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Politics : Impeach George W. Bush -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: Neocon who wrote (8258)	12/6/2001 9:28:37 AM
From: jttmab	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 93284

The matter of debt service is fairly unimportant, except as it may limit government spending. From my perspective, that was an advantage of the Clinton Era, enhanced by the Republican take over of Congress. That's pretty significant since it eats up a percentage of the outlays. On the other hand. Rampant deficit spending has significant economic stimulus value at the expense of some future Administration. Pumping Trillions of dollars into the economy has a stimulating effect. It you compare the terms of the President against that of the status of the budget deficits, increasing or decreasing, there is a strong correlation with Republican Administrations and increasing deficits; there is no correlation to party affiliation in Congress. Under Reagan, it averaged 11.54. Under Clinton, it averaged 7.86. As I am sure you know, that means that the economic climate was more favorable for Clinton. Direction of interest rate changes probably has more to do with the economic climate than the absolute rates. Witness the Fed's increase of relatively low interest rates during 2000 and it's affect in 2001. Tax simplification and deregulation had already made a lot of headway. There was no tax simplification. It started as a proposal for tax simplification and ended up adding several feet of tax code. If you wanted to claim that there was tax simplification you would have to show that the computation of AGI was simpler. I think you'll have a very difficult time showing that. I know of no time when computing the AGI got easier. It is arguable that the main cause of the (shallow) Bush recession was the dislocations produced by military build down, and that that gave Clinton money to play with, as resources moved from the military to other projects, so pressure to tax and spend was reduced. Generally, Clinton had it easier....... Bush was unlucky. Natural cycles occur in the economy no matter what one does. Shifting outlays from category A to category B shouldn't have a significant impact on the overall economy over an eight year period. It may affect local economies over the short term, but your shifting %'s of outlays around, not a drastic economic disruption. jttmab