Can Hillary reduce the debt?

[Benvolio]

You use that smear every time a source shows you wrong. But most of the material hasn't been mine, and it's been from government and academia.

I'm sure Opinterph will be thrilled to know that his carefully researched material is "driven by liberal ideology and democrat partianship". Or maybe he;ll be amused, as I am about your accusation about "democrat partianship", since the only reason it seems I sound like a Democrat (or democrat) is because you make the position of the right sound so odious that any rational person will appear to be standing with those you so ineptly oppose.

We are discussing your absurd positions, for which you cannot ride on opinterphs shirt tails. He can actually carry on a conversation without insults, which ability you totally lack. I doubt if he wants to be tarred with your brush. You are not at all in the same class.

 

[Justmarc]

I think she can... Her husband Bill did when He was a president, and people said that she helped him during that time...

 

[Kulindahr]

We are discussing your absurd positions, for which you cannot ride on opinterphs shirt tails. He can actually carry on a conversation without insults, which ability you totally lack. I doubt if he wants to be tarred with your brush. You are not at all in the same class.

What an incredibly shallow and immature dodge. We are discussing the substantial documentation given in this forum that proves your positions are so much vapor, documentation which everyone reading here has seen, and the resultant fact that your posting record and its pattern of deliberate ignorance makes anything to the right of Hillary Clinton look like some putrid that crawled out of a swamp.

You can try to make it about me all you want, but the fact of the matter is that you have consistently ignored actual data, and indeed have to in order to support your positions. From your example, anyone here could rightly conclude that the entire conservative position is nothing but racist, elitist snobbery that hates the poor and seeks a totalitarian government run by the wealthy.

We have had some capable defenders of conservatism on this forum. You are not one of them. I could do a better job, but I have no desire to be tarred with the mud of being another benvolio.

 

[Kulindahr]

I think she can... Her husband Bill did when He was a president, and people said that she helped him during that time...

That's an interesting point. The ironic thing is that a lot of what Bill achieved in that regard he did by adopting many Republican positions, sound positions that now have to be derided by the right not because they are no longer sound, but because a Democrat accepted and ran with them, and the religious nature of right-wing politics in this country (as evidenced on this board!) -- and I don't mean the involvement of believers of any stripe from churches, but the fanatical way in which plain truth is denied in order to sustain the conceptualization of Democrats as demonic forces, the making of a political position into an ideology of faith and not reason.

 

[peeonme]

I think she can... Her husband Bill did when He was a president, and people said that she helped him during that time...

I believe that Bill had a balanced budget, I don't believe that our national debt was reduced during this time.

 

[Benvolio]

What an incredibly shallow and immature dodge. We are discussing the substantial documentation given in this forum that proves your positions are so much vapor, documentation which everyone reading here has seen, and the resultant fact that your posting record and its pattern of deliberate ignorance makes anything to the right of Hillary Clinton look like some putrid that crawled out of a swamp.

You can try to make it about me all you want, but the fact of the matter is that you have consistently ignored actual data, and indeed have to in order to support your positions. From your example, anyone here could rightly conclude that the entire conservative position is nothing but racist, elitist snobbery that hates the poor and seeks a totalitarian government run by the wealthy.

We have had some capable defenders of conservatism on this forum. You are not one of them. I could do a better job, but I have no desire to be tarred with the mud of being another benvolio.

Enough of your nonsense. I am putting you on ignore.

 

[Benvolio]

I think she can... Her husband Bill did when He was a president, and people said that she helped him during that time...

Bill did not. Republicans controlled Congress after 94 and it was able to restrain his spending. He and Hillary wanted a vast medical system, remember? Much of the saving was from the military reduction after Reagan and Bush ended the Cold War again. Hillary is promising more spending programs including welfare for the unions in the form of infrastructure extravagance. The collapse of Obama care will one way or another end in more borrowing and spending.

 

[Kabluey]

I find it hilarious that infrastructure spending is a conservative no-no in the USA. Infrastructure spending is a conservative priority in other developed democracies.
Talk about wanting to watch it all burn. Selfish ancients.

 

[Justmarc]

Bill did not. Republicans controlled Congress after 94 and it was able to restrain his spending. He and Hillary wanted a vast medical system, remember? Much of the saving was from the military reduction after Reagan and Bush ended the Cold War again. Hillary is promising more spending programs including welfare for the unions in the form of infrastructure extravagance. The collapse of Obama care will one way or another end in more borrowing and spending.

I did my little research... Clinton was president 92 to 2000.. The first half of those years Democrats run the senate and house, the other half was Republicans. However, during Bush was president, that whole 8 years, Senate and House was run by Republicans.. And give me straight, how come when Bush run, the debt goes the highest ever in history? Should it be balance or surplus instead according to you if the Republicans run???

 

[Benvolio]

I did my little research... Clinton was president 92 to 2000.. The first half of those years Democrats run the senate and house, the other half was Republicans. However, during Bush was president, that whole 8 years, Senate and House was run by Republicans.. And give me straight, how come when Bush run, the debt goes the highest ever in history? Should it be balance or surplus instead according to you if the Republicans run???

