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

To: combjelly who wrote (361209)	12/3/2007 1:55:32 PM
From: TimF	Respond to of 1573994

There was more inflation in Clinton's 8 years than Bush's 4. The real cut is the nominal cut + the inflation rate, so Clinton's real cuts would be larger. Also I'm talking about the decline in part of Clinton's term, he raised it back a bit at the end. In any case if Bush cut that would help Bush (so you can blame him for not being able to have lower deficits even with the cuts), but the cuts would also help Clinton. The total cut in nominal terms was over 30% (in real terms even more). If the cold war didn't end than Clinton probably would have been in a position where military spending would have been 30% higher (again even more in real terms). How many presidents got that opportunity? Arguably Bush I did as well as Clinton. (Although he had other issues to deal with like a recession, which had barely ended by the end of his presidency). OK so include Bush I. But even including him doesn't change the point that Clinton had an unusual opportunity that made it much easier for him to control spending. And that wasn't the only benefit he had, he also had the congress most committed to control spending since before WWII. Take away those two factors and we never would have had a balanced budget under Clinton.