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[mainiac]

Nancy's greatness wasn't just measured in the number of bills passed.  It was often in the quality of the bills.  She would get bills passed that were only slightly to the left of the senate debate, but would be much better as effective legislation, less pork, more muscle.  I really hope that she becomes Speaker again soon because she did a fantastic job.

You know this full well, Nikov. This is why I don't like you -- you reek of intellectual dishonesty. I hate that more than I hate an uninformed ideologue. At least they're just too dumb to know they're full of shit. You KNOW you're full of shit but try to pass it off anyways.

+1

[Impending Doom]

Democrats had control of the purse strings for years and years, and every time the debt limit came up they asked for a bigger line of credit without any attempt to slow down their spending. So if you're concerned the party that had control of congress, and so the budget, for the last four years or so might be blamed for a financial crisis occuring you should have raised that consideration back in 2007 when your party took legislative power. You are now reaping what you've sown..

You're seeing exactly what you want

When a Republican president is in office, debt goes up. When a Democratic president is in, it goes down (with the exception of the current president).

However: when the Democrats control congress, debt goes up. When Republicans do, it either goes down ('97-'02) or remains constant ('05-'06). It also either goes up or stays the same when control is split.

These seem to contradict each other. Could you explain this?

[mainiac]

Democrats had control of the purse strings for years and years, and every time the debt limit came up they asked for a bigger line of credit without any attempt to slow down their spending. So if you're concerned the party that had control of congress, and so the budget, for the last four years or so might be blamed for a financial crisis occuring you should have raised that consideration back in 2007 when your party took legislative power. You are now reaping what you've sown..

You're seeing exactly what you want

Let me see if I can understand this chart:

When a Republican president is in office, debt goes up. When a Democratic president is in, it goes down (with the exception of the current president).

However: when the Democrats control congress, debt goes up. When Republicans do, it either goes down ('97-'02) or remains constant ('05-'06). It also either goes up or stays the same when control is split.

These seem to contradict each other. Could you explain this?

1) Selective choice of eras.  Try going back to the 50's and the 60's when new deal democrats were running the show.  That was the era of responsibly borrowing during recessions and wars and gradually paying off the debts during the good years.  It ended in the 70s, not so coincidentally when the modern conservative movement came to power.
2) More importantly, look at the effects of the individual policies being advanced.  Democrats haven't supported any major endeavors with the exception of our not-a-"conflict" in Libya and the healthcare bill.  Both of these are tiny compared to recent republican boondoggles like iraq, medicare part D and the bush tax cuts and the healthcare bill was full of every cost control mechanism that the wonks could think of (except the public option).
3) Look at where the surplus came from.  The republican congress in 1994 didn't do jack shit to make a surplus.  That surplus came because the democrats jacked up taxes in 1993.  They got voted out of power for their troubles.  But Clinton stuck to his guns and kept those taxes and it's that tax hike that made our precious surplus.  An economic recovery helped of course, but the tax cuts did the heavy lifting.

[Nikov]

Contrary to popular notions, budgets are passed by Congress, not the President. The President can merely propose a budget and sign it after Congress gnaws on it for a while. So while a lot of people want to say Clinton paid down the debt and Bush jacked it back up again, the truth of the matter is Clinton was merely President while Republicans laid out the budget, and Bush has the 2000 downturn and two wars to pay for. Even so, the debt when Republicans lost Congress to the Democrats was still at 1997 levels. Obama and the Democratic congresses proceeded to return to the 81-94 trajectory. It is almost sad to see any previous fiscal condition be better than the current one, yet everyone (in this thread, at least) blames today's 100% of GDP debt on Bush's 65% exit point.

[Impending Doom]

Contrary to popular notions, budgets are passed by Congress, not the President. The President can merely propose a budget and sign it after Congress gnaws on it for a while. So while a lot of people want to say Clinton paid down the debt and Bush jacked it back up again, the truth of the matter is Clinton was merely President while Republicans laid out the budget, and Bush has the 2000 downturn and two wars to pay for. Even so, the debt when Republicans lost Congress to the Democrats was still at 1997 levels. Obama and the Democratic congresses proceeded to return to the 81-94 trajectory. It is almost sad to see any previous fiscal condition be better than the current one, yet everyone (in this thread, at least) blames today's 100% of GDP debt on Bush's 65% exit point.

But the president has the power to veto bills passed by congress, and from what I understand, it takes a substantial amount of time and effort to pass them without his approval. Wouldn't a Republican president just veto budget proposals that passed through a Democratic congress, and vice versa?

