Replies

Possibly so.

However, that is still no excuse to maintain TOTAL spending at that level.

Without crunching the numbers, let's say that is why Nixon looks so bad on that chart in #27. If miltary spending crashed due to the winding down of the Vietnam War, why didn't he veto any budget that maintained total spending at where it was, thus inflating social welfare programs? Total spending should have been cut, not maintaining total spending and just shifting the excess into social welfare.

The problem is that DOD spending can rise and fall, but once money is spent on social welfare, they constantly create a new baseline for these programs that say spending can only go up from where it was last budgeted.

You make a valid point of explaining how it could have happened, but that was still no excuse for Nixon to let it happen. That is how and why we now have 65 cents of every dollar going toward social welfare. You know and I know that the politicians are relunctant to cut total spending.

Another hypothetical. Let's say that the War in Iraq comes to a dead stop next year. All of a sudden, that is $100 billion that will not be spent. What do you think Bush and Congress will do? Cut the Budget $100 billion? No way! They will just shift this from Iraq to social welfare. That is what happned to Nixon and it is the same thing that all presidents let happen. They refuse to cut spending when a major spending program ends--they shift it to social welfare to buy votes.

Hello, again. The problem is that the more the government does for people the less able and willing they are to do for themselves and others and the less able and willing they are to do for themselves and others the more the government has an excuse to do for them. It's a downward spiral of government spending followed by dependency, followed by even more government spending, etc.

On top of that, more and more people for purely selfish and greedy reasons don't want to pay their own bills (even if they have the money) or take on resonsibilities (even if they are capable). They want to sponge off of their fellow citizens and push off their resonsibilities on taxpayer-funded employees. The American people, collectively, are spoiled rotten.