Do cons realize the Bush economy isn't strong, rather inflated by to look good by excessive debt spending?

Question

A house of cards, waiting to fall.

The tech boom in the 90's is what made the economy look good under Clinton, not necessarily his policies. Peronally, I believe the Federal Reserve has much more control over the economy then the President. Unfortunately, the synergy between both can be very devastating.

Answer 1

Nobody realizes how contrived our economy is.....how we can have the most foreclosures on homes in history and still have a booming stock market is absurd....the dollar is doing horribly...inflation is out of control...oh sorry we don't use terms like inflation any more....no politician RED or BLUE has the balls to be straight about the economy

and from the answers you are getting the American public is perfectly unaware that the prices at the food store go up up up and credit dept is at an astronomical high

Answer 2

Actual that was the problem with Clinton's economy as well, except Clinton made his economy look better by raping the Military of its funding and transfering it to social programs.

Clinton's economy was a house of cards that started to fall apart with the Internet bubble burst. But a lot of Democrats forget that be cause Clinton could do no harm.

But all you hear is "Clinton had a great economy!" No he had a weak economy built on credit and stolen money. At least Bush's economy is just built on credit. But then again which recent president didn't build their economy on Credit?

Answer 3

Actually the economy has been driven by strong corporate profits, a reaping of the technological innovations and advancements sown in the 1990's.

But believe what you want. I know you will anyways.

Answer 4

Ever hear of the Roaring 20s?

Answer 5

No, they have their heads too deep in the sand as you can see. They'll go on blindly worshipping their "Saint George" until he runs the country into the ground. The good news is that they're only 30% of the population, so the other 70% of us need to be sure to get out and vote in every election.

Answer 6

I'd bet you think there were no Bubble in Clinton's years and it was simply made up by GOP to fool America, right??

Answer 7

The people I know all have plenty of money. The women get manicures, pedicures and facials and the men are buying big SUV's and they're all going on lots of cruises and European vacations so the economy must be doing okay.

Answer 8

What do you do when you want to screw only the working people of your nation with the largest tax increase in history and hand those trillions of dollars to your wealthy campaign contributors, yet not have anybody realize you've done it? If you're Ronald Reagan, you call in Alan Greenspan.
Through the "golden years of the American middle class" - the 1940s through 1982 - the top income tax rate for the hyper-rich had been between 90 and 70 percent. Ronald Reagan wanted to cut that rate dramatically, to help out his political patrons. He did this with a massive tax cut in the summer of 1981.
The only problem was that when Reagan took his meat axe to our tax code, he produced mind-boggling budget deficits. Voodoo economics didn't work out as planned, and even after borrowing so much money that this year we'll pay over $100 billion just in interest on the money Reagan borrowed to make the economy look good in the 1980s, Reagan couldn't come up with the revenues he needed to run the government.
Coincidentally, the actuaries at the Social Security Administration were beginning to get worried about the Baby Boomer generation, who would begin retiring in big numbers in fifty years or so. They were a "rabbit going through the python" bulge that would require a few trillion more dollars than Social Security could easily collect during the same 20 year or so period of their retirement. We needed, the actuaries said, to tax more heavily those very persons who would eventually retire, so instead of using current workers' money to pay for the Boomer's Social Security payments in 2020, the Boomers themselves would have pre-paid for their own retirement.
Reagan got Daniel Patrick Moynihan and Alan Greenspan together to form a commission on Social Security reform, along with a few other politicians and economists, and they recommend a near-doubling of the Social Security tax on the then-working Boomers. That tax created - for the first time in history - a giant savings account that Social Security could use to pay for the Boomers' retirement.
This was a huge change. Prior to this, Social Security had always paid for today's retirees with income from today's workers (it still is today). The Boomers were the first generation that would pay Social Security taxes both to fund current retirees and save up enough money to pay for their own retirement. And, after the Boomers were all retired and the savings account - called the "Social Security Trust Fund" - was all spent, the rabbit would have finished its journey through the python and Social Security could go back to a "pay as you go" taxing system.
Thus, within the period of a few short years, Reagan dramatically dropped the income tax on America's most wealthy by more than half, and roughly doubled the Social Security tax on people earning $30,000 or less. It was, simultaneously, the largest income tax cut in America's history (almost entirely for the very wealthy), and the most massive tax increase in the history of the nation (which entirely hit working-class people).
But Reagan still had a problem. His tax cuts for the wealthy - even when moderated by subsequent tax increases - weren't generating enough money to invest properly in America's infrastructure, schools, police and fire departments, and military. The country was facing bankruptcy.
No problem, suggested Greenspan. Just borrow the Boomer's savings account - the money in the Social Security Trust Fund - and, because you're borrowing "government money" to fund "government expenditures," you don't have to list it as part of the deficit. Much of the deficit will magically seem to disappear, and nobody will know what you did for another 50 years when the Boomers begin to retire 2015.
Reagan jumped at the opportunity. As did George H. W. Bush. As did Bill Clinton (although Al Gore argued strongly that Social Security funds should not be raided, but, instead, put in a "lock box"). And so did George W. Bush.
The result is that all that money - trillions of dollars - that has been taxed out of working Boomers (the ceiling has risen from the tax being on your first $30,000 of income to the first $90,000 today) has been borrowed and spent. What are left behind are a special form of IOUs - an unique form of Treasury debt instruments similar (but not identical) to those the government issues to borrow money from China today to fund George W. Bush's most recent tax cuts for billionaires (George Junior is still also "borrowing" from the Social Security Trust Fund).
Former Bush Junior Treasury Secretary Paul O'Neill recounts how Dick Cheney famously said, "Reagan proved deficits don't matter." Cheney was either ignorant or being disingenuous - it would be more accurate to say, "Reagan proved that deficits don't matter if you rip off the Social Security Trust Fund to pay for them, and don't report that borrowing from the Boomers as part of the deficit."

Answer 9

All the real conservatives agree with that sentiment as well.

Our economy is a house of cards with hurricane force winds blowing.

Answer 10

The deficit is only a tiny percentage of the GDP. Bush rules and you suck.