Earlier this month, Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid hailed the passage of his house’s version of the president’s budget as “‘a critical step’ in the direction of cleaning ‘up the mess we inherited.’” Now, with the budget he’s passed, we risk creating an even greater mess than the one he “inherited” as this chart shows:
(Created by Washington Post via Heritage Foundation)
Now, I’m just curious. Harry Reid was Senate Democratic Leader for the last four years of the Bush Administration. For the four previous years (W’s first term), he was the Democratic Whip. Did he ever use those positions to propose or otherwise promote budgets which held the line of federal spending. If you have evidence, send me the links so I can update this post accordingly?
Since Mr. Reid mentioned the “mess” he inherited, after Wednesday’s Tea Parties, I got to wondering who’s going to clean up the Democrats’ mess should they enact the President’s budget?
Will they hope that a more Republican Congress might have to accede to their push for higher taxes, thus neutering the tax issue (to the benefit of the Democrats since rank-and-file Republicans stay home on election day when elected Republicans support higher taxes)?
How are we going to clean up this mess and start paying off the multi-trillion dollar deficits?
There has to be a term better than “fuzzy math” to use on Obama and Reid. So far, I can only come up with “demagogue liars.”
First, Harry Reid was the majority leader for the last 2 years of Bush’s presidency, not his entire second term.
Second, the mess he’s describing isn’t the deficit. You guys are on deficit obsession overload and it’s clouding your judgment and compromising your reading comprehension. That undoubtedly might be a part of it, but in general, the mess that Democrats talk about inheriting from the Bush administration consists of multiple Republican failures, things like Iraq and the flailing economy, which from a liberal perspective, requires additional government spending to repair.
You guys are swaggering around like you know what ails us and you know exactly what needs to be done to fix the problems, but you’re out of power for a reason. You guys aren’t the experts on how to run the government.
I love seeing that graphic! It says so much. It answers so much nonsense that gets posted in the comments here. I hope to see it every few weeks on this blog until Obama is either out of office, or has made real spending cuts to solve his unprecedented deficits.
Levi, last time I checked, Iraq was an American victory. Has Obama been screwing it up lately?
And excessive debt is what caused the current economic crisis, Levi… How do you seriously think that taking on unprecedented new debt, effectively doubling America’s entire national debt in eight years, is going to solve that?
And my above remarks don’t even include the debt/deficit shipwrecks that Medicare and Social Security are headed for. “Liberal perspective”, indeed.
#2: “…which from a liberal perspective, requires additional government spending to repair.”
There’s your answer right there. “From a liberal perspective,” there is NOTHING that doesn’t require additional government spending to “repair.”
Levi, last time I checked, Iraq was an American victory. Has Obama been screwing it up lately?
Man, we haven’t even begun to draw down in Iraq, we still have troops in harm’s way, some of them are still dying over there, and you’re claiming victory? That’s total bullsh*t. Never mind the fact that our rationalization for the war turned out to be bogus and the whole effort in no way strengthens the United States strategically or diplomatically, but to start talking about it in the past tense while we’ve still got people dying in the field is something that only a total d*ckhead would do.
And I’m the one that gets accused of not supporting the troops. Yeah right.
There’s your answer right there. “From a liberal perspective,†there is NOTHING that doesn’t require additional government spending to “repair.â€
Since this is a place where the conservative pride themselves on focusing on the issues, do you think you’re actually making a solid point right there?
And excessive debt is what caused the current economic crisis, Levi… How do you seriously think that taking on unprecedented new debt, effectively doubling America’s entire national debt in eight years, is going to solve that?
From a liberal perspective, excessive debt isn’t what caused the economic crisis. We have our own ideas about what caused it, just like we have our own ideas about how to fix it.
You want someone to give a sh*t about what you think? Win an election.
Levi, I get you’re pissed off at the seeming chutzpah of some here who claim to know how to run govt correctly –especially when some of those here don’t even exercise the vote in critical elections and helped put Obama into office.
