Obama '08?

Record spending... record debt.

MJ, you are on an IV drip off pure Blue Kool-Aid and it
has altered your mind... you are floating in opposite land...

It's hard to make someone realize the ridiculousness of their position if they are going to argue that a $4 trillion offer isn't serious but a $2.4 trillion one is.

You can't make okie see how ridiculous that is when he simply declares black is white and up is down.

He sees almost everything in reverse; how does one discuss anything with such a person who doesn't understand the difference between personal opinion and credible opinion?

I declare, it's impossible.

Nah, Kool-Aid rots your teeth. Never touch the stuff, even metaphorically.

The primary thing to establish here is what is there to negotiate about, spending or tax revenue. Tax revenues are not the problem. The problem is too much spending. Therefore all things on the table should be about spending, how much to cut and how. Whether it is Democrats or Republicans bringing things to the table, they should be about cutting spending, not raising taxes.

I'm kind of afraid we're going to have to have both. What is worrysome is that if we raise the debt ceiling, that will be taken to mean we must meet that ceiling, not that we may.

I do not feel that either party "gets it" in Washington, roger. I also believe many if not most people feel the same way. We can see government waste all around us, but somehow it escapes the politiicians.

I guess you're just going to ignore my questions to you above. That's not super cool.

As for what I quoted - you're incorrect. Both tax revenues AND spending are the problem.

Cycloptichorn

So. if 22% of GDP is too much spending by the Federal Government, why wasn't it too much in 1981?
Why wasn't it too much in 1982?
1983?
1984?
1985?
1986?
1987?
You get the picture....

Spending 22% of GDP isn't an issue unless the revenues drop drastically because of recession, but that is precisely when the government has to spend more.
GDP = private consumption + gross investment + government spending + (exports − imports)

If you insist on reducing government spending okie, you are going to drive down the GDP.

It already has; governments have laid off about 130,000 people. There's nothing in our economy that will provide jobs for those who lost jobs. That's on top of job creation at current levels; it's not enough to meet demand. High school and college grads can't find jobs. That puts stress on families, because more are staying at their parent's home to survive.

Without consumer spending - which makes up 70% of our economy - our economy will continue to struggle. Government revenue will also suffer, because less people are paying taxes to support a greater number.

That's the same with social security and Medicare; less people are paying into the trust fund while more people become eligible for benefits. This cannot be sustained over the long-term.

The feds have failed in their responsibility to correct this problem when they became aware about the unsustainability several decades ago - under both democratic and republican control of Washington DC.

The tea partiers now want to blame Obama for needing to increase the debt ceiling - something that's been done 18 times during Reagan's tenure, and about an equal amount of time during GW Bush's tenture - raising the debt ceiling by $4 trillion in eight years when he began his term in a surplus.

Obama went into office with two wars and the Great Recession, and the tea party doesn't want to increase spending. What idiocy!

How many government employees were added to the ranks since PrezBO took office?

Very few. There have been around 201,000 new HIRES (NOT new JOBS). In the same time frame there were around 184,000 vacancies due to employees who retired or took non-governmental jobs. Boehner as usual plays fast and loose with statistics.

It sounds as though Obamanomics has put the brakes on just about all new jobs. Sure, there have been new hires, but the millions new jobs that were promised by Obama and the four horsemen (one is a woman) of the Apocalypse never materialized. Just another lie from the Obama administration.

from the Bureau of Labor Statistics


Some people seemingly have a hard time telling up from down.

MJ, It's obvious some people don't understand graphs when they plainly show how Obama was able to put the breaks on the increasing numbers of job losses, and to put it into positive territory in less than 18 months after taking office.

They're still saying Obama isn't "creating jobs," because they don't understand the impact of the Great Recession that impacted the world's economies. .

All this after the tea party candidates promised to create jobs if they get elected last year.

They are crushing our economy with their "no taxes" to approve the debt ceiling.

Where's the conservative out-roar about the tea party promises on jobs?

Hey Jack, the last time the unemployment rate was below 8% was when Bush was president. Face it, Obamanomics is an utter failure.

okie, I remember a year ago when you guys had a litany of all kinds of things the economy under Obama was failing at, which successively all got better, as promised. Businesses are looking to expand, profits are up, the market hit new heights, the car companies Obama goaded to make the necessary restructuring are generating profits and selling many more cars and coming out with new models that actually are what people want, and they;ve paid back the loans and are out of government control, as Obama said they would be, and they didn't become socialist, as you kept predicting. Jeez, every thing you bitched about a year ago has provewn you wrong, and now all you;ve got left to kvetch about is unemployment, which as we all know is a trailing indicator.

ci sent me some interesting statistics, which I can't figure out how to access once I'd read them and gone on, but recreating from memory, Bush came into office with the country at something like 3.7% unemployment and a surplus. He left office with the country nudging 8% and rising almost exponentially month by month. He came in with a surplus left him by Bill Clinton. He promptly turned that into a deficit with a tax cut which was supposed to be TEMPORARY, and was supposed to create jobs. It signally failed. Bush;s total economy was anemic at best, and outright collapsed with the financial inducstry meltdown--but then Republican presidents always suck at creating jobs as compared with Democratic presidents, as has been demonstrated several times with BLS statistics. Bush presided over a massive runup of the national debt, with an undufunded war and a huge expansion of gobvernment expenditures without a tax base to support them. And then he helped trash the economy. Which has been very expensive to fix, but much less than it would be to rebuild it from scratch, which is what Obama would have had to have done had he not put into place the programs he's overseen. PRE-Obamanomics were the massive failure. Obamanomics have done pretty well to get us growing again.

How long are you libs going to be using the "trailing indicator excuse? Obama has been in office now about 2 1/2 years, well past the half way point of his term in office.

P.S. It is the American people that drives the economy, not Obama. He deserves no credit, zero, none. Regarding car companies now selling cars that people want, I think the top selling model is still the Ford F150 truck, which was top selling long before Obama even got into politics. Face it, the man knows nothing about cars, about running a business, or about the economy.

The top three selling vehicles are all Japanese cars, and have been since the early part of the 2000s, as Detroit misread the car-buying public. It's the American car companies that apparently knew very little about car making, not Obama. The domestic car industry is in much better shape because of government intervention, and the meltdown of Detroit did not happen because of government intervention.