Look Out GOP

the reincarnation of suzy wrote:

What is?
Let me guess...
The Bush-created war on terrorism?

Bush-created? We were struck first mind you. :wink:

Bi-Polar Bear wrote:

I'm sure someone here on these boards can supply a breakdown in spending and links to document it. It would be interesting to see.

Given that a president is faced with serious and necessary expenses, he cannot be blamed for spending money. But it would, indeed, be interesting to see a budget and determine how much money was spent on security and defense related costs as opposed to waste, and how such waste compared with previous administrations.

Waste? What costs more than a protracted war we didn't have to fight?

Brandon and I agree on something and have spoken to one another in a civilized manner. Look to the skies for the imminent return of Christ any time now.

Brand X wrote:

the reincarnation of suzy wrote:

What is?
Let me guess...
The Bush-created war on terrorism?

Bush-created? We were struck first mind you. :wink:

Right. And Bush was the first to strike back inappropriately by invading Iraq... a country that had absolutely nothing to do with binLaden and the 9/11 attacks...mind you.

Given that a president is faced with serious and necessary expenses, he cannot be blamed for spending money. But it would, indeed, be interesting to see a budget and determine how much money was spent on security and defense related costs as opposed to waste

Hey, the Republicans are getting worried, eh - or at least defensive? Interesting ... I'd consider that a hopeful sign! ;-)

DAILY EXPRESS
Attention Deficit
by Andrew Sullivan

Only at TNR Online
Post date: 02.09.04

Many conservative commentators greeted the president's "Meet The Press" interview with considerable gloom. President Bush, they argued, seemed tired, bumbling, didn't actually answer the questions asked, and failed to address the most important issues out there in the country. I disagree somewhat. I felt his answers on the war and its general rationale, his willingness to concede errors, and his demeanor were strong and appealing to those who aren't already turned off by this president's character and personality. But it was in the second part of the interview that things, to my mind, unraveled. Bush offered no compelling rationale for reelecting him. He offered excuses on the economy; and, on the critical matter of the country's fiscal health, he seemed scarily out of touch. Here's the most worrying section of the interview, with some of my comments:

Quote:

RUSSERT: The General Accounting Office [GAO], which are the nation's auditors ...

BUSH: Yes.

RUSSERT: ... have done a study of our finances. And this is what your legacy will be to the next generation.

It says that our current fiscal policy is unsustainable. They did a computer simulation that shows that balancing the budget in 2040 could require either cutting total federal spending in half or doubling federal taxes.

Why, as a fiscal conservative, as you like to call yourself, would you allow a $500 billion deficit and this kind of deficit disaster?

BUSH: Sure. The budget I just proposed to the Congress cuts the deficit in half in five years.

Now, I don't know what the assumptions are in the GAO report, but I do know that, if Congress is wise with the people's money, we can cut the deficit in half. And, at that point in time, as a percentage of GDP, the deficit will be relatively low.

One simple, perhaps nit-picky, point: To the question "Why ... would you allow ... this kind of deficit disaster?" the president replies, "Sure." Sure? I think I know what the president means. It's a verbal place-saver, a pause. But it's surely worth pointing out that I know of no one who can reply to an allegation that he is about to deny with an actual affirmative. "Did you kill your wife?" "Sure. I never touched her." Who talks this way?

Then the president uses the phrase "if Congress is wise with the people's money." But the point is that, in the last three years, the Congress has, by any measure, been grotesquely unwise with the people's money. And the president vetoed not a single spending measure. In fact, his own budgets exploded spending on both war and homeland security and every other government department, from Labor to Agriculture, before the pork-sniffers in Congress even got started. Then the president simply reiterates, and doesn't explain, something no one believes, which is that the deficit can be cut in half in five years--before, as even he would have to concede, it heads into the stratosphere.

So, in one response, we have a one-word answer that means the opposite of what it should; we have an irrelevance; and we have a pipe dream. And the president expects the people to trust him with their money? If your financial adviser came up with such an answer, after a huge drop in your personal savings and massive loans coming due in a few years, you'd fire him. Back to Bush:

Quote:

I agree with the assessment that we've got some long-term financial issues we must look at. And that's one reason I asked Congress to deal with Medicare. I strongly felt that, if we didn't have an element of competition, that if we weren't modern with the Medicare program, if we didn't incorporate what's called health savings accounts to encourage Americans to take more control over their health care decisions, we would have even a worse financial picture in the long run.

I believe Medicare is going to not only make the system work better for seniors, but it's going to help the fiscal situation of our long-term projection.

OK, let me put this gently here. Is he out of his mind? The minor reforms to Medicare are indeed welcome in providing more choice and some accountability in the program. But the major impact of his Medicare reform is literally trillions of dollars in new spending for the foreseeable future. He has enacted one of the biggest new entitlements since Richard Nixon; he has attached it to a population that is growing fast in numbers; and the entitlement is to products, prescription drugs, whose prices are rising faster than almost everything else in the economy. Despite all this, the president believes it will "help the fiscal situation of our long-term projection"? Who does he think he's kidding? It's like a man who earns $50,000 per year getting a mortgage for a $5 million house and bragging that he got a good interest rate.

