Fact is the Repubs are deliberate creators of the debt. they tell their followers they are fiscal conservatives while governing the opposite. Somehow their constituents do not notice. Reagan started cutting taxes while spending tons , mostly on the military. Every Repub prez has followed the same pattern. It is how they cut Social Security, medicare and other programs that help the neediest among us. Ryan is about to hand another 3 trillion to the wealthy. His next step is to slash those programs. He has stated that is what he will do.
Big Government Republican Presidents
- Thread starter Oneuli
- Start date
Mason Michaels
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I don't understand why anybody but billionaires vote Republican.
Republicans are good at suckering the rubes into voting for them over silly wedge issues,abortion,gay marriage,play the fear card,cliches like "Drain the Swamp",Locker her up"," Locker room talk", "build the wall".
Loving91390
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Loving91390
Verified User
Hummm .... Record high EVERYTHING !!!! I'm making a lot of money ..... Under a Republican President .
Looks like YOU are the rube ....
Yeah, Democrats would never use silly useless slogans like "Hope and Change" now would they shit-for-brains? STFU.
Thank you, Princess False Witness. The guy you claim to follow -- you know, the dark-skinned Middle-Eastern Jewish guy who gave us that stirring Sermon on the Mount speech -- is doing a face-palm about now.
Sounds like you've interpreted the Constitution according to your personal wishes and not according to anything based in actual reality. But that's how you low-info I-got-mine-so-fuck-YOU-very-much types roll.
Really you dumb asshat? You think the Federal Governments constitutional duty is beyond protecting our borders and interests and administering our laws? STFU!
^ Oh ugh, someone please help this poor Trump voter!
looks good to me.
economic boom, wages on the rise, tensions with North Korea gone, ISIS wiped out, New NAFTA 2 ...
and the military is being rebuilt from Sequestor
We've had the worlds most powerful military without exception from the 1940s to today, and these days our military is so well funded that you could add China and Russia together with all our other likely adversaries and we'd still enjoy a 2-to-1 spending advantage. Yet still China is continuing its efforts n the South China Sea. It underscores the limits of a "strong military" in accomplishing our foreign policy goals.
You should look at Vostok 2018.
China and Russia are becoming strategic military partners. Nixon's China card is dead.
The insane Russiaphobia wiped it out.
Now add in the Chinese soft power of the BRI- that is a powerful combination as evidenced by the
Shanghai Cooperation Org.
Our hard power is the only reason China hasn't been able to enforce it's 9-dash line claims as well.
Our military guarantees Japan and SKorea's security as well
I don't think "discretionary spending" is a very good term, since even the so-called mandatory spending can, in fact, be altered if a president pushes for it and can get buy-in from Congress. And that has happened. For example, when the Social Security retirement age was pushed back, that altered non-discretionary spending. Similarly, when Medicare was bloated by a no-negotiation drug benefit, that altered non-discretionary spending in the other direct.
I'm not up for re-running the numbers at the moment, but I expect the Republicans would look a bit worse if we only considered "discretionary spending," since the biggest area of discretionary spending, by far, is the military budget, and that tends to spike when Republicans are in the presidency.
Congress can alter discretionary entitlement spending, but it is very reluctant to do so because senior citizens are the most powerful lobby in America and don't want their entitlements cut. Not sure, but I think Medicare included the non-negotiation provision on drugs in the original bill, so nothing was altered. Changing the retirement age of SS to 66 (and soon 67) had relatively little effect. SS spending has continued to increase with more retirees and 70-80% of seniors retire early and do not wait until retirement age.
I agree about Republican discretionary spending. I remember reading George W. Bush's non-defense discretionary spending was the highest since Nixon. That makes Democratic claims Republicans are cutting social programs misdirected--those programs increase under both parties.
The inclusion of a prescription drug benefit was an alteration, and that alteration was intentionally made in a way that prevented the government from negotiating a decent deal -- it was designed, from the start, to be a large transfer of wealth from taxpayers to drug companies.
I guess it's semantic, but we're talking about an effect in the billions of dollars, so I wouldn't call it "relatively little." Even if seniors retire early, the point is that retiring at an age that would have been considered full retirement age in the past is instead considered early retirement, resulting in diminished benefits, which means less "non-discretionary" spending than we'd have had if the government hadn't used its discretion to alter the rules.
The difficulty here is with the language challenge of addressing a situation where population is growing and prices are inflating, such that small growth in a program can be a de facto cut, when viewed in per capita, inflation-adjusted terms.
Take the Reagan years as an example. Total spending on "education, training, employment, and social services" rose from $33.146 billion in FY 1981 to $35.325 billion in FY 1989. That sounds like there were no cuts, right? But adjusting for inflation, that's actually a DECLINE from $46.138 billion to $35.325 billion. And in per-capita real terms it's a decline from $203 per capita to $144 per capita. What looks like growing spending turns out to be a 29% cut in real per capita terms. When you look at the catastrophic course of the Reagan/Bush years, sociologically -- the way violent crime rates spiked to an all time high, as did teen pregnancy rates, etc. -- it's worth remembering that didn't come despite expansion of social spending, but rather in line with what we'd expect with an increasingly austere budget for such things, when thought about in terms of real dollars and real population demands. It was an era when our national resources were being diverted into the pockets of the super-rich and the big defense contractors.
O #1,
Thanks for the topic. I'm flattered.
But just as a caveat, I didn't intend my comment to seem an endorsement of the Democrat party. It isn't. Mine was merely a lament that Goldwater era genuine conservatism has vanished from the GOP.
BUT !!
Hillary was lied to about it, as were we all.
I got your "welcomed as liberators" right here:
They died for nothing.
The irony is, during the 8 years of the GWB administration UBL killed ~3K innocent Americans.
During those same 8 years, GWB killed over a thousand more than that.
UBL fed the fish.
GWB gets a generous pension, and Secret Service protection for life.
Well isn't that just spacial !
Thanks for the topic. I'm flattered.
But just as a caveat, I didn't intend my comment to seem an endorsement of the Democrat party. It isn't. Mine was merely a lament that Goldwater era genuine conservatism has vanished from the GOP.
&
And Republican excuse-makers have been known to say: well Hillary voted for the Bush (younger) administration's U.S. military invasion & occupation of Iraq. Yes she did.
BUT !!
Hillary was lied to about it, as were we all.
You remember the "we'll be welcomed as liberators" lie?
I got your "welcomed as liberators" right here:
They died for nothing.
The irony is, during the 8 years of the GWB administration UBL killed ~3K innocent Americans.
During those same 8 years, GWB killed over a thousand more than that.
UBL fed the fish.
GWB gets a generous pension, and Secret Service protection for life.
Well isn't that just spacial !