Limbaugh; No third party?

[ImnoMensa]

Originally Posted by Larry Gude

Here's the thing; right now, the left is in trouble and it would behoove the GOP to be lining up folks whop would contrast well with their opponents in order to win. We agree this far?

Good.

So, next, how far are they going to get with people who supported TARP? How far are they going to get with the lesser of two evils gig this time?

What difference does it make to get an at bat and not take your cuts?

If the GOP places the same a-holes in candidacy that they placed last time even Obama can beat them.
Romney . Sucks ,Huckabee sucks. No amount of dislike for Obama can overcome the absolute disdain Republicans have for these two.

We need a man with balls and neither of these has them.

[Larry Gude (Premo)]

Originally Posted by ImnoMensa

If the GOP places the same a-holes in candidacy that they placed last time even Obama can beat them.
Romney . Sucks ,Huckabee sucks. No amount of dislike for Obama can overcome the absolute disdain Republicans have for these two.

We need a man with balls and neither of these has them.

I'm thinking '10 and congressional races. I will flat out, right now trade two terms of Obama in exchange for the congress from 2010 on.

[vraiblonde]

Originally Posted by ImnoMensa

If the GOP places the same a-holes in candidacy that they placed last time even Obama can beat them.
Romney . Sucks ,Huckabee sucks. No amount of dislike for Obama can overcome the absolute disdain Republicans have for these two.

You say "place" but people voted for them. And McCain beat all of them out for the nomination. So apparently Republicans don't have too much disdain for the non-conservatives.

[aps45819 (Premo)]

Originally Posted by Alexa

The Democrats are picking up seats because of the two parties, most people hope the Democratic party is more in line with what the majority wants and because the GOP failed.

Say what you want about Clinton, make all the arguments you want, they may be true.....but bottom line is that when he left office, no matter how it came to be true there was a surplus, not a deficit.

The GOP failed in the final years of Bush's presidency (when the dems took control of congress) and Bush went down a socialist rabbit hole

... and a lot of folks seem to forget that the democratic majority in congress authorized millions of dollars to pursue the enemies of our country that attacked an murdered 3,000 of our citizens. War ain't cheap.
So if Bush spending us into a deficit was bad, how do you feel about Obama creating a deficit bigger than the budget of all past administrations combined?

[SamSpade]

Originally Posted by Alexa

Say what you want about Clinton, make all the arguments you want, they may be true.....but bottom line is that when he left office, no matter how it came to be true there was a surplus, not a deficit.

You know, I'm still trying to figure out how this can be true. Every year Clinton was in office, the national debt ROSE. Meaning, every year, the government spent more than it took in. So how can there EVER have been a surplus?

[EmptyTimCup]

Originally Posted by Alexa

.a complete nut job, as is Glenn Beck.

have you watched Glen Beck ?


or are you just regurgitating what you have heard from the left ?



Glen has been throwing down on POLITICIANS on both sides ..... talking how the POL's in Washington are the Problem ..... not the Citizens ( Dems or R's )

[EmptyTimCup]

Originally Posted by Alexa

Say what you want about Clinton, make all the arguments you want, they may be true.....but bottom line is that when he left office, no matter how it came to be true there was a surplus, not a deficit.

YOU LIE .......

Alexa Dear ........ put down the Kool Aid

So why do they say he had a surplus?

As is usually the case in claims such as this, it has to do with Washington doublespeak and political smoke and mirrors.

Understanding what happened requires understanding two concepts of what makes up the national debt. The national debt is made up of public debt and intergovernmental holdings. The public debt is debt held by the public, normally including things such as treasury bills, savings bonds, and other instruments the public can purchase from the government. Intergovernmental holdings, on the other hand, is when the government borrows money from itself--mostly borrowing money from social security.

Looking at the makeup of the national debt and the claimed surpluses for the last 4 Clinton fiscal years, we have the following table:


(Follow link to see Table)


Notice that while the public debt went down in each of those four years, the intergovernmental holdings went up each year by a far greater amount--and, in turn, the total national debt (which is public debt + intergovernmental holdings) went up. Therein lies the discrepancy.

When it is claimed that Clinton paid down the national debt, that is patently false--as can be seen, the national debt went up every single year. What Clinton did do was pay down the public debt--notice that the claimed surplus is relatively close to the decrease in the public debt for those years. But he paid down the public debt by borrowing far more money in the form of intergovernmental holdings (mostly Social Security).

Update 3/31/2009: The following quote from an article at CBS confirms my explanation of the Myth of the Clinton Surplus, and the entire article essentially substantiates what I wrote.

"Over the past 25 years, the government has gotten used to the fact that Social Security is providing free money to make the rest of the deficit look smaller," said Andrew Biggs, a resident scholar at the American Enterprise Institute.


