>Obama was president in 2009. Maybe you didn't know.
Oh, don't play dumb. You know that the budget is determined the year before. That budget was passed in June, 2008. Obama was not President then.
>If a Republican spends $400B more than he's taking in, it's bad because it must be on wars.
Well, yeah, and it's also bad that a Democrat spent it on wars, too. But Obama's been ending that.
>But if a Democrat spends $1.2T more than he's taking in, it's good because it must be for food, shelter, and lowering sea levels.
Obama has barely increased spending! The deficit ended up ballooning because of reduced tax revenues due to the recession and due to Obama's tax cuts to try to stimulate the economy. Fact.
But I'm not a deficit hawk, and I've never been one. I just don't like pissing money away. War? Pissing money away in the worst way possible. Food stamps? Unemployment? Infrastructure? Alternative energy? In my mind, those things are worthwhile expenditures. There are responsible ways of using a credit card...
However, Obama does continue to waste money on a lot of the things Bush (and previous Presidents) did. When all is said and done, almost a quarter of our budget is spent on "defense."
>This is EXACTLY the kind of mentality that will keep the federal debt ticking upwards for decades to come. The current old geezers in Washington won't have to deal with it, but our generation will.
Have you noticed that the deficit has been shrinking considerably from year to year? I believe that 2013 is now forecast to be half of 2009.
>Why do you insist on continuing the same kind of insanity you see in Washington?
I'm going to put it like Charlie Pierce does. "Fuck the deficit. People got no jobs, people got no money."
Get employment (and therefore tax revs) back where they were in the late Clinton/early Bush years, and we'd be working with a much smaller deficit. But we may need to make a ton of investments to get there!
And another point, without "the same kind of insanity you see in Washington," we wouldn't have lots of the great stuff we have today. I just spent 30 hours in the last week driving the Interstates. What a system!
-Z |
