Posted on 01/16/2009 8:01:30 PM PST by lonestar67
And we know Presidents have no influence. They can't veto bloated budgets.
BTW, Table 3 in your link, at the bottom says, "Supplemental and emergency funded excluded". Kinda reminds me of my question to you in post #79.
Spending was increasing at a much higher rate when Bush came into office.
I wonder if the Bush numbers look better in 2005, 2006, 2007 and 2008?
That is fiscal conservatism.
That is funny.
Your chart again proves my point. CATO does not treat homeland security as a unique budget demand.
In each year, the rate of increase is going down. And yes, it continued to go down until 2008 and the current economic downturn.
If you take out Homeland Security— which CATO does not, then you get the OMB numbers.
Whether you accept that or not. Bush shows a control on the the growth of spending. The chart makes a pretty good case for how Congress controls spending and seeks to increase it.
I have always and still do agree with the Bush adminstration goal of keeping the deficit a low (5% or less) percentage of the GDP. Fluctuations in the economy have a far greater effect on budget results than battles between the President and the Congress about spending.
Your point was discretionary spending rose faster under Bush?
CATO does not treat homeland security as a unique budget demand.
And your link didn't include supplemental and emergency funding.
In each year, the rate of increase is going down.
If you exclude enough items, you could probably show spending was actually dropping. LOL!
If you take out Homeland Security— which CATO does not, then you get the OMB numbers.
And if you add back supplemental and emergency funding, you might get honest numbers.
Whether you accept that or not. Bush shows a control on the the growth of spending.
No matter how many times you say that, it still makes me laugh.
The chart makes a pretty good case for how Congress controls spending and seeks to increase it.
It also shows that Bush didn't do anything to try to limit spending.
I have always and still do agree with the Bush adminstration goal of keeping the deficit a low (5% or less) percentage of the GDP.
That's an awfully low bar you set.
You can laugh all you want. Laugh. Laugh some more.
Laugh at President Bush. Laugh
LOLOLOLOLOLOL
I still do not yield.
Your chart shoes the increases in spending going down— year after year.
You pretend that this nation of ingrates lead by an outrageous media and Congress constitutionally specified as controlling the budget can be and should be stopped by one person— the President.
Facts are like every other American, you are too intellectually lazy to really care how government spending comes about. Scapegoats are your daily intellectual diet . The budget is Bush’s fault— keep telling yourself that. Keep telling yourself that. Keep laughing.
Facts are not going to change. The character of the man won’t change.
He argued for limits on spending by controlling a system which rewards congressional members for increasing spending. Without that system, Congressional membrers do not get re-eelcted. Thats the ugly reality you don’t want to deal with so instead, bring Bush out to your political stage.
Sorry— I won’t cheer you on for your foolishness.
I am simply demonstrating how your evidence shows the same trends that the Bush administration is pointing to. Bush fiscally constrained the spending of Congress.
I always laugh at weak math.
Your chart shoes the increases in spending going down— year after year.
I wonder if they continue to drop, in more recent years? Interesting also that the chart increases are larger than Reagan's increases while he was winning the Cold War. I also wonder why your claim on such a narrow portion of the budget proves anything?
You pretend that this nation of ingrates lead by an outrageous media and Congress constitutionally specified as controlling the budget can be and should be stopped by one person— the President.
I laugh at the claim Bush was a budget hawk. If you say, as Reagan did, that excess domestic spending was needed to buy support for military spending, you wouldn't sound as silly. At least Reagan had the excuse of a Democratic house. What was Bush's excuse?
Facts are like every other American, you are too intellectually lazy to really care how government spending comes about.
The fact is, with massive (needed) spending on the war and on the military and Homeland Security and with Social Security about to run deficits in the next decade, Bush should have fought to cut spending. He should have fought to reform entitlements, not add new ones.
He didn't. Maybe he could make the case that he couldn't, given the needs of the WOT, but that case is far from the claim he was a fiscal hardliner.
The budget is Bush’s fault— keep telling yourself that.
Believe me, he shares the blame with Congress.
He argued for limits on spending by controlling a system which rewards congressional members for increasing spending.
He must have lost that argument.
Bush fiscally constrained the spending of Congress.
LOL!
I am happy to take another trip around the circle.
Congress creates and approves the budget. The President may have as you say, lost the argument. That does not mean he was not a budget hawk. It means that the Constitution vets the Congress with budget authority.
That is why Bush prevailed on Iraq but not the budget.
With that said, all we have to do to test your hypothesis that he was not a hawk on the budget is ask: did the Congress say he was cutting or not spending enough?
Yes, they did. To this day they still say that about every conceivable program. If this were not the case, Bush would not be a budget hawk.
You want to argue in a Presidential vacuum. Congressional politics has progressed to where Bush never really had a Congress that supported him. After the tax cuts, his Republican control was functionally ended by the filibuster.
Additinally, the budget showdown of the 1990s destroyed the Republicans when Gingrich tried to shut down the government. Those struggles proved that the budget is a political one way street: spending up.
The Bush strategy was wise— constrain the increases and allow the economy to outgrow the budget deficit. This would allow revenue to eventually outstrip spending. That was working until the most recent economic downturn.
As I noted before, an economic upturn will do more for the budget than any Congressional Presidential struggle.
Again, we know Bush was a fiscal hawk because dems and republicans said he spent to little. He may not meet your defintion our CATOs or Heritage— all respectable conservative sources— but he did act as a check on higher spending.
I have never said overall spending was reduced by Bush. I have said that he reduced the rate of growth. That was all that could be done politically.
ROTFLOL! I've never been mistaken for either of those things before...quite the opposite actually.
Well, good luck to you DumbBlonde. Please donate to the FReepathon for me, huh?
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