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Politics : American Presidential Politics and foreign affairs -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: Peter Dierks who wrote (40179)	1/6/2010 12:45:59 AM
From: RMF	Read Replies (2) \| Respond to of 71588

You may not have noticed, but the Cold War HASN'T ended. Only now we have TWO adversaries rather than one. The Russians are currently reconstructing their sphere of influence and STILL have all the nukes they need to blow us away at will. But now, we also have the Chinese and they're more dangerous than the Russians EVER were. "Carter did battle over spending with the same democrats" So, you're saying that Carter was stronger than Reagan in keeping spending down? What was Regan's "end game" exactly? About all he did was cut taxes and tell Volker he'd like to see interest rates raised enough to drive the country into SEVERE recession to get rid of inflation quickly. He also cut regulation enough that we had to go through the Savings and Loan fiasco (which cost us about half a trillion....BIG bucks back then)

To: Peter Dierks who wrote (40179)	1/6/2010 12:34:18 PM
From: TimF	2 Recommendations Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 71588

Clinton had two gimmicks that allowed him to claim to balance the budget despite the huge spending increases on discretionary items. First Payroll taxes were increased in 1993. Second the Roth IRA caused millions of Americans to prepay taxes on the promise they wouldn't be taxed on the money again later. Third you had the tech/internet bubble. Fourth you had the "peace dividend". Fifth you had the Republicans taking over congress and cutting in to Clinton's planned increases. Despite all those points, and despite the fact that the conditions for Bush where such that just about any person as president would have had large deficits, I still give Clinton some credit, and say he was better at controlling deficits and spending than Bush. But that's a really low hurdle to jump over (and one that Obama's failing to clear).