« BACK  |  PRINT

RS

MEMBER DIARY

Brain Dead Dem Congressman Thinks Spending is Too Low

By: Daniel Horowitz (Diary)  |  December 29th, 2011 at 12:45 PM  | 

RESIZE: AAA

In case you were wondering why we are doing nothing to slow our inexorable march towards Greek-style insolvency, look no further than those who are vested with the power of the purse string.  Yesterday, Congressman Rush Holt (D-NJ) suggested that we are not spending enough “to invest in research and development, education and infrastructure that would allow America to compete in this increasingly global economy.”  He proved his assertion by comparing our deficits to….the WWII era!

According to the Office of Management and Budget, America’s deficits were more than twice as large in the 1940s as they are today. In 1943, the deficit was 30 percent of our economy’s size; in 1944, it was 23 percent. Today, it is less than 9 percent. As for publicly held debt, it was significantly larger as a share of our economy in 1944 than it is today.

Hmmm, what do you think was going on during 1943-1944?  Oh yes, that WWII thing.

Obviously, we had a massive military buildup – the most unprecedented in world history – which was very costly at the height of the war.  But those were temporary annual deficits.  Immediately after the war, our deficits returned to historical lows.  Consequently, our total gross debt dipped well below 60% of GDP during the next decade, and eventually, under 35% of GDP.  Just three years after the war ended, total federal outlays were just 11.6% of GDP; today’s outlays are 24.5% of our economy.  Even in 1944, at the height of the biggest war on world history, our total debt was 97.6% of GDP, lower than our current 100.5% debt-to-GDP ratio.

Now if Rep. Holt wants to compare our spending levels to the WWII era, let’s take defense and war spending out of the equation for a moment.  In 1944, defense spending accounted for an astounding 86.6% ($79.1 billion) of total federal outlays ($91.3 billion), while non-defense spending accounted for just 13.4% ($12.2 billion) of the budget.  In other words, non-defense spending in 1944 was pegged at 5.5% of GDP ($219.7 billion).

In 2012, total defense and war spending will check in at $662.4 billion, or roughly 18% of our estimated $3.7 billion budget.  That means that our non-defense spending will come in at 20% of our GDP (roughly $15.092 trillion), compared to 5.5% in 1944.  This year, our defense spending will account for 4.4% of GDP compared to 36% in 1944.  So if we want to engage in absurdity and use WWII spending as an accurate yardstick, why not reduce our non-defense spending to WWII levels, and cut spending by over $2 trillion?

The irony is that the military is the only expenditure that Democrats want to cut, yet they are using WWII – when defense consumed almost our entire budget – as a paradigm for auspicious government “investments.”

It’s a shame we can’t ship these loons off to Greece.

Tags: , , ,

COMMENTS

POSTING RULES  |  LOGIN TO COMMENT  |  REGISTER TODAY
  • logcabin4newt
    See this is why we need to banish homophobia in the GOP.

    We need a gay friendly atmosphere to stop spending. Gays are fiscal conservatives.

    We need the Larry Craigs of the world and the Newts and the Erick Erickson’s to stand up for individual liberties and stop the communists in the demon-cratic party.

    • duncer

      He has proved the old saw once again that figures don’t lie, but liars can figure. With a degree in physics, i would have expected a more sophisticated pile of crap.

  • lizzie

    Rush Holt is a physicist – very clever for the Dems to use someone who is actually very book-smart to put this ploy forward.

    I think Paul Krugman lives in Holt’s CD, which includes Princeton, NJ, where one wonders if they still teach basic math….

  • civildebate

    because our debt is in a currency we control.

    Notice that Greece’s problems started at about 95-100% Debt to GDP and we just surpassed that mark without any signs of insolvency.

    • JSobieski

      The relevant apples to apples number is is 60%

      http://www.concordcoalition.org/issues/debt-facts

      • http://redmeatconservative.blogspot.com/ Daniel Horowitz

        The bottom line is that most of the intragovernmental share of the debt – the part that is owed to Social Security, government pensions, and other mandatory expenditures – will have to be paid at some point. You’re correct that is has not become public debt yet; however, we will either need to raise taxes, “print more money,” or most likely, issue more public debt in order to meet those obligations. So the gross federal debt is a relevant figure.

        Also, another important point people often overlook is that 91% of Obama’s $4.5 trillion increase in the federal debt has come from the public debt. I believe that $4.1 trillion of the increase has come from public debt.

        • JSobieski

          we are not yet experiencing Greece-like symptoms.

