What Fiscal Conservatives?
Missed this on Friday, but the National Debt passed $10 Trillion Dollars. And as the article reports:
“gross national debt as a percentage of the gross domestic product has, under the Bush Administration, hit a 50-year high. The debt grew the fastest under supply-siders Ronald Reagan, George H.W. Bush, and George W. Bush.
As the Center for Budget Policy and Priorities has shown, 42% of the “fiscal deterioration” and explosion of the deficit that occurred under Bush was due to tax cuts:
The key factors have been large tax cuts and increases in security-related programs. For fiscal 2009, some $1 trillion of the $1.3 trillion deterioration in the nation’s fiscal finances stems from policy actions, and tax cuts account for 42 percent of this $1 trillion deterioration.
So it seems that while high-mindedly giving lip service to “responsibility with the people’s money”, the so-called fiscal conservatives are shoveling money like crazy out the back door to their pals and leaving the rest of us to pay the bills. So not only are these children of Goldwater (said tongue in cheek) bad with money, they’ve got the logic all wrong too(surprise), since the current equation is really Conservatives=Debt.
Tags: Republican Bamboozlement
A fiscal conservative belives you should be paid less so your employer can conserve profit.
That picture is worth 2,000 words.
What’s amazing is how high it was when Truman inherited it from FDR, since that’s the route we’re heading.
Also, I tend to give Reagan a pass, since he won the Cold War without a shot fired by just spending Russia into oblivion.
But not Bush and the DeLay-Frist GOP. No pass for them.
FSP cracks me up. He gives Reagan a pass on because of Cold War and says what’s amazing is how high it was when Truman inherited it from FDR. No mention of the WWII. LOL.
Also, there is a lot debate regarding the cause of the collapse of the Soviet Union and most of it points to the internal mechanizations and not Reagan.
And not to mention that the percentage of debt to GDP was still going down from Truman to Ike –even though there was a Korean War– because that is how fast the middle class economy was growing.
FSP is right about spending Russia into oblivion — and if you look at the debt he racked up on our part you can see the precipice he took this economy to.
Also, I tend to give Reagan a pass, since he won the Cold War without a shot fired
There are a whole bunch of brown and yellow people who would disagree with that assertion.
by just spending Russia into oblivion.
Spending of course, but more important was Reagan convincing OPEC to pump more oil and drive prices down, thus denying the Soviet Union (an oil-exporting nation) the funds it needed to keep up in the arms race.
On the left, we are not very good about giving Reagan credit for the few things he got right.
And the right does not do a good job acknowledging the disadvantages the Carter administration faced.
In the 1970s, anti-American sentiment in the Middle East was at a peak due to US support for Israel, which culminated in the OPEC oil boycott.
Make no mistake, the historic US/British oil involvment in the Middle East was a colonial power grab and resource extraction. But Reagan was able to make use of that relationship to manipulate the oil market.
Reagan, (or more exactly, GHWB) reached out to Saudi Arabia and agreed to prop up the monarchy against its foes, in exchange for pumping more oil. This drove down oil price and, more than US spending, was the reason the Soviet Union was economically defeated.
The criticism from the left is correct that the US was propping up a corrupt monarchy in Saudi, but if you accept that it was done in the service of winning the Cold War, it can be seen as a necessary evil and a rational choice.
After 1989, the case for propping up Saudi Arabia began to diminish, and began to work against us, eventually producing bin Laden and the modern al Quaeda.
And of course, GWB continues to antagonize the Middle East, while also driving up oil prices to re-arm Russia.
Remind me again who controlled Congress during those same periods.