Thread: Democratic Strategist, James Carville's firm's poll reports that.....

Con, raising the amount you spend exponentially while at the same time reducing the amount of revenue collected to pay for those expenses along with other retarded policies have much more impact than "small".

I would like to think that Obama is trying to fix it. I am also not so naive to think that he should have had it fixed by now, or for quite some time to come.....

Originally Posted by Consultant

That's impossible - they do not describe their methodology or show their work where I could poke holes in it. They put out a sensational graphic though, with colors and stuff showing that Bush made things worse...but they dont explain how.

No, they quite plainly do explain how they came to those conclusions. Read the Technical Note section. It's all described there.

Originally Posted by Consultant

The entire context of that "Figure 1" is quoted below.



They call it a "fact" - but the graph shows it's a projection based on estimates...what facts do you know that can be proclaimed and supported by projections?

So now you are nitpicking? Or are you denying that Bush's policies are influencing the current deficit?

Originally Posted by Consultant

How did they age the data? What time value of money constant did they use? What do they project inflation to be over the next 10 years? None of that is in the article. It's junk economics. It may be valid but they are not proving anything.

They follow CBO estimates and projections. They clearly cite the CBO as the source for many of their numbers. Read the End Notes, it's all there and cited.

Originally Posted by Consultant

They use spiffy attention getting statements like "...was the largest deficit relative to the size of the economy since the end of World War II" - well DAMN! The biggest since WWII - sounds a lot like "the worst since the great depression". Where have I heard that before?

So now the truth is classified as "attention-getting statements"? The deficit is about 10% of the GDP. Show me where it has been higher. And the debt as a percentage of the GDP is the highest since the end of WW2.
http://zfacts.com/p/318.html

Bush's policies pushed us over the top and are a major reason we have the debt we do. How can you argue that UNPAID tax cuts don't have a major effect on the deficit? After the tax cuts, we go into two wars, increase spending but not taxes, and that clearly adds to the deficit. This is Bush's deficit, and for Obama it's like trying to stop a runaway freight train. You can't stop it and reverse it on a dime. Would have been the same under McCain, but he probably would have exacerbated the problem.

Originally Posted by Consultant

Then there's this tidbit...

Ever the Keynesian...

...aka, Stimulus.

....and?

Or, "I am 200 hundred dollars in debt, but I am going to spend more money and insist that I do not produce more money to pay for those expenditures........."
There is such a thing as good debt, like debt taken to strengthen infrastructure, debt incurred to get market sectors kickstarted, and so on..... Because there are dividends to be collected, basically an investment. Debt taken to goo to war is bad debt, because there is no dividend, the money is burned up and won't come back, because it isn't an investment, sorta like a boat but instead war is a giant hole in the desert that you keep throwing your money into......

Originally Posted by Kraker Jak

Yes you can stop it....by ending the wars, and spending more money.....wait hang on...

I agree the wars should be ended, but that will do little to stop the deficit from rising. We will still be paying for them well into the future. He can't stop the effects of the Bush tax cuts. There is no reversing that. He can't stop the economic downturn, which added to the deficit. Those things are out of his control. Look at the figures I provided, Obama's recovery measures impact the deficit minimally after 2012.

Originally Posted by Kraker Jak

I m 200 dollars in debt...and in order to get out of debt...I need to spend more money that i do not have...but wait...I will just borrow the money...yea...thats what I will do, just borrow more money...

Again, you can not pay your credit card bill with your credit card.... clearly makes sense

If you are broke, then should you starve to death or use credit cards to buy food so you can survive? If you survive, and weather the bad times, you could get back on your feet and start paying those bills back. You spend during a recession and save during prosperous times so you have money to spend during the bad times without adding too much to the debt. Unfortunately, Uncle Bush took all our savings to the casino and lost it all. Now, we were in debt during good times, so when the bad times came all we could do is add to that debt.

Like hawg said, not all debt is bad debt. Deficit spending is the best way to get out of a recession, and if you focus it right, it is an investment that pays off for the future. A question for you: Would you support raising taxes to reduce the debt?

To answer part of Fov's question:

I would raise taxes to reduce the debt, however I would do that only after cutting spending on programs that were inefficient or duplicate processes. There is a large amount of waste in the government. Some of that could go. I think that it'd be possible in the long term to begin paying down the debt by eliminating some of the federal programs that money is shunted to year after year.

Once cost cutting measures were taken and analysis down showed that more sacrifice was necessary, then yes I'd support higher taxes to help reduce the deficit. I do not want to pay higher taxes if the money is being spent willy-nilly though.

Hawg - I was referring specifically to the claimed surplus. Not the markets.