But when you drag out this TalkingPt
“Never mind the fact that our rationalization for the war turned out to be bogus and the whole effort in no way strengthens the United States strategically or diplomatically”
You fail to remember there were dozens of reasons for going into Iraq… not just one (WMDs) as the farLeft and Democrats like to fictionalize.
The goal was to remove Saddam and bring about a change in the regime. The prospect of a democratic Iraq in the MiddleEast was a goal that all –even the farLeft– should have embraced wholeheartedly.
I think your side didn’t because there was political advantage to be gained by opposing American-coalition efforts in Iraq.
My question to you –separate of your other concerns here– is: What position is more craven? Striking at the heart of evil or playing a game of political advantage? Because it sounds like, from your comment, the latter trumps anything.
#9 – “You want someone to give a sh*t about what you think? Win an election.”
So when are you running for dog catcher, Levi?
Checkmate.
Regards,
Peter H.
That’s what we pro-capitalist and pro-America people are counting on, Levi 🙂 You’re off in your own left field… when Obama’s Carter-esque inflation rates hit in a few more years, you’re going to be completely mystified. (But still blaming Bush, no doubt.)
You fail to remember there were dozens of reasons for going into Iraq… not just one (WMDs) as the farLeft and Democrats like to fictionalize.
The goal was to remove Saddam and bring about a change in the regime. The prospect of a democratic Iraq in the MiddleEast was a goal that all –even the farLeft– should have embraced wholeheartedly.
I think your side didn’t because there was political advantage to be gained by opposing American-coalition efforts in Iraq.
My question to you –separate of your other concerns here– is: What position is more craven? Striking at the heart of evil or playing a game of political advantage? Because it sounds like, from your comment, the latter trumps anything.
I’m not failing to remember anything. According to the Bush administration at the time, the primary reason we went to war was to defeat an imminent threat that was years if not months away from attacking or facilitating an attack on the United States. As a matter of fact, many in the Bush administration and Republican party declared we already had been attacked by Saddam himself in the form of the anthrax letters, which we now know was an entirely baseless claim.
Sure, sure. They would throw out some line about how we had to save the Iraqis from a despot or that we had to enforce a UN resolution, but you know (or should know) as well as I do that their main line of argument had to do with the biological, chemical, and nuclear threat that was supposedly posed by Saddam. Do you remember those events differently? Do you remember them spending equal time on ‘We’re all going to die’ and ‘We need to make sure that UN resolutions are binding!’ I don’t remember it that way, and even cursory examination of the media during that time would reveal such claims to be false as well.
I find it laughable that you would accuse war protesters of opposing the war for partisan advantage. The war does not make sense, it is counterproductive in a number of ways and it will never be worth the people, resources, and credibility that we’ve lost, and if there is a political advantage to opposing the war, it’s only because most of the voting public has correctly arrived at that conclusion as well.
Translation: Republican deficits bad. Much more ginormous Democrat deficits good.
P.S. Levi, thank you for effectively admitting that you (at least) don’t care about debt or deficits as an issue.
P.S. Levi, thank you for effectively admitting that you (at least) don’t care about debt or deficits as an issue.
I do care about debt and deficits, I just have a different set of priorities than you do.
And from what I’ve seen of your chosen political leadership, debt and deficits aren’t exactly a primary concern or yours, either.
Here is Levi from “Who Do Those Who So Readily Revile Us….” a few posts below:
Here is Levi in #9 above:
Aside from his demurring by couching everything he says as being from “a liberal perspective,” sadly Levi resorts to the old “might makes right” coward’s substitute for logic.