Quote:

BUSH: We've got to deal with Social Security as well. As you know, I mean, these entitlement programs need to be dealt with.

We are dealing with some entitlement programs right now in the Congress. The highway bill, it's going to be an interesting test of fiscal discipline on both sides of the aisle. The Senate's is about $370, as I understand, $370 billion; the House is at less than that, but over $300 billion. And, as you know, the budget I propose is about $256 billion. So...

It would appear from this response that the president believes that highway construction is an entitlement program. Again: Does he have the faintest idea what he's talking about?

Quote:

RUSSERT: But your base conservatives--listen to Rush Limbaugh, the Heritage Foundation, Cato Institute--they're all saying you're the biggest spender in American history.

BUSH: Well, they're wrong.

Based on what? They have the numbers. All the president has is words.

Quote:

RUSSERT: Mr. President...

BUSH: If you look at the appropriations bills that were passed under my watch, in the last year of President Clinton, discretionary spending was up 15 percent, and ours have steadily declined.

OK, let me be candid here and say I don't know what he means. Does he believe that discretionary spending has declined each year under his watch? Surely not. It has exploded during his administration. Is he saying that the rate of increase has slowed? Again: surely not. As Joshua Claybourn has shown, Clinton's last budget increased domestic discretionary spending by 4.56 percent. Bush's first budget increased it by 7.06 percent. His second increased it by over 10 percent. We have a few options here: The president doesn't know what he's talking about, or he's lying, or he trusts people telling him lies. But it is undeniable that this president is not on top of the most damaging part of his legacy--the catastrophe he is inflicting on our future fiscal health.

Quote:

And the other thing that I think it's important for people who watch the expenditures side of the equation is to understand we're at war, Tim, and, any time you commit your troops into harm's way, they must have the best equipment, the best training, and the best possible pay. That's where--we owe it to their loved ones.

Fine. So why has the president increased discretionary spending outside of defense and homeland security by such a huge amount? Why the massive agricultural subsidies? Why the vast new Medicare entitlement? Couldn't he have said, "Look, we're at war. We cannot afford these other things right now." Did that even occur to him?

I'm not one of those who believes that a good president has to have the debating skills of a Tony Blair or the rhetorical facility of Bill Clinton. I cannot help liking the president as a person. I still believe he did a great and important thing in liberating Iraq (although we have much, much more to do). But, if this is the level of coherence, grasp of reality, and honesty that is really at work in his understanding of domestic fiscal policy, then we are in even worse trouble than we thought. We have a captain on the fiscal Titanic who thinks he's in the Caribbean.

Andrew Sullivan is a senior editor at TNR.

not only has spending increased in a sheer dollar amount, but the rate of increase and the percentage of the GDP has increased as well. But then comes the standard excuse for all this spending, which one should get used to hearing from partisans, if you haven't gotten used to it already.

And the other thing that I think it's important for people who watch the expenditures side of the equation is to understand we are at war, Tim, and any time you commit your troops into harm's way, they must have the best equipment, the best training, and the best possible pay. That's where we owe it to their loved ones.

So is Bush suggesting that all of this spending is due to necessary military expenditures? If so, that's another false statement. Spending for education, job training, unemployment assistance, Medicare, Social Security, veterans benefits, food stamps and other "human resources" has risen from 11.5 percent of GDP to 12.7 percent. Indeed, most of the largest increases having nothing to do with national security. Here's another graphic.



Data is from the nonpartisan Congressional Budget Office, the Treasury Department, and the White House Office of Management and Budget. Graphs, which use those numbers, are provided by the Cato institute.

Update: These numbers account for inflation according to the White House Office of Management and Budget.

nimh wrote:

Hey, the Republicans are getting worried, eh - or at least defensive? Interesting ... I'd consider that a hopeful sign! ;-)

I am worried.

Clearly the liberals are willing to swallow their ideology in their crusade to defeat Bush, and this is worrisome. Ah, Finn! You don't KNOW the Liberal ideology! They are even suggesting that the hawkish positions announced by Kerry and Edwards this week have been part of the liberal agenda all along. Liberals aren't anti-war, bub. There's a little more to it than that. Maybe too complicated for you to understand?


The last time Republican political issues were coopted by Democrats, Clinton was elected. He was elected as a moderate and then quickly reverted to true form once he got in the White House. His party took a drubbing two years later, and once agains he tacked to the right, in an attempt to out Repub the Repubs. Hah! Quite the take on history. Not many Liberals EVER felt Clinton was a Liberal in the first place.

The difference between 1992 and 2004, is that in 1992, the left wing of the party was overpowered by the moderates of the DNC who actually held residence in the center. In 2004, the left is so desperate to defeat Bush that, despite its ascendency in the party, has come to the conclusion that it must bite its usual free wheeling tongue and let Kerry and Edwards move right so that they can attempt to capture the center.
Horrors! trying to appeal to a broader audience! Some nerve!Sorry, Finn, the right doesn't own these positions, much as you would like America to think so.
From Kerry's speech last night:

"We are a nation at war - a global war on terror against an enemy unlike any we have ever known before."

