mrstickball said:
richardhutnik said:
mrstickball said:
Wonderfully skewed picture. Republicans are about as delusional as you are. Badgenome and others have already called you on it, but to re-cap:
1. Congress controls writing the budget.
2. The president then signs it into law.
3. Therefore, both sides are responsible for the budget, not just the president.
Badgenone gave you a good chart. There are other charts out there that explain it similarly. Both sides of the fence have increased the deficit at insane rates. The only time there was any real deficit reduction was under Clinton/Republican legislature in '96-00. Otherwise, you can easily pull enough data out that would state that both sides are pretty bad. |
Pork is what gets people reelected in congress. For all the bantering about budget deficit, individuals in congress don't get elected on reigning in the deficit. Oh, there is the Tea Party fuming that has some impact. But the reality is that there is this divide between what people pay and what they get, and the impact of both. You run into the Craig T Nelson problem where you end up thinking the government doesn't really do anything for them, but does. And then you protest with things like "Keep the government off my Medicare". Starve the Beast mentality also resulted in cutting taxes and increasing spending to, because no one believes that they are a problem. You see a big picture of this with the Red States, who demand less government, reigning in spending and so on, getting more from Washington than they pay in.
Issue now is that government spending is what it is, but revenues declined. Rate of growth in government spending has been slowing down a lot. It is just the economy hasn't recovered as it normally would. Faced with a slow economy, demands for governmen services increase also.
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Problem is, that government spending isn't just "Is what it is" - its increased significantly within the past few years, and continues to grow. Spending as a percentage of GDP is at the highest level ever - even higher than WW2. Revenues have certainly dropped, but that only accounts for about 30% of the problem.
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The current rate of growth is lowest in decades:
http://www.politifact.com/truth-o-meter/statements/2012/may/23/facebook-posts/viral-facebook-post-says-barack-obama-has-lowest-s/
http://articles.marketwatch.com/2012-05-22/commentary/31802270_1_spending-federal-budget-drunken-sailor
One can debate the 2009 budget and if that is under Obama or not, but the reality is that the budget's growth is now slow. The fiscal cliff is of concern, because of the fact it will take even more out of the economy, and that is of concern that it will slow economic growth. Revenues have stalled due to economic issues, and with this resulted also in an increase in spending on social safety net issues.
The past few years it hasn't significantly increased. It significantly increased in the 2008-2009 time period, when the financial markets melted down, and TARP and other bailouts were being passed.
