On Fri, 2003-02-07 at 22:38, Paul Johnson wrote: > On Fri, Feb 07, 2003 at 09:12:36PM -0600, Ron Johnson wrote: > > Only anarchists believe that government should not exist, and American > > conservatives & libertarians are most emphatically *not* anarchists. > > They more or less believe in a limited Federal government. > > So when do they start practicing what they preach? Within my > lifetime, Reagan put the US $3 trillion dollars into the hole, the > first Bush added another trillion dollars and the largest tax increase > in American history, the current Bush proposes increased millitary > spending and shifting the tax burden on the poor and the single > largest increase in federal staff (Department of Homeland Security, > with most of it in the Transportation Safety Administration).
Ummm, somehow I don't think that when W was inaugurated, he was planning on having these new burdens placed on the Federal budget... > Oddly, wasn't it under the Clinton administration that we saw an > increase in human services and still turned a surplus without > increasing taxes? Seems like that's the kind of economics we should > be aiming for; hopefully we'll return to something like that before > the tax-and-spend conservatives kill us economically and socially. Don't forget that this isn't an elective dictatorship. I'm sure that if Reagan & Clinton could have been dictators, the country would look *VERY* different now. There were Dems and liberal Republicans fighting Reagan every step of the way, and most Republicans were fighting Clinton every step of the way. Reagan wanted to shutter the Education Dept, slash welfare spending. Clinton wanted to nationalize heath care, but neither happened. The Republicans forced Clinton to operate within the Budget Agreement, and pass welfare reform. Another Reagan example: TEFRA. The Dems promised to cut spending if Reagan would raise taxes. Guess who broke their promises. Reagan then knew he didn't have the political capital to fight for lower domestic spending AND fight the Cold War the way he thought it should be spent. So, since he thought that defeating The Evil Empire (no more Mutually Assured Destruction!) was more important than deficit spending, he had to make his choice. A Law Of Unintended Consequences way that Reagan caused the deficit to baloon: the 1986 tax simplification caused lots of real estate ventures to become unprofitable. Thus, the S&L Crisis. Oh, guess who came into office right around the time that the S&L's finally got paid off? Right... Clinton! So without lifting a finger, the budget got a lot closer to being balanced, and Clinton took all the credit. -- +------------------------------------------------------------+ | Ron Johnson, Jr. Home: [EMAIL PROTECTED] | | Jefferson, LA USA http://members.cox.net/ ron.l.johnson | | | | "For me and windows it became a matter of easy to start | | with, and becoming increasingly difficult to be produc- | | tive as time went on, and if something went wrong very | | difficult to fix, compared to linux's large over head | | setting up and learning the system with ease of use and | | the increase in productivity becoming larger the longer I | | use the system." | | Rohan Nicholls , The Netherlands | +------------------------------------------------------------+ -- To UNSUBSCRIBE, email to [EMAIL PROTECTED] with a subject of "unsubscribe". Trouble? Contact [EMAIL PROTECTED]
