Why don't Republicans care about the deficit anymore?

[Nyvin]

Because their guy is in. Next question.

Both parties only care about the deficit/debt when they don't hold the Presidency. The only exception to this in modern history is Bill Clinton.

Obama formed an entire special commission on reducing the deficit as president. He begged the GOP to sign on to it and they refused. Did you forget about Simpson-Bowles?

I'm not that familiar with it but given that our debt nearly doubled during Obama's 8 years I doubt Obama really cared that much.

You are confusing deficit and the national debt, so I agree that you're "not that familiar with it" and probably shouldn't be making dishonest statements like this.

Did you forget about a little thing called the biggest financial crisis in 80 years that occurred right before Obama became president? You seriously don't understand why governments have to spend more money when those things happen?

Uh, I used the terms correctly. Bush handed Obama a debt of nearly $10 Trillion and it was around $19 Trillion when Obama left office. That's a near-doubling, and it does put into question whether Obama really cared.

I asked a question about how Republicans feel about the deficit, and you keep responding by talking to me about Obama and the national debt.

You're being cute. The only reason the deficit matters is that it adds to that debt. I'm not going to give Obama a gold star because he ran a smaller deficit in his last year in office than the first, when in the middle he ran some of the biggest deficits in history and added more to debt than any president in modern history. It'd be like gaining 50 pounds a year for 7 years, then only gaining five pounds the next year, and then citing that as evidence that I don't have a weight problem. When arguments like this are made it's essentially treating the deficit in one year as more significant than the overall debt, which doesn't make any sense if you actually understand the distinction.

Trying to hold Obama up as a paragon of fiscal responsibility is a tenuous argument. Just stick with Clinton on that one.

You realize it's damn near mathematically impossible to turn the 2009 deficit into a surplus in just 7 years correct?   There is nothing any President from either party could've done with what Obama was given to start with,  you're literally asking the impossible.   For how high the deficit started out in 2009, Obama was remarkable in lowering it as much as he did.

[Attorney General & PPT Dwarven Dragon]

Because their guy is in. Next question.

Both parties only care about the deficit/debt when they don't hold the Presidency. The only exception to this in modern history is Bill Clinton.

Obama formed an entire special commission on reducing the deficit as president. He begged the GOP to sign on to it and they refused. Did you forget about Simpson-Bowles?

I'm not that familiar with it but given that our debt nearly doubled during Obama's 8 years I doubt Obama really cared that much.

You are confusing deficit and the national debt, so I agree that you're "not that familiar with it" and probably shouldn't be making dishonest statements like this.

Did you forget about a little thing called the biggest financial crisis in 80 years that occurred right before Obama became president? You seriously don't understand why governments have to spend more money when those things happen?

Uh, I used the terms correctly. Bush handed Obama a debt of nearly $10 Trillion and it was around $19 Trillion when Obama left office. That's a near-doubling, and it does put into question whether Obama really cared.

I asked a question about how Republicans feel about the deficit, and you keep responding by talking to me about Obama and the national debt.

You're being cute. The only reason the deficit matters is that it adds to that debt. I'm not going to give Obama a gold star because he ran a smaller deficit in his last year in office than the first, when in the middle he ran some of the biggest deficits in history and added more to debt than any president in modern history. It'd be like gaining 50 pounds a year for 7 years, then only gaining five pounds the next year, and then citing that as evidence that I don't have a weight problem. When arguments like this are made it's essentially treating the deficit in one year as more significant than the overall debt, which doesn't make any sense if you actually understand the distinction.

Trying to hold Obama up as a paragon of fiscal responsibility is a tenuous argument. Just stick with Clinton on that one.

You realize it's damn near mathematically impossible to turn the 2009 deficit into a surplus in just 7 years correct?   There is nothing any President from either party could've done with what Obama was given to start with,  you're literally asking the impossible.   For how high the deficit started out in 2009, Obama was remarkable in lowering it as much as he did.

Your arguments might have some merit if the deficit was only above a trillion for a year or two, but instead it was over a trillion for almost the entirety of Obama's first term, and while it fell afterward, it remained high, being at a level of $587 Billion during Obama's final full fiscal year in office (FY16). Going from the $1.3 Trillion dollar deficit he was handed when he walked in the door in 2009, Obama reduced the deficit by $713 Billion by September 30, 2016. To distill this down, over this seven and 3/4 year period, Obama reduced a deficit by a pathetic $92 Billion per year. Under this rate, it would take us until roughly 2025 to reach a surplus. Hardly a god of fiscal responsibility when you have to rely on the next president being equally or more responsible to reach a surplus.

Furthermore, that calculation is a simplification, because Obama also left us with trillions in future unfunded liabilities related to our entitlement programs.

So, while Obama is FAR better than Trump in this regard, who as of this moment has increased the deficit by more than $300 Billion, he does not qualify as fiscally responsible.

[IceSpear]

Why do people keep deflecting to Obama? This thread is about why Republicans don't care about the deficit. They're supposed to be the "fiscally responsible" party, are they not?

[Attorney General & PPT Dwarven Dragon]

Why do people keep deflecting to Obama? This thread is about why Republicans don't care about the deficit. They're supposed to be the "fiscally responsible" party, are they not?

I agree the republicans are not fiscally responsible, my point is that nobody who has held the white house in modern history has been fiscally responsible except for Bill Clinton.

[Amenhotep Bakari-Sellers]

Yes, because the economy was different then. Now, its a green, recyclable economy. The war on terror, trade deficit with China, Social Security all contributed to our deficits.

But irresponsible tax cuts, tarp funds that bailed out auto and banks that dont help average Americans do too😣.

[Absentee Voting Ghost of Ruin]

They never cared to begin with. Literally the same exact thing happens over and over.

- Democrat is president (Carter, Clinton, Obama)
- Republicans pretend to care about deficit, accuse Democrat of being a deficit buster despite some of them actually lowering it, media treats this as principled good faith concern
- Republican is president (Reagan, Bush, Trump)
- Republicans explode the deficit with unpaid for tax cuts and/or wars, media is silent

Rinse and repeat.

And it's funny people talk about how Jeff Flake shouldn't "abandon his beliefs on tax cuts just because he's anti-Trump." The guy's claim to fame was being a "deficit hawk", yet he voted for a deficit busting tax scam because he's a partisan hack. He has zero principles.

(I know I'm resurrecting an old thread here, but I think it's age helps make the point.)

Right on schedule here comes MoscowMitch...
McConnell rejects Democrats’ effort to get GOP to back raising the nation’s debt limit

Democrats are about to tell Republicans to go take a hike, and start keying up trillion more dollars in borrowing and spending,” McConnell said in Senate floor remarks. “They want Republicans to give them political cover for the partisan debt bomb that they’ll go right on to detonate with zero input from my colleagues.”

“They won’t get our help,” the Kentucky Republican continued. “They won’t get our help with the debt limit increase that recklessly, that these reckless plans will require. I could not be more clear. They have the ability. They control the White House, they control the House, they control the Senate. They can raise the debt ceiling and if it’s raised, they will do it.”

And the rest of his caucuscult is right there with him, so hypocritical that even FoxNews is calling it out:
https://twitter.com/atrupar/status/1424370112019185664

[Saint Milei]

When did Republicans actually care? I mean under Clinton, sure, but even then it was abysmal. Clinton wasn't fiscally responsible by the way. The GOP just forced his hand. They should have done the same under Obama, if they cared. The GOP didn't care because we pretty much have everyone dependent on entitlements and people will vote against the GOP if entitlements are reformed or cut. They need to be.

There's only been a handful of Republican politicians and voters that actually care. Trumpism pretty much killed fiscal conservatism. The era of Fusionism that Reagan helped bring to the forefront is gone. Buchanan's more liberal ideology on economics that he pushed for more towards the late 90s and early 00s is pretty much where the GOP is at now at this point. Most of the GOP base is ok with massive spending. Maybe states like Texas, Tennessee, and Florida still care, but that's not enough. It sucks, but cultural conservatism is more the identity of Conservatism and the GOP than anything else.

[○∙◄☻¥tπ[╪AV┼cVê└]

Both parties vote for bloated military industrial complex budgets and then lecture to us about how single payer is too expensive.

[All Along The Watchtower]

Because Gerald Ford and George HW Bush are dead.

[Benjamin Frank]

When did Republicans actually care? I mean under Clinton, sure, but even then it was abysmal. Clinton wasn't fiscally responsible by the way. The GOP just forced his hand. They should have done the same under Obama, if they cared. The GOP didn't care because we pretty much have everyone dependent on entitlements and people will vote against the GOP if entitlements are reformed or cut. They need to be.

There's only been a handful of Republican politicians and voters that actually care. Trumpism pretty much killed fiscal conservatism. The era of Fusionism that Reagan helped bring to the forefront is gone. Buchanan's more liberal ideology on economics that he pushed for more towards the late 90s and early 00s is pretty much where the GOP is at now at this point. Most of the GOP base is ok with massive spending. Maybe states like Texas, Tennessee, and Florida still care, but that's not enough. It sucks, but cultural conservatism is more the identity of Conservatism and the GOP than anything else.

That's nonsense.  Every Republican voted against the 1993 Clinton budget that led to the balancing of the budget.  The Clinton 1993 budget had $500 billion over 10 years in spending cuts and tax increases.  It was painful and politically risky with no short term political upside.  On top of the $500 billion over 10 years in spending cuts and tax increases passed earlier under and with the assistance of George H W Bush, the budget was balanced.  

The Republicans like to claim credit for this, even though every single Republican in Congress voted against this budget and offered no serious alternative simply because they happened to have taken the majority in Congress when the budget finally went into balance.

When Clinton was no longer President, but George W Bush was President and the Republicans still controlled Congress, the deficit ballooned again.  If the Republican Congress had anything to do with balancing the budget, how did this happen?

This claim that the Republicans in Congress had anything to do with balancing the budget is more dishonest Republican revisionist history.

[Saint Milei]

When did Republicans actually care? I mean under Clinton, sure, but even then it was abysmal. Clinton wasn't fiscally responsible by the way. The GOP just forced his hand. They should have done the same under Obama, if they cared. The GOP didn't care because we pretty much have everyone dependent on entitlements and people will vote against the GOP if entitlements are reformed or cut. They need to be.

