Bush & fiscal discipline

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2005/08/10/AR2005081000223.html

a shocking level of absurdity has just been reached in D.C. Bush signed the $286 billion transportation bill.
in the past he vowed not to spend more than $284 billion…hmmm.

included in the bill are 6371 pet projects, at a cost of more than $24 billion. is this a good example of conservatism/discipline in government? perhaps my favorite part of the article is the reference to Reagan…he vetoed a bill with just 152 such “projects”…lol.

can conservatives honestly be proud of this? is this congress/administration a shining example to the how government should run?

should we dub them [color=red]tax cut & spend conservatives??? [/color] is this a winning formula for a healthy country?

the $250 million going to build a bridge in Alaska makes me proud to be an American…lol. it is going to connect the mainland to an island where a whopping 50 people live. there appears to be an airfield involved…i’m guessing not one of the busier airports in the country…lol.

are you Bushies out there finding it harder and harder to defend this meathead???

[quote][quote=“Hondu Grease”]http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2005/08/10/AR2005081000223.html

a shocking level of absurdity has just been reached in D.C. Bush signed the $286 billion transportation bill.
in the past he vowed not to spend more than $284 billion…hmmm.[/quote]

[quote]White House spokesman Trent Duffy replied that Bush pressured Congress to shave billions of dollars off the bill, and he said spending is “pretty modest” when spread out over five years. The transportation bill, at $57 billion a year, is a fraction of Medicare’s $265 billion.

Besides, Duffy said, “the president has to work with the Congress.”[/quote]

So what’s more important, that Bush went over what he wanted to spend, or that he looks to be working with Congress?

Did you read the article? Why poke the eyes of “Bushies” when the article clearly states the bill/law received “widespread backing?” And It looks as if the Bush team prevented even MORE pork spending…

Why does this make you giddy? I would think anything Bush did unlike Reagan would make “you liberals” happy.

I’m glad that communities are getting the equiptment they need. But I agree, there is still too much pork.

s[quote]hould we dub them [color=red]tax cut & spend conservatives??? [/color] is this a winning formula for a healthy country?[/quote]

No, I don’t think so. The article says that this bill/law is going to open the floodgates to more and more pork barrel spending. It is going to be harder to detemine what is truly needed and what is political favoritism.

I don’t like the way you pose your question. It’s inflamatory. Or wait, did you mean THIS meathead?

[quote]Sen. Robert C. Byrd (D-W.Va.) was especially offended by a fanciful drawing in the 2003 budget portraying the executive branch as Jonathan Swift’s Gulliver, “tied-up in a morass of Lilliputian do’s and don’ts.”

Byrd, who has been especially successful in steering money to his home state, angrily lectured then-Treasury Secretary Paul H. O’Neill: “The Congress and certainly this Senate is not ordinary, and certainly not Lilliputian. We’re senators.”[/quote][/quote]

Here’s a great chance to complain about pork barrel politics and you use it to castigate Bush and Bush supporters. Using pork to make senators feel better about working with the government is disgusting. It’s their job. Why not just call pork “corruption?” On the other hand, it’s the Senators’ jobs too get federal monies to their home state to make jobs for their constituants. It’s not a partisan thing. They ALL do it.

lol working with congress??? his party controls congress…not exactly a tough sell…

when i said “this meathead” i, of course, was speaking of George W. Bush.

i’ve always been a political junkie and up unitl these past few years considered myself a moderate. with every slimey move the current administration makes, i find myself more and more liberal. i simply can’t understand how anyone can be happy with the direction the G.O.P. is going. the radical christian right-wingers are taking over the party on the social issues and the debt/deficit is growing faster than it ever has before, thanks to unprecendented corporate welfare.

i can’t understand how anyone can approve of this garbage…

this is a slick move on the part of the white house. this wouldn’t be causing such an uproar if it wasn’t bloated.

these guys are spin masters. it’s way over what is necessary. during wartime shouldn’t the government be acting a bit more responsibly? it’s bad enough he cut taxes while we are at war…

he pressured congress??? the bill is HIGHER than he said he would approve. why didn’t he veto it and tell them to go back and cut some of the pork?

either he is lying about pressuring congress, or his pressure/influence on congress is horribly ineffective?

lol working with congress??? his party controls congress…not exactly a tough sell…

when I said “this meathead” i, of course, was speaking of George W. Bush.

I’ve always been a political junkie and up unitl these past few years considered myself a moderate. with every slimey move the current administration makes, I find myself more and more liberal. [b]i simply can’t understand how anyone can be happy with the direction the G.O.P. is going. the radical christian right-wingers are taking over the party on the social issues and the debt/deficit is growing faster than it ever has before, thanks to unprecendented corporate welfare.

I can’t understand how anyone can approve of this garbage[/b]…[/quote]

With so much going on Hondu, why not take it one piece at a time?

Pork Barrel spending is a great topic. And it is a topic that ALL of us would probably agree is bad for business in the USA. Read the article. Read the law in fact. Find out just who is getting what. This is a bipartisan law, so spare the GOP runs the Congress line. If that were true, why all the trouble getting Bolton in the UN;or getting anyone approved to the Supreme Court?