Let’s call the war issue a draw. It did not cause the economic crisis. The housing bubble, like the dot com bubble before it, caused the economic crisis. We over indulged in credit spending at all levels. How does Obama deign to cure this? They do it by giving more credit, credit spending at the government level and printing currency that is devalued and inflationary. In short, Obama is running up the bill at an enormous speed and rate. He is depending on having China continue to finance our debt. Obama could have sent every person a credit card loaded with $20,000 to spend or save as he wished. It would have been a massive infusion into the economy made by the choices of the consumers. However, the deficit debt to us and our posterity would have still been the same.
Please, Levi, use your intelligence, inclusiveness and success to statistically prove my statements as false. Show me how you can (1.) borrow your way out of debt and (2.) add entitlements simultaneously. (3.) Do you expect the standard of living in the United States to decline to a less prosperous level of daily life? (4.) Do you wish to return to a status of isolationism with a minimal military? (5.) Do you expect the permanent tax burden to rise? (6.) Do you expect “government” to more closely regulate the markets and direct decisions concerning employment and production? (7.) Do you prefer greater socialism over the free market?
And, Levi, how about this: Loclities are being pinched in this economic crisis. The stimulus money being sent to the states for education is causing an unexpected result. The localities are cutting the school budgets (their biggest expense) by the amount of the stimulus money they are receiving. (8.) How do like them apples?
Fixed it for you. You’re welcome.
I still haven’t seen the movie V, but I saw the maple syrup scene… hee-larious. 🙂
Aside from his demurring by couching everything he says as being from “a liberal perspective,†sadly Levi resorts to the old “might makes right†coward’s substitute for logic.
Just because Obama won hardly means he’s right about everything, or even most things, for that matter. I don’t see his victory as an indication that people believed he had the right answers so much as widespread acknowledgment that what he had been doing was not working. The 2008 election was much more of a rejection of Republicans than an endorsement of Democrats. Not ‘might makes right,’ more like ‘failure makes wrong.’
I don’t think the Democrats are on the right track with most of the things they’re doing, either. It’s hard to understand what is going through Obama’s head when you look at his economic appointments, and his stimulus bill wasn’t much more than a disjointed vote-getter. A proper spending plan would have much more focus and provide clear opportunities for employment, investment, infrastructure upgrades, and technological innovation, and I hardly see any of that.
As for your questions….
1. I don’t think you can borrow your way out of debt if you prioritize spending the way that Obama has. Like I said, his stimulus bill too all-over-the-place and doesn’t focus on solving big problems like energy.
2. Universal health care is the way that western civilization is trending and we’re going to have to get on board eventually. Our system is far too much of a burden on employers and citizens alike.
3. As more people fall into unemployment and poverty, that’s an inevitability. Running out of cheap, easy energy is going to reduce extravagance quite a bit, as well.
4. No one is suggesting we return to isolationism or abdicate our role as the leader of the free world. We can maintain a sizable and effective military without much of the spending we feed into the military industrial complex – things like missile defense systems are far too pie-in-the-sky and strategically unnecessary at the moment.
5. I’m not sure. It probably ought to, especially for certain groups. I would think though, that all these people that claim to be worried about the debt we’re leaving to our children and grandchildren, might want to pony up a little bit more to ease their burden. I think that sort of rhetoric is more commonly just an easy emotional appeal.
6. Obama’s appointments can only mean he’s more focused on restoring the confidence based economy as opposed to providing more effective oversight and regulation. This is what’s caused the financial crisis, by the way, the idea that as long as everyone believes things are just going to keep growing no matter what, it’s all going to take care of itself. That’s an extremely fragile way to run an economy and one that is prone to rampant corruption. We do need more regulation of financial product markets and more oversight of the companies packaging and trading those products, but with Larry Summers and Tim Geithner at the helm, that’s obviously not what Obama’s got in mind.
7. I do prefer more socialism. The free market, like the government, is not immune from abuse, and it can hardly police itself automatically. There will always be people trying to game the system, and that’s where the government should play a role. Bush put the government on the sidelines over the past couple of years and it turned into the Wild West, where companies lived and died on no more than gossip, and no one had to prove they had what they said they had. That doesn’t make sense, if you ask me.
