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Who's going to take the blame for the fiscal clif

Who's to blame for going of the the fiscal cliff?

  • Democrats

    Votes: 8 12.7%
  • Republicans

    Votes: 32 50.8%
  • Other (please elaborate)

    Votes: 23 36.5%

  • Total voters
    63
The retirement age DOES have to go up because of the baby boomer generation. There are SO many retiring and NOT enough younger people working. The baby boomer generation is going to eat up SS, and it will probably be gone by the time I retire, if I ever get to.

Don't blame us, if you vote for politicians who are irresponsible, you get what you get.
 
Well it seem all but certain that we'll run over the fiscal cliff. Meaning the Government will be shut down and Bush tax cuts will expire for everyone.

Obama and the Dems want Bush tax cuts to expire for the 250k+ brackets (starting at around 3% increase for 250k up to 4.5% for 388k) and raise Capital gains tax from 15 to 20%. This by itself will cut deficit spending by over 10%.

Boehner wants only people making 1 mill + to have Bush tax cuts expire. As I have stated in a previous post (early in the general elections) that this sounds nice but simply will not raise significant revenue. Boehner's proposal, by the way, is shunned by help the wealthy Republicans.

Republicans want either

1.No tax changes

or

2.Secretly want to raise taxes for all Americans and for political reasons can't say that. Going over the fiscal cliff would do that by default. On the bright side, in the short run deficit will decrease by around 20%. On the down side, a weaker middle class would almost certainly mean a slower economy. Much more so than tax hikes only on the wealthy.


Who do you think will get the most blame when the Government fails to pass a budget plan for the future in time?

Interesting. You pose the question, then go on to basically blame Republicans.

However, my answer is simple: NOBODY will take responsibility for the 'fiscal cliff' and it will be the American citizens - taxpayers - in our entirety that will PAY THE PRICE for our collective governments irresponsibility in managing funds.
 
It hasn't yet.
Hard to see how it ever will, since Social Security does not have an authority to spend beyond the level of resources directly available to it.

and that article only describes the problem with an OPTIONAL flat tax
Flat taxes are merely further schemes to remove tax burden from the wealthy and dump it on the middle and lower classes. The rest is just window-dressing. If you are aware of ANY viable flat tax plan, please provide some reference to it.
 
You are obviously not very well informed
Nixon created th EPA and Reagan signed the Emergency Medical Treatment and Active Labor Act that forbid hospiutals from denying treatment of the sick and injured
And lastly it was Reagan who first proposed NAFTA and HW Bush signed the treaty himself.

I stand corrected.

However, a President alone does not pass a law or even a treaty. Check the record of who had majorities in congress at the times. Your corrections only add a share of the blame, it doesn't let the Dems entirely off the hook. Since I had already laid some of the blame on Reps, this just adds to their list and their share.

It does not however, in any way, change my argument/stance that both parties had a role in it, not just one. Thank you for the factual corrections and helping to strengthen/clarify my stance.
 
Can you actually point to and logically link any legislation passed by only by republicans that actually contributed to or caused the economic downturn, or for that matter, the majority of the debt?
Get a grip. There was support across the board and around the world for reprisal against Afghanistan after 9/11. It was a unique moment of national and international solidarity. Also an opportunity that Bush of course promptly bobbled. Having won decisively in Afghanistan, Bush of course gave the victory right back to the Taliban by rushing off to Iraq for no reason at all. There was active opposition to that. The largest protests in world history were in fact launched against that dreaful and misbegotten idea. But The Decider decided to push ahead anyway, knowing full well that the arguments of his critics and detractors were correct.

The Tax Cuts for the Rich were meanwhile the economic centerpiece of Bush's domestic policies. They were also a dismal failure, leading the Fed to rush in as backstop in 2002, promising to keep interest rates at 1% or below until economic activity eventually picked up. These of course were important early steps toward the credit crisis and the resulting Great Bush Recession. The tax cuts were passed under reconciliation in June 2001. They passed the House by a margin of 240-154, with all 211 Republicans who voted being in favor. They passed the Senate by a margin of 58-33 with all Republicans voting except McCain and Chaffee being in favor.

You might say the wars, but then, a Dem controlled House voted for them.
The House was under Republican control from 1995 to 2007. This claim lacks any element of either factitude or truthiness.

Also, The debt rose less than 5 Trillion during the 8 years of President G.W. Bush.
That's not such a wondrous accomplishment since it was only $5.7 trillion when he started.