Isn't this very same John Kerry who believed it was necessary to view our engagement with terrorists as a criminal prosecution? But that was back when Dean was kicking butt with anti-war rhetoric and Kerry wanted to court the Left, and highlight his experience as a prosecutor.
That was also before it became an all-out war with no peace on the near horizon, there were less terrorists then, and we could have tried to catch the ringleader instead of bombing two countries. Neither of which was the home country or country of origin of the alleged perpertrator of the 9/11 attacks, I might add! Too late now!
"I will never give any nation or international institution a veto over our national security. And I will build a stronger American military."

I could swear I've heard these very words being spoken by GW on any number of occassions. I doubt it would take two much an effort to find and cite the quotes.
Probably not. just cut out a few syllables, might sound similar.
"We will add 40,000 active duty troops - not in Iraq, but to strengthen American forces that are now overstretched, overextended, and under pressure. We will double our special forces to conduct anti-terrorist operations. We will provide our troops with the newest weapons and technology to save their lives - and win the battle."

A little knee jerk equivocation here. One of his latest arguments has been that the Bush Admin tried to fight the war on the cheap and should have sent more troops, so why not send them to Iraq? He's already indicated he won't order a pull out. In any case, despite his past voting record in the Senate, he's now all for spending a lot more money on the military.
You are believing the hype about his voting record? We have troops there NOW. I'd argue that most rational people can see that things are different!
"You see that flag up there. We call her Old Glory. The stars and stripes forever. I fought under that flag, as did so many of you here and all across our country. That flag flew from the gun turret right behind my head. It was shot through and through and tattered, but it never ceased to wave in the wind. It draped the caskets of men I served with and friends I grew up with. For us, that flag is the most powerful symbol of who we are and what we believe in. Our strength. Our diversity. Our love of country. All that makes America both great and good."

Of course Democrats are as entitled to waving the flag as Republicans, but I thought the liberals thought it was unseemly, that it smacked too much of fascist propaganda.
No, using it to suppress anti-establishment views is Fascist. Liberals know that and don't like to see it USED in that way.
Too much to quote on family values, that colorful phrase that is guaranteed to bring a sneer to the lips of the average liberal.

"So let me say straight out what I will do as President: I will cut middle class taxes. I will reduce the tax burden on small business."

A liberal promising tax cuts?
That's an easy one.
The Left has always been sneeringly dismissive of the notion of "trickle down economics," but they seem to have developed their own version: They want to tap the carotid of the Super Wealthy and Mega Corporations and use the ensuing flow to water the economic miracles they intend to plant in the soil of the middle and lower classes:
Just think of the savings if we cut out some of those fabulous tax breaks! We will have lots more money to invest in Americans, who live, work and invest in America!
1) Increased military spending
2) Increased security spending in the US
3) Increased spending on after school programs
4) More cops
5) Increased spending on prescription drug programs
6) No reduction of Social Security benefits
7) Increased spending on technology R&D
8) Provide tax incentives to business that don't outsource (Note to Dems, this means tax cuts)
9) Decrease classroom size (By fiat? This takes money, or a deliberate effort to reduce the size of your school age population)
10) Head Start, Early Start, Smart Start etc etc etc (But to be fair, we all know that these programs will, eventually end crime in America)
11) Reduced health insurance premiums for everyone!
12) Somehow guaranteeing healthcare to every American because it is a right and not a privilege

Does anyone really think these measures can be financed by rolling back Bush's tax cuts on 2% of Americans?
If we're lucky, we'll find out.
I don't know if this is Voodoo Economics, but it will have to involve some sort of magic to work. Or perhaps a miracle as with multiplying loaves, but wait, don't these religious allusions send shivers down the spine of the Left?
You made the allusians, not him.
"And let me say it plainly: in that cause, and in this campaign, we welcome people of faith. America is not us and them. But faith has given me values and hope to live by, from Vietnam to this day, from Sunday to Sunday. I don't want to claim that God is on our side. As Abraham Lincoln told us, I want to pray humbly that we are on God's side."
Well, D'uh! You guys don't own God either.
I am worried.

I am worried that this transparent ploy just might work and that like Clinton, once in office, Kerry will revert to true form and launch an agenda much more appealing to the liberals who are, currently, keeping the lid on for the sake of the cause.

the reincarnation of suzy wrote:

Don't worry Finn; HELP IS ON THE WAY!!!

I know, they should be in New York in about a month's time.

Finn wrote " He was elected as a moderate and then quickly reverted to true form once he got in the White House."

You used this statement in reference to Clinton, but this is exactlywhat Bush did, EXACTLY. Ran as a moderate, as a uniter, as someone not interested in nation building, blah, blah blah, then we got Ashcroft, faith-based charities, DOMA endorsement, pre-emptive invasion of Iraq, etc.


Moderate ?????????

Bush did run as a moderate, as a uniter, as someone who could work with both sides of the aisle, as someone not interested in nation building, etc. Those things seem moderate to me.

His appointments, policies, and actions have been entirely not-moderate.

Joe Biden's presence on the DOMA list surprises me. This issue, like abortion, crosses paty lines in curious ways.