I think we’re past the breaking point, though. There are few if any bright spots in government, business, or the media these days. They all seem more interested in self-preservation and protecting the establishment then fixing the problems endemic in our system.
Rebutting Farva:
1. But you support it anyway, or at least, praise it with faint damnation.
2. In every socialized health care has been adopted, the result has been rationing and a diminished quality of care. Why does the left want to hop onto this failure? Just because “everybody else is doing it?” Why not try market reforms, instead?
3. Argument against; resource poor countries with free economies prosper. e.g. Hong Kong. Resource rich economies under s-o-c-i-a-l-i-s-t rule stagnate and decline. e.g. Zimbabwe. More economic freedom = more prosperity. More s-o-c-i-a-l-i-s-m = stagnation and decline. Always.
4. Missile defense is working just fine, thank you. There would massive savings from pulling our defenses away from places capable of defending themselves, like South Korea and Western Europe… but when Rumsfeld proposed that very thing under Bush, Democrats were horrified at his “isolationism.” If anything, our military is badly undercapitalized. The bulk of our combat aircraft, for example, date from the Reagan Era. And a substantial number go back to the Eisenhower Era.
5. Or we could, I don’t know, cut the government 20 to 30% so subsequent generations don’t have to go bankrupt while we pay for programs that don’t work and hand out subsidies to groups like ACORN.
6. Obama’s appointments are the people throwing money away without accountability and pushing for laws to allow them to take over businesses that displease them. Not exactly confidence building measures.
7. You prefer more of what fails. (see Question 3). That’s what makes you a liberal. We prefer more of what works. That’s what makes us conservatives.
Basically, Farva wants s-word health care just because “those cool Europeans are doing it,” even though it’s fundamentally unfair and unequal.
So, being a Mormon, I don’t smoke, drink, or engage in promiscuous sex. I don’t do drugs. I have a fairly low BMI. Under s-word health care, my taxes go up, which diminishes my economic freedom, my ability to spend my income in ways that I choose.
My freedom is, in effect, taken away from me, and used to subsidize the care of smokers, drunks, sluts, fatties, and drug addicts. My good behavior is punished in order to subsidize their bad behavior. (Which is the essence of every progressive program Farva supports.)
In what way is this smart, or efficient, or fair to me? When it comes to same sex marriage, Farva is all about “fairness” and “equality.” But when it comes to health care, he wants inequality, he wants unfairness. He wants people who make the right choices punished so that people who make bad choices don’t suffer the consequences of their bad choices.
Levi offers: “(I) find it laughable that you would accuse war protesters of opposing the war for partisan advantage”.
Well, what I did and we can accuse John Kerry of using his perch as a Democrat Party candidate to attack American interests in the WOT and Iraq for simple, pure partisan gain. ScreaminHowieDean? PatrickLeahy? You want others? Soros? Maher? MikeyMoore? Hollywood celebs and Democrat Party sponsors galore? Mr JimmineyCricketCarter?
Levi, the Iraq invasion was all about regime change. Bush gave Saddam a last chance out by offering, in front of the UN Gen Assembly, that if Saddam changed his ways –stopped practicing religious genocide on Iraqis, step back from the brink and allow UN inspectors the full and complete access to suspected WMD dumps and facilities, stop attacking NATO planes over the no-fly zone he agreed to in the treaty that saved his butt the first time around– if regime change happened, there’d be no invasion.
With the invasion and destruction of Saddam’s Chicago-styled regime, we had a great prospect in creating a stable democracy inside the Arab’s Middle East –alongside Iran, no less. It was something so important and a fundamentally drastic departure from 65 yrs of chaos that for Democrats like Kerry & others to turn their backs on the prospect and undercut it at every instance for pure PARTISAN advantage –heck, you can’t even say it was principled because Kerry flipflopped on it enough to make a mackrel out of water dizzy.
