1 of 1- Goose
- Cogito ergo sum
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As Deficit Soars Toward $1 Trillion, Congress Shrugs and Spends
I find it particularly depressing that, in a time of historically low unemployment and solid growth, we are still increasing our debt recklessly.
If you don't use the boom years to get your fiscal house in order, you never will.
That huge corporate tax cut was perhaps the worst timed in history.
As Deficit Soars Toward $1 Trillion, Congress Shrugs and Keeps Spending
WASHINGTON — Treasury Secretary Steven Mnuchin urged Congress on Tuesday to raise the federal government’s statutory borrowing limit and said Washington must soon grapple with the mounting federal debt, just as lawmakers are embarking on a significant spending spree.
Annual deficits are creeping up to $1 trillion and the national debt has topped $20 trillion. On Monday, Treasury said that the United States will need to borrow $441 billion in privately held debt this quarter, the largest sum since 2010, when the economy was emerging from the worst downturn since the Great Depression.
Last edited by Goose (2/07/2018 9:16 am)
We live in a time in which decent and otherwise sensible people are surrendering too easily to the hectoring of morons or extremists.
- Just Fred
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Re: As Deficit Soars Toward $1 Trillion, Congress Shrugs and Spends
It's all part of the 'Good Santa' -'Bad Santa' Republican strategy proposed and implemented decades ago:
When in power, borrow and spend, borrow and spend, borrow and spend making the peasants happy. Then, when out of power, piss and moan about the debt as you pass the credit card on to the next guy to pay for it.
- Goose
- Cogito ergo sum
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Re: As Deficit Soars Toward $1 Trillion, Congress Shrugs and Spends
Democrats tax and spend.
Republicans just spend.
We live in a time in which decent and otherwise sensible people are surrendering too easily to the hectoring of morons or extremists.
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Thread Starter- Just Fred
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Re: As Deficit Soars Toward $1 Trillion, Congress Shrugs and Spends
I would encourage everyone to read Jude Wanniski's explanation on how this works. He wrote it 1976, and Republicans bought into it. The strategy has been working for them ever since.
Here's a taste of the essay:For example, we could say that Republican leadership in Congress and the executive branch, over the past thirty years, has generally led to:1) Foreign wars propped up by lies and motivated by the desire to steal resources.
2) Attempts to reduce many government welfare-type programs which are genuinely beneficial.
3) A tendency to encourage/allow increased environmental destruction.
4) An alliance with the Christian conservatives which can have some unpleasant results.
5) Collusion with big business/ultra-rich to loot the taxpayer via vastly bloated government contracts.
6) Deregulation and even encouragement of certain business practices with negative overall results, for example predatory consumer lending.
7) Expansion of the fascist police state, exemplified by the Patriot Act.
8) Economic exploitation of other countries, especially emerging markets, via the IMF and other underhanded tactics (see John Perkins’ Confessions of an Economic Hit Man or Naomi Klein’s Shock Doctrine.)
9) This often leads to or is accompanied by various incursions into national politics, up to and including assassination of political leaders. See for example the various color-coded “Revolutions” throughout the former Soviet states, or the U.S.’s long history of meddling in Latin America:
10) Aggressive attempts to disadvantage U.S. working classes via lax immigration policies and promotion of “outsourcing” to foreign countries.
11) The phony “War on Drugs” (the CIA is the U.S.’s largest drug importer), combined with a vast expansion of the prison-industrial complex, providing a huge resource of prison slave labor forU.S. companies.
12) Bank bailouts and other outright looting on the vastest scale.
Last edited by Just Fred (2/07/2018 11:58 am)
- Goose
- Cogito ergo sum
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Re: As Deficit Soars Toward $1 Trillion, Congress Shrugs and Spends
Republicans have built their brand on contempt for the process of governing. Is it any surprise that they’re actually pretty lousy at it?
We live in a time in which decent and otherwise sensible people are surrendering too easily to the hectoring of morons or extremists.
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Thread Starter