If we still had President Obama the Deficit would be lower.

[PoliTalker]

Hello Arminius,

Hey, great post (for the purpose of expressing your views, not mine.) Really made me work for my reply.

-You think the guy who added more than a trillion dollars to the national debt just with his illegal health care takeover alone ...

The legality remains to be seen. It has been ruled both ways and is likely headed to the SCOTUS, and it is not clear it added to the debt at all. It may have reduced it.

... and who added $8.588 trillion to the national debt overall (a 74% increase overall, the fifth-largest in history) ...

Whomever was President during the Great Recession would have presided over a time of greatly increased debt, or would have crippled the economy with austerity and the inescapable debt that would cause, along with all the hardship and discontent.

... would have been responsible on deficits?

Yes.

Based on what?

He reduced discretionary spending.

And what good would it do to be responsible on deficits if you're bankrupting the country on an almost unprecedented scale?

That question makes no sense. If the deficit is kept responsibly low, and the economy does well, the Debt/GDP ratio would increase, and the financial security of the nation would improve. Bankrupting the country is what happens when the deficit is irresponsibly allowed to go too high, especially during good economic times such as now. Allowing the deficit to irresponsibly go too high was caused by the irresponsible rich and corporate tax cut give-away. It was like President Trump got the keys to the federal credit card and frivolously charged up a bunch with no workable plan to pay it down. He raided the cookie jar for his rich buddies. And he was proud of the fact. He told his fellow Mar-A-Lago country club elites: "You all just got a lot richer." His words.

-Tax cuts for "the rich" (for job-creators) have repeatedly proven to increase revenues more effectively than job-killing tax hikes.

No, The Deficit Isn't 'Soaring,' And Yes, Tax Revenues Are At Record Highs

They are wrong. That piece is biased toward the rich. The deficit was around $600 trillion when President Trump took over.

Debtclock 2016

Now it is nearly $900 trillion.

Debtclock 2018

We cannot responsibly allow the deficit to rise at all. Any rise is bad. For every dollar of deficit rise above previous level that is how much MORE is added onto the debt than we were already adding EACH YEAR. We want to slow down the debt rise, not speed it up. We need a low deficit. Ideally, we would like to see the debt hold for a while as the economy does better. 0 deficit. For that, we need to collect more taxes. We have to pay more into the system.

Tax refunds to be 26% bigger in 2019, Morgan Stanley says

Let's examine that for a moment. Most people have too much withholding. So with the tax cut, they are going to be getting larger refunds. That means they have yet to receive the financial bump from the tax cut. People have gotten no extra tax cut money, and the economy has been doing well. This indicates the tax cut was not needed. That extra refund that people are going to be receiving is the money that the IRS would have kept and applied to the deficit, to make it lower. They are going to be paying that money back out to taxpayers, so it doesn't get applied to the deficit. That made the deficit higher, too high. And the reason is the tax cuts.

It's Official: Trump Tax Cuts Are Boosting Growth And Mostly Paying For Themselves

'Mostly' being the operative word. Know what that really means? Same headline, based on that information, could be: "Tax Cuts Not Paying For Themselves." And there you have it. The irresponsible tax cut is not paying for itself. Supported by your own link.

-You think the guy who absolutely gutted the military to the bone and beyond, and who surrendered on every front militarily, ...

I disagree with those views. I don't associate any of those exaggerations with President Obama. That's all your opinion. You are entitled to your own opinion.

... wouldn't have spent money on the military? I would have thought that was fairly obvious at this point.

Then we are in agreement.

The deficit would be lower if we still had President Obama.

The economy was already experiencing a steadily growing recovery, all set in motion by the Stimulus. The only reason the Stimulus did not work faster is because Republicans would not allow it to go any higher. If the Stimulus had been larger, the recovery would have been quicker.

[PoliTalker]

Hello Arminius,

The Great Recession that Democrats caused...

In your opinion.

I disagree. I believe it was cause by unregulated greed in the financial industry.

... and increasing the national debt by 74% (almost completely unprecedented) ...

That tends to occur when one lives in extraordinary times. It has never been shown that President Obama did anything to cause that high debt, which wasn't necessary for the USA. He does have a record for dealing with the crashed economy quite skillfully, and bringing us back for the brink of disaster. Hopefully, you recall President Bush's dire warnings to the public while pushing for the Wall Street Bail Out? President Obama inherited THAT economy. Good thing it wasn't President Trump taking over then. We would have NO recovery if that had happened then. But it wouldn't have. Obama would have beaten Trump in an election.

