Jim Crow redux
 

That was a mistake certainly, although in the context of the fuck ups of the Clinton administration, it was a normal decision given their abnormal decision making skills.

My list was terrorist acts. The Gorelick wall was not a terrorist act.

Deficit.
 

I think you misunderstand. The off-budget forecast Iraq costs are not offered as examples of balooning deficits, they're offered as examples of political duplicity.

Deficit.
 

Indeed, Penske. This inevitable success will, no doubt, be of comfort to you during your years in solitary confinement, almost as much comfort as the DHS jackbooted thugs who will occupy your appropriated, fortified villa.

Deficit.
 

Well - it would only be duplicitous if he did not announce what he was doing. But he did now didn't he. And in any event his forcast of deficit was hundreds of billions higher than the deficit will actually be with the Iraqi war expenses included. So was he being duplicitous when he overestimated the deficit?

Jim Crow redux
 

Uhm. think about the facts and let me know if you want me to edit that post and all of the responses to it.

Deficit.
 

When they kick in my front door,
How'my gonna come,
With my hands on my head,
or on the trigger of me gun,

Ohhh ohhhhhhhh, the guns of Penske!

Deficit.
 

who cares? He wasn't under oath.

Deficit.
 

I think you misunderstand. Again.

You responded to a side comment of mine about "balooning deficits" with the positive news that it appears, after earlier estimates that -- for this year -- the US government is spending ginormic boatloads in deficit spending, it turns out that we might be spending slightly smaller boatloads in deficit spending -- for this year. Ergo, we are Growing Out Of The Deficit! Hooray, and fuck the liberal doubters!

Fine. IIRC, there's plenty of debate out there about what this revision means. Does a 1 year data point truly mean that we're out of the woods and headed to the land of Milk and Honey? Or, instead, is this data point just a teeeensy bit less meaningful because (a) it's only a one year data point, 6 years into the Bush Administration's tenure, and/or (b) you're still spending boatloads of money in deficit spending compared to past years, or (c) other shit that I don't happen to remember at the moment. And besides, what does it matter to a Republican whether we have balooning deficits or not? After all, we've been told that They Don't Matter.

In any event, I don't have time to look all that up, so I chose not to engage you on that particular point, but instead to make a snide comment about the Bush Administration's political cowardice in estimating what The Struggle For The Liberation of Iraqi Men (and perhaps some of the Women, if we're lucky) will cost us for the then-coming year.

To be clear, the comment had, and has, nothing to do with the relationship of said expenditures to the overall budget deficit, or with the distinction between a budget forecast and a budget, or with the comment that you've posted above the meaning of which eludes me. But I applaud your efforts nonetheless.

Deficit.
 

Isn't that a Slippery Slope argument?

Deficit.
 

Well said. Let me revise the scenario slightly, such that the Penske fortified villa is occupied by DMV staff, puzzled yet oddly pleased at the deceased Penske's choice to respond to a summons for unpaid parking tickets with a detonation of TNT at his front door.

Deficit.
 

taking the measure of the annual deficit as a percentage of GNP, how much higher is that percentage for any of the last 3 years, than the average of te same over the last 25 years? I am betting not much.

Deficit.
 

I don't misunderstand anything, except for the fact that you refer to budget issues when you have no clue to what you are talking about.

This isn't just a one year adjustment. The whole deficit forcast has been changed for the future. When you have a growing economy - and revenues go up- they permanently go up year after year.

Under Clinton, and a Democrat congress Clinton raised taxes and the deficit actually increased. When the Republicans came in Clinton constantly hampered congresses ability to cut spending. He even shut down the government to avoid budget cuts. But the growing economy pulled us out of the deficit anyway. Of course alot of the growth was attributed to the fact that long term interest rates were dropped. Why were they dropped? Because the people that set those numbers knew now that the Republicans ran congress that the budget was eventually going to get balanced. Fiscal discipline was restored. How do we know this? That is the reason the people that set these numbers gave (by the way this is the part of interest rates Greenspan does not directly control). They said that they knew that all Clinton could do was delay when the budget was balanced but it eventually would so they could reduce long term interest rates.

So a Republican congress comes in, insists on balancing the budget, Clinton fights it every step of the way, yet Clinton takes credit for when the budget is balanced.

Bush inherits a recession from Clinton, and does exactly what anyone would do in a recession. Cuts taxes and raises spending. Standard Keynsian policy. Yet the Democrats scream bloody murder because - heaven forbid - Bush is creating a deficit. Bush is ruining Clinton's surplus - of course ignoring the fact that Clintons last budget was not balanced, Clinton fought fiscal sanity every step of the way, and it was Congresses policies that gave us the balanced budget. When you go into recession you get deficits.

Now that the economy is growing and the deficts are now diminishing and will continue to diminish if the economy stays the course, Bush gets no credit for that. Even though that is what Keynes said would happen.

So excuse me when I get a little annoyed when Democrats talk about fiscal discipline. Actually I don't get annoyed when Democrat politicians scream about this stuff because they say this stuff to get reelected. It is when their followers, who pretend to know something about budgets, repeat this propaganda, that any one with one economics or accounting class should see through, as if it were the truth instead of just political hyperbole.

Deficit.
 

2.

http://www.forumspile.com/Hit-It-Clinton.jpg

Deficit.
 

Contrary to the nonsense spouted in your post, the Clinton surplus didn't happen in a vaccuum. His economic stimulus package and tax increase passed without any Republican support in 1993, and is generally credited with easing long term interest rates, which is generally credited with reviving the economy. The Republicans at the time howled about how horrible these bills were, and how they would cripple the US economy.

There was a HUGE fight within the Administration and on the Hill between deficit hawks (Bentsen, Rubin, et al) and traditional spenders (Reich, Begala, et al). When Clinton was told by his economic advisers that he would have to shelve the middle class tax cut and increase taxes to make a real reduction in the deficit in order to reassure the markets, he screamed someting like "I have to screw the middle class to placate a bunch of fucking bond traders?" (Read Bob Woodward's "The Agenda," which was written before this strategy worked, and which implied that it wouldn't.)

He did, and he did, and the economy boomed because of fiscal and economic policies that he pushed, and all of the GOP's revisionist history won't change any of that.

Oh, and newsflash -- Clinton got what he wanted as a result of the government shutdowns (including a blow job, Penske). Newt Gingrich was the one who blinked when they went eyeball to eyeball.

Deficit.
 

Excuse my interruption, but what are you trying to say here?

Social Security is running at a surplus for accounting purposes (SS taxes > SS outlays). SS makes the federal deficit actually appear smaller than it really is, "when the smoke clears". The deficit numbers we see reported in the press are always the all-in number, and thus always understate the "true" current deficit.

Is your point that we should be amortizing the coming SS shortfall in our current budget numbers, to account for the swinish liberals' ignorance of the crisis? If so, wouldn't that cut against your "we're growing out of the budget deficits, despite the war costs" point?