It has risen almost 7 Trillion under Obama.
The deficits and debt from FY 2009 forward were created by the Great Bush Recession, not by Obama.

Obama cannot even use the excuse of the Wars, we all but pulled out of Iraq around two years ago.
We are out of Iraq because of a plan then-Senator Obama put forward to Prime Minister Maliki in the summer of 2008, and because then-and-still-President Obama implemented the planned withdrawal flawlessly beginning in early 2009, thus ending perhaps the most disgraceful chapter of baseless foreign adventurism in US history.

Was it Reps who introduced and have continued to support Welfare? NO.
The current structure of our welfare system was set up under the Welfare and Medicaid Reform Act of 1996. House Republicans voted for it by a margin of 230-2. Senate Republicans voted for it by a margin of 53-0.

Was it Reps who introduced the Fair Housing act and amendments to it? NO. Was it Reps who supported Low income housing goals and allowed Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac to use sub-prime mortgages to meet those goals? No.
You're against Fair Housing? And Bush and the Republicans most certainly did boost low-income housing goals while removing 12-to-1 leverage limits for the Big Five Wall Street investment banks, the people who were busy lining their own pockets by creating the credit crisis. Though he failed in his first few attempts, Bush finally did succeed in driving down the market share of Fannie and Freddie as mortgage securitizers.

gse_market_share.jpg

That red line is simply the Great Bush Recession happening.
 
Was it Reps who passed credit laws that allowed the existence and expansion of Derivatives so that "fair" housing goals could be met? Yes, they did have something to do with that one.
I'll say! And who was it that exempted OTC derivatives from direct regulation under the Commodities Exchange Act to begin with? And who beat back the 1998 attempt to bring them back under CFTC oversight? Hint: It was Republicans in both cases.

Was it Reps who created the EPA and who support it today? No.
The EPA was created under Nixon. He opposed it, but once Congress passed it, he took its mission as something he was obligated to support.

Was it the Reps who supported Unions? NO.
Quite so. Republicans believe that it is the God-given right of thousands of stockholders to be represented at the bargaining table by a handful of selected experts, but that if workers do the same thing, it is the work of Satan.

Was it Reps who changed medical law not only allowing the uninsured to use private hospitals but forced private medical facilities to accept non-paying patients? No.
"Acceptance" in this case means determining whether an indigent patient is suffering from a life-threatening emergency medical condition. If so, the hospital must stabilize the patient before transferring him or her elsewhere.

Was it Reps who negotiated and had control of the Senate when NAFTA and South Korean Free trade treaties were put in place and ratified? No. Although, I think a fair number of them did still support them.
NAFTA negotiated 1986-1992. Signed by Bush-41 in December 1992. Passed in the House in November 1993, 234-200, with 132 Repuiblicans voting in favor. Passed in the Senate in December 1993, 61-38, with 34 Republicans voting in favor.

US-Korea Free Trade Agreement negotiated 2006-2007. Signed by Bush-43 in June 2007. Some provisions renegotiated 2011. Passed the House in Ocober 2011, 278-151, with 219 Republicans voting in favor. Passed the Senate in October 2011, 83-15, with 45 of 46 Republicans voting in favor.

You have made the assertion that our current "mess" was entirely caused by Reps, now support that stance.
In present-day usage, the term "current mess" typcially refers to the Great Biush Recession and its difficult aftermath. Despite the phony memes manufactured by the right-wing disinformation media, the genesis of that calamity was all Republicans all the time.

Speaking of assertions, you have made a great many here that ranged from entirely false to utterly baseless. On what grounds do you purport to question the claims of others?
 
The last budget deficit under Bush and with Rep control of Congress was around $162 Billion, the next year, the year Dems took control of Congress, it jumped to over $400 Billion.
More bunk. The last budget that Bush oversaw with a Republican Congress was that for FY 2006. The deficit was $248.2 billion. Knowing that they were going to be pasted at the polls in November 2006, Congressional Republicans passed only the DOD and DHS approrpriations bills for FY 2007 and dumped the rest as calendar-cloggers onto the new Democratic Congress. It was they who then did the work to trim the deficit to $160.7 billion.
 
