As a fiscal conservative, the Republicans have pretty much burned their bridges with me. What kind of bizarro world have I entered in which the previous Democrat administration manages to balance the budget and pay down the national debt, only to have the following Republican administration roll back the legistration requiring a balanced budget and allow the national debt to soar?
As far as I’m concerned, this chart, which graphically demonstrates our national spending, should be hanging in every classroom in America. Heck, it should be hanging in many corporate breakrooms in America. At least then voting-age people would actually see it. Keep in mind that the circle showing national debt doesn’t even fit on chart. Entitlement programs don’t fit on the chart either, but can be found on this companion chart.
DOD spending I’m ok with going up. Wars ain’t cheap, especially one like the one we’re in now. Note what Roosevelt had to do in WWII. Same thing, pretty much. There’s definitely historical precedence.
Keep in mind Clinton balanced the budget, and he did it by hiking taxes to their highest levels in history, plus cutting the military ’till it bled, and cutting intelligence spending to the point where things like 9-11 happened. So don’t laud his administration as any sort of a success on that front. Remember, Hillary’s plan to socialize our health care system was going to have income taxes raised to about 45% to pay for it all. I don’t think you can laud him for trying to make us a socialist state.
I’m ok with cutting most of the other fluff stuff, but military and intelligence gathering need to probably be increased. I won’t gripe about that.
Check out Neil Boortz’ book on the Fair Tax. It’s really about the only thing that makes sense anymore, along with some healthy budget cuts like removing the IRS. This system can work, but it’s going to take a bunch of pet pork getting sliced. Nobody seems to want to do that.
The Republicans are more than disappointing when it comes to fiscal spending. Just goes to show that there are no conservatives in politics. Just a bunch of drunk sailors.
All my life the Republicans have been shouting for a smaller government and fiscal responsibility. All my life, whenever the Republicans were in power, both the size of the government and the national debt have increased.
I’m done with the Republican party. Actually, I reject the whole two party system. It’s time a viable third party comes along and shakes the two parties out of their complacency. I voted Libertarian in the last presidential election and I’ll probably do so again. Not that I think for an instant that the Libertarians have a shot at office, but if enough people did it maybe the other parties would at least sit up and take notice.
I completely agree. I get tired of the arguments I’m getting from Republicans, which is basically, “you have to vote Republican or else the Dems will get in.” That’s somewhat true. But I don’t like the lesser of two evils. I don’t like evil, period. And nobody’s really doing the right thing. I hate to say it, but I voted for Perot because he was saying everything that I wanted to hear out of a candidate. Of course, that got us Clinton, but I felt like my vote at least made a point during that election.
And there are some Republicans out there trying to do the right thing. They get paralyzed by the rest of the party’s unwillingness to do the right thing out of fear of political reprisal. That’s as evil as anything else….
There comes a time where you actually HAVE to stand up for what’s right, no matter what the result. It’s enough to be on the side of the angels, in the end. I think most people agree with that. My third party candidate might not win, but I’ll at least be casting a vote for what I believe in. That’s what it should all be about, anyway.
Right. After the Perot debacle, the Republicans woke up and took notice that Americans were tired of what their system had become. It was at the very next congressional election that we saw the “Contract with America” and our candidates acting like they actually served the public. Of course, eventually the old lessons were forgotten and the “Contract with America” Republicans were replaced with “Put it on My Tab” Neocons. Time for another wakeup call.
Wow that is awesome! I wish I had some expendable ca$h to buy that poster. My hats off to the artist.
Gee only 983 Billion… couldn’t we find another line item for 17 Billion to round it out to an even Trillion!!
I mean after all if we are STILL funding Osprey research to the tune of 2.2 Billion dollars a year… WTF!?! STOP FUNDING this POS ya’ jackasses it DOESN’T WORK!
I say f@#$ it buy 50 billion dollars worth of UAVs and wire them into an X-Box live game called “Al Qaeda Hunt: Combat Evolved”. Let someone else dig the bastards out of holes. Kill smarter, not harder ;)
You get my newly created “Flaming Frog of Freedom” award for coolest idea of the week!
[...] It’s that time of year again–time for congress to haggle over the Iraq spending budget. Anyone who has read my blog knows that when it comes to the government and my money, I’m definitely a fiscal conservative. I know I’ve written about the Iraq spending bill in the past, but I can’t seem to find it at the moment. However, I did find this post about our overall spending. [...]
[...] hot button is fiscal responsibility, and it’s damn hard to find a good [...]