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The covid relief plan would prove a definitive counter to your hypothetical concern over tax money.
by kbutler 6y ago
The covid relief plan would prove a definitive counter to your hypothetical concern over tax money.
- kbutler 6y agoThe public clamor for “$2k” checks, which comprise less than 1/4 of the $1.9 trillion dollar package that’s now entering reconciliation proves pretty strongly that the public is not sensitive to the cost of their government “benefits”. The Democratic Party has never been particularly concerned about taxes and debt. The Republican Party is periodically concerned about it, but mostly when they don’t control the government. I used to think Democrats would tax and spend, and republicans would borrow and spend. It looks like both will now print money (expand the money supply) and spend. The next few years will be an interesting test of “Modern Monetary Theory”.
- blacksqr 6y agoClinton and Obama were the only presidents to lower the deficit in the last 50 years. https://www.usatoday.com/story/news/factcheck/2020/12/31/fact-check-meme-lacks-context-clinton-obama-federal-deficit/6464069002/ https://www.usatoday.com/story/news/factcheck/2020/12/31/fac...
- kbutler 6y agoWho controls spending? Especially on transfer programs, which represent the bulk of the deficit? (It’s not the president) http://goliards.us/adelphi/deficits/index.html http://goliards.us/adelphi/deficits/index.html is more useful. It shows party control of the presidency, house, and senate and deficits each year, not just at end of term. Looks like the ideal for deficit control is to have a democratic president and republican control of both houses of Congress. Unified government by either party leads to less constraint on spending.
- blacksqr 6y agoIf Democrats make up half the team that you claim is most effective at limiting deficits, it would seem to me to be difficult to sustain the argument that Democrats don't care about them.
- kbutler 6y agoLook at the data on deficits linked above. This seems to be the pattern: Republican president: spend on this! Republican congress: OK Democratic congress: OK, as long as we spend on this, too. Democratic president: spend on this! Democratic congress: OK Republican congress: No, deficits are important.
- aksss 6y agoYeah, but that happened with the other party controlling the purse strings, in both cases, who were voted in as a reaction to those administrations with financial mandates.
- blacksqr 6y agoBoth Clinton and Obama inherited a recession from their Republican predecessors, and were punished for the unforgivable sin of responding appropriately.
- aksss 6y agoBy that logic did Bush inherit the dot-com crash from Clinton? I think you'd like to make the world fit neatly into ideological views. The boom-bust cycle of the US economy is pretty nuts when you step back and take it all in. Often the federal policies and bank regulations, to the extent they drive 'irrational exuberance', seldom reach their zenith and nadir all within one administration. The subprime mortgage crisis being a good example.