          The ability to print money, the fixed assets of the US, as well as our place in the world will allow us to go further than Greece before things come crumbling down—-but crumble down we will.

          • civildebate

            Japan is at 225% Debt to GDP without any signs of insolvency.

            If we can reach Japan levels of debt without signs of insolvency then why are people freaking out right now? Cut taxes and up investment while the borrowing is cheap.

          • aesthete

            Or (and this is almost the Godwin of monetary history) Argentina and Zimbabwe? Nothing about printing your own currency magically eliminates the need for investor confidence, and a lack thereof when one is a poor debtor.

            Also, Japan is doing terribly, and has been for quite some time. They don’t call it “The Lost Decade” because the Ministry of Silly Walks misplaced the Prime Minister’s calender.

    • Francis Cianfrocca

      It’s true that Greece is insolvent because they borrowed more than they can hope to pay back, in a unit of account that they can’t devalue. That’s not going to happen to us,

      What could happen to us is inflationary pressure, but probably not. Federal borrowing is economically equivalent to creating risk-free assets held by the private sector. To an important extent, these assets have the ability to drive higher levels of money in the economy. If the resultant money creation exceeds the economy’s supply-side ability to generate goods and services, inflation results.

      The conventional view on this among economists is that we’re nowhere near that threshold because productive assets in the real economy are underutilized. (The high unemployment rate is prima facie evidence of that.) This CW is probably not 100% true because some unknown proportion of the economy’s assets (including human resources) is no longer a good match for demand. But let’s leave that to the side.

      Bottom line: no inflation, and no practical drag on the govt’s ability to continue borrowing.

      What IS a problem, however, is the abysmal efficiency that we get from government spending. Congressman Holt assumes that a dollar spent by govt is a dollar well-spent. He has a point in regard to certain kinds of R&D spending, but he’s wrong regarding just about everything else.

  • natedogg

    I think when we have a discussion over spending, we forget that economically speaking WWII acted as a giant government stimulus package. That completed the trend toward healthy employment levels which the New Deal had begun but not fully achieved. So, there is a time for spending and there is a time for cutting. Right now I agree with the Congressman that we should spend like it’s 1944 so we can get back on our feet and later cut like it’s 1946 (and even later cut taxes like it’s 1961 under Kennedy). Cutting spending now is like putting a sick child on a diet.

    • http://www.hakubi.us/ Neil Stevens

      What WWII did was mark an end to the barrage of social programs, as government put productivity and growth first.

      Basically when the New Deal finally gave way, we were able to grow our way out.

      • natedogg

        that is unnecessary. The point is not whether we needed social programs or not, or whether it was war spending or not. The point was that WWII was massive, across the board government spending that increased aggregate demand. That’s it. It was Keynesian stimulus by a different name. Whether that money is going toward building roads or building tanks, or just buying products, it’s money spent by the government that got us out of the rut.

        • http://www.hakubi.us/ Neil Stevens

          You keep saying it’s true but it’s not. If Keynesian spending worked then we’d be in good times right now.

          • civildebate

            If the Keynesian spending was less than half of the output gap… which is was, then it can’t possibly close the ouput gap… which is what many lefty economists were saying the entire time.

            But really this is only a controversial point because conservatives don’t want to concede that any left wing policies work at all. On the local level, the same GOP representatives that voted against the stimulus had no problem claiming credit for the jobs it created in their districts (and even taking pictures at the ribbon cutting ceremonies of many of those projects).

            Likewise when the Dems cheer about cutting defense spending and NASA spending we know that they also cheer the elimination of many jobs of people who make bombs, missiles, rockets, jet fighters etc.

            In many places, uber rich sports team owners claim that increased gov’t spending on a new stadium for them is worth it because of the increase in economic activity.

            We know that the gov’t dumping over 8 trillion dollars into banks on WallSt have kept the industry from total collapse.

            But on the national level, the GOP is afraid that Dems will overdo it if they acknowledge that any spending is good so they claim that all spending is bad and doesn’t create jobs…. which is irrational.

          • aesthete

            and is, among other things, an impediment to government spending our way out of a crisis, as Keynesians would prescribe.

        • jakeofalltrades

          As a wise woman once said, if any government spending on labor were beneficial for the economy, we would pay people to dig ditches and refill them.

          This should demonstrate the point that economic growth only happens when resources are directed to a beneficial end. All democrat spending does is line the pockets of Wall Street bankers ($7 trillion dollars by Obama alone) so they can use it to buy government debt so the government can pay welfare recipients and public employee unions to vote for them.

