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Politics : Liberalism: Do You Agree We've Had Enough of It? -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: Kenneth E. Phillipps who wrote (66623)	6/10/2009 7:34:45 PM
From: TideGlider	1 Recommendation Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 224705

ROFLMAO!! You are a HOOT! Horrible HOOT!

To: Kenneth E. Phillipps who wrote (66623)	6/10/2009 7:54:41 PM
From: Sedohr Nod	1 Recommendation Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 224705

Being such a fair man(GAG)... what percentage of the deficits do you attribute to baseline budgeting? Yeah, I know....it's hot on the west coast.

To: Kenneth E. Phillipps who wrote (66623)	6/11/2009 10:59:47 AM
From: tonto	1 Recommendation Respond to of 224705

Correct. It includes debt carried forward from previous administrations as well as the huge irresponsible spending ongoing. In our state, the corruption is bad and Gov. Doyle is being compared to Blago...

To: Kenneth E. Phillipps who wrote (66623)	6/11/2009 12:13:09 PM
From: TimF	2 Recommendations Respond to of 224705

Deficits from 2009 to 2019 include prescription drug medicare spending which was proposed by Bush Sure, but that's not a huge increase, we are already spending money on that program. If you want to go back to who was president when programs where authorized, then you have to consider that a huge portion of spending is under programs initiated by Democrats. and spending for Irag and Afghanistan. Which will decline enormously by 2019. The simple fact is Obama and the Democrats in congress are responsible for a huge share of that deficit increase.

To: Kenneth E. Phillipps who wrote (66623)	6/12/2009 4:21:23 PM
From: TimF	5 Recommendations Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 224705

...But more to the point, it's not like Obama has evinced any interest in closing the budget deficit. Right, he says he wants to deal with it. Bush said the same thing, and I don't see Andrew or anyone else giving him brownie points for his good intentions (nor should they). Whatever Obama says he wants to do about the budget deficit, what he's doing is making it bigger. And not just this year, when he arguably should be: I give him a total pass on 2009 spending, and am prepared to be convinced on 2010. But Obama is making the deficit bigger in 2011, 2012, 2016, 2018, and beyond. Of course, a lot of that is due to Medicare and Social Security--not Medicare Part D, but the boring old kinds, enacted by Lyndon B. Johnson and FDR. But I don't think that the main problems with the programs are that both Johnson and Roosevelt enacted those programs while running sizeable budget deficits. The problem is that they are very expensive and their costs are growing just as the taxes that support them start to fall. Obama has more reason to be mad at Johnson and FDR for bequeathing him intractable legacy costs than at Bush: they will substantially reduce the scope of the things that Obama can do. But I don't expect to hear him explain that he has to run a budget deficit because he inherited a legacy of unsustainable spending by his Democratic predecessors. The fact remains that Bush actually left him very little legacy of permanent spending to be drivng his future deficits. Once we withdraw from Iraq (I assume we can all agree that any president would have invaded Afghanistan), and the tax cuts expire next year, the actual net contribution of everything Bush did to Obama's structural deficits will be well under $100 billion a year of the $1 trillion or so Obama is projected to spend... meganmcardle.theatlantic.com