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Originally posted by Tyrone Slothrop
I think that's the crux of it. The discussion we were having before Spanky chimed in had to do with whether Clinton and the Democratic Congress in ''93-'94 were profligate. Slave's opinion to the contrary, they weren't. They balanced the budget by raising taxes and cutting spending. The spending here is discretionary spending.
Entitlements make up the larger portion of the federal budget, and they are structured so that they are off-budget -- Social Security payments (e.g.) continue each year with Congress taking action. Year on year, entitlements will always rise because the population is growing, whether or not they grow in relative terms (e.g., because the proportion of elderly is growing).
To the extent that Spanky is responding to what the rest of us were saying about Clinton and the Democrats by pointing to outlays, he is comparing apples and oranges, and is talking about something different.
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Just because Congress calls it discretionary and non-disrectionary does not mean Congress does not have the power to cut it. Congress could cut both discretionary and non discretionary spending any time if feels like. This is not apples and orages. It is very simple. Congress spends a certain amount of money every yeare and it HAS TOTAL CONTROL OVER WHAT THE BUDGET IS. Discretionary or not.
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Originally posted by Tyrone Slothrop Spanky appears to be fundementally confused about the relation of entitlement spending to the budget. I say this because he thinks Gingrich shut the government down in 1995 over entitlements, but the shutdown was over discretionary spending -- the failure to pass a federal budget.
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Congress passed a budget that both cut discretionary spending and reduced the increase of so called "non discretionary spending".
Quote:
Originally posted by Tyrone Slothrop
Republicans made noises in those years about cutting entitlements, but there was never any real prospect that they could do this -- it was more about making political noise than anything else.
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You can't go four words without a misstatement of fact. The Republican Congress never "made noise" about cutting entitlement spending. Clinton made noices about cuts in entitlement spending because he accused the Republicans of trying to cut entitlements, while infact they were simply trying to reduce the growth of entitlements. And Congress actually passed billls that did exactly that. Cliinton refused to sign them.
Quote:
Originally posted by Tyrone Slothrop
When they had a Republican President again, the GOP Congress increased entitlements (the drug benefit) rather than decreasing them, and when President Bush looked seriously at going after Social Security, Republicans in Congress saw political doom and ran away from him as fast as they could.
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That paragraph was actually accurate. The first accurate paragraph you have had in page six posts.
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