Reader Comments
I received some feedback to my posting from Tuesday of this week and I felt it would be valuable to share this with other readers. The reader's comments are italicized.
FCC -- As I understand, the changes also mean the same company could own the most popular TV station a handful or radio stations, and the only newspaper in a mid-size town. But still, what's the big deal? As long as everybody knows the Church [The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints in Salt Lake City, UT] owns KSL, KSL radio, and the Deseret News, they can choose where they get their news.
The reader is right. It is worth clarifying that the details of the plan include this change as well as others. It might be helpful to review the testimony of Michael Powell, Chairman of the FCC, to the Senate Commerce Committee yesterday. I happened to catch it on C-Span and amongst other things he makes it clear that owning stations in markets totaling 45% of households may still mean you only own 3% of actual stations. Like my reader, I agree that an informed citizenry can choose to look elsewhere for the news.
WMD -- I'm surprised they haven't turned up. I honestly thought they were there. I'm not quite as surprised that it took so long for us to figure out on Korea and Iran--they wouldn't be too terribly hard to hide. Makes one wonder how much we really do know. How many weapons, technology, etc. is N. Korea shipping to other countries? Russia?
Surprise is a good way to describe it. Best I can figure the WMD either never were there, have been destroyed, or are well hidden (horrible grammar, I know). As for never being there, we can easily demonstrate that the Democrats and France agreed that Iraq had WMD before the war. The debate was never about the veracity of this fact. So to say the White House was making the story up is misleading political opportunism. I don't think they were destroyed. If well hidden eventually we should find them. But how about a different angle? Is the problem that they HAD WMD or that they were doing everything they could to obtain, develop, distribute, and use WMD? Fair -- the evidence of this is also missing. But consider this, when Bush first introduced the Axis of Evil I argued that the real link between the three was an openly expressed desire to oppose, in a belligerant way, the policies of the United States of America. Why, for example, isn't Cuba or France on the list? Cuba causes all kinds of problems and sometimes makes a lot of noise, but when push comes to shove they are not willing to directly confront us in a physical way and they are not on the market to acquire the military arms to do just that. France causes us trouble all the time (if you think Iraq is the first time they were obstinate you need to read up on Cold War history) and they even have a WMD program. But they do not call us the Great Satan, try to assasinate our President, shoot at our airplanes, or cheer when we are stricken as we were on 9/11. The only fights they pick with us are over letting in agricultural exports. What Osama showed the world was that there is a way to fight the US and inflict casualties. So a fair question after 9/11 is: 'Who might get some bad ideas?' And the list easily came out as Iraq, Iran, and N Korea. The next question is: 'What are these countries most likely to try should they get some bad ideas?' The easy answer is: 'Anything they have already been trying'. And in all three cases there was a documented effort to create WMD or the tools of WMD. All three have had documented programs to create nuclear weapons and interestingly enough N Korea is well documented for trying to build missiles that it has then sold to Iran and Iraq. You can do similar analysis from different directions and you come up with a similar list. Consider it yet another way, Thomas Friedman makes some real good points about why we picked on Iraq. The bottome-line? Because we could. Of the problems out there, Iraq was the easiest way to show the world that we were serious and that we could really do some damage.
Spending -- It's out of control and Bush isn't pointing the finger at the Democrats because they're not entirely to blame.
Exactly my point. And this is why I say that this is my only criticism of Bush. Does this mean I wouldn't vote for him in 2004? No. Just look at the record and you will see that Congressional Republicans are handing out pork barrel like crazy. With a little effort on a search engine you can find all kinds of lists of this junk. And to make it worse, even Bush himself has handed out the garbage. Good politics, BAD leadership.
Tax cut -- I don't know the details of the latest bill but I'm all for simplifying things. Especially being a small business owner, let's make it simple all the way around. Lower the better too.
Amen.
Economics Lesson For the Day
Frederic Bastiat is famous for his parable of the broken window. To put it simply, he uses it to explain the concept of opportunity costs -- if the government does X, it will prevent the free market from doing Y. So, the government should stop doing X. The story is worth reading, but there are also cliff notes versions available. I recommend you check it out.
Jun 4, 2003
Misleading on Economics
Yesterday afternoon Daniel Gross criticized the Bush tax cuts in a piece on Slate. Readers of this blog (not that there are all that many), will recognize that I am not all that impressed by the Bush tax cut. I didn't give all my reasons yesterday, but Gross has given me the inspiration to go into a little detail. Gross is completely wrong on his criticism. And what is really bad is that he understands enough about economics to find some good sources, but in reality he wasn't paying attention when he was in Economics 101 in college.
First: My problem with the Bush tax-cut
It is not big enough to do enough; it is not big enough to force the government to cut spending on a few programs; and it is too complicated.
