Al_U_Card, on Feb 15 2009, 09:18 AM, said:
When you replace the housing (read credit) speculative bubble with a consumer spending (read credit) speculative bubble, how is that going to save the day? It is just prolonging the agony and delaying the inevitable.
Not all consumer spending is the same. The unemployment benefits for people who have lost their jobs will generally be spent on living expenses rather than on useless stuff.
Putting people to work on fixing bridges, schools, and energy-inefficient buildings is also sensible and not speculative. But clearly the tax cuts are the stupid part of the stimulus bill.
The 100% 'no' vote on the stimulus by House republicans reminded me of the intense and unanimous republican opposition to restoring fiscal responsibility in 1993. The republican leadership insisted that restoring fiscal responsibility would throw the country into a depression:
THE BUDGET STRUGGLE; HOUSE PASSES BUDGET PLAN, BACKING CLINTON BY 218-216 AFTER HECTIC MANEUVERING
Quote
Representative Bill Archer of Texas, the ranking Republican on the House Ways and Means Committee, said the tax increases in the Democratic program would amount to "a job-killing poison for the economy."
"Try to soak the rich," Mr. Archer continued, "and you drown middle-income men and women."
But the Democrats held their ground. Representative John Lewis of Georgia said the Republicans were not seriously interested in governing. "They just said no," he asserted.
At the outset, Representative Martin Olav Sabo, the Minnesota Democrat who heads the Budget Committee, told his colleagues: "This package represents the opportunity of a lifetime to turn this country around. There will never be a better time to do it. It will get harder, not easier, if we put it off."
Clinton had to work very hard to overcome the fear-mongering tactics of the republicans who wanted to keep gorging at the federal trough.
Quote
Mr. Clinton mostly cleared most of his schedule so he could spend the day on the telephone calling Representatives. Treasury Secretary Lloyd Bentsen spent most of the day in the Capitol, meeting with recalcitrant Democrats. So did Leon E. Panetta, the budget director, and Thomas F. McLarty 3d, the White House chief of staff.
A Rose Garden ceremony honoring teachers was delayed for about 15 minutes, and the President could be seen through the French doors on the telephone in the Oval Office.
"What I keep trying to tell all the members is that this is the beginning of the process, not the end," Mr. Clinton said. "There is a whole lot more work to be done. We've just been here seven months. Finally, they've got somebody here who's serious about responsible budgeting instead of just talking about it."
Because he was serious, Clinton forced through a program that balanced new taxes with spending controls.
Quote
But beyond the tax increases are some important spending cuts.
A freeze would be placed for the next five years on all Government programs financed by annual appropriations. That means that if spending is increased, say, on education, it must be reduced for some other program.
All taxes and entitlement programs -- like Social Security, Medicare, welfare and farm price supports, which pay benefits to everyone who is eligible for them -- would be on a pay-as-you-go basis. That means that if benefits are raised or taxes cut, they must be offset by raising another tax or cutting another benefit.
Far from throwing the US into a depression, Clinton led the country into prosperity and left the US in a position to eliminate its debt entirely. The fiscal position was so sound that only an administration of idiots and crooks could possibly screw it up.
But that is another story...
The growth of wisdom may be gauged exactly by the diminution of ill temper. Friedrich Nietzsche
The infliction of cruelty with a good conscience is a delight to moralists that is why they invented hell. Bertrand Russell
Help