Look, we have more than enough idiots already in the threads “rewriting” willy-nilly, left and right, what commenters say; don’t stoop to that level Levi.
You can say anything else you want as a way to rebutt those very simple facts but it won’t change history or unbiased understanding if you persist in spitting out Democrat Talking Points and misconstruing the facts and what people write.
Thank you, Levi, for “coming clean.” You are much easier to chat with when you park the bumper sticker slogans at the door.
Look at all those trillions Obama’s “plan” is adding to the national deficit. How do propose funding it? Conservatives say don’t spend all that money in the first place. The Chinese are seriously toying with not buying the debt, so it is the same thing.
Your Social Security is not funded. Your Medicare is like mine, bankrupt. Your nationalized healthcare will be another boondoggle entitlement. Where’s the money? It can only come from higher taxes, cutting other government programs, growing the economy and reaping more taxes or a combination of all three.
My struggling brother-in-law is unable to sell real estate in Florida. The market is awash with available units and thousands of realtors looking for a buyer. Lawn care people can’t find work, people are not renovating, fixing property up for non sales is idiocy. Meanwhile, the houses are vandalized or home to squatters or turning into drug stops. How do you plan to tax these people back into prosperity?
When you whack the “rich” with taxes, they stop spending on lots of things that employ “little” people. My brother-in-law had a secretary and a handyman working for him. Now he has neither employee and he is looking at getting a job at Publix. Of course, the market will turn at some point, but how do you propose to have the “government” take care of all the displaced people? Do you really think there is some panel of geniuses that can see through the fog of this battlefield in the economic crisis? Do you think that throwing money at the problem will do any better than all the money that has been thrown at education or poverty?
And the liberals were just sitting in the bleachers watching? Why won’t Henry Waxman investigate the cause?
How does making an ass of yourself at the G20 strengthen us diplomatically? How about pissing off Mexico? How about pissing off the Vatican? How about embarrassing the PM of Ireland? How about molesting Queen Elizabeth II? How about meeting with PM Brown and acting like you’d rather be anywhere else?
You vote for a-holes who keep referring to our soldiers as terrorists and want their private insurance to cover their wounds. Therefore, no you don’t, dickhead.
Who, exactly, are “many” Mr. Strawman?
#20: “There will always be people trying to game the system, and that’s where the government should play a role. Bush put the government on the sidelines over the past couple of years and it turned into the Wild West, where companies lived and died on no more than gossip, and no one had to prove they had what they said they had. That doesn’t make sense, if you ask me.”
Levi, as usual, your statements are nothing but liberal slogans, talking points, and bumper stickers strung together in an endless run on sentence that sounds like a car alarm. How does Bush signing the Sarbanes-Oxley Act into law in 2002 factor into your corporate gun-slinger fantasy?
How, oh how much we should all WISH that Bush had really “put the government on the sidelines over the past couple of years”…
Of course, it is true that *Democrats* put the government on the sidelines when *Democrats* blocked regulation of Freddie Mac and Fannie Mae, thus creating the sub-prime mortgage crisis – a crisis of, literally, over-lending.
Freddie Mac and Fannie Mae were/are *government-sponsored* entities, therefore they (unlike private entities) most certainly should have been regulated. The Dems get it wrong at every turn: they passing crushing regulations on private entities / the free market, while letting government-sponsored entities run wild and bring the nation’s very foundations into question.
#27. It is laughable that the Democrat party is crying about regulation when they blocked any type of regulation when it came to Freddie Mac and Fannie Mae!!! They were/are the Majority on the Financial Services Committee. Barney Frank (D) is the Chairman of the FSC and has been for years. Ron Paul proposed riening Freddie Mac and Fannie Mae in 2003 – the Democrats wouldnt hear of it!!! Now they are whining about how they inherited all this mess. They forget they co-signed this mess and had the power to avert it in the first place.