More bunk. The last budget that Bush oversaw with a Republican Congress was that for FY 2006. The deficit was $248.2 billion. Knowing that they were going to be pasted at the polls in November 2006, Congressional Republicans passed only the DOD and DHS approrpriations bills for FY 2007 and dumped the rest as calendar-cloggers onto the new Democratic Congress. It was they who then did the work to trim the deficit to $160.7 billion.

Budget for fiscal year 2007 was approved by congress and signed by G.W. Bush, Feb 6, 2006. FDsys - Browse BUDGET
 
Of course its both. Remember...this was all set in motion when the 'super-committee' failed to come up with an greed upon set of budget cuts.
No, this was all set in motion by the idiotic hostage-release agreement that was negotiated in the waning hours before US borrowing authority expired in the summer of 2011. That's where the idiotic notion of a "Select Committee" came from, along with the also idiotic follow-ons that were to occur if the Select Committee failed to do what it was told to do, which of course it did not even come close to doing. These draconian consequences were supposed to act as an incentive to the Committee and then to Congress in taking the necessary actions. Tell that to Grover Norquist. The Republicans simply don't care. They weren't voting for any sort of tax increases then (resulting in the S&P debt downgrade) and they aren't now either, even when their own leaders propose them.

Congress cant pass a basic operating budget...
Congress never does that. The President submits an annual budget. Using that as a blueprint, Congress passes a set of twelve authorization and appropriations bills. Perhaps you are thinking of a CR (continuing resolution) which is not a budget but which provides emergency funding to the government under the terms of the most recently enacted appropriations. Or perhaps it is omnibus spending bills that have thrown you off. Omnibus bills are a budget-equivalent in that they take many or all of the regular appropriations bills and roll them up into one big piece of legislation. The Omnibus Appropriations Act of 2009 would have been an example. It carried the actual FY 2009 appropriations for everyone but DOD, DHS, and DVA in one single package.

...and what spending legislation they DO manage to pass always heaps on more debt and deficit spending.
A pretty obvious outcome when real federal receipts are still less than 90% of what they were five years ago. More to the point, you need to give up on the notion of ever seeing a balanced budget again in your lifetime. It simply isn't going to happen.
 
No, this was all set in motion by the idiotic hostage-release agreement that was negotiated in the waning hours before US borrowing authority expired in the summer of 2011. That's where the idiotic notion of a "Select Committee" came from, along with the also idiotic follow-ons that were to occur if the Select Committee failed to do what it was told to do, which of course it did not even come close to doing. These draconian consequences were supposed to act as an incentive to the Committee and then to Congress in taking the necessary actions. Tell that to Grover Norquist. The Republicans simply don't care. They weren't voting for any sort of tax increases then (resulting in the S&P debt downgrade) and they aren't now either, even when their own leaders propose them.


Congress never does that. The President submits an annual budget. Using that as a blueprint, Congress passes a set of twelve authorization and appropriations bills. Perhaps you are thinking of a CR (continuing resolution) which is not a budget but which provides emergency funding to the government under the terms of the most recently enacted appropriations. Or perhaps it is omnibus spending bills that have thrown you off. Omnibus bills are a budget-equivalent in that they take many or all of the regular appropriations bills and roll them up into one big piece of legislation. The Omnibus Appropriations Act of 2009 would have been an example. It carried the actual FY 2009 appropriations for everyone but DOD, DHS, and DVA in one single package.


A pretty obvious outcome when real federal receipts are still less than 90% of what they were five years ago. More to the point, you need to give up on the notion of ever seeing a balanced budget again in your lifetime. It simply isn't going to happen.
:lamo
The dems have held the senate and white house for 4 years...they held the house and senate for 6 years. The senate cant so much as come to the table let alone pass a budget. And to you its all the republicans fault. You are such a mindless partisan ****. :lamo
 
Well it seem all but certain that we'll run over the fiscal cliff. Meaning the Government will be shut down and Bush tax cuts will expire for everyone.

Obama and the Dems want Bush tax cuts to expire for the 250k+ brackets (starting at around 3% increase for 250k up to 4.5% for 388k) and raise Capital gains tax from 15 to 20%. This by itself will cut deficit spending by over 10%.

Boehner wants only people making 1 mill + to have Bush tax cuts expire. As I have stated in a previous post (early in the general elections) that this sounds nice but simply will not raise significant revenue. Boehner's proposal, by the way, is shunned by help the wealthy Republicans.