There's only been a handful of Republican politicians and voters that actually care. Trumpism pretty much killed fiscal conservatism. The era of Fusionism that Reagan helped bring to the forefront is gone. Buchanan's more liberal ideology on economics that he pushed for more towards the late 90s and early 00s is pretty much where the GOP is at now at this point. Most of the GOP base is ok with massive spending. Maybe states like Texas, Tennessee, and Florida still care, but that's not enough. It sucks, but cultural conservatism is more the identity of Conservatism and the GOP than anything else.

That's nonsense.  Every Republican voted against the 1993 Clinton budget that led to the balancing of the budget.  The Clinton 1993 budget had $500 billion over 10 years in spending cuts and tax increases.  It was painful and politically risky with no short term political upside.  On top of the $500 billion over 10 years in spending cuts and tax increases passed earlier under and with the assistance of George H W Bush, the budget was balanced.  

The Republicans like to claim credit for this, even though every single Republican in Congress voted against this budget and offered no serious alternative simply because they happened to have taken the majority in Congress when the budget finally went into balance.

When Clinton was no longer President, but George W Bush was President and the Republicans still controlled Congress, the deficit ballooned again.  If the Republican Congress had anything to do with balancing the budget, how did this happen?

This claim that the Republicans in Congress had anything to do with balancing the budget is more dishonest Republican revisionist history.

Well the budget raised taxes so it makes sense why Republicans were in opposition to this. I'm not sure where this nonsense/dishonest/revisionist history claim comes from. You conveniently ignored the fact that the budget increased taxes and the most popular argument for why HW Bush lost re-election is because he lied to the public about no new taxes. So Republicans backing a budget that raised taxes would be suicide and antithetical to what the GOP wanted at the time. Again, it's not like Clinton truly wanted to balance the budget. He was forced to because it made democrats look bad which is why it narrowly passed. The GOP did force his hand because he would have looked like the spender in chief and made the budget skyrocket. An easy hit for Republicans back then. You claim there's no upside to this, yet the very upside can be seen given the 20+ history after 93 where Republicans blast democrats for trying to spend uncontrollably. It's the same talking point Clinton and his cabinet wanted to avoid.


I already said Republicans never really cared besides under Clinton.  The deficit wasn't eliminated until the BBA btw

[Benjamin Frank]

When did Republicans actually care? I mean under Clinton, sure, but even then it was abysmal. Clinton wasn't fiscally responsible by the way. The GOP just forced his hand. They should have done the same under Obama, if they cared. The GOP didn't care because we pretty much have everyone dependent on entitlements and people will vote against the GOP if entitlements are reformed or cut. They need to be.

There's only been a handful of Republican politicians and voters that actually care. Trumpism pretty much killed fiscal conservatism. The era of Fusionism that Reagan helped bring to the forefront is gone. Buchanan's more liberal ideology on economics that he pushed for more towards the late 90s and early 00s is pretty much where the GOP is at now at this point. Most of the GOP base is ok with massive spending. Maybe states like Texas, Tennessee, and Florida still care, but that's not enough. It sucks, but cultural conservatism is more the identity of Conservatism and the GOP than anything else.

That's nonsense.  Every Republican voted against the 1993 Clinton budget that led to the balancing of the budget.  The Clinton 1993 budget had $500 billion over 10 years in spending cuts and tax increases.  It was painful and politically risky with no short term political upside.  On top of the $500 billion over 10 years in spending cuts and tax increases passed earlier under and with the assistance of George H W Bush, the budget was balanced.  

The Republicans like to claim credit for this, even though every single Republican in Congress voted against this budget and offered no serious alternative simply because they happened to have taken the majority in Congress when the budget finally went into balance.

When Clinton was no longer President, but George W Bush was President and the Republicans still controlled Congress, the deficit ballooned again.  If the Republican Congress had anything to do with balancing the budget, how did this happen?

This claim that the Republicans in Congress had anything to do with balancing the budget is more dishonest Republican revisionist history.

Well the budget raised taxes so it makes sense why Republicans were in opposition to this. I'm not sure where this nonsense/dishonest/revisionist history claim comes from. You conveniently ignored the fact that the budget increased taxes and the most popular argument for why HW Bush lost re-election is because he lied to the public about no new taxes. So Republicans backing a budget that raised taxes would be suicide and antithetical to what the GOP wanted at the time. Again, it's not like Clinton truly wanted to balance the budget. He was forced to because it made democrats look bad which is why it narrowly passed. The GOP did force his hand because he would have looked like the spender in chief and made the budget skyrocket. An easy hit for Republicans back then. You claim there's no upside to this, yet the very upside can be seen given the 20+ history after 93 where Republicans blast democrats for trying to spend uncontrollably. It's the same talking point Clinton and his cabinet wanted to avoid.


I already said Republicans never really cared besides under Clinton.  The deficit wasn't eliminated until the BBA btw

Let me see how much of this I can make sense of.

1.You said 'the Republicans forced his hand.'  How did they 'force his hand' when Clinton had already exposed their insincerity and hypocrisy when every Republican announced opposition to the Clinton budget but did not come up with a credible alternative?

