The bulk of the damage done was done before 2006. The major complaint of that congress was their ineffectiveness not their movement in line with Bush.
Right, and the Dem's prior to 2008 were screaming left and right that we needed to reign in spending, get the budget balanced, and as soon as they were elected in 2006, that's what they did, right?
The time to spend is when your country is bleeding out.
We did, and have been doing, that. The last budget we had was $2T. We've been spending $1T over that. That's $1T of stimulus spending on top of whatever other stimulus spending is happening. You have your stimulus each year and it's not touching the problem.
Gridlock got us an anemic recovery from the worst economic disaster since the great depression. No gridlock might have gotten us a normal recovery.
Gridlock got you "only" $1T extra blown each year. That you want to go past $4T+ of deficit spending because you didn't feel it was enough is just not something that can be sustained. I want a lambo. I can't afford it (well, I choose to not afford it, I guess I could if I wanted to be like the Fed). Therefore I don't have one. I'm still living, despite me not having a lambo. See how easy that was?
The time to pay back is when times are good. Look at a chart of national debt if you want to see how things are supposed to work. Well, except when certain republicans have been in office, but they're the "fiscally responsible" side.
Right. That's the
theory. Except it
never happens.
You go look at a chart of the national debt when budgets were "only" what they were running when Clinton was POTUS, when the economy was booming not because of anything Clinton did, but rather, because he enjoyed being POTUS during a tech boom, and thus enjoying plenty of Fed tax income, and let us know how much the Fed debt was paid down in those awesome times of economic prosperity. What's that?!?! It wasn't touched?!?! You mean, they limited it to just not getting worse, they didn't raise taxes across the board/cut spending to make the debt go down???
How can that be so, you just said they'd be paid back when times were good! Gee, how good do the times have to be for the debt to be paid down? Better than even the .com era? Yeah....good luck with that. This is why the excuse of "We'll pay down this insane debt when times are good, just let us keep up the insane spending levels so we can prop up the house of cards" logic is immediately discarded. We know the qualifier is BS, which makes the case for the Want BS. Find a better case, don't keep repeating it.
When I talk of countries succeeding, I'm talking more about places like Germany and Canada not countries that are more backwards than 19th century America. Economic growth isn't the end all metric for how well a country is doing especially in regards to it's actual citizens.
Germany? Who enjoys their position in the EU and did large austerity reform? Canada, who can make the policy decisions they make in large part because of their proximity and partnership with the US?
The fact is, no other country in the world is in the position the US is in because they are not the US. We have our own unique problems and situation, just because something works for one country doesn't automagically mean it'll work for us.
Chuck
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