Republicans want either

1.No tax changes

or

2.Secretly want to raise taxes for all Americans and for political reasons can't say that. Going over the fiscal cliff would do that by default. On the bright side, in the short run deficit will decrease by around 20%. On the down side, a weaker middle class would almost certainly mean a slower economy. Much more so than tax hikes only on the wealthy.


Who do you think will get the most blame when the Government fails to pass a budget plan for the future in time?

Just like they did last time, republicans will get the blame.
 
Get a grip. There was support across the board and around the world for reprisal against Afghanistan after 9/11. It was a unique moment of national and international solidarity. Also an opportunity that Bush of course promptly bobbled. Having won decisively in Afghanistan, Bush of course gave the victory right back to the Taliban by rushing off to Iraq for no reason at all. There was active opposition to that. The largest protests in world history were in fact launched against that dreaful and misbegotten idea. But The Decider decided to push ahead anyway, knowing full well that the arguments of his critics and detractors were correct.

The Tax Cuts for the Rich were meanwhile the economic centerpiece of Bush's domestic policies. They were also a dismal failure, leading the Fed to rush in as backstop in 2002, promising to keep interest rates at 1% or below until economic activity eventually picked up. These of course were important early steps toward the credit crisis and the resulting Great Bush Recession. The tax cuts were passed under reconciliation in June 2001. They passed the House by a margin of 240-154, with all 211 Republicans who voted being in favor. They passed the Senate by a margin of 58-33 with all Republicans voting except McCain and Chaffee being in favor.

The tax cuts were only for the Rich? Also, the Cuts were put in place before we were attacked. Who knows what would of happened if we hadn't.


The House was under Republican control from 1995 to 2007. This claim lacks any element of either factitude or truthiness.

You are correct, I made a mistake, it was the Senate that the Dems controlled in 2001-2002.

That's not such a wondrous accomplishment since it was only $5.7 trillion when he started.

The country was attacked by an enemy which Clinton refused to deal with. The military was in dismal shape. During Clinton, the military had been drastically cut of Personnel, however, number of squadrons, divisions and other "fighting" units were barely touched, forcing greater utilization rates of remaining personnel. In 2000, the DoD was funded at a staggering $260.8, with just the maintenance cost for the Air Force alone rose to over $100 Billion in the mid 90's.

So no kidding he had to spend a lot to even get existing equipment back working.

The deficits and debt from FY 2009 forward were created by the Great Bush Recession, not by Obama.

Prove that it is "Bush's Great Recession". The Nature and the Origin of the Subprime Mortgage Crisis Clearly the problem started long before Bush took office. Problems were identified and prediction of bailouts being needed in the future were made in 1999, before Bush even ran for office.

You can hold that line as long as you wish. But since taking office, yes, approximately $1 Billion went to a stimulus program. Where did the rest go? And even the stimulus had unreasonable political ties in it so some states necessarily rejected it. Some went to the wars, but nowhere near the remaining sum.

By all means, lets see you tie all nearly $7 Trillion in spending to Bush era programs or problems created solely under the Bush administration.

You're against Fair Housing? And Bush and the Republicans most certainly did boost low-income housing goals while removing 12-to-1 leverage limits for the Big Five Wall Street investment banks, the people who were busy lining their own pockets by creating the credit crisis. Though he failed in his first few attempts, Bush finally did succeed in driving down the market share of Fannie and Freddie as mortgage securitizers.

That depends on how you want to define "fair". If they couldn't buy it under previous rules, then the rules should of never been changed. Want a house? Earn it. Don't earn enough, then make yourself more valuable, otherwise STFU.

I also never said Bush/Republicans didn't help it along and they certainly didn't stop it. But, they were not the originators of the crises.
 
History tells us that increases in taxes simply corresponds with increases in spending, and there's no reason to believe that won't be the case here.
It's not history, but old wives' tales that tell you that. LBJ's 10% tax surcharge in 1968 was concurrent with an outright decline in real spending. Clinton's tax increase in 1993 was also associated with an outright decline, and Bush's in 1990 was at least associated with a decline in the rate of growth of real spending. In fact, the only real culprit on this front since WWII has been Ronald Reagan with his 1982-87 tax increases, all but the last of which were associated with increases in spending.

As pointed out by the OP, increasing the taxes on those over $250k will fail to deal with 90% of our deficit spending.
So what? Are you saying that if you had run out of gas by the side of the road and a stranger with a gas can pulled over and offered to help, you would send him on hios way because his crummy two-gallon gas can wouldn't be enough for a fill-up? It isn't written anywhere that a step in the right direction needs to get you all the way to your destination in order to be worthwhile. In fact, ending the tax cuts for those over $250K offers the highest ratio of fiscal benefit to economic cost of any option on the table. If you can't accept that one, you'll really have trouble justifying any of the others.

We may arguably have a revenue problem, but that problem is miniscule next to our psending problem.
We don't have a spending problem. Spending -- even with all the emergency responses to the Great Bush Recession -- is in line with historical standards. What we have here is all but exclusively a revenue problem.

However, this isn't ABOUT solving problems...it's about playing politics, and hte Democrats see a political advantage here so they're pushing it not because it's what's "best for the country" but because they believe it's what's best for Democratic electoral efforts. Unfortunatley, what ACTUALLY needs to happen isn't good for either sides electoral efforts, which is whyu it won't get done and we will continue to have this BS
The election was in November. There isn't one in January. Meanwhile, everyone spins everything while on camera because they want to influence public opinion in their favor and they know that majorities get all their information -- good or bad -- from the boob tube. Politicians get handed the message and are told to stay on it. This is all just Sound Bite Creationism 101. Don't pay so much attention to it.
 
Budget for fiscal year 2007 was approved by congress and signed by G.W. Bush, Feb 6, 2006.
Come on. That's the date the FY 2007 Budget was first SUBMITTED to Congress. Nobody on The Hill had seen a single page of it prior to that.
 
The dems have held the senate and white house for 4 years...they held the house and senate for 6 years.
Democrats have now held the Senate for at least 8 years (2007-2015) and the White House for at least 8 years (2009-2017). They controlled the House between 2007 and 2011, which is 4 years. So you got all of them wrong.

The senate cant so much as come to the table let alone pass a budget.
Budgets aren't passed or even voted on in Congress -- appropriations bills are.

And to you its all the republicans fault. You are such a mindless partisan ****.
The fiscal cliff was authored by "Or Else" TEA Party types as part of a weak-kneed agreement to end the debt limit hostage-taking crisis in July 2011. Just facts. It was all supposed to be so scary that either the Select Committee or Congress would be driven to act. No one thought the cliff could actually come into play. Yet another hapless miscalculation by the right-wing.
 
I don't know who will be blamed. I assume that depends on which side's propaganda a person buys into.

I DO know who's gonna get ****ed in the ass. Pass the vaseline, please.
 
Receipts minus outlays equals surplus. Since the revisions of 1983, SS has built up more than $2.7 trillion worth of those.
When we didn't have a recipient to worker ratio of less than 3. https://www.socialsecurity.gov/oact/tr/2011/lr4b2.html
R
Gee, that's exactly the situation the boomers (then aged 19-37) faced back in 1983. They resolved it by raising taxes on themselves. Can anybody here take a hint?

As for your 2034 number, it's bunk. First of all, the offcial number is 2035, and second of all, it is based on severey pessimistic assumptions. It has only been during the "bad years" of the Great Bush Recession that the projections of the SS trustees have been even close to realistic. Consider that in 1997, they projected the SSTF would be exhausted in 2029. In 2007, they projected it would be exhausted in 2042. So ten years went by (about evenly divided between strong years under Clinton and weaker ones under Bush), but not only did exhaustion fail to get ten years closer, it got three years further away, 35 years to 32. That's a good measure of how distorted the SS trustees reports are. To be sure, all projections are and should be done to the pessimistic side, but SS (and Medicare) have taken things to unjustified extremes.
1. Why should I have to pay higher taxes into the system to get the same benefits that the last generation got?

2. Because we had an economic boom=more money into the system. But until our economy starts picking up again, it is merely wishful thinking to just assume that we will return to 4% growth rates and everything will be fine and dandy.

R
Drop the "ticking timebomb" nonsense if you want serious people to take you seriously. All of Medicare's problems arise within the hopelessly inefficient, for-profit, fee-for-service health care system that it is plugged into. PPACA made a long overdue start at redefining our health care financing systems, but while it extended the Part-A actuarial projections by about a decade, there is a lot of work left to be done.
I agree. Except for the insurance mandate.

