Bad News

[BLAZER PROPHET]

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2009/08/25/AR2009082502734.html


A quote:

"Mr. Orszag promised that next year's budget will include the proposed solutions that the administration has so far declined to articulate."

 

[BrianFromWA]

There's the potential for me to step into the unknown on this one, but I have some questions.

I'm not sure I agree with the author's statement that

Almost two-thirds of the current fiscal year's $1.6 trillion deficit -- a postwar record 11.2 percent of GDP -- is attributable to the $700 billion financial sector bailout passed last October, and what has been spent so far under the $787 billion counter-recession stimulus package adopted in February. Both were unavoidable.

Someone please correct me if I'm off, but I was under the impression that the October "bailout" was a set of loans collateralized by stock in the company the gov't lent to. So that, either the money gets paid back (some of that's already happened, right?) or the government has assets (percentage ownership of the companies they lent to who defaulted)...right?

Second, the February stimulus package wasn't "unavoidable", was it? Unless you mean that you couldn't avoid having it passed even though one party was just about unanimously against it, with the "Democrats muscling it through" amidst "staunch GOP opposition".

Third, you can say that you "inherited two wars", but if your campaign was run on the premise that you'd be bringing the troops home from Iraq in 16 months, can you really pass the buck on the 2019 budget deficit b/c of those wars? I mean, he could "muscle through Congress" a bill right now that stops the funding for those wars. It seems to be a poor leadership tactic by the administration to bemoan what they "inherited". Just like, if your campaign promise is that taxes would go down for 95% of Americans, it seems that you can't bemoan the previous administration's tax cuts as a contributing factor to your budget projections of large debt.

 

[maxiep]

I've said it before and I'll say it again: President Bush's domestic spending policies were a disgrace. We had a longstanding agreement in this country that generally speaking the Democrats were the gas and the Republicans were the brakes. Paying off old people by paying for their medicine was the last straw. Now both parties are putting the gas pedal to the metal and the brakes are left unattended.

However, the answer wasn't to exponentally increase spending as President Obama has done.

We have a citizenship problem, and it goes back to the words of President Kennedy's inaugural address, words we've turned on their head. Today, we as citizens ask not what we can do for our country, but what our country can do for us. No country can sustain itself based on that attitude.

It's time to tighten the belt. It's time to do without. It's time to start cutting government programs wholesale. It's time to start getting rid of mandates. Promises made are going to have to be broken. More people need to pay taxes in addition to steepening the progressive taxation curve. The sacrifice needs to be shared. We need to start paying down our debt. Of course, taking those courses of action would mean many Congressmen would lose their seats, so I doubt it will ever happen. The change is going to have to come from the citizenry itself.

Let's hope we're up to the task.

 

[BLAZER PROPHET]

I've said it before and I'll say it again: President Bush's domestic spending policies were a disgrace. We had a longstanding agreement in this country that generally speaking the Democrats were the gas and the Republicans were the brakes. Paying off old people by paying for their medicine was the last straw. Now both parties are putting the gas pedal to the metal and the brakes are left unattended.

However, the answer wasn't to exponentally increase spending as President Obama has done.

We have a citizenship problem, and it goes back to the words of President Kennedy's inaugural address, words we've turned on their head. Today, we as citizens ask not what we can do for our country, but what our country can do for us. No country can sustain itself based on that attitude.

It's time to tighten the belt. It's time to do without. It's time to start cutting government programs wholesale. It's time to start getting rid of mandates. Promises made are going to have to be broken. More people need to pay taxes in addition to steepening the progressive taxation curve. The sacrifice needs to be shared. We need to start paying down our debt. Of course, taking those courses of action would mean many Congressmen would lose their seats, so I doubt it will ever happen. The change is going to have to come from the citizenry itself.

Let's hope we're up to the task.

It's not so easy. And, with a predominately liberal judicial base and Congress, it can't happen. It won't. Sadle, we're flat our stuck with continuous and non stop exponential raises in the debt for the infidinate future until the dam bursts- that's when the "citizenry" will have to act.