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

To: Steve Lokness who wrote (110908)	5/7/2009 6:06:41 PM
From: TimF	Read Replies (2) \| Respond to of 541572

Again it seems I must deal with attacks on straw men. I said nothing about Republicans in general being fiscally responsible. That chart is simplistic in that it ignores events effecting the governments balance of payments, it ignores previous policies and who passed them (for example about half the budget is entitlements, mostly passed with Democrats controlling both congress and the oval office), and it ignores congress. And its in nominal dollars, which is a fairly meaningless method for comparing deficits over time. Real per capita dollars would be better. Percentage of GDP would be much better. (Which would cause the world wars, esp. WWII to be the high points in terms of deficits.) Also fiscal responsibility isn't just a matter of how large of deficits you have, massive spending with massive taxation is also irresponsible. But despite all these rather serious flaws, it could be considered a counter argument to a claim that "Republicans are fiscally responsible". That is if I had actually made any such claim.