douglas?