Republican Spending -- from FoxNews no less

While Reagan cut taxes and gained huge increases in revenues, he also cut spending by and large.

IMO, what Bush is doing is not wanting to get into a pissing contest over spending items in bills for getting the same when it comes to the terror battle. The tax cuts have brought in (what tax cutters expected) larger federal revenues. But they didn't cut spending at all and never will under any regime again. The Reagan conservatives are gone.

What Bush has continually failed to understand though is Washington is not Austin. Helping Ted Kennedy get his name and pub behind the education bill did not get Bush some in kind help later with things he wanted. In Washington, everybody is using everybody else for the moment and will stab each other in the back the first chance they get, ala, Trent Lott and Frist.

 

Raeganomics didn't work in the sense you are saying they did. He cut taxes because he believed that by cutting taxes, it would improve the economy & actually increase revenue - except it turned out that America's tax rates weren't high enough to cause such a change & all that happened was the realization that we could spend money that we didn't have because it didn't increase revenue at all, it decreased it.

 

Reagan had the right idea.. he wanted to cut federal taxes and spending and allow the individual states to run alot of the social programs that the fed was running, therefore cutting out much of the bureaucracy that ate up much of the money... the Dems who ran congress at the time were willing to cut taxes, but not the social programs, and this drove began a debt cycle...

 

Didn't say that it wasn't the right idea - just that it didn't do what he hoped it would.

It probably worked out better. Now we can spend, spend, spend & never worry about...

 

you need to stop thinking in such simple terms.

the government is not a person. the government lives effectively forever and can always push debt towards the future. the government can get better interest rates than regular people. the government can borrow from person A to pay person B over and over if they like.

"Some people and politicians frequently state that the government should be run like a business. Economist Robert Eisner took this to heart when studying the government's accounting practices (Robert Eisner and Paul J. Pieper, "A New View of the Federal Debt and Budget Deficits," American Economic Review 74, March 1984). He discovered that its accounting methodology is quite different from that of business world."

from : http://www.sumeria.net/politics/debt.html

besides the debt really isnt that much relative to federal revenue. what % of your annual income would you say is an acceptable amount of debt to carry?


and i read your link and it taught me nothing except what i have been telling you, that social security should be abolished.

when people do not know what they are talking about, they relate the national debt to personal debt or an ordinary business. it isnt the same. the government is not trying to make a profit or have a positive income. they are trying to facilitate growth in the economy!

 

Wrong my friend. When Reagan came into office the top income tax bracket was 70%. He cut that down to 21%. When he did that, revenue's didn't drop. They increased. Budget deficits grew because of military spending that had been avoided and were much needed. When he came into office also, interest rates were at 18 and 20%. People are bitching now cause interest rates are going up to 7.5%. No one could afford a home or car under Carter. Gasoline shortages, double digit inflation. All terms that today's youth has never heard of. His economic policies regalvanized a tax drained economy of which we are still reaping the benefits today.

Yeah, you're right, it never materialized.

 

The probably with balanced budgets i that they dont take into account lean times and prosperous times.. look at Louisiana.. we are required by the state consititution to have a balanced budget... when there is a revenue shortfall, one of the few monetary sources that is not protected is higher educations, so they pull money and increase tuition.

 

how do you know that? has the borrowing not facilitated any growth? did the streets and bridges and military not help the economy?

when you pay interest on your home, do you consider that to be waste? again i ask, what % of your annual income do you think is an acceptable amount of debt? would you buy a house for 50 thousand if you earned 100 thousand? of course! would you consider your interest payments to be "waste?" wouldnt the value be that you are living in the house before you could have otherwise?

if we go into debt to build a bridge, that bridge gets used and helps the economy. and the earlier the bridge gets built, the better it is is for everyone, because it spurs growth, yunno people getting to jobs and markets better and all. so can you comprehend that debt is not bad? can you understand that growth is what is relevant?

if you are not a credit risk and can borrow money at low interest rates, then you should.

you should always borrow when the benefits outweigh the cost. do you think the debt burden is so high that it is crippling us more then the benefits the spending provided? how do you know?

what percent of the gdp do you think is an acceptable level of debt?

red, you need to relax with the doomsday predictions. peak oil, crazy debt. things are gonna be ok man, trust me.