Quote:
Originally Posted by spence
There's so much wrong with this post. Clinton didn't gut military spending, he held it steady after a decline by Reagan and Bush 41.
http://www.heritage.org/research/rep...tary-readiness
The Bush tax cuts mostly just increased the deficit
Bush's average deficit as percentage of GDP compares favorably to Presidents since Reagan. Only Clinton had a lower ratio of deficit to GDP. And Bush's average ratio was significantly raised by TARP. Clinton's was so low because of spending cuts (including military) and the false picture created by the dot.com bubble which burst just before he left office which left Bush with a rapidly rising deficit. Bush's tax cuts, it is argued, helped to stimulate economic growth which had fallen to 1% in 2001 to above 4% in 2003 after which it slowly dropped until 2006 and spiked up again to 3% in 2007. Then the Bank failure contributed to the so-called great recession. And the mortgage bubble had begun well before Bush. In essence, he "inherited" (I know you like the notion of Presidents, at least Obama, inheriting stuff) the collapse of the dot.com bubble and the rise of the mortgage bubble. He contributed to that with the Iraq War, but still managed to grow the economy in the interim until the poop hit the fan--which he warned Congress several times that the crisis was looming but which the likes of Barney Frank dismissed, so nothing was done to correct the problem.
Also, average unemployment rate under Bush was 5.31% which was slightly higher than Clinton's average of 5.17%
while economic growth was driven by a real estate bubble.
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The real estate bubble was a part of growth, as was the tech bubble for Clinton. So if you want to take away Bush's bubble, you'd have to take away Clinton's. And, besides, the mortgage bubble started well before Bush and passed through Clinton who also would have advantaged because of it.
But thanks, as you usually do, for slanting away from my response to RIROCKHOUND which was simply a cite to the last time a President lowered taxes and raised military spending. You may want to argue about whose theories on effects are right or wrong, but the simple fact is that economies have survived and even grown when taxes were lowered and military spending rose. Parse it all you want, but it did happen.