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Politics : View from the Center and Left -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: Cogito who wrote (103303)	2/6/2009 7:48:49 AM
From: Mary Cluney	Respond to of 542043

<<<Given that Bush and his Republican-controlled Congresses (throughout most of the period) were fully aware of the increases in spending, I'd say it was damned irresponsible of them to cut taxes the way they did.>>> That is 368 billion in additional defense spending that the Bush administratin acknowledges. Off hand I remember them distributing and couldn't account for the billions in cash they were distributing from a truck in the streets of Iraq. Nevertheless 368 billion is what the Bush administration acknowledges in direct additional defense spending. On top of that there is 249 billion each year according to Bush's own Treasury Secretary Paul O'Neill that results in Bush's irresponsible tax cuts. Just add those two items together and you increase the budget deficit by over 600 billion. Add to that interest costs because they had to borrow money to give away the money.

To: Cogito who wrote (103303)	2/6/2009 1:41:42 PM
From: TimF	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 542043

So by those figures, defense spending increased by a more than 120%, and non-defense spending increased by roughly 50%. Increasing a small program by a larger percentage is easier than increasing the larger program (or in this case collection of programs). You are right that the percentage increase in defense was larger than in non-defense. My point was that most of the increased spending went to other areas. Even if Obama and the new congress shared the same spending priorities as the Republicans who preceded them, that trend would continue, even accelerate, as Iraq winds down, defense hits some limits, entitlements continue to grow at a good clip, and the stimulus and bailout money starts to take effect. The TARP bailout bill wasn't in Bush's initial budget, so you could probably add another $350bil or more to the non defense side (of course because of the large base of non-defense spending, that still leaves you with a bigger percentage increase on the defense side) To me, it really does seem that both the tax cuts and the military spending increases are fair targets for criticism, and to a greater extent than the non-defense spending increase is. To me its just the opposite. Mostly, but not only, because the non-defense spending increase was a lot more money. Given that Bush and his Republican-controlled Congresses (throughout most of the period) were fully aware of the increases in spending, I'd say it was damned irresponsible of them to cut taxes the way they did. IMO, that could more reasonably be phrased as "given that Bush and the (somewhat) Republican-controlled congress where fully aware of the tax cuts, I'd say it was damned irresponsible of them to increase spending the way they did. But really it doesn't even depend on the tax cuts. Whatever they did with taxes it still would have been irresponsible to increase spending that much.