Reply #13: Wait a second, I just threw up a bit [View All]

[ComerPerro]

:puke:

In fairness, much of this was thrust on Bush. The poor bastard. He must just be a victim. But I thought the GOP was the Party Of Personal ResponsibilityThe huge budget surpluses predicted during the Clinton years were predicated on having no national emergencies, no wars and no economic turndowns They were also predicated on not having some know-nothing jackass waste trillions of dollars on tax cuts for people who don't need them. But the Sept. 11 attacks affected a large segment of the economy from the financial markets to the travel industry. Yeah, nice try, but the fiscal year that showed the massive downturn ended at the end of Sept. 2001. Blaming 9/11 for Bush's terrible decisions is just shameful.Then, the government had to absorb cleanup costs, set up a new Department of Homeland Security, increase airline security and fight a war in Afghanistan. Well, you might find it intersting to learn that the administration was looking to find an excuse to justify war with Afganistan during that summer. Interestingly enough, it was also always the paln to go after Iraq. Besides, the administration has refused to fund essentials of homeland security such as emergency responders. .(The costs of the war in Iraq, by the way, are not included in the budget.)

The deficits also reflect Bush's initiative to establish a drug benefit under Medicare, the most significant expansion of the welfare state since the 1960s. There have been wonderful advances in medicine in recent years that enable us to treat conditions with prescription drugs that once required invasive surgery - if they could be successfully treated at all. But the costs of these medications are often far beyond what elderly patients can afford. Too bad that, thanks to Republicans, many elderly patients still can't afford these treatments.

But absorbing even part of these costs is extremely expensive for the government as well. The cost of the new benefit was originally estimated at $400 billion, but it is now expected to reach $540 billion. Its not an underestimate. Its called a lie. After 3 years of Bush, you should be used to them by now.

Politically, there is a nice kind of irony in seeing Bush, whose detractors claim is an extreme right-winger, going into debt to expand social spending, sorry, but I don't count corporate welfare as social spending. while Democrats, who spent half a century building up deficits and deriding balanced budgets as superstitious nonsense Maybe you don't remember Clintons 4 years of budget surpluses?, pass themselves off as watchdogs of the public purse. Sure enough, they had two criticisms of Bush's spending plan: The deficit is two big and there isn't enough social spending. Once again, I would like to point out that Corporate handouts are not social spending. Republicans only fund social programs if they know they can profit from them somehow.