Clinton and Bush, as well as almost everyone else, was saying the US was on a path to eliminate the entire debt.
And they were all wrong.
Well those who said such things were wrong, it wasn't "almost everyone else".
You say military budget cuts helped.
The military is still much smaller then it was before the cuts. Small increases with Iraq and the efforts against the Taliban, Al-Qaeda, ISIS etc. but even during the peak of such efforts the military was closer in size to the post cut low levels than to the pre-cut levels.
Also more generally over time the military has become a smaller and smaller part of the federal budget. Going forward there is less to be gained from any military cuts. The military used to be the majority of federal spending even in peace time. The WWII peak was 88 percent, Korea peak was 72 percent, but between and after those periods it was over 50 percent until around 1970. In 2010 it was under 25 percent, in 2015 under 22, and in 2020 its estimated to be under 17 and a half percent.
I'm not saying it shouldn't have, or shouldn't continue to decline (although with the rise of China, and some of the things happening with Russia and NK, I'd probably go for it declining slower), just pointing out there is less ability to get the same type of benefit from this in the future. The army was cut from 18 divisions to 10. Would you cut it again to 5? Even if that would be ok with you (and I don't think it would be justified), it would be a smaller cut in number of divisions and it would probably be the end of such cuts. The navy is well down in ships, and China may soon have more naval ships than the US (the American ships are on the average bigger and more advanced but those advantages are declining as well, and also in any confrontation in the Pacific China could have their whole navy with the US having a part of it).
Republicans were aware boomers were going to retire. Are you suggesting it was normal to not prepare for their retirement and instead create massive debt so we wouldn't be prepared?
The massive debt doesn't help, but if it was zero we still wouldn't be prepared. The promised spending is simply too much to possibly prepare for. I might be starting to sound like a broken record on this point but you keep refusing to face it. No income tax rates have ever been able to sustain the promised level of spending.
Also the debt increase is mostly because of extra spending not tax cuts.
Also its not just about the baby boomers retiring. Once they pass the problem stops getting rapidly worse but it continues to slowly get worse, not better. Its not just a blip of demographics, the entitlement set up in the US is structurally unsound. |