Again, great topic:

Nail +
head +
hammer =
good

but please avoid the traps that cause IP to be a shit slingling fest:

machine gun +
spray +
vitriole =
bad

Peace
jds

jd,

good point. sometimes i get a bit crazy. i need to stay on topic. it’s tough…lol.

thanks

[quote=“Hondu Grease”]jd,

good point. sometimes I get a bit crazy. I need to stay on topic. it’s tough…lol.

thanks[/quote]

I’m trying to find the actual law now on Senate.gov

Do you know the real name of the bill?

edit:

OK I think this is it:

house.gov/transportation/highway/tealu.html

wait!

THIS is the passed law:

thomas.loc.gov/cgi-bin/query/D?c … 109dW6Vlj::

it’s a bit wordy…lol

the alaskan bridge deal just kills me. $250 million…i’m in the wrong business…

warning off topic…lol

what does the “total words” thing mean under the name/number of posts data? what is forumosa tracking?

I don’t think Forumosa is tracking anything, in particular. That is just a word count… so you can see how many words you have typed on this site… just a statistic… Don’t know if it is limited to those words you actually type, or whether it includes also the words of others contained in the quote boxes…???

Good thread, Hondu. Personally, I think Bush’s spending record has been an absolute embarassment.

JD and others are right to point out that pork spending is very much a bipartisan sport, but that’s no excuse for Bush’s wretched performance in this area over the last 4 years. The guy needs to be reminded where the veto pen is kept.

Fiscal conservatives are a lonely bunch these days. It’s all very well to say that things would probably be even worse if a Democrat were in the White House, but that misses the point that Republicans are (to some of us anyway) supposed to be the party that stands up for the average citizen and fights against the practice of taking from the many and giving to the politically well-connected.

It’s a shame.

[quote=“Hobbes”]Fiscal conservatives are a lonely bunch these days. It’s all very well to say that things would probably be even worse if a Democrat were in the White House, but that misses the point that Republicans are (to some of us anyway) supposed to be the party that stands up for the average citizen and fights against the practice of taking from the many and giving to the politically well-connected.[/quote] Hobbes, are you serious??? Ok, ok… maybe a Democrat would spend more… but Republicans are supposed to be the party standing up for the average Joe, and against taking from the many and giving to the politically well-connected?

REALLY??? This is something that I do not know, and I’m serious, so please tell me, when did the political terms “Republican” and “Democrat” gain an ironic-inflection when applied to the parties in question. “Republican” and “democrat”, in standard political terminology, mean the complete opposite of what you just stated, so when did the slippage occur? And to be fair, I realize that these are political parties that we’re talking about… :slight_smile: …so my question isn’t directly relevant to the topic of a particular spending bill, but it’s informative with regards to the fiscal philosophies in question.

This is an interesting article from an interesting site, a blog that posts articles from Democrats, Republicans and Independents…

watchblog.com/republicans/ar … 02511.html

[quote]July 28, 2005
The Party of Fiscal Responsibility
I am a registered Republican. And I am a member of the Party of Fiscal Responsibility. So, as Republicans have taken over the business of federal governance, I have become painfully aware of the unpleasant reality: the two are not the same.

Most of those who supported the Gingrich-led Republican Revolution wanted, among other things, a fiscally responsible government. It was not an unreasonable idea: Republicans had long been the minority party in Congress, and did a brisk business in carping about Democratic spending boondoggles. And President Bush (41) had bitten the bullet and raised taxes - not a popular move with Republicans, but one that, in retrospect, bespoke a sober approach to the budget.

Thus, when Republicans took control of the national agenda in 2000, many of us who had voted for them cheered. Now, finally, we would have a government that would give us our money back and allow states and local governments to set their own taxing and spending priorities. But the longer the G.O.P. has been in charge, the more glaringly apparent it is that they are not the Party of Fiscal Responsibility.

In this climate, it does not take a Rovian genius to realize that the Democrats can score points with voters and businesses by promising a return to fiscal responsibility. But if we learned anything from the Gingrich Revolution, it is that there is no Party of Fiscal Responsibility - only a temporary Minority Party. Democrats running for president in 2008 will trumpet their fiscal bona fides, and governors from either party will have an advantage over tainted Washington insiders.

.[/quote]

I’d have to agree. Fiscal responsibility is a fleeting issue used and abused by BOTH parties.

The problem is that ALL this pork was known before now, but really there is no way of we laymen knowing about it this unless someone is obssesive about following the debate…yawn…which is how pork happens in the first place.

My advice, read more blogs.

Jaboney:

Obviously this is a huge topic, and everyone has their own take on it. But the very brief version of how I look at it is this:

In my opinion, a central theme of the Democratic party is the idea that the nation is full of uneducated peasant who don’t know what’s good for them, and that the solution to this is to gather up a large portion of these people’s resources in the form of taxes, and give these resources to a small elite group of wealthy, powerful, well-educated lobbyists, legislators and agency officials on K Street, on the Hill, and in the White House. These people, in turn will then selflessly and benevolently use these resources in a way that they think best.