          Republicans want taxes lowered, so less of this money goes to the above wastes and is instead given back to the people who employ everyone so they can afford to hire the people on welfare. But then they would not be on welfare anymore and so would no longer vote democrat.

          That is why no modern Democrat will ever cut taxes or spending.

          • civildebate

            You’re only using the example of digging and refilling ditches because of the stigma around paying people to do something deemed useless. But really you aren’t showing that the money they are receiving (and presumably spending in the economy) is not helping the economy. And the example of digging ditches is really no different from paying people to hit a baseball, run up and down the field with a football, or film a reality show about nothing but because the stigmas are different around those activities so people (you!) are comfortable acknowledging their positive economic effect.

            But just think about how many places in the world get a substantial amount of their economic activity from having a gov’t run prison in the city… or a military base… or a large university.

            Many of those military bases, like say the US bases in Germany, aren’t really doing much but they sure create a ton of economic activity. And of course, lots of people studying useless stuff at universities sustains countless college towns.

            And of course there’s huge portions of Wall Street that create absolutely nothing tangible and just move people’s move from one place to another yet they generate tons of local economic activity in NYC.

          • aesthete

            Professional sports, video games, reality TV, and so on are profitable because a sufficient number of people find them valuable enough that they are willing to produce and exchange something of value for varying levels of access to said goods. Unless you come from a very unusual town, the same cannot be said for ditch-digging — this has nothing to do with stigmas, but with the end product of the labor. I assure you, if people found Mario Kart or Iron Chef as boring as watching people dig a ditch, they would immediately cease to pay for it. No economics textbook will tell you otherwise — in fact, the logical error that you just made is one that vexed economists for the better part of a century until the so-called “marginal revolution”, which essentially expressed the point that I just made.

            Similarly, your thinking on military bases, college towns, etc relies on an old fallacy known as broken window fallacy: since scarce resources must have been diverted from others to pay for these military bases, colleges, etc, it is clear that wealth must first be destroyed to create “new” wealth. People who save money are not dragons: they don’t sit on their piles of gold; they generally prefer to invest at least some of their money, and money not invested is made available to banks and thus lowers interest rates for those in the private market (which allows businesses to borrow and expand, creating jobs — you get the picture). Economists agree that free market processes, the pricing mechanism, and other aspects of voluntary exchange are much more efficient means to create wealth in normal times than government fiat. (There are several reasons for why this is, but this is already getting long-winded so I would recommend Greg Mankiw’s basic econ textbook or this free website for further reading.) Therefore, in normal times the wealth destroyed in the private sector to create military bases and colleges tends to produce less wealth than if this money had been left in the private sector. Economists primarily disagree on whether this holds true during recessions — not whether this holds true as a general state of affairs.

          • civildebate

            my premise is that the income the ditch diggers received is stimulative when compared with being unemployed with no income. It’s not much different from receiving unemployment checks since the output of the work is nothing. The CBO, even under Bush, said it’s stimulative.

            But yes, I agree it would be more stimulative if they were making something of value. Still, “free market processes” are basically a myth though. The gov’t built and runs airports because the private sector cannot, same with the interstate highway system, universal mail delivery, gov’t regulated utilites etc,

            So no it’s not accepted that free market processes ALWAYS create the best outcomes.

            Not to mention the gov’t created much of internet and funded much of the tech sector’s early days because no one in the private sector wanted to dump money into the R&D for decades with the high probability of having nothing to show for it.

            But the “free market” really doesn’t exist because it would require the gov’t not dictating what can and cannot be bought and sold. Slaves, human organs, judicial decisions, drugs, prostitution etc would all legal in a truly free market and neither liberals or conservatives want that. So you’re starting from a faulty premise because we assume some things the market will invest in (like slaves or prostitution) are not creating wealth in a way that actuallyl benefits society.

            WRT military bases and college towns you’re making a lot of assumptions that aren’t generally true. Resources don’t always have to be diverted because they aren’t always in use by the private sector (i.e. labor, natural resources etc.). The money doesn’t really come from the private sector either but I won’t go into MMT here.

            Further, military bases and colleges are essentially long-term investments in the private sector. It’s generally accepted that we need national defense and education to grow the private sector. And many believe that our military should expand around the world to protect American business interests overseas and open up new markets.

            Businesses borrowing and expanding doesn’t always create jobs (at least not American jobs) due to globalization and automation.

