Trump vs. Republicans

Obama inherited a massive banking crisis, no doubt.

He made it worse. On purpose.

In the words of his chief of staff, "never let a good crisis go to waste." Meaning, they should milk it for all the money they could get out of congress for unrelated causes.

Do you deny someone has to do something about those deficits and debts?

 

The cost of the "wars" was 1/2 the surplus at the time. Obama didn't inherit ISIS, he made it.

Reagan's biggest defense budget was $465B out of ~$1.7T budgets. I'm pretty sure the math doesn't support the 55% claim.

All of Reagan's budgets were declared DOA by the democrats in congress. It was democrats that wrote the budgets, and it's their responsibility to control the purse strings. Reagan wanted budget cuts and the line item veto. While revenues doubled over his 8 years, congressional spending tripled.

https://www.washingtonpost.com/arch...51b-8cd3-246b6728b17b/?utm_term=.6035bac7b5fe

For each of the past several years, President Reagan has sent a new budget to Capitol Hill, and Congress has promptly pronounced it DOA -- dead on arrival.

This year, with the drama over the Gramm-Rudman-Hollings balanced-budget act beginning, the early reaction is different: Most Republicans as well as Democrats have declared the administration's budget DBA -- dead before arrival.

"If it's last year's budget with another $15 [billion] to $20 billion in cuts added to it, with no major policy changes, then it clearly won't work," said Senate Budget Committee Chairman Pete V. Domenici (R-N.M.), reflecting indications of what the budget will contain. "It can't fly, and it won't fly."

The fiscal 1987 budget that Reagan is scheduled to submit to Congress Feb. 3 is expected to include spending cutbacks of at least $50 billion to meet the $144 billion deficit target of the recently enacted Gramm-Rudman-Hollings legislation to force a balanced budget by fiscal 1991.

 

That's a silly analysis.

He increased spending by 25% the first year and near 0 the rest. But the rest, the spending was 25% bigger, too.

Growth... don't be fooled.

 

Do the math.

$800B increase in budget x 8 years = $6.4T. If he started with a $0 increase and ended up increasing spending $6.4T, the spending increases would have been massive year over year.

It's fine to post data and charts that support your argument, but you might look at what you're posting, beyond the spin.



Obama junked W's $3.0T budget in 2009 and submitted his own at $3.8T.

+$800B for each year: 2009, 2010, 2011, ... etc.

If spending went back to $3.0T, you'd have a point.

The spin is just that. The math proves it.

 

FDR escalated our military beyond any president ever in history. He ran up enormous debts to pay for it. The highest debts in our history, as a % of GDP. FDR turned our peacetime factories (auto makers, airplanes, etc.) into war materiel factories. He had 300,000+ military airplanes alone.

As a % of GDP, Reagan's military was on the smaller side. Much less than the 6% of GDP that JFK urged congress to authorize. The spending was needed because Carter gutted the military, making it embarrassingly ineffective (see the rescue of the Iranian hostages that failed).

Reagan changed the way we conduct diplomacy, alright. Made peace with the USSR and made its collapse imminent. The intimidation thing was always there. We beat up on nations in our hemisphere and put missiles in Europe to threaten the USSR. JFK made a deal to end the cuban missile crisis by agreeing to remove some of those missiles. Kinda before Reagan's time. Reagan didn't start the cold war, he ended it. The massive decrease in nukes was started on his watch.

I don't think that growing the military is good or bad. It depends on if it gets used. Reagan didn't use it.

During the 80s, with all that military spending, spinoffs like the Internet, the microprocessor and PC, were developed. And the economic growth kicked ass for main street and the middle class. 24M+ jobs.

For those who don't want to go to college, or want a way to pay for it, joining the military is a fine way to go. It's as honorable, if not more so, profession than teaching or any other government job.

Whether you liked it or not, the $11B (peak yearly spending) on Star Wars did bring the Russians to the bargaining table and was a defensive idea. Not a sword but a shield. Too bad the science community were so defeatist about it, when they went all out given a similar challenge to land a man on the moon at a time we had near zero concept how to do it or the technology.

Finally, your spin chart isn't a poll. It's deliberately misleading.

If he had increased spending not at all, he would have spent $3T x 8 years = $24T. Since he increased it to $3.8T year 1, he spent at least $30.4T even if he increased the budget by $0 each year. If we're going to measure spending, the $30.4T and $6.4T increase are the true measure.

 

Choose one that makes your point that isn't spin. You posted it, you "own" it.

Yes it's true he didn't raise spending year over year that much, but that's not a great thing considering the overall amount he did spend beyond the budget he was handed.

 

I love when DennyAnne starts posting fresh from a nap.

 

Or not.

 

http://ic.galegroup.com/ic/uhic/Ref...76200015&zid=b582f79f2ad42bb9cec171187322a220

U.S. military spending rose to 27 percent of the federal budget under Reagan; just to stay even the Soviets needed to spend 60 percent of their budget. The fact that the Soviets had fallen behind U.S. technology partly contributed to this spending difference. Reagan knew of the disparities in development. Rather than an all-out military buildup of weaponry, he emphasized the development and deployment primarily of technologically advanced weapons. Although conventional weapons were not neglected, the B-l bomber, M-l Abrams tank, and F-15 fighter bombers received the majority of resources for development. New technologies needed to integrate these weapons into the command-and-reconnaissance structure demanded development. The president also ordered added restrictions on technology transfers to foreign countries, thereby increasing the cost for the Soviets to keep pace. ​

And that is how the Cold War was won.

 

I don't claim to be non partisan.