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"What the Debt Ceiling Really Means" - from a conservative think tank's perspective. No one blinked an eye from the conservative side as deficit spending rose

"What the Debt Ceiling Really Means" - from a conservative think tank's perspective. No one blinked an eye from the conservative side as deficit spending rose all through the Bush administration and the debt ceiling got raised 7 times. Heck this article may even be technically correct but it skews hypocritical when it only becomes an issue during Democrat's administrations.

sp332 15y ago
No one blinked an eye from the conservative side Well, the Republican party might not have raised a big stink about it, but plenty of conservatives were definitely complaining. Edit: colindoc84 almost has a good point, so edited.
- colindoc84 15y ago
  No real scotsman argument already?
  - altcognito 15y ago
    In all fairness, this has been rinsed and repeated a number of times in recent history. Reagan was a true conservative, but was held back by a democratic congress. Bush Sr. just wasn't a real conservative because he raised taxes. Bush Jr wasn't a real conservative because well, he spent like crazy. The Democrats do the same thing: Clinton wasn't a real "democrat" because he signed NAFTA and reformed welfare. Obama "wasn't real" because he couldn't end the wars, close GITMO or reform the finance industry. (a number of other items)
    - jerf 15y ago
      I find it helpful to at the very least split into social vs. fiscal conservatives. It is easy to be socially liberal and fiscally conservative, or socially conservative and fiscally liberal. G. W. Bush was socially conservative and fiscally liberal. Of course you can split things much further than that; nothing really stops you from being an anti-abortion otherwise-social-liberal, but I really think failing to split out social/fiscal leaves you really baffled by who is aligned with who.
spottiness 15y ago
The Cato institute is not a conservative think tank, as in "conservatives vs liberals or republicans vs democrats". They are a libertarian think tank, and have been very critical of the Bush administration for exactly the same reasons that you mention plus others. (http://www.cato.org/pub_display.php?pub_id=3750 http://www.cato.org/pub_display.php?pub_id=3750) If the article is technically correct though, that's all that matters. Let's use facts expressed in numbers to make decisions and leave emotional concepts like "hypocrisy" to artists.
- altcognito 15y ago
  Yeah, but it's completely wrong: "If we are really worried about a hike in interest rates, what about the hike we can expect if we fail to get federal borrowing under control?" Interest rates are as low as they've ever been. In fact, the only "threat" of our rates for borrowing going up have not been for borrowing more, but quite the opposite. http://krugman.blogs.nytimes.com/2011/07/10/feel-the-pressure/ http://krugman.blogs.nytimes.com/2011/07/10/feel-the-pressur... "The real fiscal Armageddon that this country faces comes not from a delay in raising the debt ceiling, but from out-of-control federal spending and government debt." Except that this "out of control" federal spending has been rising at the same rate as a % of GDP essentially since 1950.(minus a blip in 1992) http://www.usgovernmentspending.com/us_20th_century_chart.html http://www.usgovernmentspending.com/us_20th_century_chart.ht... It's fair to say we have both a spending and a revenue problem. This page shows how revenue has been dipping pretty dramatically the last couple of years: http://www.deptofnumbers.com/blog/2010/08/tax-revenue-as-a-fraction-of-gdp/ http://www.deptofnumbers.com/blog/2010/08/tax-revenue-as-a-f...

sp332 15y ago

No one blinked an eye from the conservative side Well, the Republican party might not have raised a big stink about it, but plenty of conservatives were definitely complaining. Edit: colindoc84 almost has a good point, so edited.

colindoc84 15y ago
No real scotsman argument already?
- altcognito 15y ago
  In all fairness, this has been rinsed and repeated a number of times in recent history. Reagan was a true conservative, but was held back by a democratic congress. Bush Sr. just wasn't a real conservative because he raised taxes. Bush Jr wasn't a real conservative because well, he spent like crazy. The Democrats do the same thing: Clinton wasn't a real "democrat" because he signed NAFTA and reformed welfare. Obama "wasn't real" because he couldn't end the wars, close GITMO or reform the finance industry. (a number of other items)
  - jerf 15y ago
    I find it helpful to at the very least split into social vs. fiscal conservatives. It is easy to be socially liberal and fiscally conservative, or socially conservative and fiscally liberal. G. W. Bush was socially conservative and fiscally liberal. Of course you can split things much further than that; nothing really stops you from being an anti-abortion otherwise-social-liberal, but I really think failing to split out social/fiscal leaves you really baffled by who is aligned with who.

spottiness 15y ago

The Cato institute is not a conservative think tank, as in "conservatives vs liberals or republicans vs democrats". They are a libertarian think tank, and have been very critical of the Bush administration for exactly the same reasons that you mention plus others. (http://www.cato.org/pub_display.php?pub_id=3750 http://www.cato.org/pub_display.php?pub_id=3750) If the article is technically correct though, that's all that matters. Let's use facts expressed in numbers to make decisions and leave emotional concepts like "hypocrisy" to artists.

altcognito 15y ago
Yeah, but it's completely wrong: "If we are really worried about a hike in interest rates, what about the hike we can expect if we fail to get federal borrowing under control?" Interest rates are as low as they've ever been. In fact, the only "threat" of our rates for borrowing going up have not been for borrowing more, but quite the opposite. http://krugman.blogs.nytimes.com/2011/07/10/feel-the-pressure/ http://krugman.blogs.nytimes.com/2011/07/10/feel-the-pressur... "The real fiscal Armageddon that this country faces comes not from a delay in raising the debt ceiling, but from out-of-control federal spending and government debt." Except that this "out of control" federal spending has been rising at the same rate as a % of GDP essentially since 1950.(minus a blip in 1992) http://www.usgovernmentspending.com/us_20th_century_chart.html http://www.usgovernmentspending.com/us_20th_century_chart.ht... It's fair to say we have both a spending and a revenue problem. This page shows how revenue has been dipping pretty dramatically the last couple of years: http://www.deptofnumbers.com/blog/2010/08/tax-revenue-as-a-fraction-of-gdp/ http://www.deptofnumbers.com/blog/2010/08/tax-revenue-as-a-f...