In my opinion, there are probably many Democrats who really believe that the more wealth and power they gather to the government, the more genuinely good things they can do with it. I actually think most of them believe that – and in this sense I bet most of them even think that THEY are the ones sticking up for the little guy (since the way to help the little guy is to give them more money and power so they can do more good things). Nevertheless, the corruption and abuse that this kind of philosophy creates is very sad.

So when I say that I feel the Republican party is supposed to be the one that sticks up for the average person – this is what I mean. I mean that, regardless of how good some of their intentions may be, the Democrats seem to me to be a party reliant on the idea that a small group of people (who went to the right schools, and have the right connections) should control the work, wealth, and decisions of the rest of the population.

I do understand that there are many people who are Republicans for other reasons. And, as I mentioned in my post above, I think that the Republican party is doing a pretty poor job in recent years when it comes to fighting for the rights of the little guy vs. the elites. But it still seems a little better in this regard, to me, than the alternative. shug

As I said – big topic. I’m not sure I articulated my thoughts very well, but maybe that gives you an idea of what I was talking about.

Hobbes, I thank you, sir. :bow:

[quote=“Hobbes”]In my opinion, a central theme of the Democratic party is the idea that the nation is full of uneducated peasant who don’t know what’s good for them, and that the solution to this is to gather up a large portion of these people’s resources in the form of taxes, and give these resources to a small elite group…[/quote]Fair enough. Although not usually a political thinker, C.S. Lewis had an interesting short essay on this very point. His take was basically: “The average person doesn’t deserve a say in the government of the country because they’re ignorant of the necessary facts and procedures… heck, I don’t deserve a say in the government of a henhouse for the same reason. But because nobody deserves to be a master, democracy is the least-worst system.”

[quote=“Hobbes”][T]here are probably many Democrats who really believe that the more wealth and power they gather to the government, the more genuinely good things they can do with it.[/quote]Agreed. Actually, I think that this is a good thing except that your phrase “the more wealth and power they gather” is open-ended. I’d like limits, thank you very much! I think that good government overcomes the costs and failures of trying to coordinate complex activities between too many diverse actors. And when done right, with the proper input from everywhere and every level, the collective is smarter than the individual.

[quote=“Hobbes”]So when I say that I feel the Republican party is supposed to be the one that sticks up for the average person – this is what I mean. I mean that, regardless of how good some of their intentions may be, the Democrats seem to me to be a party reliant on the idea that a small group of people (who went to the right schools, and have the right connections) should control the work, wealth, and decisions of the rest of the population.[/quote]I see what you mean. But republicanism, from the classical period right through to modern America–and there’s an argument to be made for Hong Kong’s goofy local government–is government by “those who own the country.” It’s the government of household heads, which might mean Ward Cleaver in his four-person house, or it could mean the heads of Microsoft, Walmart, GM, dePont, ect. It very easily, and quickly, becomes just a slightly different kind of oligarchy than the Democratic one you cite; one I trust less. But I could hardly get too excited about working for either one. As you said, “the corruption and abuse that this kind of philosophy creates is very sad.”

Nice thread, Hondu Grease. Maybe I’m not all that turned off by American politics after all.

I agree with this completely. This is why I don’t get invited to many libertarian dinner parties – I just don’t buy the notion that no government (or even “bare bones”, police, natl. defense and nothing else) government is a system which would yield good results. So we’re left with something of a continuum, on which maybe you would favor a little more government and me maybe a little less – but we both agree that there is some breaking point where the costs/advantages tip.

I also agree with your point about not trusting the other types of elites, the type that tend to rise to the top in environments with less regulation and less governmental power. I have no desire to see Bernie Ebbers style corruption any more than I want to see pork barrel big government corruption. When asking which is worse, I suppose it depends on the case. One thing that makes me a little less scared of the corporate type corruption, however, is that people like Bernie Ebbers and Scott Sullivan and Michael Milken and so on often do end up in jail. Even mighty corporations like Enron, with political connections that would make your head spin, wind up going bankrupt when they fail to produce the goods over time.

I suppose you could say the same thing about voters who can kick out the corrupt politicians. But honestly, how often does that actually happen? What’s the reelection rate for incumbant House and Senate members, 95%? Furthermore, the corrupt folks in the government are the same ones who are hooked into the legal apparatus that is supposed to keep them in check. You go after a corrupt Senator without an ironclad treasure-trove of evidence and your career is finished. On the other hand, if you’re Elliot Spitzer, say, and you go after the corporate big dogs, your career looks very bright. At the end of the day I just think that the private sector elites are far more fragile: fortunes are made and lost every day, and yesterday’s bigshot is tomorrows prison inmate. I just don’t think government is as likely to get caught – and that’s why I tend to think it is the scarier of the two.

Cheers,
H

lets not forget the remarkable discipline the Clinton administration showed regarding the budget…

he had the budget balanced by his 3rd year in office.

the economy during the Clinton years was arguably the best its been in 50 years.

i am not the biggest fan of Clinton (i still haven’t forgotten how he dropped the ball big time in Rwanda). but i do think the country, as a whole, was much healthier during his tenure.