          • gekster

            You don’t pay attention much, do you.
            Free market principles is the best thing on the block, and work every time.
            When government gets in the way of the free market, it will distort the free market, and cause it to not be ‘free’ anymore.
            This is how we got to where we are today.
            The government trying to control the ‘free market’.

          • civildebate

            The government got in the way of the free market when it ended slavery too.

          • civildebate

            The government got in the way of the free market when it ended slavery too.

          • JSobieski

            Markets don’t purport to solve all propblems or to tell us what should be banned and what should be allowed.

            Markets are great at resource allocation issues. Setting prices, leting people decide what products/services they want to produce, etc.

            Markets don’t make moral judgments about things like slavery or prostitution.

            When it comes to economic efficiency and wealth generation “market processes” are very much real and they function remarklably well.

            The question for government intervention is thus as follows:

            Is the goal to impact the economy or something that is not primarily economic in nature?

            If the goal is primarily economic, then markets should be left alone aside from basic guardrails (all markets need guardrails to function).

            If the goal is primarily political (outlawing slavery for the purpose of outlawing slavery, not for the purpose of boosting the economy), then government intervention is appropriate.

            Governments are need to make laws, but markets make better economic decisions.

          • gekster

            Thank you.

          • http://impudent.edublogs.org/ kyle8

            If by markets you mean a total philosophy of freedom and free markets. Things like slavery would not be allowed because they violate the very premise of the market which is freedom of choice.

            Prostitution would be allowed, on the basis of protection of the individual since it is illegal prostitution which brings in the pimp and coercion.

            There is an entire body of work about this which calls free market capitalism the only real natural and moral philosophy of mankind.

          • JSobieski

            Kind of like asking is the US a Christian nation.

            In a narrow sense, in a broader sense, yes.

            However, in the broader context, markets are an extension of freedom, but freedom does not necessarily result from markets.

            China?

          • aesthete

            First of all, “best outcomes” relies on normative value judgements which will be different for different people. No system, whether free market or socialist, can promise “best outcomes” without this term being defined more clearly. However, there is a good deal of concrete evidence and philosophical argumentation behind the idea that voluntary trade (free markets) results in the most efficient allocation of scarce resources (barring a few cases which I’ll avoid for the sake of simplicity).

            Second, I would suggest that a common theme in your posts is an over-reliance on poorly-defined (and politically charged) terms, uncited assertions, and red herrings. For example, the common refrain of government inventing the internet is both only partially correct, and completely irrelevant to the point that you are trying to make. Corporations, non-profits, individual philanthropists, and many, many other participants in the public sector have contributed to and funded long-term research projects. In this case, the internet was facilitated by government research; the same is true of GPS and others. These facts do not, however, prove that government was necessary for their invention or that long-term research projects are impossible or under-funded in the private sector, anymore than me randomly finding a million dollars in a trash can means that we are spending too little time searching in trash cans for valuables.

          • JSobieski

            Aesthete is correct—this single sentence illustrates why your central thesis is flawed.

            The economic value of something is not intrinsic, it depends on the person and the context.

            If I barely have enough money for food, my demand for professional sports is limited. If I am flush with cash, I will pay top dollar for entertainment.

            Economics is ultimately about allocating resources between people’s wants and people’s willingness to provide those wants.

            The only issue on which you are correct is very very narrow. There are some thing that are simply so big and so economically without a rational payoff, that only government would do them.

            For example, if we wanted to engage in a space race against the USSR using private entities pursuing their self interest—we would not have beaten the Soviets to the moon.

            However, it is worth noting that the objective (beating the Soviets) was not inherently economic in nature. Put another way, sometimes economic concerns are trumped by non-economic concerns. We ceased having trade with Nazi Germany not out of economic considerations, but for military purposes.

          • civildebate

            Obama has cut taxes in both the stimulus plan, the making work pay credit, and the payroll tax. Even his jobs bill was mostly tax cuts.

            And you know as well as I do Dems are just itching to cut military spending, Medicare Advantage, farm subsidies, the War on Drugs, and the War on Terror. They just don’t want to cut entitlements or the welfare state.

          • aesthete

            I highly doubt that Democrats wish to cut spending on the GWoT, the War on Drugs, farm subsidies, or any part of Medicare at all — not when it grants them power. Indeed, I have yet to see a serious proposal from any Democrat in power proposing to do any such thing, and we certainly did not see any such thing occur when Pres Obama had his veto-proof majority. President Obama has embarked on several initiatives (Pacific Century, renewal of the PATRIOT Act, AG Holder’s prosecution of states with marijuana dispensaries, new and expanded wars in Libya, Afghanistan, and Yemen) which makes serious planning to this effect unlikely to transpire.