Also, the public did not perceive candidate McCain as being as good as candidate Obama for the economy. They were right. Austerity would have made the Great Recession worse. Austerity is no way to pump up an economy. That's like pulling the plug on it and waving the white flag to defeat and depression.

... is kind of incompatible with this ludicrous portrayal of one of history's most reckless nanny state extremists as fiscally responsible.

Obama's Parting Gift: Trillion-Dollar Deficits As Far As The Eye Can See

All of that is conjecture. It's opinion. "Perhaps the biggest driver of future deficits is..." Yes, and 'Perhaps' the USA will learn from the Universal Basic Income in Alaska that maybe it is a good idea to have industry pay significantly for the right to extract underground reserves, and the funds generated should simply be handed out as free checks to everybody. You never know.

As with FDR,

Opinion piece.

Obama's obscene tax burdens and crushing regulations on those who take all the risks and invest all the capital necessary to grow the economy prevented the recovery altogether. Which is why it is literally called the worst economic recovery in U.S. history. Which is why all the job-creators and economists point out the specific Trump policies that caused them to reverse course and grow the economy again, once there was no longer a Constitution-shredding Marxist lunatic in office to punish success and reward failure.

Not everyone who hires people says that. Believing so would be an exercise in fooling oneself.

Economists agree: Trump, not Obama, gets credit for economy

Biased opinion piece favoring the rich

Obama gets first major win with TARP

That package right there saved millions of jobs. That's why it won popular support. It was like a giant neon sign saying: Wall Street Needs More Regulation!!! The 'free market' could not support itself, and instead, greed got the better of them and they undertook loans they knew would never be repaid.

[anonymoose]

Hello anonymoose,



You know what? I have zero problem with tax and spend. Tax and spend is how our government is designed to function.

Good thing for you I'm not king. I'd raise taxes and cut spending until the deficit is under control. It would cause a recession but that's the price that needs to be paid to get one's financial house in order.

Because the largest cut went to the richest and most powerful. Which was especially bad because it was so irresponsible to do that at at time when we needed to increase revenue to reduce the deficit further.

Too funny. Nobody has the balls to do that.

That's what responsible governments do during a good economy. You try to pay down the debt.

Agreed but we don't have a responsible gubmint. At least fiscally. Never have in my lifetime. Every administration in my life has increased the nat'l debt.

The reason for that is the propaganda of the right that taxes are so bad. We all have to accept taxes rather than demonize them. There are plenty of things in life we wish we didn't have to deal with yet must accept. Republicans are just ridiculous when they think you can run a government by not paying enough taxes; and instead borrowing to pay the bills.

Agreed.

[artichoke]

The legality remains to be seen.

Except it's already provably unconstitutional and was from the beginning.

It has been ruled both ways and is likely headed to the SCOTUS, and it is not clear it added to the debt at all. It may have reduced it.

It cost more than a trillion dollars just initially and created over a hundred new federal bureaucracies. In what alternate universe is this something that did anything but further bankrupt the country (to shred the Constitution make everything worse)?

Whomever was President during the Great Recession would have presided over a time of greatly increased debt, or would have crippled the economy with austerity and the inescapable debt that would cause, along with all the hardship and discontent.

History teaches us the opposite. FDR spent us into oblivion compared to other presidents, and his policies demonstrably deepened and prolonged the Great Depression.

He reduced discretionary spending.

While violently shoving us further into bankruptcy on an almost unprecedented scale. Again, the known facts are incompatible with the spin you are pushing here.

That question makes no sense...

It does if you understand how Obama manipulated the numbers to come up with hilariously false propaganda points like that.

Step 1: Spend the country into oblivion.

Step 2: Reduce next fiscal year's spending (often by gutting the military--one of the very few things the Federal Government is actually supposed to be spending money on under the Constitution--to the bone and beyond).

Step 3: Brag about how "fiscally responsible" you are.

They are wrong. That piece is biased toward the rich.

You are wrong. You are biased against the rich.

The deficit was around $600 trillion when President Trump took over.

The part of the article you're missing in your apparent rush to disqualify (and not read) anything that reaches a conclusion you don't like:

The latest monthly budget report from the Congressional Budget Office shows the deficit jumping $102 billion in just the first two months of the new fiscal year.

