THIS IS THE CHART AS AT JANUARY 2019
Posted on 03/20/2019 11:55:44 AM PDT by SeekAndFind
Stop spending money you don’t have, dummy.
Can we conservatives agree — at least among ourselves — on that much?
Maybe not.
Confession: I am not much of an ideologue. And I don’t think “Stop spending money you don’t have, dummy!” is an ideological position, exactly. And there’s no need to be fanatical about it: Running a deficit during a serious economic downturn, a war, or a national emergency? I’m flexible. You show me Hitler invading Poland and my response is not going to be: Stop spending money you don’t have, dummy.
Whip those Nazis. And, then:
Stop spending money you don’t have, dummy.
The Keynesians say that we should run deficits during recessions in order to goose demand and keep the economy hopping. There are economists I respect who believe that and economists I respect who are critical of that prescription. Get back to me on that the next time we’re in a recession and I’ll get into that at length. Until then:
Because, here’s the thing: The economy is doing pretty well, I’m reliably informed. President Trump is on his phone all damned day talking about work-force participation and GDP growth. (Not so much about the trade deficit.) And no one is better pleased by this than I am. People are working, wages are growing. I love to see it. So:
Stop spending money you don’t have, dummy.
I don’t know if Keynesian deficit spending works, but I am pretty sure that the idea is supposed to be that you do that kind of stimulus spending when the economy is lagging. But we run deficits when the economy is up, down, sideways, at ease, nervous, overconfident, sweaty, feeling a bit of a chill, singing Elvis Costello songs at late-night karaoke sessions. If the economy could hop on one foot while singing the national anthem of Burkina Faso (“Against the humiliating bondage of a thousand years / Rapacity came from afar to subjugate them for a hundred years!”), we’d run a deficit while the economy was hopping on one foot and singing the national anthem of Burkina Faso (“Against the cynical malice in the shape of neo-colonialism and its petty local servants!”).
Of that much I am confident. But I would prefer that the powers that be in Washington would instead:
Stop spending money you don’t have, dummy.
For pity’s sake: Under the budget just proposed by President Trump, we’re not only spending money we don’t have — we’re spending money we don’t want to have.
A goodly sum of the revenue in the Trump budget projections comes from Obamacare taxes — which the administration and congressional Republicans want to see repealed. As predicted by your favorite correspondent way back when the bill was being debated, some of those politically unpopular taxes have never been collected, and probably never will. (They are in a state of eternal deferment, like future presidential candidates faced with service in Vietnam.) That was some vintage Obama-era CBO-score bullsh** that has been reincarnated as Trump-era CBO-score bullsh** — because eternally reincarnated bullsh** is the only thing in Washington that is truly bipartisan.
Stop spending money you don’t have, dummy.
Republicans love tax cuts. Tax cuts are why God set Republicans wandering on this earth in their Cole Haan loafers. But the Trump budget assumes some tax increases as such GOP-beloved business-friendly tax measures as immediate deduction of capital expenses expire and go bye-bye. Like the Obamacare taxes, those tax increases probably are not going to happen. As the Committee for a Responsible Federal Budget runs the numbers, about $1.2 trillion of the Trump budget’s future revenue comes is CBO-score bullsh** — or “phantom revenues,” as the Wall Street Journal delicately puts it.
And even with that CBO-score bullsh**, the budget would add $7.3 trillion to the debt between 2020 and 2029.
Stop spending money you don’t have, dummy.
The last time we had a surplus, tax revenue was 18.8 percent of GDP and spending was 17.6 percent of GDP. That was 2001. Taxes were even higher as a share of GDP in the two years before that: 19.2 percent of GDP in 1999 and 20 percent in 2000. I prefer low taxes, but I don’t remember the tail end of the 1990s as an Orwellian dystopia. If the estimates hold, this year, revenues will be about 16.3 percent of GDP and spending will be 21 percent — with deficits forecast as far as forecasters can see. And that’s while the economy is doing well. Either that tax number moves or that spending number moves — or we have deficits forever, until the creditors call us on our bullsh**.
At which point we will have no choice but to:
Stop spending money you don’t have, dummy.
Also, stop spending money you DO have.
Too many whine groups on the gravy train. And they’ll never take less, even if it’s a matter of national survival.
Oh they have it all right - it’s yours and mine.
Saturday Night Live (back when it was funny) did a skit on this with Steve Martin and Amy Pohler.
Gotcha.
No 5.6M for border wall.
Done.
Anything else.
/trololol
Democrats can get any spending they want. All they have to do is threaten to shut down the government, the media will just blame Repubs and Trump for it. So they have to give them everything they want.
The spending just gets worse and worse and worse.
Nearly as bad under Republicans as when Democrats run the show.
And yet the wheels are not coming off, and show no signs of coming off anytime soon.
Which is why when you try and explain to young socialists that we can’t afford to give them free healthcare/tuition/childcare/insert favorite goodie here they think that we are crying wolf.
Because the surpluses were HUGE when the Rs had both chambers under BUSH AND TRUMP.
come on man.
They’re way past pump priming as an excuse to spend. Keynes is passé. Yes, spend more in bad times but in good? Why that’s an opportunity to spend more!
Now a days it’s more like economic masturbation with these Keystone Keynesians. Spending is their porn and power their aphrodisiac.
Try asking your representatives to tell the young people in their state that they will have to pay the debt and its carrying cost. Also, what is there plan to repay the debt? No answer.
LOL. The Govt. can't even slow down the increase of deficit spending much less reverse it. How long can you sustain spending a trillion dollars + of imaginary money ever year?
I just wonder what they’d all do if suddenly they were faced with the National Debt l coming due all at once! Then we’d see exactly what “essential spending” is!
Would they cut the military to keep the welfare benes going?
I could solve the problem of over spending if they would give me a LARGE Grant to study the problem.
Wow, no one has ever suggested this before.
Nearly 77% of the spending goes to just three programs: Social Security, Medicare, and Medicaid.
I don’t think Congress is going to make any cuts to these programs.
Congress BUYING VOTES WITH TAXPAYER MONEY.....so, “spending” isn’t an issue for them.
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