2.If you want to argue that President Clinton/the Congressional Democrats didn't really want to cut the deficit either, there is probably some truth to that, as they were forced by the circumstances of high real long term interest rates and the resultant sputtering economic recovery.  But, to claim the Republicans forced President Clinton and the Democrats into cutting/eliminating the deficit is, indeed, nothing but dishonest Republican revisionist history.  

Polling at the time also showed that it was the slow pace and inconsistency of the economic recovery that cost George H W Bush reelection.  Breaking his 'no new taxes' pledge had little to no impact as voters consistently said to pollsters that they expected him to break that promise anyway. The big issue in the 1992 election was the sputtering economy, and the belief that the high federal government budget deficit was the reason for this.  Ross Perot's Presidential campaign played that up and became something of a folk hero over this, although he never provided any credible deficit reduction plan and he never even explained the connection between the budget deficit and the slow economic recovery.  

However, the point here is that the claim Bush lost because he reneged on his 'no new taxes' pledge is also dishonest Republican historical revisionism.

3.The Republicans did nothing but obstruct President Clinton and the Democratic attempts to balance the budget, and as soon as they re-took the Presidency, they ballooned the deficit again.  That is the real historical record, and to claim anything else is an outright lie. And it really doesn't matter why the Republicans were opposed as they proposed no alternative.

So, no, the Republican demands the Republican demands that Clinton balanced the budget had no effect on President Clinton, his cabinet or the Congressional Democrats other than the Republican hypocrisy and dishonesty annoyed the Democrats.

4.I have no idea what you are referring to with the balanced budget amendment.  There is no balanced budget amendment in the Constitution, and yes, President Clinton did balance the budget and then achieve 'surpluses as far as the eye can see.' It may have taken the social security fund surplus to do that, but there is not a single Republican President who has even come close since then, and the social security fund surplus was counted as part of the overall budget long prior to President Clinton.

I think you may mean 'PAYGO' not the balanced budget amendment, but it was the Democrats who have mostly supported that, while Republicans have not because it would have prevented them from passing ever more tax cuts for their wealthy friends/future employers/fellow grifters.  George W. Bush and the Republicans let PAYGO expire in 2003, and it was reinstated by Speaker Pelosi in 2007, and she then reinstated it again after re-taking the Speakership in 2019.

5.It's also the case that as mediocre as President Obama's deficit cutting was, he did leave office with a $450-500 billion deficit while President Trump in 2019 had a $1 trillion deficit even though the economy was in better shape overall in 2019 than in 2016.  So, it is still completely false to argue that even since President Clinton that the Democratic record on deficits is no different than the Republican record.  As disappointing as President Obama was here, the Democrats are still much better than Republicans on the deficit/debt overall.

[Yoda]

"anymore"

[pbrower2a]

Here's a good article about Walter Jones, the last remaining Republican deficit hawk in Congress.

https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/wonk/wp/2017/12/28/is-this-the-last-deficit-hawk-in-the-republican-party/?noredirect=on&utm_term=.4730ed2f1049

There are 291 Republicans in Congress, and only one voted against the GOP tax bill because he thinks it will increase the U.S. deficit.

A 12-term congressman from the eastern banks of North Carolina, Rep. Walter B. Jones Jr. (R-N.C.) says his fellow House Republicans have used cherry-picked data and fanciful projections to delude themselves into believing that the plan will not balloon the federal deficit.

“I guarantee you, if Mr. Obama was the president and he put this tax bill in, those deficit hawks in my party would get out of the nests and start squawking,” Jones said. “But here they are, and because it’s a Republican president possibly adding $1.5 to $2 trillion to this country’s deficit, they’re going to stay in the nest and not squawk about it.”

Jones’s vote against the legislation, which passed last week, makes him unique among his party in putting the preeminent concern that had dominated GOP policymaking for years — the mushrooming national debt — ahead of the tax package.

...

“At the time I joined, the Republican Party was very outspoken about the debt of the nation. … I look at where we are as a nation now, and the Republican Party doesn’t stand for less government and less spending,” Jones said. “It spends like there’s no tomorrow.”

Anyone else notice the distinct lack of RINOs in this thread?

It's not a matter of "Left" and "Right". The Left has long seen an activist, beneficent government serving the ends of making life easier for the afflicted and disadvantaged.  The Right has seen that as an anathema, holding that it is the duty of the common man to make the filthy rich even more filthy rich by supporting a plutocratic order that ensures that anything good that happens to anyone is the conscious choice of the economic elites who, history has almost always shown, look out for themselves alone. The Right ideal has been the sweatshop or the plantation in which those who do the work get the privilege of survival in return for working ever harder and longer under savage conditions for far less.

Certain realities, such as the specter of revolutionary socialism that promises first to take the crushing power of economic elites away and perhaps putting members of the previous elite that made the Common Man a literal prisoner (note the deliberate allusion to the Internationale)  of starvation to death, if not simply exiling and dispossessing them. Technology creates a conflict among members of the economic elites, as some technologies succeed only if the promoters of those technologies have a ready market. Capitalism saved itself from this

   

by mitigating its worst tendencies. It was wiser for capitalists to concede some of the output that they had been taking for themselves than to lose their great stores of wealth and such intangibles as their lives in some Socialist revolution, and to seek people who, like small farmers and small-scale business owners, could get little from Big Government for hefty taxes, as political allies. Democracy proved safer than despotism.

Of course, there were fascist regimes that restored the old subjection of the toiler to traditional elites with the addition of militarism and racism. Most fascist regimes in Europe in the 1920's and 1930's either fell before more ruthless fascists (thus the Dollfuss-Schuschnigg dictatorship, the Polish colonels' regime, Metaxas' Greece) or became hideous monstrosities that provoked the most dangerous powers of the time (Britain, the USA, and the Soviet Union) only to die in the onslaught of WWII (Tojo's Japan, Nazi Germany, Mussolini's Italy, Antonescu's Romania, Szalasi's Hungary, and the Ustase regime in Croatia along with some puppet leaders of subordinated states.     

The Right began to support some virtues contrary to a welfare state, such as making people responsible for the generation of wealth not theirs as a means of having any economic certainty. Small farmers and small-scale entrepreneurs had an incentive in supporting a more libertarian approach to economics: small government that did little for people. Of course, as the tendencies for consolidation of agriculture, retail, and finance into ever-bigger combines, the support for the old fashioned near-libertarian wing of the GOP also faded. The GOP began to become more connected to Big Business, and it found that Big Government could be useful in supporting and enforcing monopoly, eviscerating unions, and privatizing anything that could turn a profit on the cheap to rapacious monopolists.

The Right has learned that Big Government can be useful also for one of the most profitable of all activities: war, ideally to enforce local compliance with "American interests (meaning corporate investments and the gravy train thereto attached) abroad". Maybe only a coup, as in Chile in 1973, is adequate for creating a foreign (usually American) investor's paradise that is a Hell for anyone not already a plutocrat or big landowner. Maybe the election of Joe Biden spared us from wars to 'liberate' Cuba and Venezuela on behalf of Corporate America.

Profits and class privilege now matter more to the political Right than do deficits. America no longer has a divide between a small-government conservative party, as Reagan presented the GOP, and a watered-down social-democratic party as is the Democratic Party; it now has a semi-fascist Party and a watered-down social-democratic Party. Sure, there is a Libertarian party, but it looks to have even lesser prospects than the Socialist Party of the era of Eugene Debs.

If it is any consolation, the Democrats are adopting some political values that used to be largely conservative -- such as respect for protocol and precedent, acceptance of a hierarchy of achievement, a disdain for criminality and corruption, support of personal self-development, recognition of the validity of tradition (if no specific tradition in America), and rejection of crony capitalism. Those traits mark Eisenhower and Obama.           

[Saint Milei]

When did Republicans actually care? I mean under Clinton, sure, but even then it was abysmal. Clinton wasn't fiscally responsible by the way. The GOP just forced his hand. They should have done the same under Obama, if they cared. The GOP didn't care because we pretty much have everyone dependent on entitlements and people will vote against the GOP if entitlements are reformed or cut. They need to be.

There's only been a handful of Republican politicians and voters that actually care. Trumpism pretty much killed fiscal conservatism. The era of Fusionism that Reagan helped bring to the forefront is gone. Buchanan's more liberal ideology on economics that he pushed for more towards the late 90s and early 00s is pretty much where the GOP is at now at this point. Most of the GOP base is ok with massive spending. Maybe states like Texas, Tennessee, and Florida still care, but that's not enough. It sucks, but cultural conservatism is more the identity of Conservatism and the GOP than anything else.

That's nonsense.  Every Republican voted against the 1993 Clinton budget that led to the balancing of the budget.  The Clinton 1993 budget had $500 billion over 10 years in spending cuts and tax increases.  It was painful and politically risky with no short term political upside.  On top of the $500 billion over 10 years in spending cuts and tax increases passed earlier under and with the assistance of George H W Bush, the budget was balanced.  

The Republicans like to claim credit for this, even though every single Republican in Congress voted against this budget and offered no serious alternative simply because they happened to have taken the majority in Congress when the budget finally went into balance.

When Clinton was no longer President, but George W Bush was President and the Republicans still controlled Congress, the deficit ballooned again.  If the Republican Congress had anything to do with balancing the budget, how did this happen?

This claim that the Republicans in Congress had anything to do with balancing the budget is more dishonest Republican revisionist history.

Well the budget raised taxes so it makes sense why Republicans were in opposition to this. I'm not sure where this nonsense/dishonest/revisionist history claim comes from. You conveniently ignored the fact that the budget increased taxes and the most popular argument for why HW Bush lost re-election is because he lied to the public about no new taxes. So Republicans backing a budget that raised taxes would be suicide and antithetical to what the GOP wanted at the time. Again, it's not like Clinton truly wanted to balance the budget. He was forced to because it made democrats look bad which is why it narrowly passed. The GOP did force his hand because he would have looked like the spender in chief and made the budget skyrocket. An easy hit for Republicans back then. You claim there's no upside to this, yet the very upside can be seen given the 20+ history after 93 where Republicans blast democrats for trying to spend uncontrollably. It's the same talking point Clinton and his cabinet wanted to avoid.


I already said Republicans never really cared besides under Clinton.  The deficit wasn't eliminated until the BBA btw

Let me see how much of this I can make sense of.

