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Politics : Formerly About Advanced Micro Devices -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: Road Walker who wrote (277644)	3/3/2006 8:29:14 PM
From: TimF	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 1572505

No we are not. Yes we are. Rather than go around in circles on this its probably best just to recognize that we disagree. Of course Clinton and the Rep congress didn't turn around the huge momentum of the growth of government on a (historical) dime, but they did a hell of a job slowing the growth. The combination did the best job of slowing the growth in a long time, but a large part of that was due to the draw down of the military. If just considering non-military spending (and perhaps taking in to account Katrina and 9/11) Clinton and the congress at the time did a better job than Bush and the current congress but that's a low hurdle to climb. Once you had the combination of Clinton and the Republican congress (early on Clinton had a Dem congress and less restraint on government growth), they actually did a decent job, but considering the circumstances I can't really call it "a hell of a job". You are arguing at the margin. Of course Clinton and the Rep congress didn't turn around the huge momentum of the growth of government on a (historical) dime I'm wouldn't have expected any president and congress to have done so, but having not done so, its not reasonable to say "the era of big government is over". We are growin government at an unsustainable rate. Probably unsustainable. Definitely undesirable. You can work for your libertarian utopia, or you can work for incremental change. If you want change towards your agenda, then the Dems are a better horse to ride than the neo's We you take a particular Dem (Clinton, combined with the Republican Congress) and compare him to a specific Republican president (Bush combined with the current spendthrift Republican congress) and you only measure spending without considering other factors your statement makes some small amount of sense. But only a small amount because my political aims are not limited to controlling federal government spending. Also I think the biggest part of the difference might be the past congress compared to today's congress. Even though many of the members are the same, some are not, and those who are the same are acting very differently. Part of this might be because the Republicans have grown comfortable with their power and position. Part of it is because the had their head handed to them on the whole "shut down the government" situation back when Clinton was president. Part of it is the way Delay and his supporters operated. Part of it is do to Bush. I really would like to shake up the current cozy Republican grip on power, but not by giving things back to the Dems. I have a lot of problems with them as well, generally more than with the Republicans. I recognize the a "libertarian utopia" is no in the cards any time soon, so other issues become relatively more important. I might trade off the conservative side on some issues if we could get a serious move to libertarianism but we are not going to get that, neither the Republicans or Democrats seem to even really want to move in that direction. Tim