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| Re: Social Security Reform (Re: Subtalk politics: at a glance) (102136) | |||
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Re: Social Security Reform (Re: Subtalk politics: at a glance) |
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Posted by Andrew Kirschner on Mon Feb 27 23:47:25 2006, in response to Re: Social Security Reform (Re: Subtalk politics: at a glance), posted by Charles G on Mon Feb 27 15:40:08 2006. But Clinton's "surplus" was also likely a deficit when you net out the Social Security intake.I'm sorry, but you're going to have to qualify that. Do you mean the requirements of social security would have cancelled out the surplus. Doubtful. But even if it's true, it would have been no less true under Shrub than under Bubba. But Shrub went and pissed the whole surplus away on tax cuts. So the debt can only be worse. BTW -- was "Clinton's surplus" actually "Newt's surplus"? After all, the budget didn't move towards being balanced until after 1994. Clinton did begin the process pre-1994 with his tax reform bill, extrememly unpopular at the time, but clearly the responsible thing to. (Bush Sr, ie "41", also got the ball rolling a few years earlier with his rollback of Reagan's giveaways, though it would contribute to his loss in 1992.) However, I do seriously doubt he would have gotten all the way there without some kind of contentious presence in Congresss. The fairest thing to say is that the surplus of 1998-2000 was the work of BOTH Bubba and Newt. It took the compettion of partisan politcs, with neither owning a monopoly on power, to force both sides to act responsibly. That's not to say it had to be quite so volitile, what with Newt's GOP determined to bring down the Democrat who had the gumption to win. At any rate, I doubt the phenomenon would have occured if wither party had had a monopoly on power. It sure ain't happenning with the GOP monopoly of today, what with Shrub spending like there's no tomorrow and congressional Republicans tripping over themselves to aggree with him. |
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