Quote:The counter argument being that in order to do so, Carter and later Clinton gutted the one service the nation cannot do without, national defense. Reagan, and Bush felt compelled to spend effort to revitalize our national defense. Reagan due to his desire to end the Cold War, and Bush because of that World Trade Center incident.The US already spends more money on its military than any dozen countries of the world put together. And, of highest dozen others, almost all are locked in a military alliance with the US. The US military budget is very close to the entire rest of the world: everyone vs. the US, in pure dollars, would only be a slight loss for the US! Count NATO allies, and it wouldn't even be close: this is the largest peacetime mass of military power, ever. There is no cutback under any president that changes the basic fact: the US has the most expensive army in the world, by miles and miles. Cutting it back to merely a few hundreds of billions of dollars would hardly leave the country militarily crippled. There's a huge yawning gap between having to "do without" a military and "spending slightly less colossal sums" on it.
As for Ronnie's role in bringing down the Evil Empire, his belligerent policy was certainly a contribution, but the major cards were already played by the time he came to office. War in Afghanistan, stagnating economy, increasing nationalist unrest, and inability to innovate were already present by 1980. Soviet defense spending had, in real terms, been increasing more or less steadily since Nixon was president, and did not particularily accelerate under Reagan. They actually somewhat flatlined, and while the Soviets were all a-twitter about SDI, they never really did anything about it in terms of spending. But, for whatever reason, nobody talks about Ford or Carter for their genius in causing Soviet overspending.
In the end, it was Gorbachev's reforms that did them in. Fear of American technology and military spending was a part of their long-term motivation, and constant harassment in foreign policy was costly, but ultimately, the American part in the collapse of the USSR is secondary: the Soviets killed their own empire, through bungling their dictatorship, then through bungling their attempt to democratize.
Quote:I don't mean a balanced budget. I mean pay down the debt. You know, so that we don't spend 15% of tax revenues on debt service. I would also note that as of Clinton/Bush, there are no Democrats and Republicans, only self serving demagogues and publicans.If you can find a way to pay down the debt while running budget deficits, I think I might be able to find you a job at one of those fancy hedge funds that just imploded, because that would be some impressive skill.
Or, in other words, administrations that don't balance the budget aren't even at step one towards paying down the debt. The administrations that have at least gotten to step one are Democratic, not Republican.
-Jester