Spending like drunken sailors
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PostmodernProphet
fully immersed in faith..
wouldn't it be sweet if we could get the government to cut back to what Bush spent in 2008?........
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The Almighty
HELL NO... because Bush's deficit hitting $500B was OUTRAGEOUS. Why would you want to go back to the OUTRAGEOUS deficits of Bush?
Disillusioned
New member
I just think it'd be cool if we didn't spend more money than we had. You find what your limit is and you spent to it, not more. This inifinite money kick the government is on is even more stupid than it's civilian counterpart.
It'd be even sweeter if government revenues as a percentage of GDP returned to, say, 2000.
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The Almighty
If Obama's policies would quit crushing the economy, it would be easy to get back there. Or to 2005 levels as those were essentially the same as 2000. But I know, I am guessing you don't want to include the bump down we saw due to Clinton's recession.
Where do you think the economy would be if we had let the too big to fail and the mortgage industry hit bottom? If his policies are crushing the economy, what would the GOP policies change?
Like two wars?
For the record, 2005 levels were not "essentially the same as 2000." There was about a 3% difference. And when that 3% applies to $13 Trillion, you're talking real money. Also, the bump down in revenues as a percentage of GDP occurred not because of the recession that began and ended in 2001 but because of the Bush tax cuts enacted in June 2001. That's why you see declining revenues as a percentage of GDP from 2001 through and including 2004.
Clinton's recession.
PostmodernProphet
fully immersed in faith..
I guess it's like gasoline......$3.20 per gallon looks cheap after $4.20.....
apple0154
MEOW
Here's the problem. The "financial instruments" the "money changers" screwed around with ended up with everyone (the taxpayers) paying the bill. Someone got away with a lot of money; mostly those who worked for big banks/investment companies. Then there's "Iraqi Freedom" which cost billions and billions.
FY2003 Supplemental: Operation Iraqi Freedom: Passed April 2003; Total $78.5 billion, $54.4 billion Iraq War
FY2004 Supplemental: Iraq and Afghanistan Ongoing Operations/Reconstruction: Passed November 2003; Total $87.5 billion, $70.6 billion Iraq War
FY2004 DoD Budget Amendment: $25 billion Emergency Reserve Fund (Iraq Freedom Fund): Passed July 2004, Total $25 billion, $21.5 billion (estimated) Iraq War
FY2005 Emergency Supplemental: Operations in the War on Terror; Activities in Afghanistan; Tsunami Relief: Passed April 2005, Total $82 billion, $58 billion (estimated) Iraq War
FY2006 Department of Defense appropriations: Total $50 billion, $40 billion (estimated) Iraq War.
FY2006 Emergency Supplemental: Operations Global War on Terror; Activities in Iraq & Afghanistan: Passed February 2006, Total $72.4 billion, $60 billion (estimated) Iraq War
FY2007 Department of Defense appropriations: $70 billion(estimated) for Iraq War-related costs[4][5]
FY2007 Emergency Supplemental (proposed) $100 billion
FY2008 Bush administration has proposed around $190 billion for the Iraq War and Afghanistan[6]
FY2009 Obama administration has proposed around $130 billion in additional funding for the Iraq War and Afghanistan.[7]
FY2011 Obama administration proposes around $159.3 billion for the Iraq and Afghanistan wars.[8]
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Financial_cost_of_the_Iraq_War
Now the talk is wanting to cut programs like SS and Medicare and let's catch the guy who is illegally receiving $200.00 on welfare and wasting that vast sum of money on food and rent. Let's balance the budget on the backs of the poor and when the budget is balanced the government can repeat Rumsfeld's words and say war is an affordable option. The Super Committee set up proposed cuts if the government couldn't come to an agreement and there is already talk of exempting the military cuts. They'll be damned if poverty and overblown budgets will stand in the way of killing people. They'll take the food out of the citizen's mouth if they have to. They'll have the elderly eating dog food while slowly dying from pneumonia due to a lack of money for heat but the weapons will keep on coming.
The Repubs wanted the country bankrupt. Well, not exactly bankrupt. Just overdrawn enough so social programs would have to be cut because they don't believe in social programs and what better way to cut them than spend the money that should finance them? That was their goal. Of course, they didn't plan on Obama entering the picture and turning the tables by making ObamaCare a priority. He's not going to wait until the budget is balanced before instituting social programs because it will never happen.
Government will be obligated to offer social programs and their cost will have to be paid before anyone else gets the wacky idea war is an affordable option. People's money, their taxes, will be used for medical care and food and shelter and not for blowing up foreign countries and then rebuilding what was blown up. The absurdity is truly mind-numbing.
