From: coolidge@speaker.wpd.sgi.com (Don Coolidge)
Newsgroups: alt.politics.bush,alt.fan.dan-quayle,alt.politics.clinton,alt.politics.elections
Subject: Re: FAQ: The Record Thing
Date: 18 Aug 92 18:07:41 GMT
Organization: Silicon Graphics, Inc.

In article <168478AE9.MEDELMA@cms.cc.wayne.edu>, MEDELMA@cms.cc.wayne.edu (Michael Edelman) writes:
|> In article <ompaeio@twilight.wpd.sgi.com>
|> coolidge@speaker.wpd.sgi.com (Don Coolidge) writes:
|>  
|> >
|> >In article <1992Aug16.195933.7846@ncsu.edu>, dsh@odin.ece.ncsu.edu (Doug Holtsinger) writes:
|>         [...]
|> >Let's put this into perspective. In only eight years, Ronald
|> >Reagan and his borrow-and-spend crew doubled the size of the
|> >total outstanding national debt, accumulated over the previous
|> >200 years. Now, in not-quite four years, George Bush and his
|>  
|> Here's where it pays to think things through a little. The Reagan era
|> debt may have been high in absolute numbers, but so was GNP. It's a
|> littel silly- or perhaps just plain ignorant- to try to compare debt under
|> a $7Trillion economy with debt under a $4Billion economy. The Reagan era
|> debt was about 40% of GNP, or about 1/3rd of the post-WWII debt.

Here's where it *really* pays to think things through a little :^)

The long-term interest rates under which the Reagan debt were established
are absolutely ruinous. Interest on the national debt is now the third-
largest non-defense item in the budget, and is gaining fast on Social
Security and Medicare (yes, I know Social Security isn't officially in
the budget. If you want to be pedantic about it, make interest Number Two,
with a bullet, and climbing the charts fast). Its size cripples the ability
of our national government to do anything useful - there just isn't any 
money left. *Of course* government can't provide good services anymore -
all the bucks are going to the banks (many of them foreign), rather
than back to the taxpayers.

Now, then, to get back to your alleged :^) point - are you saying that
previous administrations, in a $4 trillion economy, used to regularly
roll up annual deficits of $130 billion? If so, please point out a few.
I remember the nation being scandalized when Carter posted a $59 billion 
deficit one year. No administration in history has created deficits
comparable to those of Bush and Reagan, in either absolute or relative
scale, with the possible exceptions of Roosevelt's WWII years (where I
am sure you will admit there were extenuating circumstances).
  
|> >To be moderately serious, anyone who considers that Democrats have
|> >a monopoly on spending just hasn't done his homework. Yeah, I know
|> >it's much easier to just swallow the malarkey regularly spewed out
|> >by OMB, or Bush's and Quayl's speechwriters, but the plain facts of
|> >the matter are that the last dozen or so budgets, every one of them
|> >Republican, have been the dozen biggest budgets in our history. No
|>  
|> This borders on the foolish. If the last twelve years have had Republican
|> presidents, and the economy continued to grow, you'd expect that the
|> 1992 budget to be bigger than the 1980 Carter era depression budget,
|> wouldn't you? After all, GNP is much higher. It's just silly.

As The Count on Sesame Street constantly encourages, use your numbers.
Your premise is flawed.

The budget grew far out of proportion to the economy during those years.
The deficit grew far out of proportion to the budget. Had both grown at
the same sickly rate as our economy (much less than 3% per annum, averaged 
over the twelve years; though long-lasting, it's nothing to write home 
about, and certainly not the miracle that the Republicans would have us
believe), we'd have had no net increased deficit (surplus some years, 
deficit in others, it should all even out). Or do you really fail to 
understand the significance in dollars and cents of borrowing a trillion 
dollars at rates ranging from 8% to 15% and more? That's between $80 and
$150 *billion* in interest alone, every year. (How big did you say your
yearly tax bill was?) In pure numbers, 3% compounded over 8 years is about
a 26% growth, and in twelve years that comes to 42%. Far less than the budget 
growth, and far, far less than the growth of the deficit.

All that is just the Reagan contribution, of course. Bush has added
about another trillion.

Not to mention, of course, that these were the guys who were going to
*cut* spending...yeah, right.
 
|> >Democratic budgets compare. And they've been "paid" for by mortgaging
|> >the futures of ourselves, our children, and our grandchildren (if,
|> >indeed, the pain stops there).
|>  
|> More silliness. You have to look at the trends and the actual policies
|> instead of mindlessly repeating what you hear on TV. Phrases like "mortgaging
|> our future" are meaningless and were an attempt to discredit a phenomenally
|> sucessful economic policy that would still be growing if we'd elected a
|> Republican in 1988 ;-)

See my comments above about the alleged long-term recovery. Also, I'm a 
homeowner; I understand far too well what the verb "mortgage" means :^). 
As for repeating what I hear on TV, if I did so, I'd still believe the 
baloney you've swallowed about how wonderful the Reagan "boom" was. I 
repeat, we lost ground during that time because the weak, though continued,
growth utterly failed to keep pace with either our burgeoning national 
or our exploding personal indebtedness.

|> >Use your brain, Doug. First, check up on your sentence construction.
|> >Then get off your good intentions and find out whether or not what
|> >you're being told is, in fact, true. Finally, make the supreme
|> >effort and actually *think* about it all, what it means, both in the
|> >short and long run.
|>  
|> I think the writer might take some of that advice himself.

Hmmmm...pots and kettles...:^)

|> >I have a friend with a parrot. The parrot can repeat anything
|> >you tell it. But that doesn't make it true...nor, of course,
|> >does the parrot waste effort thinking about what he says -
|> >he just bounces it back at the source.
|>  
|> Can your parrot say "Mortgaging the future", too?

My *friend's* parrot. Goodness, is reading that difficult? :^)
But, yes, of course my friend's parrot can say "mortgaging the 
future". And the phrase means about as much to him as it does 
to you.

Don Coolidge
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