That sure looks like the deficit is "soaring," as one news outlet claimed. But as the CBO makes clear, almost all that deficit increase was the result of quirks of the calendar. Depending on where weekends fall, significant sums of spending can get shifted into different months.

A true apples-to-apples comparison, the CBO says, shows that the deficit climbed by just $13 billion.

So, no, the deficit is not soaring.

We cannot responsibly allow the deficit to rise at all. Any rise is bad.

Obama supporters officially forfeited ever getting to pretend to care about fiscal responsibility ever again. Sorry. I cannot take anything you say along these lines seriously.

Let's examine that for a moment. Most people have too much withholding. So with the tax cut, they are going to be getting larger refunds. That means they have yet to receive the financial bump from the tax cut. People have gotten no extra tax cut money, and the economy has been doing well...

On top of this being a non sequiter fallacy, the jobs that have been created, and the thousand-dollar "crumbs" people got from the tax cuts, are just two examples off the top of my head of people receiving more money from the tax cuts.

'Mostly' being the operative word. Know what that really means? Same headline, based on that information, could be: "Tax Cuts Not Paying For Themselves." And there you have it. The irresponsible tax cut is not paying for itself. Supported by your own link.

Which might make sense if Democrats were arguing that the tax cuts were just barely missing the mark on paying for themselves. But that's not what they're saying at all. Democrats are fear-mongering about the tax cuts hurling us into spiraling debt to help the rich, which is a bold-faced lie. As the link shows, they almost completely pay for themselves (and that's already, without the full impact even being calculable yet).

I disagree with those views. I don't associate any of those exaggerations with President Obama. That's all your opinion. You are entitled to your own opinion.

You closing your eyes, covering your ears, and screaming, "Your opinion!" at every documented fact you don't like in no way refutes said fact.



Fact: Obama needlessly surrendered Iraq to Islamic extremists, against the advice of all his advisors, on blind ideology alone.

Fact: Obama gutted the military to the bone. US Military ‘In A Death Spiral’ After Obama-Era Cuts

Fact: Obama appeased Iran's lunatic Islamofascist regime with everything it wanted in exchange for hollow promises.

Fact: Obama betrayed our number-one ally in the Middle East (another form of surrender).

And so on.

The deficit would be lower if we still had President Obama.

Again, repeating it won't make it less wildly false. All the evidence suggests that Obama was the problem.

[artichoke]

In your opinion.

Wrong. Demonstrable fact.

I disagree. I believe it was cause by unregulated greed in the financial industry.

That's you parroting a provably false narrative.

That tends to occur when one lives in extraordinary times.

Every president can (and usually do) hide behind that excuse.

It has never been shown that President Obama did anything to cause that high debt

Except for spending more than a trillion dollars to illegally take over and destroy the health care system, for starters.

He does have a record for dealing with the crashed economy quite skillfully,

If by "record" you mean the "record" worst recovery since the Great Depression, sure. LOL

and bringing us back for the brink of disaster.

By kicking job-creators while they were down with obscene levels of taxation and over-regulation (hint: the terrible economy was his fault, and it survived despite his best efforts).

Hopefully, you recall President Bush's dire warnings to the public while pushing for the Wall Street Bail Out?

Hopefully you remember the direct role Obama played in TARP: Obama gets first major win with TARP

President Obama inherited THAT economy.

"Inherited" that provably Democrat-created mess, yes.

Good thing it wasn't President Trump taking over then. We would have NO recovery if that had happened then.

All the evidence shows the opposite. Economists agree: Trump, not Obama, gets credit for economy

But it wouldn't have. Obama would have beaten Trump in an election...

Irrelevant posturing.

All of that is conjecture. It's opinion.

The guy who just went on a hypothetical voyage about what "would" have happened if President Trump were in charge is against speaking in ways that are not purely factual? And that leads you to dismiss the hard numbers (i.e., not conjecture) being presented in the article?

Um...no. That's not how that works.

Opinion piece.

That's a lazy and invalid fallacy. The facts and arguments laid out in opinion pieces can be valid. Pointing out that it is an opinion piece refutes nothing.

Not everyone who hires people says that.