Nobody enjoys paying taxes but people in countries with social programs do not object to the same degree because they get a return on their taxes. Health care. Child care. Transportation..... Everyone receives some benefit. Seeing ones money thrown away on war after war would get anyone pissed off.
Obama is trying to change that. That is the change he talked about. It's not about monetary equalizing. It's about using the money people are already paying and was/is being thrown into the hell pit of war. It's making a fundamental change so everyone benefits.
Troops back from Iraq. A few "Special Tactics" to get bin Laden and rescue hostages instead of thousands of troops.
The people have to let Obama solidify his plans and get the country on the right footing.
On that note it's siesta time here.
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The Almighty
Link please. Also, were the GDP's in 2000 and 2005 the same?
ROFLMAO... what a crock of shit. Tell us... if the revenue decline was because of the tax cuts, what made it go back up in 2005?
I suppose we will just ignore the FACT that when you have a recession, typically you have:
1) More corporations showing LESS or NO income (ie... losses) for taxation
2) More individuals writing off capital losses on stocks vs. getting taxed on gains.
Yeah... I am sure it was primarily the tax cuts. Funny that the tax cuts existed in 2005 as well. Do explain, enlighten us...
You give me yours first.
It didn't really go back up. It remained significantly below 2000 levels through 2007. Then we got another recession and then Obama implemented various additional tax cuts.
I'm not ignoring anything. You're ignoring the fact that, peak to peak, revenues were quite a bit less in 2007 than they were in 2000. Show me the data you're using and I'll show you why you're wrong. In 2005, revenues as a percentage of GDP were down by 3.3% as compared to 2000. In 2007, at the peak of the cycle, revenues were down as a percentage of GDP by 2.1% as compared to the previous peak in 2000.
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The Almighty
Is TARP the extent of his policies? No. In fact, TARP was not put in place by Obama. Was TARP in place prior to Obama taking office? Yes. It was enacted by the Dems in Congress and signed by Bush.
1) Dodd Frank is a travesty, it should never have been put in place. It adds significant regulations without addressing the actual friggin problem.... WALL STREET.
2) Instead, Glass Steagall should have been put back in place. The 'too big to fail' should have been broken back up into retail banks and investment banks.
3) Obamacare is a nightmare waiting to implode.
4) The stimulus was successful in stopping the bleeding, but it failed to provide long term benefits due to the manner in which the money was spent.
5) Multi-year TRILLION dollar deficits with no end in sight
6) Complete confusion as to the future of the tax code
7) Endless class warfare
What would GOP policies change?
Not much as they are quite weak as well. The best that could be said is that they would repeal the Obamacare. I will believe it when I see it for any of the rest.
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The Almighty
Well, I was looking at a chart.... http://www.usgovernmentrevenue.com/recent_revenue
Which is why I asked you for the data, I was eyeballing the chart. Looked at it wrong. It was 2008 that looked similar to 2000.
According to the charts it started escalating when the economy started recovering from the Clinton recession. That said, 2000 was a great year, given all those profits and cap gains from 1999... it is not too shocking. That said, I will stipulate that we did not reach 2000 levels again until 2008 rather than 2005. (again 2008 benefited from the run-up in the markets and corp profits in 2007, because quite obviously it was not a good year for the economy on the whole)
http://www.usgovernmentrevenue.com/recent_revenue
Again, show me the data YOU are using. Because it looks like the peak was in 2008... not 2007.
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The Almighty
Nope, you were right... peaked in 2007... http://www.usgovernmentrevenue.com/...s1li111mcn_F0t_Total_Recent_revenue#copypaste
Fiscal Years 1985 to 2015Year GDP-US
$ billion Total Direct Revenue -total
pct GDP
1985 4217.5 31.95 a
1986 4460.1 32.27 a
1987 4736.4 33.40 a
1988 5100.4 32.86 a
1989 5482.1 33.24 i
1990 5800.5 33.23 a
1991 5992.1 33.07 a
1992 6342.3 33.07 a
1993 6667.4 33.39 a
1994 7085.2 33.51 a
1995 7414.7 34.27 a
1996 7838.5 34.85 a
1997 8270.46 35.66 a
1998 8727.02 36.53 a
1999 9286.86 36.08 a
2000 9884.17 37.19 a
2001 10218 34.52 i
2002 10572.4 31.21 a
2003 11067.8 31.23 i
2004 11788.9 33.01 a
2005 12554.5 33.80 a
2006 13310.9 35.28 a
2007 13969.3 37.01 a
2008 14270.5 32.94 a
2009 14014.8 25.94 a
2010 14551.8 32.47 e
2011 15079.6 32.17 g
2012 15812.5 33.18 g
2013 16752.4 34.33 g
2014 17782.2 35.15 g
2015 18804.1 35.57 g
But I am missing where you are seeing the major difference with 2000. Do point it out.
