| Tyrannical said: I think I recall similar protests during the clinton administration. Newt Gingrich led a big republican house victory then. |
The country was a much different place in 1994. For example, people were actively protesting healthcare reform then because they were scared of "big government." Now they are actively encouraging the government to go forward on healthcare reform.
And the government can make money by spending money, although not in the same way that a business would.
Lets say you have a situation like the one we were in several months ago when Lehman Brothers went under. The economy is taking a major hit and is slipping into a recession. The private sector has literally stopped investing and banks are holding onto their assets for dear life. Unemployment is rapidly accelerating and the DOW is plummeting. The consumer has put away his credit card for the first time in decades. If the government does nothing, it risks allowing the economic downturn to snowball exponentially since all those negative economic factors will feed each other and cause things to get even worse, particularly if the banking system goes under. Systemic instability in the banking system is the #1 fastest way to land yourself right in the middle of a depression (see The Great Depression).
The government can't make money if the country isn't making money. Even the alternative Republican budget had the government running major deficits for several years. Without a healthy economy, the government suffers just like everyone else. If the government does inject capital into the market through monetary policy (which had already happened since interest rates were near 0%) and fiscal policy once monetary policy has proven ineffective, it can prevent the economy from driving off a cliff to the point that no one can do anything about it (see The Great Depression - took the unprecedented level of government spending in WW2 to get us out of it). And yes, government spending DID get us out of the Great Depression. It was the government's spending in WW2 that did. FDR didn't spend ENOUGH money since the economic downturn had already snowballed and fallen off the cliff and there wasn't much he could realistically do.
We had two bags of grass, seventy-five pellets of mescaline, five sheets of high-powered blotter acid, a salt shaker half full of cocaine, a whole galaxy of multi-colored uppers, downers, screamers, laughers…Also a quart of tequila, a quart of rum, a case of beer, a pint of raw ether and two dozen amyls. The only thing that really worried me was the ether. There is nothing in the world more helpless and irresponsible and depraved than a man in the depths of an ether binge. –Raoul Duke
It is hard to shed anything but crocodile tears over White House speechwriter Patrick Buchanan's tragic analysis of the Nixon debacle. "It's like Sisyphus," he said. "We rolled the rock all the way up the mountain...and it rolled right back down on us...." Neither Sisyphus nor the commander of the Light Brigade nor Pat Buchanan had the time or any real inclination to question what they were doing...a martyr, to the bitter end, to a "flawed" cause and a narrow, atavistic concept of conservative politics that has done more damage to itself and the country in less than six years than its liberal enemies could have done in two or three decades. -Hunter S. Thompson