R
As for allegations of a looming public sector pension crisis, the whole idea is a corporate, hard-right invention aimed at the trained seals. The argument here is basically that since lack of union protections among other things allowed corporations to plunder and then destroy private sector pension systems, public sector systems now seem attractive by comparison, so to be fair, we'd really better destroy those as well.
I'd like to see some evidence?
After all, excessive pension obligations did actually contribute to the auto bailouts and GM going bankrupt.
R
From your experience in economics thus far, do you consider dead-wieght loss to be a micro effect or a macro effect? How about national tax and revenue sysems?
Both? Correct me if I'm wrong, but "macro" economics is just the total aggregate of the "micro."

You will change your mind.
Do elaborate.
 
Other is the vote.
The GOP is split by moderates and extreme tea baggers..Its the extremists who are the problem..
We do need people to watch these politicians very closely.
Of course, every Republican who is a Norquist(sp) lackey and refuses to listen to reason re : taxes, should be voted out of office...
 
Don't blame us, if you vote for politicians who are irresponsible, you get what you get.

I'm not "blaming" anyone. That is just the way it is. :shrug:
 
You changed the question. The subject of the thread says who is going to take the blame. The answer is obvious, nobody is going to take the blame, they're going to point fingers at the other party. Then you change the question when you get to the actual poll.
 
The tax cuts were only for the Rich?
No, they were merely called that because -- like almost everything Bush ever did -- they were so heavily tilted toward benefitting the already wealthy.

Also, the Cuts were put in place before we were attacked. Who knows what would of happened if we hadn't.
More to the point (and almost anything would be), they were passed before the road to the credit crisis had become clear. But when they failed (as predicted) and the Fed had to jump in to freeze interet rates at 1% in a last-ditch effort to stimulate economic activity, that path became a whole lot clearer.

You are correct, I made a mistake, it was the Senate that the Dems controlled in 2001-2002.
The Senate was 50-50 in 2001, but because Cheney would cast the tie-breaking vote, Republicans were in control. In June 2001 however, Jim Jeffords -- a lifelong Republican fed up with his party's refusal to fund education for the disabled -- left the Republican Party and became an Independent caucusing with the Democrats. That gave them control of the calendar and committee chairs for 18 months.

The country was attacked by an enemy which Clinton refused to deal with.
That's quite irrelevant and also a hoot. Clinton is the guy who was always off on one of those wag-the-dog wild goose chases of his, going after some guy bin Laden when any Republican could have told you that the REAL issue was Monica Lewinsky. Bush on the other hand was the guy who decided that the attack on the USS Cole was a "stale" issue by five months later, so they weren't going to do anything about it. In fact, having been told by outgoing Clinton staff that terrorism would be the number one problem on their watch, the Bush administration completely ignored the matter until they were blind-sided on 9/11.

The military was in dismal shape. During Clinton, the military had been drastically cut of Personnel, however, number of squadrons, divisions and other "fighting" units were barely touched, forcing greater utilization rates of remaining personnel. In 2000, the DoD was funded at a staggering $260.8, with just the maintenance cost for the Air Force alone rose to over $100 Billion in the mid 90's.
All of this is rubbish, and again, what on earth does any of it have to do with the fact that "only" increasing the debt by $5 trillion doesn't quite sound so hot when it was "only" $5.7 trillion to begin with.

Meanwhile, military and intelligence downsizing had kicked in under Bush-41 concurrent with the fall of the Soviet Union. That's just a matter of historical record. Total obligational authority for DOD was repeatedly cut over Bush's four years, including by 9.8% in 1992 and 8.1% in 1993. Meanwhile, force levels declined by nearly 20% -- from 2,202K to 1,776K.

And of course Bush-43 would fight his lovely wars in Afghanistan and Iraq using only and exactly the military that Clinton had left to him. You know what they say...

A commander-in-chief leads the military built by those who came before him. There is little that he or his defense secretary can do to improve the force they have to deploy. It is all the work of previous administrations.
-- Dick Cheney

Fortunately, that Clinton hand-me-down military was one that even in the face of declining budgets had moved forward into advanced command and control systems, precision weapons, expanded use of robotics, and communications protocols with real-time links between remote intelligence posts and boots on the ground. JDAMs and drones were Clinton products as well. Every time you hear about what a Predator or Global Hawk did, you should think of Clinton. The overwhelming speed and efficiency of military operations under Bush were owing to the quality and capacity that Bill Clinton had put together for him. Clinton also took care to boost military pay, retirement, and health care benefits -- all of which right-wingers naturally hate him for.

