Tax And Spend II

[tongodeon]

mmcirvin and I have been talking about the counter-argument to what I said in my last post.

Deficits under Democratic Presidents have happened to be smaller than Republican Presidents not because of who's in the White House but who's in Congress. Deficits exploded under Reagan because the Democrats in Congress wouldn't cut discretionary spending.

Comments

[lsdiamond]

If we're limited to the repubs being the only ones who care about warmongering, how do we explain the current dems' refusal to bring our boys home, and in fact continuing to spend on Bush's war efforts?

If there *is* an active effort to end Bush's great wargame, I'd love to hear about it. The last thing I recall hearing was that we were sending yet more troops to Afghanistan (?), and that was definitely since the last election.

BTW, your taxation charts were really enlightening! Makes me want to look over my own records.

[tongodeon]

Republican inclinations to look at out-groups, find enemies, and engage them militarily are not their innovation. It's a deep-seated human emotion. Democrats are still susceptible to that political pressure, not just in spite of but *because* Democrats don't make that part of their brand, and more Democrats than I like fall in line behind Republican militarism because those arguments fly in their home district.

Plus they've got a point to a limited degree. While Iraq was a mistake, Afghanistan wasn't (or was at least a different kind of mistake). Obama campaigned on a policy of ending Bush's great wargame in Iraq and continuing his great wargame in Afghanistan where unlike Iraq they really did have a regime that really did sponsor real terrorists.

I'm not saying that Democrats don't fight wars, I'm saying that their strategy doesn't involve inventing or inflating caricatures of new foreign enemies to justify new wars and then calling Republicans wimps if they don't also cower in fear.

I think you might want to look at terrorist sponsored states.

[drieuxster]

The taliban were in their holy war against the unbelievers and drug dealers, and were not actively engaged in exporting that problem abroad. But they were not against taking rent from Al-Qaeda when they were asked to move out of the Sudan.

Yes, an argument can be made that we should be allowed to bomb anyone renting space to people we do not like, but that is a whole bunch different from those rentiers being the source of the problem.

I would totally disagree

[drieuxster]

First off, Reagan understood that one does not fight terrorists with a majikal 'military only option' - and that one does not detain them as military personnel. So blaming the folly of Iraq on the Younger Bush, because the Elder Bush was unwilling to waste 10 years of american sweat equity bleeding in Iraq is a bit fallacious. That dubya is from the skool of republicans who need to validate their manhood by a 'real war' IS a critical problem that needs to be addressed at the socio-psychological level. That the excessive expenditures were already recognized as a socially acceptable means to cripple the federal government was well discussed BEFORE Dubya won the election

Re: I would totally disagree

[mutantgarage]

That may be the real key here, the GOP/Bush intentionally started these wars and spent the maximum possible on them in order to force cuts in social spending. The mindless destruction of Iraqi infrastructure was unnecessary, the regime had already folded and had little broad based support anyway after 10 years of no-fly and sanctions. But it did create the opportunity to spend vast sums of American taxpayer dollars via no-bid contracts to right-wing affiliated corporations. And yet, no like increase in spending for the VA to help the injured veterans, after all, that's a 'social' program.

Re: I would totally disagree

[tongodeon]

the GOP/Bush intentionally started these wars and spent the maximum possible on them in order to force cuts in social spending

O.K., the beast is starving. Now what?

Seriously, what insanity is this? We want to stop big government spending and so the solution is big government spending. It's almost as if the real problem isn't spending or deficits or fiscal irresponsibility at all - the problem is that public money gets spent on poor people.

Re: I would totally disagree

[mutantgarage]

Almost?
Try 'is' , at least for the 'smaller government' and lib types.
It's also called 'I got mine, to hell with you'.