Democrats are more economically responsible than Republicans.

Republicans Past and President One things about this debate I have not mentioned is that parties evolve. In fact the democratic and republican parties of 50 years ago are very different than today. The Republicans at Harding's time were isolationist and did not believe in military intervention. Today, Republicans have a reputation of being more aggressive. Ronald Reagan transformed the Republican party making it more conservative and more military focused. The Tea Party has also shifted the party to the right fiscally since Bush. The resolution is that Democrats ARE more economically responsible than Republicans. So my opponent needs to spend a little more time on the Republicans of today, not the ones of 30 to 40 years ago. Why Big Government Hurts Economy I think that people are lazy by nature. If you didn't have to excel at your job to get your pay, most people won't do it. If a business does not have to save customers money to earn a good profit, then it won't. This is why private competition is so important. When there is competition you have to do better than the other guys, and they are trying to do better than you. This becomes a race to make the customers happy. When this happens products are better, cheaper, and technology improves. When we have big government, there are a lot of government programs and unfortunately there is no competition for them, so they don't have to improve over time and become efficient. For example the Obamacare website cost 317 million dollars to build. Republican Senator Tom Coburn found 30 billion dollars in wasteful spending and we all know there is much more where that came from. The National Endowment of the Humanities spent 1 million promoting romance novels as one example (1). Private enterprise on the other hand has given us incredible advanced in digital technology with computer power doubling every 18 months. It has given us better and cheaper hybrid cars. The enormous advances during the industrial revolution is proof of the incredible power of private enterprise. One example of competition is wages. In our economy, those with fewer skills earn less than those with greater skills. If you don't have any real skills, you will probably be earning less than $20,000 a year. If you do have in demand skills you can earn over $60,000 a year. This is one way our free market encourages people to learn skills. However, government has been transferring trillions from skilled to unskilled workers encouraging people not to try as hard and making the American dream harder to get for everyone else. Democrat's Socialism and the Middle Class People in the middle class pay on average 30% of their incomes in taxes in some form or another (2). So if you are making $60,000, you are really earning $40,000. The middle class is getting squeezed to death and having 1/3 of their money taken from them and this is not helping. 85% of the middle class say it is getting difficult for them to maintain their standards of living (3). Socialism hurts the middle class. European Socialism While America is highly socialist, Europe is even more. Government revenue is on average 40% of their economies (4). Yet the average income in the US is on average 44% higher than that in the EU (5). Unemployment in the EU tends to stay around 9% and that is with all the people in their vast welfare and unemployment programs who are not officially unemployed (6). In the US, 6% unemployment is considered high. The point I am trying to make is that high welfare spending doesn't work. Because of a lack of competition government brings economies generally perform worse. Maybe big government is the reason the US economy has been so bad over the last decade. We are getting an economy just like Europe with our ever growing government (2). Executive Blame Not only does my opponent like to attack the Republicans of the past but he seems to assume that the executive is to blame when things go bad in the economy. The problem is that the executive is not the one who makes legislation. It is Congress that does this. So the president is not entirely responsible for what government does. In the 80s the executive was Republican and in the 90s it was democrat. But in the 80s Congress was democrat and in the 90s it was republican. And as I mentioned before, there are a lot of things out of the government's control. When evaluating the policies of each party it is best to look at what each party is proposing in Congress right now rather than look at what happened during presidencies of the past. When looking at performance it is better to look at the economic affect of socialism (more democrat) vs. capitalism (more republican). Budget Battles Republicans have been fighting for deep spending cuts in Congress. Just look at the Paul Ryan's plan that want to cut government spending from 22% to 19% and is heavily opposed by democrats for cutting our socialist welfare spending. Currently government spending stands at 3.5 trillion and as mentioned before Obama wants to raise that to 3.9 trillion with 1 trillion of new taxes over the next 10 years. With a projected revenue of 3 trillion in 2014 this would raise our deficit from 600 billion to 900 billion reversing much of out deficit cuts. Democrats fight for more spending and taxes while republicans fight for less. Big spending and taxes hurts the free market and makes our economy worse. Lets go over some of opponent's specific arguments. When I pointed out that it is democrats who often keep republican presidents from cutting presidents my opponent said: "It is often the REPUBLICAN resistance in Congress that prevents incumbent Demcrats from repairing a broken economy. Look at what is going on in Congress right now. Barack Obama is fighting for his country and wishes for cooperation. Instead of cooperation, he gets resistance. " As mentioned before, Obama's solution is to raise taxes in a struggling economy and increase deficits, and government spending. As mentioned before, these only make an economy worse. And plus, when interest rates go back up, the interest from the increased national debt will kill us. Interest on the national debt is 230 billion per year and is estimated to rise to 830 billion in ten years with no sign of slowing (10). Republicans need to work harder to cut more spending, and not raise it. "In fact, Bush is the PERFECT example of a Republican." Bush fought a lot more wars than the typical Republican president. He also didn't focus on spending cuts as much as the Republican of the 90s or today do. As mentioned before, he did run into bad luck with three recessions that have not been shown to be his fault. Ford and Nixon My piece about executive blame applies to these two presidents. The inflation that occurred during this era was because people expected a continuous rise in the price of goods, so they bought more increasing demand, and prices. Increased prices led to demand for higher wages pushing up prices even more (12). The recession happened because the post WWII economic bubble finally burst. The 1973 oil crisis and increased demand for steel causing a steel crisis also contributed (11). Wage and price controls removed by Nixon are harmful because they create shortages. For example, if you artificially make oil prices low, the increased demand for it will create oil shortages. Not Obama's Fault My opponent argues that our economic problems are not Obama's fault. This is a double standard. Whenever things go bad for a Republican president, it is his fault. But when things do bad for a democrat suddenly my opponent selectively realizes that the executive is not entirely responsible for all of government. 1: http://freebeacon.com... 2: http://www.usgovernmentrevenue.com... 3: http://billmoyers.com... 4: http://epp.eurostat.ec.europa.eu... 5: http://www.politifact.com... 6: http://rwer.wordpress.com... 7: http://budget.house.gov... 8: http://www.nytimes.com... 9: http://www.heritage.org... 10: http://money.cnn.com... 11: http://en.wikipedia.org... 12: http://economics.about.com...