1.You said 'the Republicans forced his hand.'  How did they 'force his hand' when Clinton had already exposed their insincerity and hypocrisy when every Republican announced opposition to the Clinton budget but did not come up with a credible alternative?

2.If you want to argue that President Clinton/the Congressional Democrats didn't really want to cut the deficit either, there is probably some truth to that, as they were forced by the circumstances of high real long term interest rates and the resultant sputtering economic recovery.  But, to claim the Republicans forced President Clinton and the Democrats into cutting/eliminating the deficit is, indeed, nothing but dishonest Republican revisionist history.  

Polling at the time also showed that it was the slow pace and inconsistency of the economic recovery that cost George H W Bush reelection.  Breaking his 'no new taxes' pledge had little to no impact as voters consistently said to pollsters that they expected him to break that promise anyway. The big issue in the 1992 election was the sputtering economy, and the belief that the high federal government budget deficit was the reason for this.  Ross Perot's Presidential campaign played that up and became something of a folk hero over this, although he never provided any credible deficit reduction plan and he never even explained the connection between the budget deficit and the slow economic recovery.  

However, the point here is that the claim Bush lost because he reneged on his 'no new taxes' pledge is also dishonest Republican historical revisionism.

3.The Republicans did nothing but obstruct President Clinton and the Democratic attempts to balance the budget, and as soon as they re-took the Presidency, they ballooned the deficit again.  That is the real historical record, and to claim anything else is an outright lie. And it really doesn't matter why the Republicans were opposed as they proposed no alternative.

So, no, the Republican demands the Republican demands that Clinton balanced the budget had no effect on President Clinton, his cabinet or the Congressional Democrats other than the Republican hypocrisy and dishonesty annoyed the Democrats.

4.I have no idea what you are referring to with the balanced budget amendment.  There is no balanced budget amendment in the Constitution, and yes, President Clinton did balance the budget and then achieve 'surpluses as far as the eye can see.' It may have taken the social security fund surplus to do that, but there is not a single Republican President who has even come close since then, and the social security fund surplus was counted as part of the overall budget long prior to President Clinton.

I think you may mean 'PAYGO' not the balanced budget amendment, but it was the Democrats who have mostly supported that, while Republicans have not because it would have prevented them from passing ever more tax cuts for their wealthy friends/future employers/fellow grifters.  George W. Bush and the Republicans let PAYGO expire in 2003, and it was reinstated by Speaker Pelosi in 2007, and she then reinstated it again after re-taking the Speakership in 2019.

5.It's also the case that as mediocre as President Obama's deficit cutting was, he did leave office with a $450-500 billion deficit while President Trump in 2019 had a $1 trillion deficit even though the economy was in better shape overall in 2019 than in 2016.  So, it is still completely false to argue that even since President Clinton that the Democratic record on deficits is no different than the Republican record.  As disappointing as President Obama was here, the Democrats are still much better than Republicans on the deficit/debt overall.

1. Credible alternative is code for "what does your side like" and not really something worth talking about seriously. It's one thing to say republicans never proposed a budget because they weren't serious. It's another thing to dismiss budgets proposed because you don't find them pleasing.
2. It's not dishonest. I already explained why. If you disagree, that's fine, but don't say I'm being dishonest because you don't like my position.
3. If you want to raise taxes, there's a reasonable argument to oppose a budget even if it attempts to reduce spending.
4. Did I say amendment? If I did, I meant act.

[Benjamin Frank]

When did Republicans actually care? I mean under Clinton, sure, but even then it was abysmal. Clinton wasn't fiscally responsible by the way. The GOP just forced his hand. They should have done the same under Obama, if they cared. The GOP didn't care because we pretty much have everyone dependent on entitlements and people will vote against the GOP if entitlements are reformed or cut. They need to be.

There's only been a handful of Republican politicians and voters that actually care. Trumpism pretty much killed fiscal conservatism. The era of Fusionism that Reagan helped bring to the forefront is gone. Buchanan's more liberal ideology on economics that he pushed for more towards the late 90s and early 00s is pretty much where the GOP is at now at this point. Most of the GOP base is ok with massive spending. Maybe states like Texas, Tennessee, and Florida still care, but that's not enough. It sucks, but cultural conservatism is more the identity of Conservatism and the GOP than anything else.

That's nonsense.  Every Republican voted against the 1993 Clinton budget that led to the balancing of the budget.  The Clinton 1993 budget had $500 billion over 10 years in spending cuts and tax increases.  It was painful and politically risky with no short term political upside.  On top of the $500 billion over 10 years in spending cuts and tax increases passed earlier under and with the assistance of George H W Bush, the budget was balanced.  

The Republicans like to claim credit for this, even though every single Republican in Congress voted against this budget and offered no serious alternative simply because they happened to have taken the majority in Congress when the budget finally went into balance.

When Clinton was no longer President, but George W Bush was President and the Republicans still controlled Congress, the deficit ballooned again.  If the Republican Congress had anything to do with balancing the budget, how did this happen?

This claim that the Republicans in Congress had anything to do with balancing the budget is more dishonest Republican revisionist history.