[mainiac]

Contrary to popular notions, budgets are passed by Congress, not the President. The President can merely propose a budget and sign it after Congress gnaws on it for a while. So while a lot of people want to say Clinton paid down the debt and Bush jacked it back up again, the truth of the matter is Clinton was merely President while Republicans laid out the budget, and Bush has the 2000 downturn and two wars to pay for. Even so, the debt when Republicans lost Congress to the Democrats was still at 1997 levels. Obama and the Democratic congresses proceeded to return to the 81-94 trajectory. It is almost sad to see any previous fiscal condition be better than the current one, yet everyone (in this thread, at least) blames today's 100% of GDP debt on Bush's 65% exit point.

Once again, just ignore the actual substance of the policies and you can believe whatever you want.  But hey, that's what conservative "intellectuals" do best.

[nenjin]

The Clinton years showed the effects of a large tax increase that Clinton pushed through in his first year, and that Republicans incorrectly claim is the "largest tax increase in history." It fell almost exclusively on upper-income taxpayers. Clinton’s fiscal 1994 budget also contained some spending restraints. An equally if not more powerful influence was the booming economy and huge gains in the stock markets, the so-called dot-com bubble, which brought in hundreds of millions in unanticipated tax revenue from taxes on capital gains and rising salaries.

Clinton’s large budget surpluses also owe much to the Social Security tax on payrolls. Social Security taxes now bring in more than the cost of current benefits, and the "Social Security surplus" makes the total deficit or surplus figures look better than they would if Social Security wasn’t counted. But even if we remove Social Security from the equation, there was a surplus of $1.9 billion in fiscal 1999 and $86.4 billion in fiscal 2000. So any way you count it, the federal budget was balanced and the deficit was erased, if only for a while.

http://www.factcheck.org/2008/02/the-budget-and-deficit-under-clinton/

It was an appropriate tax policy that was a significant contributor to a balanced budget. A tax policy Republicans hated and demonized all throughout his presidency. Except for, in Nikov's world, the day or two in which they were the ones that thought it up and have just had the limelight stolen from them.

[Nikov]

Or in your world, where Obama inherited Bush's debt and can't be held accountable for anything bad that happens, ever. Did that chart not show a very remarkable increase in national debt after 2006 under a Democratic congress only accellerate under a Democratic president? Is that, as we have been arguing this whole time, not your responsibility?

[Vector]

Who gives a fuck whose responsibility it was anymore?

We need to fix it, not spend all this time grumbling about who did it.  We inherited it.  Time to get the show on the road.

[Nikov]

Well you've been driving for four and a half years, 'inherited' it two and a half years ago, and have pretty much been slamming the gas toward a cliff at 100% of GDP the whole time. So kindly find your brake pedal and lets ease back to 65% of GDP where we were when you took the wheel from us, and maybe we can make a U-turn without flipping sideways in a few decades.

[Vector]

Me?

No.  I'm not a democrat.  I was referring to the fact that "we," meaning our generation, had inherited a problem.  I do not care who caused the problem.  All I know is that we've got an enormous problem and I feel like we're driving off a cliff.

At this point, I say raise taxes, lower spending, and fix the fucking holes that the corporations are driving their gold-covered cars through.  Do something about the outsourcing of jobs.  Or whatever.  I don't personally know what to do at this point, but this entire situation is driving me nuts.

[Nadaka]

Me?

No.  I'm not a democrat.  I was referring to the fact that "we," meaning our generation, had inherited a problem.  I do not care who caused the problem.  All I know is that we've got an enormous problem and I feel like we're driving off a cliff.

At this point, I say raise taxes, lower spending, and fix the fucking holes that the corporations are driving their gold-covered cars through.  Do something about the outsourcing of jobs.  Or whatever.  I don't personally know what to do at this point, but this entire situation is driving me nuts.

You do know how to fix it. That is exactly what I am talking about.

[Nikov]

Okay. Lets raise taxes, fix corporate loopholes, and then... do something about jobs being outsourced. Well, since we can't lower taxes to encourage business to stay here in spite of our expensive labor, payroll taxes and regulations we'll need to get creative. Maybe the old Roman trick of declaring all sons have to take up their father's profession will work the second time around?

Nakada, although you said you wanted to end class warfare you just furthered it. Bravo.

[Duuvian]

Sounds like a deal Nikov. So how about we start from scratch after the near debt meltdown. Everything Obama did for the past few years was due to political pressure, and I assume GWB had the same problems. Now it's up to us in the present to fix those problems and any others that are thrown in the way.

EDIT: If expensive labor is the problem, which it may be in some cases, then why not try to find ways to either increase productivity (which is not always good for a market) or ways to elegantly affect markets that would cause market growth.

[Vector]

At this point, it's not even about the taxes being raised.  If we fixed the loopholes and lowered taxes, I would still feel better than I do right now, because I don't feel like we have any control over the country.  The laws are open enough that folks can just skate through them.  I said I don't know what needs to be done because I really don't understand the economy.

I just hate feel like I'm being tricked.  And right now, it feels like the entire time that I've been growing up everyone and their pet mongoose has been pulling a fast one.