Translation: If fewer than 100% of job-creators admit that confiscating less of their money gives them more money with which to create jobs, then it is not true that confiscating less of their money gives them more money with which to create jobs. It shouldn't require anyone to acknowledge it. It's painfully obvious common sense.

Biased opinion piece favoring the rich

I refer you to the last time you made me correct this fallacy.

It was like a giant neon sign saying: Wall Street Needs More Regulation!!!

Only to the misinformed.

The 'free market' could not support itself

Again, provably false. Repeating it won't make it true.

[PoliTalker]

Hello anonymoose,

Good thing for you I'm not king. I'd raise taxes and cut spending until the deficit is under control. It would cause a recession but that's the price that needs to be paid to get one's financial house in order.

I agree. It's a good thing you don't have the power to purposely cause a recession by decree. I prefer our democratic republic. I advocate for no big spending cuts and strongly increased taxes on the rich, tapering down to no increase for the lower half of earners. I do not believe a large tax increase on the rich would cause a recession. Profits would be reduced due to the need to pay more taxes, but if they laid off people, that also impacts a business and reduces profits as well. Doing so would be making their profit situation worse, not better. The most profitable decision would be to simply pay the extra taxes and pocket what they can after doing so.

The extra revenue would be used to eliminate the deficit, begin paying down the debt, pay for guaranteed universal health care, free college to those who get good grades, shoring up the Social Security system, strengthening the government safety net, added environmental regulation (with ZERO industry representatives in charge of ANY of that,) and what the heck, if you agreed to all of that, I would toss in 25 billion for the wall (as long as all the other stuff is paid for, too.) Why not? I don't really think the wall is going to change anything, I think it's wasted money, but if conservatives wanted to compromise in this way, I would agree to that.

Too funny. Nobody has the balls to do that.

Clinton eliminated the deficit. That was being a responsible President. He created a surplus (unseen since then, as soon as a Republican took over.)

Money Magazine: " "If we maintain our fiscal discipline, using the surplus to pay down the debt and using the savings to strengthen Social Security, America will entirely pay off the national debt by 2015," Clinton told reporters on the White House lawn.
Clinton said the budget surplus for fiscal year 1999 would be a higher-than-expected $99 billion, compared to an earlier projection of $79 billion. For fiscal 2000, which begins Oct. 1, Clinton sees the budget surplus rising to $142.5 billion from an earlier projection of $117.3 billion.
"Improvements in the outlook since February have added $179 billion to the projected budget surplus over five years, half a trillion over 10 years, and a trillion over 15 years," Clinton said.
In February, the White House forecast a five-year surplus of about $700 million, a 10-year surplus of about $2.41 trillion and a 15-year surplus of about $4.47 trillion.

Surpluses exceeding expectations

Budget surpluses have surpassed most projections recently as the booming U.S. economy, now in its ninth year of expansion, and big stock market gains have filled government coffers with soaring revenues."

Democratic President Clinton's Realistic Plan To Pay Down The Debt (before W came along.)

Agreed but we don't have a responsible gubmint.

We could have that if we made responsible government a priority. We have a self-government. All that is required for us to have a fiscally responsible government is for enough of us to demand it. Ultimately, government answers to we, the people. Conservatives do us (and themselves included) a great disservice by assuming government is always going to be hopeless. It is up to us what our government does. We can make it anything we want if enough of us want to make that happen. But it can't happen as long as so many people believe it is hopeless to try. If conservative propaganda can get so many people to hate government, imagine what could be possible if that messaging instead encouraged people to make government all it could be - For The People.

At least fiscally. Never have in my lifetime. Every administration in my life has increased the nat'l debt.

While that's true as a strict fact, it overlooks the fact that President Clinton did manage to eliminate the deficit for a short time, demonstrating what is possible. His final words as President, I will NEVER forget. W was being inaugurated. There were the usual speeches. Clinton had his last chance to speak as President. He said: "Pay down the debt. Pay down the debt. Pay down the debt." Like that. He said it three times in a row. That was the responsible thing to do. He was being fiscally responsible right then, and didn't want to see his efforts to reduce the debt go to waste. He gave W the power to actually pay down the debt. W ignored it and immediately ran it up. I recall getting my small increase after W's tax cuts, thinking: 'What a waste. I don't need this. And the cost was too high.' I feel the exact same way with Trump's tax cuts. We didn't deserve tax cuts. It was irresponsible, both times. And even if there was the expected economic boost, it came at the expense of the next generation. We can't keep raiding the cookie jar and spending our children's earnings. Irresponsible!

