House moves to raise U.S. debt ceiling ($9,000,000,000,000)

Washington Times ^ | May 10, 2005

[MEGoody]

The average of the nation's intelligence level will increase dramatically when you've departed. Make it quick.

[xrp]

I doubt it, since Avg IQ is around 100 and mine is above 140.

[MEGoody]

"I doubt it, since Avg IQ is around 100 and mine is above 140."

Certainly can't prove it by your posts. You have more of a 'sez you' mentality.

[xrp]

k

[Hank Rearden]

Of course I'm going to vote - Libertarian. I don't vote for parties or candidates that grow government, assault the First Amendment, prop up Ponzi schemes and cook up "free" pill vote-buying scams for greedy geezers.

Why would anybody support people like that? That's the kind of crap democRats pull.

[MEGoody]

"Of course I'm going to vote - Libertarian."

Thanks for the clarification.

I can't vote Libertarian because I'm way too socially conservative.

[Hank Rearden]

I can't vote Libertarian because I'm way too socially conservative.

Me too. It's not monolithic; check out Libertarians for Life for example.

[Toskrin]

We're not at any sort of critical point yet, but someone will have to reign it in, and it won't be GW Bush. Our total debt as a percent of GDP is about what it was in Eisenhower's administration, but it's going up instead of down.

The inflection point at 1980 is more due to inflation than to Reagan's deficit spending. Nominal GDP was growing very rapidly during the Ford/Carter years because of inflation. Even though, percentage-wise, our debt was lower then than now, the interest payments were higher.

One thing is clear - Bush, unlike Reagan, has no interest in curbing spending. It seems the best economic times were when we had a Democratic president and a Republican congress that couldn't agree on how to spend the government's money.

(Don't worry, I'm not trolling for the stainmeister...)

[A CA Guy]

Now we know why the estate tax needs to stay in place to collect money from all the old dying people over the next 30 years that helped create lots of this debt.
The income from the estate tax might rival the Federal Income tax for a time.

We need to make sure the money goes to the debt reduction though.

[TheOtherOne]

One thing is clear - Bush, unlike Reagan, has no interest in curbing spending. It seems the best economic times were when we had a Democratic president and a Republican congress that couldn't agree on how to spend the government's money. ...SO THEY SPENT LESS

I agree.

[listenhillary]

Much of these declining spending years in Clinton's era were done out of the muscle of our military.

What were the long term costs of Clinton's dismantling of our military? Cutting our navy to 1930 levels?
9/11 was what we bought. Penny wise and pound foolish we were. How much spending occurred after 9/11 to prevent this from happening again? How big of hit did our economy (and tax revenue) take from 9/11?

Not that I don't agree that our government spending is out of control and the new "Free drugs for seniors" socialist plan.