State of the UnionFollow

********* Medicare costs us in excess of $400 billion dollars every year.

Then why did Bush and GOP go and spend it all and leave us with the bill? Why did they gut the legislation explicitly designed to prevent that from happening?

Yay for GOP fiscal responsibility!

And just call me Deputy GoNads.

No, the reason the Dems lost in Massachusetts was because the candidate was awful and nobody liked her. Had they found someone who, say, liked shaking hands with voters, they would have had a much stronger shot.

No, but you can wait a few years and then blame it all on the Democrats.

This is Varus trying to change the subject off of the pathetic GOP fiscal irresponsibility.

Yeah, I'd be desperate to stop talking about the GOP's fiscal mismanagement as well.


Really? I'd say most sane people would say that cutting your income stream while not cutting spending is a bad thing.

But, hey, we know from experience that the GOP thinks the best way to run the country is to cut off its income while massively increasing spending thus driving the nation deep into debt with a wildly unbalanced budget. So maybe only liberals do think that's a bad thing.

Good point, Varus. I'll give you that one.

Of the "super-massive" 1.4 trillion deficit, 1.152 trillion occurred under Bush. Even if we write off $479 billion from the recession as "Gonna happen anyway", the amount Obama added pales against the $673 billion directly caused by Bush and the GOP.

But, hey, make another "crack pipe" joke. That might change reality!


You realize that ratio was run up to the edge by Bush's irresponsible fiscal policies, don't you?

Of course you do. But you'll never admit it. It might shatter your precious partisan world view.

Lol... Um. It doesn't work that way Joph. Deficits are calculated year to year. They do not "roll over". Did Bush write the 2009 budget? Heck. Were the Republicans even in power to write budgets for the previous 2 years? No, they weren't...

The Obama administration proposed a budget. The Dems in office wrote it and passed it. That budget resulted in increased spending, which combined with decreased revenues resulted in a 1.4 Trillion dollar deficit.



Strange how Bush and the GOP, with no power to spend any money are somehow completely responsible. Are you kidding me?



It increased from 36% to 40% in 2008. Adjusting for contraction and reduced revenues, we'd be presumably looking at a debt ratio of about 44-45% right now. That's "high", but not as high as it was in the mid 90s, so not disastrous by itself. Then came Obama and a Dem controlled congress who decided to spend money like it grew on trees...

It's not the dollar amount of the debt or a deficit that matters. It's the end result of that compared with the total economic pie. The economic downturn alone would *not* have put us into this mess. The Democrats deciding to take advantage of the situation by spending as much money on as much stuff as possible is.

It's amazing that you steadfastly refuse to look at the damn numbers. It's the spending increases which pushed us over the edge Joph. And that was all Democrat doing. Even before Obama took office, the Dems took the original Paulson plan, doubled the cost and retargeted the funds from toxic asset purchase to "bail out and take control" (with some "encourage green jobs and people we like" money in there for good measure), and began the spending spree we've been on ever since.


Don't let a crisis go to waste, remember?

Umm... "Lol"

You realize that the Medicare expansion was an annual cost, right? It doesn't magically leave the deficit once the calendar rolls over. Um... Lol. You did know that the lost revenue from Bush's irresponsible tax cuts doesn;t magically reappear before they expire, right? That every year they continue to impact the budget? Lol. Um. Lol. How about those war costs that were never properly budgeted? Um. Lol.

Um.


Lol. The effects of their fiscal policy ended the moment they left! Lol. Um.

Um. Lol!... Lol. Um.

Edited, Feb 4th 2010 4:08pm by Jophiel