          • civildebate

            surely cut Medicare Advantage in the Obamacare bill.

            On the state level they’ve been legalizing medical marajuana for quite some time now (WoD).

            Dems wanted to pull out of Iraq pre-surge (GWoT) and Obama went against most of his party when he continued the Afghan war and expanded it into Pakistan.

            I think the outrage over Libya came from both sides (not equally though).

            And Dems are cheering the automatic cuts to Defense while the GOP are railing against them.

          • civildebate

            surely cut Medicare Advantage in the Obamacare bill.

            On the state level they’ve been legalizing medical marajuana for quite some time now (WoD).

            Dems wanted to pull out of Iraq pre-surge (GWoT) and Obama went against most of his party when he continued the Afghan war and expanded it into Pakistan.

            I think the outrage over Libya came from both sides (not equally though).

            And Dems are cheering the automatic cuts to Defense while the GOP are railing against them.

          • jakeofalltrades

            Because they cannot by definition affect long term allocations of capital and labor. They merely generate more uncertainty as, under a regime of deficit spending, taxes will eventually go back up to compensate.

            There is no such thing as a real tax cut if said cut is paid for with debt.

          • http://impudent.edublogs.org/ kyle8

            want to cut any of those things, in fact when they had all the power they increased funding for those things.

            And yes they did enact tax cuts, Stupid, idiotic, unhelpful temporary tax cuts.

            We are actually better off with no tax cuts than short term tax cuts. They do not stimulate anything, and they may have a perverse effect as they increase uncertainty in markets, while contributing to the deficit.

        • http://www.libertylives.org madnorskie

          World War 2 devastated two continents, destroyed cities and nations, and left millions dead and millions more impoverished. To cite that as a positive example of government spending that “boosted aggregate demand” is delusional.

          The idea that government spending during WW2 ended the depression is also economically false. Instead of a wall of text, I’ll simply link to an entertaining and informative video: http://www.google.com/url?sa=t&source=web&cd=1&ved=0CCgQtwIwAA&url=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.youtube.com%2Fwatch%3Fv%3DGTQnarzmTOc&ei=wF_9TvW_NoaTiALSgL2SDQ&usg=AFQjCNHiONxavoj15EN6XmJVl0GgaezxNw

          • gekster

          • http://www.libertylives.org madnorskie

            That’s what I get for trying to post from an iPhone.

          • http://edgeinducedcohesion.wordpress.com nathanalbright

            I hadn’t seen that one before.

    • tomatin

      It wasn’t the spending. It was the fact that the world needed food and goods and the US was the only country that could provide them after WWII.

      • progressivelibertarian

        n/t

  • flguy

    Sounds like the congressman’s public school education didn’t quite cover everything, or maybe he just missed that day.

  • progressivelibertarian

    Your ‘gotcha’ post is more about what you can count, rather than what counts.

    Clearly, if our system doesn’t ensure that we continually produce cutting edge science/tech talent, sooner or later we’re going to lose ground on the world stage to the countries that are investing heavily into educating their young.

    Let me state it as a problem/goal: I’d like to see our kids ranked 1st in math and science proficiency in 10-15 years’ time.

    What would be your solution towards achieving that goal?

    • civildebate

      The answer should be that we look at what the leading countries are doing well and try to transplant that here.

      But the answers you’ll get will be something revolving around cutting (edu) spending and stripping workers (teachers) rights, pay, and benefits.

      We should also examine why our university system is so good but our k-12 system is so bad.

      And it might help to help rebuild some of our damaged minority communities instead of trying to make them die off by defunding everything they touch.

      • aesthete

        on K-12 education. We had spending increase twofold without any improvement in education results. No one is saying that merely cutting spending will solve problems in our education system, conservatives least of all: only a dishonest or ignorant person would characterize the preeminent conservative ideas for reform (charter schools, vouchers, less labor-intensive teaching, to throw out a few) in that way. Many will note (correctly) that tossing good money after bad has not had the advertised effects, and would like to see their property taxes not rise to soul-crushing levels in pursuit of a chimera.

        It’s also worth pointing out that the US does relatively well in these rankings in the early years of schooling (K-8), and only starts to decline at the middle and high school level. This has been true for some time: most European school systems weed out the less competitive children at this point in their schooling, and place them in trade schools or apprenticeships. I assure you that if the US did the same, our scores would look similar to theirs. I am guessing that carting the dummies off to trade school before high school was not what you had in mind for education reform, though.