Fiscal Years 1985 to 2015Year GDP-US
$ billion Total Direct Revenue -total
pct GDP
1985 4217.5 31.95 a
1986 4460.1 32.27 a
1987 4736.4 33.40 a
1988 5100.4 32.86 a
1989 5482.1 33.24 i
1990 5800.5 33.23 a
1991 5992.1 33.07 a
1992 6342.3 33.07 a
1993 6667.4 33.39 a
1994 7085.2 33.51 a
1995 7414.7 34.27 a
1996 7838.5 34.85 a
1997 8270.46 35.66 a
1998 8727.02 36.53 a
1999 9286.86 36.08 a
2000 9884.17 37.19 a
2001 10218 34.52 i
2002 10572.4 31.21 a
2003 11067.8 31.23 i
2004 11788.9 33.01 a
2005 12554.5 33.80 a
2006 13310.9 35.28 a
2007 13969.3 37.01 a
2008 14270.5 32.94 a
2009 14014.8 25.94 a
2010 14551.8 32.47 e
2011 15079.6 32.17 g
2012 15812.5 33.18 g
2013 16752.4 34.33 g
2014 17782.2 35.15 g
2015 18804.1 35.57 g
But I am missing where you are seeing the major difference with 2000. Do point it out.
I thought that was your source. Those charts are wrong. I'm not sure where the error is in their calculations, but they are not correct. Just run the math. The federal government does not take in close the amount of revenues to reach anything close to 30% of GDP. Ever.
Think about 2008 and use 30% (the actual number on the chart looks closer to 35%) of $14 T. Federal government revenues were nowhere close to $4.2T. If they were, we would have had a surplus of about $1.3T.
Here's my source:
http://www.cbo.gov/ftpdocs/108xx/doc10871/appendixf.shtml
FUCK THE POLICE
911 EVERY DAY
There haven't really been many intentional increases in spending programs in the past few years, besides TARP and the Stimulus. So almost all of the growth is due to the growing population of elderly drawing on SS and Medicaid, the fact that medical prices have been rising at several times the rate of inflation for the past few years, the huge increase in laid off workers who need unemployment insurance, and a dramatic decline in revenue due to the recession.
What do you propose we do? Cut SS? Good luck. How are we supposed to reduce medicare and medicaid prices? We can't just put a cap on it. That's like trying to balance your budget by only sending the power company part of the power bill. Medicare and medicaid already pay below market rates, and it's eventually going to get to a point where doctors have to stop accepting those patients. Even to the extent that such a policy would be successful (in the years before doctors simply give up and stop accepting the patients), it's main effect would simply be to cause them to raise prices for other patients. Unemployment is going to go down with time, and revenue will as well. However, to seriously attempt to balance the budget at the current moment would be insanity.
FUCK THE POLICE
911 EVERY DAY
It would be sweet if medical prices went back to what they were in 2008, if the elderly population shrunk to what it was in 2008, if the unemployment rate fell to what it was in 2008, and if people started making money again so that tax revenue wouldn't collapse like it has. Unfortunately, none of those things are going to happen for a few years.
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The Almighty
Fair enough. Valid point.
So we see you used the anomaly of 2000. Might we have cherry picked the high? Me thinks you did.
The average of the tech boom period of 1990-2000 was 18.68. So you selected the outlier. Imagine that. I should have expected as much.
In 2008 it was back to about the average. Just under at 18.5.
Can't help but notice a couple other things from those tables...
1) Corporate income tax as a percentage of GDP went UP under Bush to the highest levels since the 1970s and we ended up with a shitty economy... just like back then. (table F4)
2) As we came to the peak of revenue as a percentage of GDP, OUTLAYS as a percent of GDP were coming down to their LOWEST levels of that period 1970-2009. Hmmm... imagine that.
I wonder what would happen to our economy today if we reduced taxation on corporations (encouraging job growth) and lowered our federal spending as a percentage of GDP (means future tax rates won't have to be increased as much). hmmm... I bet that wouldn't have any positive effect though, because we all know the government's only way out of their spending problem is to spend more.