In his first inaugural speech, Ronald Reagan said:
“In this present crisis, government is not the solution to our problem; government is the problem. From time to time, we’ve been tempted to believe that society has become too complex to be managed by self-rule, that government by an elite group is superior to government for, by, and of the people. Well, if no one among us is capable of governing himself, then who among us has the capacity to govern someone else? All of us together, in and out of government, must bear the burden.”
Remember the “Fiscal Cliff”?
It was only a decade ago (2013) and it proves politicians learn nothing and know nothing. In a way, it shows how, due to rabid resistance, President Trump barely scratched the surface in his attempts to change government. See if any of these quotes sound familiar:
Barack Obama on January 1, 2013:
“I will not have another debate with this Congress over whether or not they should pay the bills that they’ve already racked up…”
Democrat Steny Hoyer, February 12, 2013:
“Does the country have a spending problem? The country has a “paying for” problem. We haven’t paid for what we bought, we haven’t paid for our tax cuts, we haven’t paid for war.”
House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi, February 10, 2013:
“It is almost a false argument to say that we have a spending problem. We have a budget deficit problem.”
These three comments represent the mindset of Democrats with respect to fiscal responsibility. This sounds a little like a story I remember from several years ago where a woman’s sister applied for a bunch of credit cards in her sister’s name and then lavished presents on her. When she got caught and was prosecuted, the bad sister claimed that it was the good sister’s fault because she wanted and accepted the gifts, and she should have known that the bad one couldn’t possibly afford to give those gifts in the first place.
Since 1955, Democrats have controlled both Houses of Congress for roughly two thirds of the past 68 years. Entitlement creation and expansion has been the exclusive province of the Democratic party since FDR.
Today’s Democrats are just rationalizing their historically bad fiscal behavior.
The first quote was typical of Obama. He never got out of the Alfred E. Neumann “What, me worry?” approach. He spent his entire first term working to get Obamacare and its tax increases passed and then blamed Congress for passing his pet program when the costs began to hit in his second term.
And now we have moved on from Obama’s Alfred E. Neumann to Biden’s Chance the Gardner.
Every Democrat with a microphone singles out “paying for” tax cuts when economist Arnold Laffer has clearly shown how the initially lower levels of tax receipts are offset with economic growth when taxes are cut, resulting in HIGHER tax receipts.
Democrats always harp on “not paying for war” as if the military spending is the only budget issue when it is dwarfed by entitlement spending as noted in US News in December of 2012, when entitlement spending became the highest in American history:
“In 2010, entitlement spending had grown to be almost 100 times higher than it was in 1960; it has increased by an explosive 9.5 percent per year for 50 straight years. Entitlement transfer payments to individuals (such as for income, healthcare, age, and unemployment) have been growing twice as fast as per capita income for 20 years, totaling $2.2 trillion in 2010 alone—which was greater than the entire gross domestic product of Italy and roughly the same as the GDP of Great Britain.
In 1960, entitlement spending accounted for less than a third of all federal spending; in 2010, it was just about two thirds of government outlays, with everything else—defense, justice, all the other duties of government—making up less than one third. Over the last half-century, income-related assistance (which we used to call “welfare”) multiplied more than thirtyfold after adjusting for inflation. The most shocking growth has been in Medicare and Medicaid. In the early 1960s, neither program existed; by 2010, these two programs cost more than $900 billion a year.
Entitlement spending is 2/3 of the federal budget. Actually, the Defense Department budget is less than 20% of the total federal spend – and much of that spending goes to defense contractors who actually provide jobs. Defense spending is one of the legitimate Constitutional priorities of the federal government and only the Democrat’s loathing of the military keeps them from recognizing that this is no different than one of their beloved jobs programs – with the exception that this one actually has a legitimate Constitutional basis.”
Blaming military spending is like saying that I have a $3,000 mortgage payment but buying an ice cream cone is the reason that I have so little money in the bank.
Deficits are caused by one thing – spending more than you take in. When families lose income, they cut spending. Government does not – it prints just money.
Presidents in both parties – from John F. Kennedy to Ronald Reagan – have known that our free enterprise economy is the source of our middle-class prosperity and yet every Democrat believes it’s the cause of our problems, that economic downturns happen because our government didn’t tax enough, spend enough and control enough. Under every Democrat president, the solution to virtually every problem we face is for Washington to tax more, borrow more and spend more.
This idea – that our problems were caused by a government that was too small – has never been true. In fact, a major cause of our most recent downturn was created by reckless government policies.
Just like President Reagan said.
Spot on Michael. And as President Reagan stated: "The most terrifying words in the English language are: I'm from the government and I'm here to help."
“…. from JFK to Reagan – have known that our free enterprise economy is the source of our middle-class prosperity and yet every Democrat believes it’s the cause of our problems, that economic downturns happen because our government didn’t tax enough, spend enough and control enough. “
They SAY… but they’re actually not that stupid. Every once in a while (in recent decades, depending on which “spin” serves their purpose), they slip and tell the truth.
They just believe that WE’RE that stupid - and if they tell the same lie often enough, we’ll start believing it.
Art Laffer - one of the best economists, who actually proved his theory - demonstrated the validity of the Laffer Curve more than once. They’ve KNOWN this for 40 years. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Arthur_Laffer
Problem is, it doesn’t give them the keys to the public treasury. But cooking up nonsense like “MMT” does, and keeping that cash flowing is where their real power comes from.
So let’s “solve” the problem by bringing in another 6, or 8 , or 10 million more recipients of entitlements! More votes to keep them in power! Who cares that it doesn’t help those they’re elected to represent! Just blame it all on the evil rich; that’s always been a popular justification for raising taxes. Grafting (in the political corruption sense) is always the same, no matter what name you give it. Only the middleman gets rich.
I think our confusion lies in believing we’re electing them to solve problems, without seeing that that’s a conflict of interest. Solving problems doesn’t guarantee continuing power.
Creating problems guarantees continuing power.