[PoliTalker]

Hello Arminius,

FDR spent us into oblivion compared to other presidents, and his policies demonstrably deepened and prolonged the Great Depression.

You are entitled to your opinion. I believe it was necessary for FDR's government to create jobs because capitalism wasn't doing it and people were starving.

While violently shoving us further into bankruptcy on an almost unprecedented scale. Again, the known facts are incompatible with the spin you are pushing here.

We didn't go bankrupt. But you are free to believe anything you want, no matter how unsupported it is.

Step 1: Spend the country into oblivion.

Step 2: Reduce next fiscal year's spending (often by gutting the military--one of the very few things the Federal Government is actually supposed to be spending money on under the Constitution--to the bone and beyond).

Wild exaggerations. The USA spends far more than ANY OTHER NATION on 'defense.' Really, it's offense so we can bully our way all over the world. How is it 'defensive' to have military bases in most other countries? How many foreign military bases do we allow in the USA?

You are biased against the rich.

Not true. I AM rich. I would like to see more widespread prosperity so others can enjoy life without need, as I do. Financial security should not be a difficult dream. We are an advanced civilization. We have the power to make financial security more widespread.

Obama supporters officially forfeited ever getting to pretend to care about fiscal responsibility ever again.

The heat of running a fiscally irresponsible government is now on Trump supporters.

Sorry. I cannot take anything you say along these lines seriously.

That is not required. You are entitled to your own opinion.

On top of this being a non sequiter fallacy, the jobs that have been created, and the thousand-dollar "crumbs" people got from the tax cuts, are just two examples off the top of my head of people receiving more money from the tax cuts.

Penny-wise, pound-foolish. Sure, tax payers get a little break now. The cuts for average tax payers expire, but the cuts for the rich are permanent. That was an instant gratification trick to gain support. Oh yeah. No dispute there at all. I agree money from tax cuts is flooding the economy. I just didn't see the need. The economy was already doing fine without it. And if we have to borrow against the future to prop up the economy, then it isn't really working very well, because that is not sustainable. You cannot borrow your way to prosperity. A better way to improve the economy would be a minimum wage hike.

Which might make sense if Democrats were arguing that the tax cuts were just barely missing the mark on paying for themselves. But that's not what they're saying at all. Democrats are fear-mongering about the tax cuts hurling us into spiraling debt to help the rich, which is a bold-faced lie.

You are entitled to your own opinion as are others. Opinions are not provable as fact, so they also are not lies. They are simply views and impressions.

As the link shows, they almost completely pay for themselves (and that's already, without the full impact even being calculable yet).

The tax cuts needed to not only pay for themselves, but generate more revenue above that to be justified. Show us how tax cuts not only offset the loss of revenue, but actually generate enough more economic activity to reduce the deficit, create a surplus, and begin paying off the debt, and that all happens without cutting spending on the safety net. Then you have a good argument for tax cuts. Until then, forget it. Irresponsible!

You know, this thought that we can cut taxes and get more revenue is kind of wishful dreaming. It really sounds great, you know? Kind of like having your cake and eating it too. It really does sound good. Actually it sounds a bit too good. Too good to be true. Kind of sounds like: 'You can eat cake and lose weight too!'

Call now and get a free plastic Jesus for the dashboard of your car!

You closing your eyes, covering your ears, and screaming, "Your opinion!" at every documented fact you don't like in no way refutes said fact.

I do not close my eyes, nor do I cover my ears, to civil discourse. I am here and I am willing to read any view you wish to express. I am simply responding with my own views. I am highly motivated to listen to what you have to say in case there is something I have overlooked, something which eludes me. (You've presented nothing which changes my view.) Claiming opinion to be fact does not persuade me. It actually causes me to value your views less. I am interested in being as objectively informed as possible. But in order to do that we must separate fact from opinion. Facts are provable. Everyone is entitled to their own opinion; but not their own facts. Some struggle with discerning the difference. Not my problem. I will simply continue to be as realistic as possible. I don't claim my views to be fact. I endeavor to show why they are supported by logic.

Fact: Obama needlessly surrendered Iraq to Islamic extremists, against the advice of all his advisors, on blind ideology alone.

That is an opinion.

