Posted on 06/11/2010 11:45:02 AM PDT by ConjunctionJunction
The first thing law schools teach litigators is to not ask questions without knowing the answer. Rep. Gerry Connolly (D-VA) never went to law school — and it shows in this exchange from Wednesday between himself and Ben Bernanke, the Fed chair, who was testifying on Capitol Hill. Connolly wanted to slap at his Republican colleagues who want spending cuts to bring the budget into balance by getting Bernanke to say that there isn’t enough money in the budget to cut, and that revenue has to be increased to end deficits. Unfortunately, as Liberty Central notes, Connolly got broadsided by Bernanke, who responded that “of course!” the budget could get cut — if Congress would just do it:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hNpOGgV0P1c
********************************************* CONNOLLY: I’m telling you, they don’t have an open mind. They have publicly expressed that they do not favor — you know, they’re all for deficit reduction as long as anything having to do with revenue is off the table. Can we get to serious deficit reduction — change that trajectory you talked about — if we eliminate half of the ledger sheet?
BERNANKE: Well, theoretically you could if you cut enough, but it would be very difficult to do that.
CONNOLLY: Is there enough spending to be cut?
BERNANKE: Of course! I mean … [laughs]
CONNOLLY: National defense, homeland security?
BERNANKE: That’s your judgment, that’s the Congress’ judgment. That’s not my judgment.
CONNOLLY: Ah. Um … it must be nice to be an economist. *********************************************
The entire premise of his question is absurd. The budget for FY2010 exceeds $3.8 trillion, which means that we don’t have to eliminate “half the ledger sheet” in order to close a $1.3 trillion deficit. We only need to eliminate a third of the ledger sheet. That $3.8 trillion, by the way, is $1.1 trillion more than the last budget from a Republican Congress, FY2007. If we returned to the FY2007 budget, we’d be almost all of the way there just by eliminating all of the spending increases inserted after Nancy Pelosi and Harry Reid took charge of the budgeting process.
The real story of the deficit is that the budget has grown by almost double in the space of 10 years, from $2 trillion in FY2000 to almost $4 trillion today despite inflation being practically nonexistent the entire time. We’re not in deficits because the American taxpayer doesn’t shove enough money into Washington’s Leviathan maw; we’re in deficit because Washington can’t stop spending more and more money. Gerry Connolly is a poster boy for that problem.
Throw at dart anywhere inside the Beltway, and you'll hit a 'poster boy'. They are pretty much all greedy little pigs.
Nov 2, 2010 -- Time to Clean House.
Economists are, for the most part, people who don't have quite the brains to be engineers but are way brighter than politicians. I know because I are one.
At the end of the day, if an economist is wrong, his credibility is on the line. Unlike politicians, he can't call in the spin doctors to claim "things are different now" or "it failed because we couldn't do enough of it."
Simple, chop the budget in half and the extra money to pay down the national debt. If these morons won’t do that, they should be out of office and looking for a real job and work like the rest of working stiffs !
LOL @ your description of an economist. I swear if they laid every single economist on the planet end to end you still wouldn’t reach a conclusion.
Keith Fimian is the answer to the Connolly problem - he just won the Republican primary in VA-11 on Tuesday.
I was told by my economics professor that the only thing you need to do to be perfect as an economist is be universally pessimistic. If things go against you, you can say it’s because people listened to you. If things go for you, you’re a genius that everyone should have heeded.
I've heard that is you ask any question to five economists, you'll get five different answers, six if one is from Harvard.
OR their favorite, “It’s Bush’s fault”
Hope Connolly gets his arse whipped...
Gerry Connolly attended a “fund raiser” for the Islamic Spirit Convention in VA, April 3rd of this year. The Dar Al Hijrah Islamic Institute held it. Hope this makes it into some of Fimian’s campaign ads-—Americans need to know who the American candidate is.
Connolly—Whattaguy!!! Sucking up to and supporting islam. Makes him a traitor in my eyes.
“At the end of the day, if an economist is wrong, his credibility is on the line.”
If true, please explain how Paul Krugman is considered “credible”.
Connally has to go. He showed up at our work to give a talk and answer questions, but then scheduled a live radio interview in DC so he only had 10 minutes to talk.
And instead of talking about what our company was interested in, he spent the entire 10 minutes telling us how great the economy was now that the democrats were in charge.
All I can say is “Wow!”. Good grief!
Sure, cut Defense and Homeland Security, collectively one of the only legitimate Constitutionally authorized responsibilities of Congress [provide for the common defense]. As Mark Styne so correctly illustrates, Europe is the welfare state it is because they don’t spend significantly on defense. The question is, who will defend Europe when America becomes Europe?
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