Your blogger source is an illiterate hack who makes almost as many mistakes as you do. Did you check his publications? Almost all are in the Southern Economic Journal. I'd never heard of it, so I looked up its rankings. A well regarded, peer-reviewed journal might have an influence index approaching 100. A few are over 200. The index for the SEJ is 3. That's abysmal. It's vanity journal level. There is meanwhile nothing at all wrong with subprime lending. There is however something wrong with abuse of subprime credit markets. And it was the abuse of subprime and other markets that led to the bad paper that led to the credit crisis that led to the Great Bush Recession. Rather than putting a stop to any of it, Bush egged the abusers on, calling for more and more lending and lifting leverage limits to allow it. Cowboy capitalists enabled and encouraged by the awful fiscal, monetary, and laissez-faire regulatory policies of the Bungler in Chief are what put us into the biggest black hole in 75 years.

Clearly the problem started long before Bush took office. Problems were identified and prediction of bailouts being needed in the future were made in 1999, before Bush even ran for office.
Well yes, the back story includes the Asian and Russian financial crises of the late 1990's that wiped out a significant number of the finance companies, That plus Bush's antagonism toward CRA helped create a credit vacuum in low- and moderate-income communities that unscrupulous private brokers could then easily push into, abusive practices and all;.

You can hold that line as long as you wish. But since taking office, yes, approximately $1 Billion went to a stimulus program. Where did the rest go?
The rest of what? Can you explain what it is you are trying to add up?

And even the stimulus had unreasonable political ties in it so some states necessarily rejected it.
Yet more unfounded slop. Led by right-wing rising star Gov. Mark Sanford of South Carolina (remember him proudly, right-wingers), a handful of whackjob southern governors walked away from free money for those struggling in their states to make an entirely partisan point. They put their own political needs ahead of the financial needs of people in their states. "Slime" is a good word for those folks.

That depends on how you want to define "fair". If they couldn't buy it under previous rules, then the rules should of never been changed. Want a house? Earn it. Don't earn enough, then make yourself more valuable, otherwise STFU.
We had people being denied credit when they had more assets in the bank they were seeking to borrow from than the amount they were seeking to borrow. Their applications were denied simply because of their street address while similarly situated borrowers in other parts of town were being routinely approved for loans. Does that meet your definition of "fair," or would you oppose practices such as that?

On the other side of the coin, there has never been any law, policy, rule, or court order requiring anyone to lend anything to anyone who was not qualified for the loan. The fact is that a large contingent of unscrupulous mortgage brokers quite purposely and voluntarily did put people into mortgages they knew full well would fail simply because those mortgages would make a lot of profit for them and for their Wall Street securitizers. Paper-churning for fun and profit. Strip off all the gains, sell off all the risk. After all, I won't be here and you won't be here -- whatever problems will all fall into somebody else's lap. Meanwhile, we'll all get rich.

I also never said Bush/Republicans didn't help it along and they certainly didn't stop it. But, they were not the originators of the crises.
They absolutely WERE the originators of the crisis along with the cowboy capitalists they cheered on and opened doors for and then refused to regulate even when evidence of credit market abuse began piling up to the rafters. Warnings of an eventual crisis building in a stock of poorly underwritten adjustable-rate loans had begun to appear in professional and scholarly writings by late 2003. The chorus grew from there, but it was all ignored. Like the Wall Streeters, the Bush administration wanted its profits now and didn't care about bills that would come due in the future. We tend to descibe that sort of thing with words like "incompetence" and "malfeasance". These were in fact the hallmarks of the entire Bush-43 era.
 
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Boehner should not comprimise with Obama. The Republicans in DC should let us fall off the fiscal cliff and then blame Obama.


As shown by this past election season, Republicans lack the communication skills necessary to make a majority of Americans believe anything they might say about the President.
 
The retirement age DOES have to go up because of the baby boomer generation. There are SO many retiring and NOT enough younger people working. The baby boomer generation is going to eat up SS, and it will probably be gone by the time I retire, if I ever get to.

A much simpler and fairer solution would be raising the amount of income subject to FICA (presently at $110,000). If that level were to be raised to say $1,000,000, SS and Medicare - if the funds were protected, remember some guy saying something about a "lockbox" - would be solvent into the foreseeable future
 
As shown by this past election season, Republicans lack the communication skills necessary to make a majority of Americans believe anything they might say about the President.

Nah...they don't lack the skill. They lack the media and the tendency to lie repeatedly.
 
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