Fact: Obama gutted the military to the bone. US Military ‘In A Death Spiral’ After Obama-Era Cuts

No. That is an opinion. There is no proving such an assertion. And it is widely known that the Daily Caller is a highly right-wing-biased website, heavy on opinion, light on cherry-picked facts. A highly slanted information source. It is actually so biased that I don't really need to read anything from the DC. I can easily predict what it is going to say. That site is a stooge for the ultra-rich. Everything that site endorses helps the ultra-rich to extract more wealth from the 99%.

Fact: Obama appeased Iran's lunatic Islamofascist regime with everything it wanted in exchange for hollow promises.

Fact: Obama betrayed our number-one ally in the Middle East (another form of surrender).

And so on.

It is incorrect to believe those views are fact. They are nothing but opinions. It is impossible to have a realistic view of the world if one cannot discern between fact and opinion.

Again, repeating it won't make it less wildly false. All the evidence suggests that Obama was the problem.

I'm sure you want to believe that. I don't understand it, but you are, of course, entitled to your own view. I see things differently. President Obama inherited an absolutely trashed economy, and turned it around. He had very popular support when he was elected, (and his inauguration was bigger than President Trump's.) Other President's might have struggled in dealing with The Great Recession, but President Obama listened to good advisers and skillfully guided us through a steady recovery which might have been quicker if Republicans had allowed the stimulus to be larger than it was. Few people wanted to face the prospect that in order to turn our economy around the one thing that was needed was 'needless government spending.' Spending not for the sake of completing the projects selected, but for the simple fact that this government spending was going to create jobs. Jobs which capitalism failed to create without government help. Capitalism couldn't build that, so government had to.

President Obama remained popular even after the stimulus, although his support among moderate Republicans dropped once the rich wing propaganda machine campaigned against it. President Obama only lost popular support when he stepped on the third rail of politics at the time: Health care reform (a seemingly no-win subject the Republicans refused to take up under Bush.) Now that the PPACA is law and people see how it works, they like it more and President Obama enjoys FAR higher approval than President Trump. That doesn't say much at all for President Trump, because usually when the economy is doing well, Presidential approval is quite high. President Trump must be a pretty bad President to have such low approval numbers during a great economy.

President Obama's handling of the economy was excellent. His approval record on that is very high. It is a very reasonable and well-supported opinion to believe that if we still had President Obama, the deficit would be lower.

[anonymoose]

Clinton eliminated the deficit.

You know that isn't true, that's virtually impossible without a draconian effort by a complicit president and congress or me as dictator or king, but he did reduce the rate at which it increased. And depending on what chart you look at he may have actually reduced it for a yr. or two. Other charts show that it increased every yr. Overall it increased, but I agree that our gubmint was at its most fiscally responsible during his tenure.

[PoliTalker]

Wrong. Demonstrable fact.



That's you parroting a provably false narrative.



Every president can (and usually do) hide behind that excuse.



Except for spending more than a trillion dollars to illegally take over and destroy the health care system, for starters.



If by "record" you mean the "record" worst recovery since the Great Depression, sure. LOL



By kicking job-creators while they were down with obscene levels of taxation and over-regulation (hint: the terrible economy was his fault, and it survived despite his best efforts).



Hopefully you remember the direct role Obama played in TARP: Obama gets first major win with TARP



"Inherited" that provably Democrat-created mess, yes.



All the evidence shows the opposite. Economists agree: Trump, not Obama, gets credit for economy



Irrelevant posturing.



The guy who just went on a hypothetical voyage about what "would" have happened if President Trump were in charge is against speaking in ways that are not purely factual? And that leads you to dismiss the hard numbers (i.e., not conjecture) being presented in the article?

Um...no. That's not how that works.



That's a lazy and invalid fallacy. The facts and arguments laid out in opinion pieces can be valid. Pointing out that it is an opinion piece refutes nothing.



Translation: If fewer than 100% of job-creators admit that confiscating less of their money gives them more money with which to create jobs, then it is not true that confiscating less of their money gives them more money with which to create jobs. It shouldn't require anyone to acknowledge it. It's painfully obvious common sense.





I refer you to the last time you made me correct this fallacy.



Only to the misinformed.



Again, provably false. Repeating it won't make it true.