Interestingly, this most likely was not even a conscious decision by Clinton. The Social Security Administration is legally required to take all its surpluses and buy U.S. Government securities, and the U.S. Government readily sells those securities--which automatically and immediately becomes intergovernmental holdings. The economy was doing well due to the dot-com bubble and people were earning a lot of money and paying a lot into Social Security. Since Social Security had more money coming in than it had to pay in benefits to retired persons, all that extra money was immediately used to buy U.S. Government securities. The government was still running deficits, but since there was so much money coming from excess Social Security contributions there was no need to borrow more money directly from the public. As such, the public debt went down while intergovernmental holdings continued to skyrocket.

The net effect was that the national debt most definitely did not get paid down because we did not have a surplus. The government just covered its deficit by borrowing money from Social Security rather than the public.

The Clinton Surplus Myth

The dot-com bubble provided a temporary economic stimulus during the Clinton era, which allowed the Social Security Administration (SSA) to increase revenue through Social Security taxes, leaving Social Security with a surplus.

The Social Security Administration is legally required to purchase government securities with surplus funds, which results from having more funds than required to pay out Social Security checks. This results in a transfer of funds from Social Security, intragovernment holdings, to the Treasury Deparment, which Clinton used to pay down the national debt.

You may wonder what the problem is. If there is a surplus of funds, does it really matter where it comes from?

There is a difference between debt and surplus, no matter where the funds are coming from. The government doesn't have unique sources of production, and must rely on external sources from which to extract capital. Therefore, a true surplus can only arise by reducing spending.

Even by raising taxes, this only represents debt owed to the public. Clinton relied on the dot-com bubble by funneling funds through the SSA, which allowed him to mimic a surplus by obscuring the source of his funds. This is a clever accounting game, but it is not a surplus.

So when the dot-com bubble burst, and Social Security was left in debt, the federal government couldn't give the SSA its surplus back. The money had been put towards the public debt already. By that time, Clinton was already out of office, so the effects of the dot-com crash could be blamed on the Republican George Bush anyway.

The bubble itself, which was caused by overspeculation in Internet-based start-up companies, was, in itself, funded by low interest rates set by the Federal Reserve, giving investors a surplus of capital which to invest in the overvalued Internet companies. Government policy contributed to the unsustainable dot-com bubble which the government took advantage of to temporarily reshuffle its debt to give the appearance of a budget surplus to win political favor.

Admittedly, I blame ignorance rather than malevolence on the bad policies of the Clinton Administration. I doubt that Clinton, who is unstudied in Austrian economic theory, realized how his policies contributed to the business cycle, and therefore probably thought his debt reshuffling was innocuous. If he had realized that the dot-com bubble was going to burst, however, and that it would leave the economy worse off and Social Security without its much-needed surplus, he would have found a different way to pay off the national debt through lowering spending. If more people were aware of the above facts, I very much doubt that Obama would want his economic policies associated with the likes of Clinton. Unlike Clinton, Obama is coming into office at the beginning of a recession, without a plan to decrease government spending and will have no concievable way of decreasing the national debt.

[vraiblonde]

Originally Posted by Alexa

I have to disagree. While there are those that want a free hand out anyway they can have it, I do believe that you short change the vast majority of the American public.

Oh well. You and Larry, sittin' in a tree...

FACT: More forumites participate in sex-themed Chit Chat threads and Fight Club than the Politics forum.

FACT: More people watch Two and a Half Men than watch any news program.

The views of one party of another is down right extreme and no where near what the true platforms are of either. Yet, each has been able to make a mockery of the other, by their political tricks and by their actions once in office.

FACT: I do not need some pundit to tell me what the Obama administration and the Democrat Congress stand for. I can simply read/listen to their speeches and observe their actions. No tricks involved.

Sorry Alexa - your supposition isn't holding up to reality.

[Bann (Premo)]

Originally Posted by EmptyTimCup

have you watched Glen Beck ?


or are you just regurgitating what you have heard from the left ?



Glen has been throwing down on POLITICIANS on both sides ..... talking how the POL's in Washington are the Problem ..... not the Citizens ( Dems or R's )

Glenn Beck & Rush Limbaugh, Sean Hannity, Mark Levin, Neal Boortz, Laura Ingraham, et. al - all of them give the Libbies the heebie jeebies.

I have no idea of their collective audience numbers, but I'd be willing to bet it is a majority of the country, when added up.

The hysterical rantings of the Left over the turnout of the Tea Party Rally September 12, is a good indicator of how scared they are that their days in control of the Congress and the White House are numbered.

Look out Steny & Nancy - your house is going to be rocked in 2010.

[Alexa]

Originally Posted by Larry Gude

Yeah, that's what they say. Even though they never listen to him or Beck.

It's fine to argue that Limbaugh = Olbermann. That just doesn't make it so.

Fact is, Limbaugh very much represents a right wing view.

As does Keef.

No, he represents the extreme right wing view. I can't speak for others but I have watched and listened to Limbaugh and Beck. Their messages are spewed with hatred and polarizing propaganda that makes little sense. Their idiots plain and simple. Their ideology doesn't represent the majority of the American people and only serves to alienate the party into oblivion.

You may not agree, but it is.