Quote:
Originally posted by Tyrone_Slothrop
He's a tenured professor, so you're wrong about the job. His comments about Reagan and the fisc clearly refer to the deficits. Please recall that under Reagan, we ran big deficits, and it took much effort under Bush I and Clinton to pay them down. Or do you and sgtclub think, like Cheney, that deficits don't matter?
If you think the bitterness is from being out of power, you're being willfully obtuse.
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Deficits only matter when they reach critical mass as a percentage of GDP. Based on the OBM director's testimony yesterday (at least it was on CSPAN last night), our current deficits as a percentage of GDP are not even close to historical levels. In fact, they are slightly above where they were running under Clinton and roughly the same as under Reagan. Of course, this never gets parsed out in the DEMs discussion. Rather, they just yell and scream about the gross number without any context for it.*
Ty, you and I agree that we don't like the deficits under this president, but for different reasons. My reason is that I HATE big government and wasteful spending. You don't like wasteful spending and you also believe that the deficits are harming the economy. I think this latter point is wrong, but no one knows for sure.
*Same logic for taxes, cuts in spending, etc.
