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Politics : Formerly About Advanced Micro Devices -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: mel221 who wrote (983751)

11/24/2016 3:00:37 PM

From: koan

Read Replies (3) | Respond to of 1579762

More nonsense from you guys. I know that argument well, and I have no desire to get into the weeds with you over it. But I'll give you that for the sake of this argument.

So you explain to me then, why George W. Bush said that the government shouldn't have too much money and used that as an excuse for the massive tax cuts he gave to the rich?

Wouldn't you think that if we owed so much money, that the massive tax cuts to the rich, and he said he was giving them to the rich, was irresponsible?

<<

>> When Bush took over, the government was running huge surpluses

Too bad liberals like you do not believe in or understand basic math. If you did, you would understand the US Federal Government did not have a net surplus during any of the Clinton Budget years.

The net debt did increase less during the late 90s; in part because of the .Net Bubble, excess Fed stimulus by Greenspan because of Y2K fears, and Republican control of the House.

Historical Debt Outstanding

09/30/2002	6,228,235,965,597.16
09/30/2001	5,807,463,412,200.06
09/30/2000	5,674,178,209,886.86

09/30/1999	5,656,270,901,615.43
09/30/1998	5,526,193,008,897.62
09/30/1997	5,413,146,011,397.34
09/30/1996	5,224,810,939,135.73
09/29/1995	4,973,982,900,709.39

treasurydirect.gov

Koan, please back up your claim that the Federal Government was running a real surplus when Bush took over. Show us your data!

To: mel221 who wrote (983751)	11/24/2016 3:27:12 PM
From: koan	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 1579762

The Fix The story behind Obama and the national debt, in 7 charts By Philip Bump January 7, 2015 Since President Obama took office, the national debt has increased by $7.4 trillion. On January 20, 2009, it stood at $10.6 trillion; on Monday, it was at $18 trillion. That bit of data leapt to the front page of The Drudge Report on Tuesday, linking to an assessment from CNS News.com. The increase, the site's Terence Jeffrey writes, "is $65,443 per household, $70,985 per full-time worker and $84,266 per full-time private-sector worker." Grim. We thought those figures deserved some context. These are the data on which the argument hinges. The Department of the Treasury releases daily updates on the amount of debt held by the government. There are two categories: debt held by the public, which is the sort of debt you think of when you think of government debt -- Treasury bills and bonds and notes and so on -- and "intragovernmental holdings," which are securities held by other government accounts. The CNS News article didn't adjust for 2014 dollars, which we've done below. Before 2009, it was relatively flat. Then, it exploded -- almost entirely in the "held by public" part of the debt. But if you zoom in a little closer, say, from January 2008 to January 2010, you see something interesting: the fuse was lit before Obama took office. (Note that this graph is only the "held by the public" part of the debt.) That's because the increase in debt in the early years of the Obama administration was a largely a response to the imploding economy -- just as the big bulge at the end of the George W. Bush administration (2008) was. Debt increases are a function of the government not being able to pay its bills. Too little revenue (taxes) compared to costs (spending), and you have a deficit. Since 2002, this is what quarterly deficits (or, rarely, surpluses) have looked like. The administration likes to brag about its effort to reduce the deficit -- which is fair. After all, you can see in the graph above that deficits have decreased. But the White House uses another metric: the deficit as a function of total economic production, or Gross Domestic Product (GDP). The drop is more noticeable in that comparison (especially when you look at it annually, as we do below). Critics of the administration, though, look at the corollary to the above chart: total debt versus GDP. And that's a much bleaker comparison. Debt has gone from a little over 60 percent of GDP to more than 100 percent -- meaning our debt is now equal to our total economic production. So how significant an indictment of Obama is the increase in debt? We only live in this reality, of course, so we can't tell how more or less aggressive spending under other presidents might have affected the deficit (and therefore the debt) or the economy over the past six years. If you're inclined to not be a fan of Obama, you'll think this is the most compelling point. It shows the net change in the debt in trillions of dollars over the course of the last eight administrations. 5-Minute Fix newsletter Keeping up with politics is easy now. Sign up But if you're more sympathetic to the president, you'll note this one. It shows the percent change to the debt under each president. After all, adding a few trillion dollars onto a debt that's already a few trillion dollars in size is less of a change than if you add a few trillion dollars to almost no debt. Obama's term isn't over, but it is hard to believe he could increase the debt by as large a percentage as Ronald Reagan did. What isn't answered in any of these graphs is the key question: To what extent does this debt matter? The answer to that is a subject of debate among economists. And to the lay person, it too tends to break along partisan lines.