You got to be kidding right?
I am making a "partisan argument"? I just acknowledged that the Obama administration DECREASED the deficit... ! I am about the least partisan person on this board.
You are still basing your position on the idea that I should agree with everything Obama did, because Democrats are OK with deficit spending, when they clearly are not.
Second.. the fact that the government tries to keep the deficit down is certainly a good indication that both democrats AND republican economists think that the debt and deficit being too high IS harmful. And politically unpopular.. whether you want to believe the truth or not.. factors into how the economy runs.
That's why in debate we always try to base our positions on logic and data, and not simply run off a list of supposed authorities that support our position. I am pointing out the sheer lack of data that supports your position, and you come back with a list of authorities.
As far as the argument of Iraq?
Totally different because while we didn't find WMD's in IRAQ..so we didn't remove them
OBAMA DID reduce the deficit.
The argument is exactly the same - an authority took action, therefore that action must be correct.
So while you are arguing that there is no evidence of debt being a problem.... you are forgetting that Obama and others have worked to KEEP it from being a problem.
That's a bit circular, don't you think? "Of course there's no evidence of what I have been saying - because authorities recognize that the deficit is a problem, they have been working to eliminate the problem." But you forget that Moronic Right made the flat-out claim that
the debt is a problem. Present tense. And, as always, without proof.
Of course there is proof. Are you really going to argue that the best time to reduce deficit spending was when we were just getting out of a recession? Hardly. Yet Obama reduced the deficit. Do you really want to argue that that's what he wanted to do because he is a deficit hawk ideologue?
That's not proof of crap. Once again, you are trying to make the case that the action
must have been taken because deficits are harmful, without any consideration that what he did was wrong (for whatever reason, economic or political).
We didn't NEED to expand our debt for our wars in the Middle east, or expansions of medicare to medicare part D..etc. or the Bush tax cuts. (wait.. am I being partisan again????)...
No, you are just being adversarial, instead of considering what I am saying.
and unfortunately because we did so.. when we needed to expand our deficit spending.. we were constrained because of that previous debt load.
Show me some proof that we were constrained because of the previous debt load. Don't waste too much time trying, because you won't be able to. The best you can come up with is your "the authorities always do the correct thing" argument. (Which doesn't even come close to flying.)
Of course there was question of our ability to do so. Heck.. we had fights about it.. we even had our credit downgraded... there was even talk about whether the dollar should be the default currency for the world. the only reason you think my position is baseless is because you don't want to see reality.
I think your position is baseless because your position
is baseless. If it wasn't, you'd be able to come up with some proof, some data that shows that the Fed was, at some point in time, unable to come up with more dollars because our debt load was too high.
The fact that our credit was downgraded means nothing - but again, I don't expect you to look into that question any further than to point to the supposed authority (Moody's) and conclude that they must be correct. Were the ratings agencies correct when they rated MBSs full of subprime loans "AAA"? They must have been - they
are ratings agencies, after all. :doh And if you ever did look into it in any depth, you would find that the agencies walked back their downgrade, and blaming it on the possibility of political stalemate over the debt ceiling, NOT over the country's ability to create more money and meet its obligations. When pressed, they agreed (with me) that there is no operational limit to money creation.
And what happened to bond sales after the downgrade? Nothing. Yields stayed down, demand for bonds stayed high. If you want to stick with an appeal to authority that makes sense, why not conclude that bond traders knew that U.S. bonds were AAA-safe, regardless of what Moody's claimed?
