Remember that “net spending cut” the president kept talking about a long time ago in a galaxy far, far away when he was a mere presidential candidate (i.e., the 2008 presidential campaign)? Take note of how Tea Party critics fault us for not more aggressively challenging the spending excessed of the Bush Era?
Well, seems like such folks have some explaining to do. Via Instapundit, we learn that the “111th Congress Created More National Debt Than First 100 Combined“:
I keep hearing over and over again this claim from the left and their apologists in the media that the 111th Congress was the “most productive” Congress since the Depression era. Maybe that’s true and maybe it isn’t, but since when is doing stuff on its own a positive? Shouldn’t what they’re doing matter more?
Because what Congress did was add $10,492 in debt for every man, woman and child living in the United States.
Funny how they equate productivity with spending money. By their standards, I guess a teenager who runs up her parents’ credit card at the mall, can just say she was being productive.
I love the date on the Dear Reader’s “net spending cut” comment: Oct. 15, 2008. In other words, we were already well into the recession and even the financial crisis. If deficits and Porkulus were the answer (but of course they weren’t), then the Dear Reader knew or should have known, at that date. He should have already been promoting deficits and “stimulus” as the answer. But he didn’t. He intentionally told Americans the opposite. That is: He lied.
Now to save some time, by heading off the next leftie jumping in here with “But what if there were no stimulus? Things would be even worse. You Tea Party-ing racists never answer that.”
No and no. First, we answer it all the time. Second, the answer is: The U.S. economy would be much STRONGER and recovering much BETTER, if there were no “stimulus”. The “stimulus” is not a stimulus, it’s a corrosive narcotic. Bush and Obama have both proved that now (remember the Bush “stimulus” from the spring of 2008?) The excessive, unaffordable and unsustainable government spending is the *cause* of our problems, not the solution to them. The trillions in new national debt each year, are the cause of our problems. The bailouts are the cause of our problems. Etc.
Also, before Countervail or one of the other lefties shows up with, “The CBO says the ‘stimulus’ created millions of jobs, blah blah blah,” let me post my usual rejoinder in which Reason.com points out that the CBO projections are based on simply whether or not the money was spent; the CBO itself says, quote, “if the stimulus bill did not do what it was originally forecast to do, then that would not have been detected by the subsequent analysis.”
In short, Barack Obama and the left are pushing the results of an equation that is completely incapable of showing anything other than the results they predicted in the first place, whether or not it reflects reality.
Shell game.
ILC, they’ll still get on and make the claim. LOL!
The greatest problem with the Stimulus and the follow-up “Porkulus”…besides having to borrow the money…was that much of it was spent on current-account spending; salaries and operating expenses and overhead. It didn’t go to “new” infrastructure, or even deferred maintenance…it was transferred to the states and municipalities for offsetting ordinary expenses to cover THEIR revenue shortfalls.
You don’t borrow money to pay current expenses…any small business-owner will tell you that’s the road to ruin. You borrow for long-term growth and investment, or you borrow to refinance existing debt to reduce debt-service costs. For almost everything-else you grit your teeth and tighten the ol’ belt and hunker-down ’til things improve. Survival is more important that artificially-cushioning non-essential employees’ lifestyles…you cut to the bone, and grab the saw if necessary.
Life’s a bitch, …embrace the suck.
And let’s not forget that this latest excuse for a Congress actually wanted to add more trillions to our debt with a gajillion dollar budget, but thankfully enough members came to their sense and found enough testicular/ovarian matter to vote that down.
Unfortunately, the GOP getting its clock cleaned in the lame duck session coupled with Boehnehead’s picks of establishment idiots like Fred “Ban the Incandescent Bulb” Upton for the Energy Committee do not augur well for improvement in the next Congress.
Welcome back to 2006.
Productive? As in the back-end of a cow being productive?
Nope. Productive as in charging businesses a 200-300% increase in unemployment to keep folks at home watching Oprah instead of working and increasing revenue.
Nothing personal–but I can’t help but think that you do seem to be looking at trees in a rather large forest… What happens to this picture, when you explicitly factor in the budgetary effects of two wars (at least one of which is a war of choice), both wars we were led into (and initially mismanaged) by a previous “conservative” administration? Yes, you may argue about the stimulus budgetary measures, but when all is said and done–its the wars that blow the deficit to where it is right now