From: cmk@athena.mit.edu (Charles M Kozierok)
Subject: Re: [misc.activism.progressive] Clinton Office Requests Comments
Organization: Massachusetts Institute of Technology
Distribution: inet
Date: Thu, 7 Jan 1993 17:04:47 GMT

In article <1iheiaINN522@armory.centerline.com> mrh@centerline.com (Mike Huben) writes:
>In article <1993Jan7.025741.4810@athena.mit.edu> cmk@athena.mit.edu
>(Charles M Kozierok) whines (when presented with real numbers):

oooh mike, you're hurtin' my feelings... please stop... i think i'm
going to cry (*sniff*)

>>these numbers are misleading. i don't think they imply any "major
>>deficit reductions".
>
>Please explain then.

because the numbers changed, which can be attributed to random factors,
or the inflation we all know about. Carter's term was a financial
nightmare. if in the all the chaos of his term a couple of numbers
changed in the right direction to allow you to make your claim, fine.
but in order for there to be "major" deficit reductions, i would
expect to see some changes in spending policy, particularly in the
area of entitlements. this did not happen. as a matter of fact,
the indexing of entitlements happened during his term, which is
one direct cause of the current run-away deficit problem. 

i am not trying to claim that Carter was worse than Reagan or
Bush. i am not trying to claim that inflation was his fault,
or anything like that. i am only saying that he was *not*
a great opponent of budget deficits.

>>>According to the same article, 8 balanced budgets were passed since 1931.
>>
>>irrelevant. most of them were far closer to 1931 than to 1993.
>
>If you had the attention span of a gerbil, you'd remeber that Bob DeBula wrote:
>"Or a demopublican promising deficit reductions?"

and if you had the logical reasoning capabilities of said rodent, you'd
remember that i said i don't care, because it is irrelevant. the deficit
crisis is *now* not in 1931. the claim in quotes above about deficit
reduction is based upon the current problem, not something that happened
50 years ago. budget deficits were not killing the country then, and
"demopublicans" were not lying about the deficit being their priority then.
only one balanced budget has been passed in
the last 30 years, and it just barely so. the 8 budgets you mention were
included to try to cloud the real issue. kind of like looking at a baseball
player's career stats to cloud his poor recent performance.

>These balanced budgets were
>all passed by "demopublicans".  Any year where growth of GNP exceeds growth
>of the deficit, the deficit as a percentage of GNP is reduced.

so what. seriously -- there is noise in the numbers. i would look at
the longer term trends. i'm sure you'll be pleased to respond to this
with another insult. try something from the reptile family.

>>they were both very bad. but they share the blame with their predecessors,
>>particularly Johnson, who initiated the entitlement programs which
>>are now responsible for the major part of the current mess. and the $6B
>>surplus occurred in '69, which was actually the first year of Nixon's
>>reign, no?
>
>No.  The '69 budget was submitted by Johnson, just as the '93 budget has been
>submitted by the outgoing Bush.  But I don't expect you to be able to make
>such leaps of deduction.

and we all know that the government follows its budgets *exactly*, and
that *nothing* changes when a new president takes over.
Nixon controlled expenditures in '69 and the information i have says
that he immediately began to decrease spending as soon as he took office,
particularly on the war. and since we're talking about such small amounts of
money anyway ($6B) it is quite possible he was responsible.

again, the $6B surplus is a red herring anyway. it is kind of
like a company that reports a "profit" of $1M on revenues of $600M and
expenses of $599M -- it doesn't take much change to swap that profit into a
loss, but *some* people only look at the word "profit", not at how
significant it was, or how it came about. but i don't expect you to be
able to use your brain to look beyond the simplicities of the situation.
of course all that wool *does* get in the way.

--
charles
Newsgroups: alt.politics.libertarian