      • jakeofalltrades

        and so produce the best education. Our doctors compete with each other and produce the best medicine. Our film industry competes with itself and thus produces the best entertainment.

        Public school teachers have no competitive pressure and no reason to perform. They exist in de facto local monopolies and have no risk of having their school shut down by lack of business if they can’t attract students. If anyone raises their poor performance as an issue, they run around screaming that said plaintiff hates children (which is rich compared to the teachers who leave the children ignorant, illiterate, and unable to fend for themselves in the modern world).

        If you want K-12 to be as good as higher education, privatize it. Parents with a choice will not send their kids to a crappy school.

        • civildebate

          “No one is saying that merely cutting spending will solve problems in our education system”

          It doesn’t really solve any problem with our education system. Not all schools are overfunded, especially not those in the inner city.

          “Public school teachers have no competitive pressure and no reason to perform.”
          So if it’s an market incentive thing then why don’t Finland, Canada, Australia etc. have the same problems?

          And keep in mind that Asian students in the USA are pretty much the best in the world in science and math yet those go through the same school systems.

          “This has been true for some time: most European school systems weed out the less competitive children at this point in their schooling, and place them in trade schools or apprenticeships. I assure you that if the US did the same, our scores would look similar to theirs. I am guessing that carting the dummies off to trade school before high school was not what you had in mind for education reform, though.”

          Except in Germany, that doesn’t happen until the last part of high school… and even those dumb kinds still take all the same tests and do better than our kids. See: Finland, Canada, Australia, and New Zealand.

          • jakeofalltrades

            n.t.

          • civildebate

            True enough. They do pick their teachers from the 10% percent of their college graduates.

  • ag8tor

    as many theories as you want. Did Mr. Holt mention the source of funds for all this “extra” spending that he touts so highly? Social security fund? Nope…gone. Medicare ? Nope…gone. Entitlement projects? Nope…sacred for Dems votes. I assume Mr. Holt and his Dem colleagues will all be willing to write a check to cover the extra funds needed. Better yet, maybe Obama or Pelosi could cut their vacations short by a couple of days and donate the expense to this “extra” spending. Wait, how about some magic beans or fairy dust? Haven’t we still got those magic printing presses that can print money without anything to back it up? Glad I remembered that because I was really starting to worry about how we could fund it. I feel better now. Spend away libs!

    • malvernpa

      One assumes that the government needs to spend to stimulate the economy because the private sector cannot do so sufficiently to regain economic traction. That is not Americas problem. The private sector has far more capital to inject into the economy than does the government and do so without creating public debt and deficits. The issue is that the risk cannot be calculated while this administration is in power. The rouge regulators can bring a company to its knees quickly with one stroke of a pen. The legislation passed is so ambiguous, “The secretary will at their discretion….” How can any business person plan and invest when so much Marxist garbage comes out of such legislation when power is concentrated in the unaccountable hands of unelected officials. This administration takes care of its friends and will openly through nails on the road of any industry that dares to disagree with them or that they do not like, I give you the NLRB. Or how about the legal, not to mention constitutionally protected, business of the gun shop. This administration will put the lives of the border patrol, aid in the murder of Mexican nationals to achieve their goal of destroying a constitutional amendment with out 3/4 approval of the states then on TV lie about what they were doing under oath. Quite frankly rouge dictators have nothing on this administration. So the American investor sits on its hands till they are gone. We do not need more debt, we need the Obama administration gone.

      • edintexas

        “The rouge regulators…”. Is that an assertion that this Administration’s regulatory entities are run by Communists? If so, I think you are probably correct.

        Oh, and they have gone rogue too.

  • bigboy46

    Are you kidding! Greece wouldn’t even take this guy. The libs don’t even know when to stay quiet to keep from actually showing how stupid and ignorant they really are.

  • sharrondeer

    Massive spending during WWII served as a huge stimulus to the economy, which is what finally got us out of the Great Depression. By the end of WWII, GDP was double what it had been in 1938. It dropped in 1946 and 1947, not surprisingly, but it was still about 180% of the GDP in 1938., and grew steadily thereafter.

    GDP has been growing since the second quarter of 2010, but only at slightly below the average rate of 3.2%. Combine the enormous debt that accumulated from 1981 on with an average growth rate in GDP, and you’ve got a real problem. We need to both cut spending and increase the growth rate of GDP.

    My apologies if I’m being too technical or too boring in describing all this.

  • Pingback: free music downloader