Well the budget raised taxes so it makes sense why Republicans were in opposition to this. I'm not sure where this nonsense/dishonest/revisionist history claim comes from. You conveniently ignored the fact that the budget increased taxes and the most popular argument for why HW Bush lost re-election is because he lied to the public about no new taxes. So Republicans backing a budget that raised taxes would be suicide and antithetical to what the GOP wanted at the time. Again, it's not like Clinton truly wanted to balance the budget. He was forced to because it made democrats look bad which is why it narrowly passed. The GOP did force his hand because he would have looked like the spender in chief and made the budget skyrocket. An easy hit for Republicans back then. You claim there's no upside to this, yet the very upside can be seen given the 20+ history after 93 where Republicans blast democrats for trying to spend uncontrollably. It's the same talking point Clinton and his cabinet wanted to avoid.


I already said Republicans never really cared besides under Clinton.  The deficit wasn't eliminated until the BBA btw

Let me see how much of this I can make sense of.

1.You said 'the Republicans forced his hand.'  How did they 'force his hand' when Clinton had already exposed their insincerity and hypocrisy when every Republican announced opposition to the Clinton budget but did not come up with a credible alternative?

2.If you want to argue that President Clinton/the Congressional Democrats didn't really want to cut the deficit either, there is probably some truth to that, as they were forced by the circumstances of high real long term interest rates and the resultant sputtering economic recovery.  But, to claim the Republicans forced President Clinton and the Democrats into cutting/eliminating the deficit is, indeed, nothing but dishonest Republican revisionist history.  

Polling at the time also showed that it was the slow pace and inconsistency of the economic recovery that cost George H W Bush reelection.  Breaking his 'no new taxes' pledge had little to no impact as voters consistently said to pollsters that they expected him to break that promise anyway. The big issue in the 1992 election was the sputtering economy, and the belief that the high federal government budget deficit was the reason for this.  Ross Perot's Presidential campaign played that up and became something of a folk hero over this, although he never provided any credible deficit reduction plan and he never even explained the connection between the budget deficit and the slow economic recovery.  

However, the point here is that the claim Bush lost because he reneged on his 'no new taxes' pledge is also dishonest Republican historical revisionism.

3.The Republicans did nothing but obstruct President Clinton and the Democratic attempts to balance the budget, and as soon as they re-took the Presidency, they ballooned the deficit again.  That is the real historical record, and to claim anything else is an outright lie. And it really doesn't matter why the Republicans were opposed as they proposed no alternative.

So, no, the Republican demands the Republican demands that Clinton balanced the budget had no effect on President Clinton, his cabinet or the Congressional Democrats other than the Republican hypocrisy and dishonesty annoyed the Democrats.

4.I have no idea what you are referring to with the balanced budget amendment.  There is no balanced budget amendment in the Constitution, and yes, President Clinton did balance the budget and then achieve 'surpluses as far as the eye can see.' It may have taken the social security fund surplus to do that, but there is not a single Republican President who has even come close since then, and the social security fund surplus was counted as part of the overall budget long prior to President Clinton.

I think you may mean 'PAYGO' not the balanced budget amendment, but it was the Democrats who have mostly supported that, while Republicans have not because it would have prevented them from passing ever more tax cuts for their wealthy friends/future employers/fellow grifters.  George W. Bush and the Republicans let PAYGO expire in 2003, and it was reinstated by Speaker Pelosi in 2007, and she then reinstated it again after re-taking the Speakership in 2019.

5.It's also the case that as mediocre as President Obama's deficit cutting was, he did leave office with a $450-500 billion deficit while President Trump in 2019 had a $1 trillion deficit even though the economy was in better shape overall in 2019 than in 2016.  So, it is still completely false to argue that even since President Clinton that the Democratic record on deficits is no different than the Republican record.  As disappointing as President Obama was here, the Democrats are still much better than Republicans on the deficit/debt overall.

1. Credible alternative is code for "what does your side like" and not really something worth talking about seriously. It's one thing to say republicans never proposed a budget because they weren't serious. It's another thing to dismiss budgets proposed because you don't find them pleasing.
2. It's not dishonest. I already explained why. If you disagree, that's fine, but don't say I'm being dishonest because you don't like my position.
3. If you want to raise taxes, there's a reasonable argument to oppose a budget even if it attempts to reduce spending.
4. Did I say amendment? If I did, I meant act.

No, I mean that literally and the Republicans weren't serious.  Bob Woodward's book 'The Agenda' describes the process of the 1993 budget primarily from the perspective of the Clinton Administration, but also goes into some of the Congressional efforts.  

There never was a Republican budget counter proposal. I don't know where you have this idea that there was one.  They Republican leadership said 'we're in opposition, it's your job to fix this.'  That's fine enough in so far as it goes, nobody should necessarily expect the Republicans to propose their own budget.  However, and I've written about this previously on this website, the Republican leadership its members of Congress had no intention of doing anything to help the Clinton Administration reduce the deficit.

There were two instances the book details that spelled this out.  Vice President Al Gore spoke to a number of Republicans in private who had publicly called for significant deficit reduction.  He gave them a number of proposals of spending cuts (for example, reducing entitlement increases by not providing full COLA adjustments.  I believe it was 2%.  So, if inflation was 4% in the year, the recipient would only receive a 2% increases) and some tax or fee increases.  

