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

To: TimF who wrote (45317)	8/26/2010 6:42:28 PM
From: TimF	Respond to of 71588

McMegan in reply to brad1064 The "off budget"-ness of the Iraq/Afghanistan spending is a myth, based on a misunderstanding of what happened. It is true that the administration often did that spending through supplementals rather than asking for it in the baseline budget, but that's not all that unusual. At any rate, all of that spending shows up in the historical figures, which is all we are now working on with the Bush adminsitration; it just didn't show up prospectively when they did their budgets at the beginning of the year. As for what a sustainable budget deficit is, anything below about 3% of GDP can be sustained basically forever because of growth and inflation, which eat away the relative impact of the debt service/repayment. As long as it roughly fluctuates around this--going to say, 4-5% in bad times, 0-2% in good times--it's sustainable. By that metric, Bush's deficits were basically sustainable. Medicare Part D is or is not a problem depending on whether you believe new research showing it's actually saving money in other parts of the system. But it's dwarfed by the larger problems that were prexisting in M/M/SS theatlantic.com

To: TimF who wrote (45317)	8/27/2010 4:44:03 PM
From: DuckTapeSunroof	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 71588

Re: "the deficit was, within the range of sustainability, what anyone would have been running" 'ANYONE'???????????????? That's a bit of a silly assumption, ain't it? I mean the President immediately preceding Bush did not.... Seems silly to say that no matter WHO we elected they would have ALL blow the deficit sky high. I highly doubt that the Iraq War would have happened (deficit financed) under any other leadership, or that Medicare part D (100% deficit-financed) would have either... and I know that Gore did not call for those higher-income tax cuts either. :-)