9/11 occurred, and a recession began immediarely. Bush used deficit spending and sucessfully ended the recession. Then Congress authorized the War against al Quaeda and Taliban.

 

[opinterph]

Bush used deficit spending and sucessfully ended the recession.

The Bush tax cuts “added about $1.7 trillion to deficits between 2001 and 2008.” [Link]

The cost of the Bush tax cuts “will remain the largest component of deficits for the foreseeable future.” [Link]

​

 

[Benvolio]

The Bush tax cuts “added about $1.7 trillion to deficits between 2001 and 2008.” [Link]

The cost of the Bush tax cuts “will remain the largest component of deficits for the foreseeable future.” [Link]

​

The tax cuts were of course an element of the deficit spending. In any event, deficits only exist because we spend more than the income. It is very democrat to suggest that taxes should equal spending. It should be the other way around.

 

[opinterph]

The tax cuts were of course an element of the deficit spending. In any event, deficits only exist because we spend more than the income.

Generally speaking, do you support the use of discretionary fiscal policy as a stabilization tool for the economy?

 

[TX-Beau]

The tax cuts were of course an element of the deficit spending. In any event, deficits only exist because we spend more than the income. It is very democrat to suggest that taxes should equal spending. It should be the other way around.

OH MY! PLEAAASSSSSEEEEEE DON'T TAX THE RICH!!!

Seems to me that the deficit exists because of two avoidable wars and a massive giveaway to the rich all the while tanking the economy.

 

[Kabluey]

OH MY! PLEAAASSSSSEEEEEE DON'T TAX THE RICH!!!

Seems to me that the deficit exists because of two avoidable wars and a massive giveaway to the rich all the while tanking the economy.

Well, the Iraq/Afghan wars after 2001 cost $1.3 trillion.
Tax cuts cut $1.7 trillion from income.
TARP cost $700 billion, while tying up around $30 trillion on government books.
The auto bailout cost $80 billion.

It's a miracle net intergovernmental debt isn't more than $5.4 trillion.

 

[Benvolio]

Generally speaking, do you support the use of discretionary fiscal policy as a stabilization tool for the economy?

Yes. Alas, it tends to become a political tool, by both parties, and that problem is amplified by the partisan nature of our media. Clearly deficit spending is out of hand--a trillion or so a year. But Congress cannot check or balance, if it will be demonized in the press for trying. A Republican Pres and Congress might try to reduce the deficit, but it would predictably result in a recession; a political disaster.

 

[Kabluey]

Yes. Alas, it tends to become a political tool, by both parties, and that problem is amplified by the partisan nature of our media. Clearly deficit spending is out of hand--a trillion or so a year. But Congress cannot check or balance, if it will be demonized in the press for trying. A Republican Pres and Congress might try to reduce the deficit, but it would predictably result in a recession; a political disaster.

Proposing tax cuts isn't a check or a balance, it's simply cutting the income required to pay down debt.

And trillion dollar walls are new spending (Mexico ain't ever gonna pay for that).

 

[Kulindahr]

I believe that Bill had a balanced budget, I don't believe that our national debt was reduced during this time.

Ah -- good point of distinction.

So balancing the budget is a necessary but not sufficient condition for paying down the debt.

 

[Kulindahr]

Enough of your nonsense. I am putting you on ignore.

How to win friends and influence people -- NOT!

One more example of how the alleged spokesman for the right on this forum seems to be great at making the right look like trash.

 

[Kulindahr]

I find it hilarious that infrastructure spending is a conservative no-no in the USA. Infrastructure spending is a conservative priority in other developed democracies.
Talk about wanting to watch it all burn. Selfish ancients.

It's because we don't have conservatives on the right in the U.S., we have reactionaries. Reactionaries are generally less in touch with reality than are radicals, the big difference being that radicals dream of a future they want to see, which is pure dreaming, while reactionaries dream of returning to a past which never was, and that means lying to themselves.

Real conservatives would never support the corporatization of the American government; it was conservatives who warned against the military-industrial complex (and other corporate power grabs). Real conservatives would never stand for cutting programs based on people paying in (e.g. Social Security) by calling a contractual arrangement a "entitlement". Real conservatives would never stand for a national debt that couldn't be easily paid back in a decade, and none at all owed to foreign countries. Real conservatives would never, ever support a move that would possibly disenfranchise any American. But these are what our supposed "conservatives" today drool over.

Nor, actually, would real conservatives blindly worship any economic system other than the basic free market, something which requires lots and lots of small and medium companies, not giant corporations able to squeeze out competition and buy the agencies meant to regulate them. Conservatism as I learned it idealized the old British "nation of shopkeepers", where everyone could be an entrepreneur and indeed a large portion of the population was.

Put all these together, and it what today's U.S. right compares nicely to is Bismarck's Prussia, where regimentation was preferred at all levels of societal structure, whether government of economic, and authoritarianism was an ideal, not just an idea. Centralizing power was what it was about, and that's what today's right-wing policies in the U.S. favor in fact if not in word.

We need radical conservatives, or perhaps rather conservative radicals, of the Jeffersonian stripe: people so dedicated to holding on to the best of what they have had that they do not balk at violently tearing down what is in the way. In that sense, I am a conservative -- one of the few around.