Redstate

is a $300 million dollar deficit something to celebrate?  Because it was $100 million more last year?

Regardless of the Left's tantrum surrounding "inflated" deficit projections, the one indisputable fact in this issue is that total tax receipts GREW by 11%, even though taxes were CUT!  It's amazing that liberals pride themselves on being able to read nuance, but can't grasp macroeconomics in a capitalist society.  To them, there is one finite pie of wealth out there and those rascally Republicans just want to give a bigger slice to the rich.

What is at work here is that capital in the hands of the people who spend and invest, grows more capital!  The "pie" gets bigger, and then, VOILA! The Government takes in more money.

Now if we could only spend less....ah well.

The New York Times would insist that it was just us.

I don't know who you are or what your gig is.  But a very cursory study of the RedState universe here would reveal to you that most of us here are very uncool with the budgetary bloating disease running rampant in the Beltway (which is why Sen Coburn holds near-diety respect around here).

So a substantial reduction in the annual deficit is very definitely something to celebrate.  Yes we wish it was more.  We are often pretty hot at Bush and at the Republican establishment because their spending habits seem indistinguishable from those of the tax-and-spend leftist Dems.  Many of us here at RedState have given not our surplus money but our personal money necessary to pay our bills in order to fund candidates like Pence, Flake, Coburn, Hensarling, and etc, who are NOT part of the spend-spend-spend community.

So if you are trying to make some kind of snarky point, I suggest you take some sandpaper and apply it where it'll do the most good.

'No I win', I've read your commentary.  You are not a troll (so I apologize for the pretty nasty bit there).  Since you are one of the smart people, why do you not see how this is a good thing.  A very positive step.  We can celebrate the good thing, while demanding much more of it.

So I say smile, enjoy the moderate success, then pina coloda up and get to work demanding better.

This is a discussion of the Democrats' concordance with the NY Times.

Yes, any deficit is bad, but the Democrats scoffed -- loudly and repeatedly -- at Bush's promise to cut the deficit in half by 2009.  They also insisted that the cuts would deepen the recession and increase the size of the deficit. Realize that deficits were higher before the tax cuts than have been after it.

When the Democrats are just plain wrong about these things, they don't even pause to reflect.  They just change the attack and forget that the original assertion never happened. And The New York Times -- who need only search their archives to find the original stories and their own original editorials -- plays right along.

it's hype and the idea that fiscal restraint will come from Dems in Congress is just laughable. Ultimately those spending bills are going to be passed, veto or no. In the past a presidential veto of a spending bill has never been correlated to the president winning the fight.

answer:   a useless collection of ink-stained wood pulp and cellulose, unworthy of even bottom-of-birdcage duty, if you actually paid for it.  If your libby neighbor gave a pile of it to you for free, then it is acceptable for bottom-of-birdcage, wrapping fish guts for the trash, and doggy paper duty.

And not being a proper noun, it is not capitalized when I use it.

my point is that hundreds of billion dollars is a craptastic thing no matter if it's 300 billion or 500 billion.  How our politicians can celebrate ONLY 300 billion debt astounds me.

was Harry Reid, who said something to the effect that the reduction was bogus because the administration exaggerated how big it was going to be to start with.

Why do we want to pay down the long-term debt? Have we run out of productive uses for cash? Are we trying to make sure the next Democrat president has plenty of borrowing capacity available to start New And Wonderful Things?

pause, take a shallow breath and ask your yourself what would be the reaction if the deficit had gone up by a like amount.  In wartime and with Katrina it's a big thing.

But I just want to emphasize what I was saying before I went into the cheap knee-shots:

(a) the huge majority of us RSers have been harping and continue to harp on this very point, and

(b) it is progress, and it is in fact significant progress.

In addition, it is so clearly and undeniably a result of the tax cuts, that it has the additional pleasing factor that we get to stick it in the eye of those leftie zealots for whom no tax cut or spending cut is ever acceptable.

But certainly agreed.  Our federal government, led by a GOP congress that REALLY should know better, and a President who is no better, is spending our hard-earned money like drunken prostitutes.

And having just recently re-visited the movie National Treasure (very cool, unforgetable line 'people don't talk like that anymore') and studying the D-of-I, it is a little frightening to say, but the American revolutionaries threw off their British rulers -- on significantly less provokation than what our government is currently doing to us.  

if it wasn't true why would all of these folks be saying the same thing? </sarc

And I'm not saying the deficit is a disaster because , as you say it isn't huge compared to GDP.

But the administration hyping cutting the deficit by a small percentage is tough to take.

If that's all they can do with a majority in both houses, what's going to happen if they lose one or both? Of course, paradoxically, it might be better for the budget & spending with the Dems in control, since maybe Bush would actually veto some spending bills.

Sorry, but a small drop in the deficit when we have very strong economic growth is hype to me.

If we can't subtantially reduce the deficit when growth is this high, when exactly is it going to happen? When the economy stagnates?

Again, many people don't care about deficits, but for those who do, the President is trying to portray himself as a deficit hawk, which is patently absurd.

(Admittedly oversimplified) economic theory says it makes sense to run deficits when the ecomony is weak to boost recovery, and when the econony is booming is the time to run surplus and pay down the long term debt before the next economic downturn.

Lower taxes =

Increased economic growth

Increased income (as defined by the IRS)

Increased tax revenues

Lower deficits

Worked in the 1960s

Worked in the 1980s

Worked in the 2000s

Also, note that even with the profligate spending of the Congress (Dems and Reps), the deficit is going down.  Just imagine the fiscal health of the US government if they could ever exercise some restraint...

If it weren't in the public interest, they wouldn't print it, now would they?  

It does bring one to wonder what other items has the NYT taken its finding of the public interest from the Democrats.

recuperating in her plastic surgeon's ofice after anothe botched facial transplant, is probably woozy from the bottle of Jack Daniels her doctor gave her for an anesthetic.

    She says that we have had a $ ten trillion turnaround from surplus to debt in five years.  I know the IRS is institutionally palsied,as are all federal agencies God bless their life giving rays, but unless that blood sucking department has taken on the appearance of our CIA they must have collected something over that period.  Therefore as unlikely a fact as the hope for success on the part of Dame Nancy's plastic surgeon, on whom I have it from good sources, has been seen bumping into fire hydrants while walking his seeing eye dog.

how a reduction in growth is called "a cut".

"I used to smoke a pack a day. I was planning on going to three packs a day, but I'm only smoking two. Therefore I've cut my smoking by a pack a day."

The deficit was $318 billion last year, now they're projecting ~$300 billion. Sure, it could be worse, but it's hard to be enthusiastic about this.

of GDP I don't see what there is to be concerned about.