Fiscal responsiblity seems to be a recent addition to the GOP's platform

On October 17, 2000, during the 3rd Gore-Bush debate, Former President Bush had this to say:

"If this were a spending contest, I would come in second. I readily admit I'm not going to grow the size of the federal government like he is."

I suppose we'll never know if Former VP Gore would have beaten Bush's budget-busting spending spree.
 
Joe Sestak said:
On October 17, 2000, during the 3rd Gore-Bush debate, Former President Bush had this to say:

"If this were a spending contest, I would come in second. I readily admit I'm not going to grow the size of the federal government like he is."

I suppose we'll never know if Former VP Gore would have beaten Bush's budget-busting spending spree.
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We would not have gone into Iraq and may have not even had to go into Afganistan
 
NigelTufnel said:
The last Republican president to actually be fiscally conservative in any respect is GHWB, and he got run out of town for it.
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Bullshit. He ran up the nations debt by $1.2 Trillion in four years. A far faster pace than Reagan and Clinton.

The last fiscally conservative President was Ike.
 
Superfreak said:
Bullshit. He ran up the nations debt by $1.2 Trillion in four years. A far faster pace than Reagan and Clinton.

The last fiscally conservative President was Ike.
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Bullshit. 1991 was the first year that deficit spending under GHWB eclipsed any of the deficits under Reagan, largely due to increased mandatory spending resulting from the declining economy and the Iraq War.

Bush did the fiscally responsible thing of holding the line on discretionary spending and increasing taxes to control the rising deficits and declining revenues and he got run out of town.
 
NigelTufnel said:
Bullshit. 1991 was the first year that deficit spending under GHWB eclipsed any of the deficits under Reagan, largely due to increased mandatory spending resulting from the declining economy and the Iraq War.

Bush did the fiscally responsible thing of holding the line on discretionary spending and increasing taxes to control the rising deficits and declining revenues and he got run out of town.
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$1.2 TRILLION added to the nations debt in four years.

$1.6 Trillion added in eight years.

Do the math.
 
Superfreak said:
$1.2 TRILLION added to the nations debt in four years.

$1.6 Trillion added in eight years.

Do the math.
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You're being a simpleton. GHWB inherited the tax policies of Reagan and mandatory spending is mandatory spending. There's little a president can do to decrease deficits on a year to year basis. A president can either try to increase revenues (raise taxes) or cut/hold down discretionary spending. GHWB did both. Under GHWB, discretionary spending as a percentage of GDP was lower than under Reagan every single year.
 
NigelTufnel said:
You're being a simpleton. GHWB inherited the tax policies of Reagan and mandatory spending is mandatory spending. There's little a president can do to decrease deficits on a year to year basis. A president can either try to increase revenues (raise taxes) or cut/hold down discretionary spending. GHWB did both. Under GHWB, discretionary spending as a percentage of GDP was lower than under Reagan every single year.
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to put some things into perspective, two charts....

the first shows federal spending as a percentage of GDP......not a significant difference between 1980 and 2008, though you can see what's happened as of 2010....

usgs_line.php


the second shows tax revenue.....blue is federal, red is state, green is local....



usgs_line.php


http://www.usgovernmentspending.com/index.php

as of 2010 we are spending approximately 40% of GDP and taking in revenue of 20% of GDP.....does that not mean we are currently borrowing 20% of GDP?........
 
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PostmodernProphet said:
to put some things into perspective, two charts....

the first shows federal spending as a percentage of GDP......not a significant difference between 1980 and 2008, though you can see what's happened as of 2010....
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To respond, your first chart is total spending, not discretionary spending. As such, it is not responsive to my post about discretionary spending. If you look at discretionary spending, it hovered around 10% of GDP throughout Reagan's term to close out Reagan's presidency at 9.1%, was cut down to about 8.2% by the end of GHWB's term, was cut down to about 6.3% at the end of Clinton's term and then increased to almost 9% at the end of GWB's term. Under Obama's budget as submitted, it is projected to decrease back down to 6.2% by 2015 (of course, this assumes a certain amount of GDP growth that may or may not materialize).

On the tax cuts, if you dig into the data, revenues decreased following the tax cuts and rebounded a few years later only to decrease again as a result of the recession.
 
NigelTufnel said:
You're being a simpleton. GHWB inherited the tax policies of Reagan and mandatory spending is mandatory spending. There's little a president can do to decrease deficits on a year to year basis. A president can either try to increase revenues (raise taxes) or cut/hold down discretionary spending. GHWB did both. Under GHWB, discretionary spending as a percentage of GDP was lower than under Reagan every single year.
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and he also inherited a rebuilt military that Reagan paid for....

bottom line... He outspent revenue by $1.2 trillion over his term. You can't tell us that he had a worse economy than when Reagan took over. He didn't.
 
Damn Yankee said:
So what made you change?
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By 2003 it was obvious that Bush/Cheney were NOT conservative, in addition, they were pushing the country towards facsim, eliminating human rights, etc. Frankly, under Bush I felt true fear for the first time as a citizen of this country.
 
Dune said:
By 2003 it was obvious that Bush/Cheney were NOT conservative, in addition, they were pushing the country towards facsim, eliminating human rights, etc. Frankly, under Bush I felt true fear for the first time as a citizen of this country.
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And now that Obama has upheld, extended, and even strengthened everything that Bush did you feel no fear, right....
Even though we now have TSA thugs groping women and children in the guise of safety, and though a majority of the public is totally against those assholes and their tactics, you now say everything is ok....

In your eyes, Bush was moving toward facism, but Obama doing EXACTLY the same thing to an even greater degree, its all just dandy, right...:palm:

you're a pinhead....and thats an undeniable truth.
 
I would have had a cap on discretionary spending, of all the discretionary spending.

I would not have any caveats, as we did for the pay-as-you-go requirement or mandatory spending. I think it should have been more stringent.
 
Dune said:
By 2003 it was obvious that Bush/Cheney were NOT conservative, in addition, they were pushing the country towards facsim, eliminating human rights, etc. Frankly, under Bush I felt true fear for the first time as a citizen of this country.
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So they weren't conservative, so you became liberal? :confused:
 
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