In regards to the fee increases, I believe he thought some Republicans would go for that because they frequently spoke about the need to 'run the government like a business' and he had government financial statements showing how either the government was either providing these services at a loss, or, like in the case of the grazing fees, that the government was not receiving fair market value.

The Republicans told him they weren't interested in any proposals.  He seethed at their hypocrisy, but because the meetings were in private, he couldn't mention it on the record at the time.

The second thing, and this wasn't just all Republicans, was a group of bipartisan supposedly 'moderate' Senators led by Democrat David Boren and Republican John Danforth.  They proposed massive entitlement cuts that they not only knew the Democratic majority in both the House and Senate would not vote for, but that they themselves would not vote for.

The sole purpose of their counter proposal was to be able to say to the press "we have a counter proposal."  The purpose of this was because the one broad based tax increase proposal that had survived to that point was a gas tax and, not surprisingly, Democrat David Boren of Oklahoma was not happy with that.  Boren and these bipartisan 'moderates' were telling the media 'we don't need the gas tax increase, we have a counter proposal that would reduce the deficit by just as much.'  Their likeliest goal was to simply kill the gas tax proposal and either force the process to start all over again or to simply have less deficit reduction.  

I should probably look at the book again, but if I recall correctly, that this bipartisan group would not even vote for their own proposal became known when Majority Leader Mitchell threatened to call their bluff and have a vote in the Senate on their proposal.  These 'bipartisan' Senators then would have had to have either voted for their massive entitlement cuts or vote against their own proposal.

I think when Senators propose something that they themselves would vote against, it's more than fair to say the proposal isn't serious or credible.

The extent to which Republicans treated this as all a political game, and not a matter of serious public policy became clear when first term House Democrat Marjorie Margolies Mezvinsky cast the deciding vote in the House in favor of the Clinton budget and Republican House Members yelled out in response "Goodbye Marjorie!"

Now, I think I've demonstrated enough that even back then many Republicans weren't serious about public policy, and that most Congressional Republicans even then didn't actually care about addressing the deficit and it's not my fault or problem if this hurts your sensitive Republican feelings.

There is no 'difference of opinion' here.  The Republicans as a whole presented no alternative budget, and the Republican Senators along with a number of Democrats who did offer a counter proposal would have voted against their own counter proposal.  That, as detailed by Bob Woodward is a matter of factual public record and is not a difference of opinion.

I had a similar discussion on twitter over this, except this is to do with current events.  Senator Rand Paul spoke out against some proposed Biden tax increases and called for cutting 'waste fraud and abuse' instead.  

I tweeted 'has Rand Paul actually proposed any specific spending cuts or is he just grandstanding' and some person replied to me 'he has outlined an entire budget' and sent me the link to it.

It turns out he proposed an amendment and not a budget, and rather than detail any spending cuts, it mentions every Senate appropriations committee and calls for the committee to find cuts in spending, the same amount of cuts to be found by each committee over the same time period (I forget the specific dollar figures, there are to be cuts after one year, and then more cuts over 5 or 10 years.)  So, Senator Paul wanted to claim credit for balancing the budget, but leave the actual work of finding the spending cuts to the committees. To laugh off this sarcastically as a 'profile in courage' doesn't even begin to describe Senator Paul's actions, it's a profile in cynicism.

[MaximaEt_Illustratum]

"Anymore"?

[Amenhotep Bakari-Sellers]

They do, why do you think we are gonna have divided Govt 220/215 whomever controls Speakership McCarthy or Hakeem Jeffries or Pelosi and we are gonna have a 51/49 or 52/48 Majority Leader Schumer, due to deficits, middle class voters don't want the Govt in a Pandemic eating away with taxes, once we are out of Pandemic which will be a long time, even Biden said he didn't expect Pandemic to last the whole midterm, we will see Blue waves

But a flip from many of my mapmaking, the real maps of mine are in Post random maps, we are gonna have divided Govt

I want to see Ryan, Demings, Beasley and Fink elected but those are wave insurence save your donation monies for our ,304 candidate, don't waste your monies on wave insurence, just like saving a broken tooth, if you have a root canal without a crown, don't waste monies on that tooth, don't bite down hard on it

[here2view]

Neither party really cares about the deficit, the only difference is that Republicans openly lie in claiming that they do.

[TheReckoning]

I'm sure it varies.  I think many of them just parrot whatever stupid shepherd they're following this week tells them to parrot. (this is true of every political group, don't think you're better) Many others are legitimately disappointed I think.  I'm disappointed that they've been so damn quiet about it.

You realize that slipping the "both sides do it" backhanded defense of the current GOP in there, is you just parroting the GOP's core strategy for the mid-terms, right?  I'll admit the irony is pretty good, though.

In that case, the GOP can expect to lose, and by a wide margin as well. No one has ever won an election campaigning off of “Both me and my opponent suck!”

[Non Swing Voter]

anymore?  they haven't since Bush senior.  The Republican party's platform is and always has been "what I can do for me and my people and screw everyone else."  Particularly now, in an era where red counties and states tend to be much much poorer than blue counties and states (the counties in particular), of course they are going to want to spend more and let blue states pay for it.  We basically have uncontrolled spending because neither party wants to put a check on it, they just want to deliver for "their" people.  Republicans moreso though.