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0 pointstasty_freeze9y ago0 comments

There is also the mantra that Republicans are the party of small government and fiscal responsibility. Nope, the difference between Democrats and Republicans is what they want to spend the money on. This is just a fact, easily verified by looking at the debt across decades of various administrations and congressional alignments.

A few years ago Ted Cruz and company very nearly shut down the government and defaulted on the national debt, insisting that raising it was irresponsible and laying it at the feet of President Obama. They insisted any increase in spending had to be offset by a cut somewhere else. Sounds like a really bold, principled stand. Then this:

http://www.patheos.com/blogs/dispatches/2017/01/11/republica...

Now that Republicans are fully in charge, they just authorized an escalating increase of the debt limit, running from $580B/year (2017) to $946B/year (2026), or a $10T increase over the next 10 years. There was no dissent, it was just quietly passed. I'm not saying it was wrong or irresponsible to do -- I'm just saying the politics are transparent, if they weren't already.

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georgemcbay9y ago

"There was no dissent"

Rand Paul dissented.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SBWJ_LW_hBI

As a liberal-leaning person, I disagree with Rand Paul on many policy issues, but respect the fact that his actions are consistent with his stated ideals, which is becoming increasingly rare.

enraged_camel9y ago

We also know for a fact that Republicans aren't in favor of the government staying out of people's private lives. They are, after all, strongly anti-abortion, which by definition is an extremely private affair.

edit: what I said is 100% correct, so I will assume that the downvotes are simply political in nature.

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JumpCrisscross9y ago

> increase of the debt [sic] limit, running from $580B/year (2017) to $946B/year (2026)

Growing the deficit from $580bn to $950bn over 7 years means it is growing at over 6.2% per year. To be fair, the median nominal GDP growth rate between 1933 and 2015 was 6.4% [1]. That said, forecasted near-term growth is expected to come in between 2.5 and 3.5% [2].

The difference between the 6.2% deficit growth rate and 2.5 to 3.5% nominal GDP growth rate will need to be made up with a mix of tax increases (austerity), inflation (redistribution) or, while unlikely, default.

[1] http://www.multpl.com/us-gdp-growth-rate

[2] http://www.tradingeconomics.com/united-states/gdp-growth

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