Thanks for expressing your view. I disagree with it. Nothing you have said has caused me to doubt anything I have asserted. But I am very glad you have explained why you feel the way you do about things. While I disagree with your view, I completely support your right to express it. I actually think much of what you have said is best left unchallenged. Your views are so extremist that, for one who strives to separate fact from fiction, I think simply allowing you to voice how you think so much opinion is fact does more to cause rational minds to disagree with you than anything I could say. When I read what you have to write, I get the impression you have weakened your position and strengthened mine.

President Obama is far more popular than President Trump.

People trusted President Obama to guide us through the worst economic downturn since the Great Depression. They chose him over John McCain because they believed he would do a better job with the economy. They still must believe that, because after what you claim was 'the worst recovery' (meaning a naturally expected longer slower recovery to a deeper recession,) they rate President Obama far higher than they do President Trump who has presided during a more-recovered economy than President Obama. Americans believe in President Obama's handling of the economy much stronger than they believe in President Trump.

My opinion remains unchanged:

The deficit would be lower if we still had President Obama

[PoliTalker]

Hello anonymoose,

You know that isn't true, that's virtually impossible without a draconian effort by a complicit president and congress or me as dictator or king, but he did reduce the rate at which it increased. And depending on what chart you look at he may have actually reduced it for a yr. or two. Other charts show that it increased every yr. Overall it increased, but I agree that our gubmint was at its most fiscally responsible during his tenure.

It is true.

Read it and rejoice:

Y2K US Federal Budget Surplus: $260 billion

ELIMINATED THE DEFICIT.

CREATED a SURPLUS.

[anonymoose]

Hello anonymoose,



It is true.

Read it and rejoice:

Y2K US Federal Budget Surplus: $260 billion

ELIMINATED.

CREATED a SURPLUS.

Amazing how two people can read the exact same thing and come to two different conclusions. Right there in your link it shows the deficit at well over $5 trillion,600 billion. But yes, there was a budget surplus temporarily as you said. Debt elimination? No. Only I can do that once anointed king.

[montgomery]

Only I can do that once anointed king.

Can you explain what that means? Does it mean that you will be anointed king?

[anonymoose]

Can you explain what that means? Does it mean that you will be anointed king?

Yes, I will be. And it will hurt. But we'll be better off for it in the long run. Fiscal responsibility, personal responsibility rewarded rather than penalized, universal healthcare via Moosecare (which I unveiled on the old dcj board).
Handguns for the public will be illegal with severe penalty/punishment for their possession, much worse if used in a crime . Hunting rifles allowed only with a valid hunting license and proof of responsible ownership.
What else would you like to know about my plans for the country?

[montgomery]

Yes, I will be. And it will hurt. But we'll be better off for it in the long run. Fiscal responsibility, personal responsibility rewarded rather than penalized, universal healthcare via Moosecare (which I unveiled on the old dcj board).
Handguns for the public will be illegal with severe penalty/punishment for their possession, much worse if used in a crime . Hunting rifles allowed only with a valid hunting license and proof of responsible ownership.
What else would you like to know about my plans for the country?

Nothing. Suggesting that you will be anointed king is off-topic spamming.

[PoliTalker]

Amazing how two people can read the exact same thing and come to two different conclusions.

Extraordinarily so.

Right there in your link it shows the deficit at well over $5 trillion,600 billion.

No, that's the debt figure you are reading. There was no deficit. It was eliminated. The deficit was replaced by a surplus. (shown) There was no deficit at the time. And if you watch the debt figure for a moment, you can see that it is getting smaller. That's because there was a surplus, not a deficit.

But yes, there was a budget surplus temporarily as you said. Debt elimination? No. Only I can do that once anointed king.

OK, I'm perplexed. Why are you using the words debt and deficit interchangeably? They are not the same thing.

The debt is the debt. That's how much we owe.

If we owe more than we are bringing in, the difference is called the deficit.

If we are bringing in more than we owe, the difference is called the surplus.

The deficit could be zero and we still owe the debt.

The deficit could be eliminated and we still owe the debt.

In order to eliminate the debt, we would have to first eliminate the deficit, then create a surplus which equaled the debt. If we eliminate the deficit and create s surplus, but it is smaller than the debt, then the debt is reduced by the amount of the surplus for that year.

The link I have shown is real-time of all the figures at that given moment in time. There is an option in the upper right corner to advance the clock or look back in time to a previous date. When looking at the figures for year 2000 at the conclusion of President Clinton's terms, it shows a surplus.

DebtClock