I have read a slew of pieces recently, and heard a lot of talk radio, addressing the concept that the actual goal of the administration is to substantially alter how our government works. I wanted your thoughts.

Basically, the premise is that the Republican presidents of the past couple decades have passed politically beneficial, but economically troubling, tax cuts that benefited mainly corporations and the wealthy. While cutting Federal revenues, they have each ratcheted up spending on GOP desirable areas such as the military, funding wars, etc. Each time this has created a substantial national debt.

When the Democrats come to office (in this case the eight year term of Bill Clinton is the example available), they take a course of balancing the budget and trying to redistribute Federal funds to programs in need. However, the total pool of revenue was substantially lowered by the tax cuts (nobody wants to pass a general tax increase -- including Clinton who passed minimal increases targeted at the wealthiest tax payers), so the government is forced to go through a process of shrinking and cutting out programs.

Continuing this theory to present day, many analysts feel the GOP is trying to starve the government so that fundamental changes must be made in programs that dramatically impact large populations in the US. Education (supposedly something the administration was going to provide adequate funding for, but has not), Medicare, Social Security -- you name it, it will be underwater soon with the tremendous deficits, and the inevitable rise in interest rates that will eventually accompany.

So, is the GOP trying to carry out a targeted strike on how we run our country? There seems to be some merit to the argument, though it leaves me feeling even more sure that our current course is a very bad one.

As the recently leaked Treasury report clearly stated -- the commencement of the Baby Boomer retirement process will require a substantial increase in Federal revenues just to offset basic programs. We are in a world of hurt if covering just the basics is going to be beyond our means, let alone doing something real about diseases, education, and the decaying infrastructure of our country. (The interstate system is about 50 years old now, and we have seen very little done to upgrade some of our infrastructure systems.)

There are not enough hours in the day to fully address the number of logical fallacies in your screed. I'll just take two:

1. The Democrats as the party of balanced budgets? Puh-leeze. If the Democrats are so committed to balanced budgets, how come the Democratic controlled Congress never passed one in my lifetime? They controlled the House from the Eisenhower administration until 1994 and there was not one balanced budget in that time. Seems the Dems (via Bill Clinton) only seemed interested in balancing the budget after the Republicans took control of Congress in 1994.

Please note that under the U.S. Constitution, it all starts with Congress. Congress is Article I. The inferior executive is Article II. If the Dems love fiscal sanity so much, why didn't they love it when they controlled Congress?

2. You're blaming the Republicans for the impending Social Security/Medicare disaster? Once more (with feeling). Puh-leeze. Social Security started with FDR. Medicare was LBJ and the Great Society. I seem to recall they were Dems. Neither were ever meant to be "insurance," even though they are now treated as such. They have always been pay-as-you-go pyramid schemes. Pyramids. As in: they only work when more are paying at the bottom to pay off the earlier arrivals at the top. Guess what? With declining birthrates and longer life expectancies, the pyramid's going to collapse soon. Only a few very courageous Dems (Bob Kerrey, e.g.) and R's have dared touch the "third rail" of American politics. George W. Bush has proposed some very mild reforms (privatization of 5% of Social Security), and the typical Democratic party demogoguery on this issue is once again sickening. It's one of the key reasons I'll never vote Dem again.

I can't take anyone seriously who's unwilling to face those two basic truths

errrrrrrr ummmmmmmmmmm 2 words.. Jimmy Carter...

Now what were you saying about the economy and dems? I'm sure you miss the days of double digit inflation.

Everybody knows deficits don't necessarily matter ... except conservative Republicans, who are nonetheless saying it now because the Shrub is running staggering deficits beyond the horizon.

They DO matter, of course, when the goal of the radical GOP -- as identified recently by the Financial Times of London -- is to train-wreck the economy so that social spending can be hacked even further a few years from now, as the alleged only solution to the massive tax gifts to the wealthy.

The war was a fraud. Impeach the Resident.

You know, most people read the wall street journal here in AMERICA... Relying on London for american financial news.

The lengths we'll go to to get real news and not Ari Fleischer-spoon-fed propaganda.

Just read the NY times then, they just sorta make it up as they go.

Try the London Guardian once in a while, PhillyFan. You might learn something, i.e.; Tony Blair's got his ass in a sling because of Bush's WMD lies.

http://www.townhall.com/columnists/anncoul...c20030605.shtml

Well both parties have to share the blame for where we are right now economically. I think we need to quit the finger pointing and actually start trying to solve the problems.

The radical sections of each party drive them and that is why we have so much conflict. Both parties play WAY WAY WAY too much to the media, the photo op/soundbite, and to opinion polls.

I am just sad to see that September 11th really did not teach us anything that we are in this together. Everyone is just as greedy and power hungry as ever, maybe even more.

I'd just like to add that Eastern Liberal Simpering Intellectual Elite Snobs (ELSIES ®) can buy the Financial Times from a newspaper machine at several locations in the DC Metro system. I'm sure that you can do that in the Chicago, Philadelphia, Baltimore, etc. transit systems too. The practice may be outlawed in Arizona.

[ June 05, 2003, 06:48 PM: Message edited by: twin58 ]

I agree with you wholeheartedly Aaron.

I think our more conservative posters missed a very salient point. This is not my theory. It is the theory currently being discussed at length in newspapers, magazines, and on talk radio. I was just simply putting the basic tenets in writing to spur discussion.

You can disagree with the tenets all you want, that is the point of the topic. However, these points are widely accepted by the analysts leading the discussions.

It gets kind of tiring to keep hearing the age old cliche that Democrats are tax and spend kind of folks. History proves that this is simply untrue. Just as history proves that Republicans are not all that fiscally responsible.

It was Bill Clinton's administration, after all, that not only balanced the budget but put us into a surplus situation. This after several years of running very high deficits and having a rather difficult to service national debt. These deficits and exploding debt levels came during the 12 years of the Reagan/Bush I era. So, the premise put forth by the experts is pretty much in line with the facts.

In terms of the Democrats controlling the House for so long, but not balancing the budget. There were 28 years in there where Republicans were in the WH. Everything goes through Congress, but starts in the Executive Office with the proposed budget. In those 28 years, every Republican president used the "impending threat of the Red menace" (familiar strategy) to insist on substantial military outlays that made it very difficult to balance anything. It was only after the collapse of the Soviet Union that people started to question the out of control military spending. That played a fundamental role to finally balancing the budget -- it had very little to do with the Republicans finally taking control of the house for the first time in decades.

[ June 05, 2003, 06:56 PM: Message edited by: charliecstl ]

Hey, you make "ass in a sling" sound like a *bad* thing! wink

From Paul Krugman's column today: