Do you realize that Federal Spending reached it's lowest point in 35 years..during the Clinton Era?

Question

And it's highest? No, not Bush... the Reagan years!

http://www.nationalpriorities.org/Resource-Budget/Federal-Spending.html

1. Wasn't the Congress Republican during the Reagan era? And Democrat during half of the Clinton era?

2. Clinton never "gutted" the military. He froze military spending. Please enlighten me on how a bigger, more expensive and more clunky military would have stopped nut cases from flying planes into buildings. Your premise is silly at best.

I found this interesting... The high deficits in the 1980s accelerated the accumulation of federal debt. Servicing this debt now consumes approximately 7% of spending, or about $180 billion. This amount would actually be much higher - around $270 billion - except that it is off-set by interest earned on the Social Security trust funds.


So basically Republicans and Bush complain about the Social Security issue, meanwhile, the interest that fund should be earning is PAYING FOR DEFICIT SPENDING!!!
How hard is it to grasp the concept of not spending what isn't available?

Answer 1

Yep and if you take the Reagan years the Bush 1 years and little Bush years they account for 70% of the deficit spending in the last 30 years, so much for thwe conservtive myth of small government HUH

Answer 2

Yes. Fortunately for America, the Democrats lost Congress to the Republicans in 1994 and they actually behaved like Conservatives back then. If the Democrats had a majority in Congress during that time, you would have seen a massive increase in government spending.

Reagan really never had a chance. He was trying to fight the Cold War by increase defense spending, and the only way to get his spending bills passed was to go along with the spend-thirsty Democrats in Congress.

During Clinton's term, he and the Republicans in Congress actually decreased non-defense government spending by 0.7%. That's the way you do it. Unfortunately under Bush and the whacko Republicans of the 21st Century, non-defense government spending is well into the double digits. It's nuts.

I am convinced that what America needs is a weak Democratic President (like Bill Clinton) and a strong CONSERVATIVE Congress. I don't see that happening anytime soon.

Answer 3

Yep!

If you liked this question, you should read Alan Greenspan's (former Fed Reserve head) new book. He deals with Clinton from a financial perspective in great length.

Clinton passed bugets in his first term that eliminated much the national debt. The first was especially hard. He did it at great political cost to him. That budget controlled spending and cut tax relief for the rich. No republicans voted for it.

The republicans can claim no credit for eliminating the crushing debt Reagan ran up. They can only claim credit for rubberstamping Bush's debt.

Republicans are about lowering taxes at all costs. They buy military toys with a credit card from the bank of our grandkids. The Democrats (recently) have been the party of adults who get that you should pay for what you buy rather than passing debt on to the next generation.

Answer 4

Even most liberals gave up on this lie a long time ago. It doesn't hold water.

For the slow liberals who didn't get it, lets go over it one more time.

Reagan asked for legislation allowing the rebuilding of our military infrastructure. Congress (with democrat control of both houses) gave him the legislation.

Military spending went up, but so did revenue due to tax cuts and the resulting net difference was a 12% DECREASE as measured against the staggering INCREASE in GDP.

The Clinton administration spent more than any other two administrations preceding him (including Reagan). The bookkeeping trick was to push payments for his programs out an average of ten years. There's your explanation for the current spending figures.

Bush 41 coasted on Reagan's momentum and DID increase spending beyond revenues. But then, both Bush's are socially liberal so what can you expect!

Nice try!

Answer 5

Boy they hooked you.

Please reread your link. The story states the spending as a percentage of GDP. We all know the GDP was artificially inflated during the Clinton years due to stack market exuberance and over inflated stock prices..

One of the largest reasons I dislike Bush is because of his overspending. He promised to shrink the government when he ran in 2000.

Answer 6

Reagan tripled the national debt. GWB has only doubled it. But to Bush's credit, he seems to be working really hard to match Reagan.

Answer 7

Repubs = Borrow money, cut taxes, build up the military-industrial complex

Dems = Restraint, repairing of Republican fiscal irresponsibility

Answer 8

(A) Congress controls spending
(B) Lowest/highest relative to GDP? That's because of the military building in the early 1980s and the fact that it took a few years for the tax cuts to produce GDP growth, because the Fed was sharply restricting monetary growth to finally end high inflation.

Answer 9

what? we were busy doing the disco with the Clintons cause they said the economy was doing great. Strange thing though, I saw too many people out of work those years.

Answer 10

I don't know. I used to believe that Repukians were fiscal convservatives until recently. So, some of us are learning!

PS> I want to see Samatha Stickers in a big, high res photo!