Big Enough: I could just talk about the equity issue of how much I am personally getting. A few hundred dollars is not going to change my behavior. In this sense, Gross is correct. Small tax cut changes have little effect on behavior. His mistake is that he links the wrong behavior to the wrong taxes and the wrong policy. But back to me. A cut of a few hundred dollars will only cause me to pay down a little debt and maybe buy that new DVD player I want to get. The DVD player is made in China and so the money goes right out the door. Sure, there is a cut in dividends and capital gains, but will anyone who actually realized a capital gain or owned stock in a company that had enough profit to issue a dividend please raise their hands? Don't get me wrong, in the long-run of about 5 to 10 years the capital gains and dividend tax-cut will be very good for the economy (more on that later when I take Gross to task), but in terms of immediate stimulation it does very little. And to make it worse, those clauses expire under the tax-cut law in about 3 years. Some good that does.
I have always felt that any tax cut should be measured on it's size relative to the economy. Since theoretically we are freeing up that amount of money to go towards the rest of the economy. The tax cut is a $350 billion cut over 10 years. So the real amount for this year is somewhat less than the total. The final numbers do not really matter, but let's just assume that half of the costs occur in year 1 -- $175 billion. The GDP is currently projected to be more than $10 trillion dollars for this year! The Federal budget is $2 trillion. So, even at $200 billion in tax cuts the amount of money returned to the economy or lost to the budget could be considered in percentage terms as only a 2% investment in the current economy. In reality the effect this year is more like $50 billion or half of a percent. In effect we are shifting the econoimic decision making for 0.5% of the economy away from the government and back to the people. Why not 5%? The existing tax cut is not big enough.
Spending Cuts: A tax cut with a 5% impact would force spending cuts and reduce the size of government. That would be a real change. Close down a few bureacracies and let some of those "smart" bureaucrats free to start businesses. In fact, you could give them each a very fat severance package just to soften the transition. Afterall if you didn't lay them off you would have to pay them for 20 years so why not buy off their cooperation with a severance check worth one year's salary? I bet you wouldn't find too many government workers protesting that. As I stated yesterday, government expenditures are growing at an incredible rate and it is time that we curb the appetite. A large tax cut would force some priortization on Congress.
Complicated: Because the tax cut is so small there needs to be a lot of fancy formulas in order to make it sound good. So, you need to make a certain amount of money and have a kid, or own some stock... The point is that in order to get your tax cut you will have to hire an accountant and by time you are done paying the accountant all of the tax cut will go to the accountant. Now, I personally have nothing against accountants since my wife is one and trust me we are excited about all the easy money coming our way, but why should a tax cut be so complicated? Make it larger and then you could just give everyone a big cut in rates and call it a day.
Now for Mr. Gross
The big mistake Mr Gross makes is that he confuses Supply Side economics with Keynesian economics. Let me try real hard to make this simple.
Keynes believed that in times of recession the government should run a deficit and stimulate demand. Demand is the aggregate desire of the entire economy to spend money on consumables and services. In good times consumers provide more than enough demand. But, every so often they become nervous and stop going to Wal-Mart. To be fair, and this is where people like Gross begin to get lost, Keynes did not mean that Uncle Sam should go to Wal-Mart and buy toilet paper, but he might as well have. Keynes understood that there was consumer demand and government demand that came together to create total demand -- C + G = D. If C drops then raising G can keep D high enough to stimulate the economy. In theory this is fine, but there are a few simple problems. G should drop back down as C returns to normal, but history tells us that it never happens and so we get inflation since D is now too great for the Total Supply (S). Time after time this puts in place a painful cycle of recession, growth, then inflation.
Supply Siders looked at this and asked if there was a better way to resolve the cycle (pay attention Mr Gross). Instead of going to Wal-Mart and buying the toilet paper, why not cut the cost for Wal-Mart of doing business? Or more specifically, why not cut the cost for people investing in Wal-Mart? Keeping it simple. If Sam Walton only has one store and in good times he makes a $50K profit each year after paying $25K in taxes, but in bad years he makes nothing after still paying large amounts of taxes, what is he likely to do in bad years? Close the store? Stop taking returns? And what happens to all the cheery greeters? So, the idea behind Supply Side is to cut the taxes on the returns to investment in capital such as stocks, bonds, property, buildings, and equipment. Therefore, the threshold for being a profitable business is lowered and the engine of the economy is freed up. We can debate if Supply Side works or not (and to be fair my economics professors were not all convinced), but at least we should be correct about what a Supply Side tax cut or tax increase is.
The tax cuts that Gross sites are all consumer tax relief. Marginal rates on my salary only affect how many DVD players or Big Macs I can buy in one year. But, cuts in taxes on capital gains affect how willing I am to buy stock in a new business. The funny thing is that Mr Gross uses the Bush Sr. and Clinton consumer tax increases to show that there was no negative impact on the economy from raising taxes. But, he fails to mention that in 1994 the new Republican Congress passed a cut in Capital Gains taxes. Supply Siders have a good argument for saying that the Clinton economic boom in the late 90's is thanks to that tax cut. Despite my criticisms of Bush's tax cut because of size, at least this tax cut is mostly a supply side cut with a few consumer benefits to help sell it. The last Bush tax cut was only a consumer tax cut. There is hope for the future of this economy because of the new tax cut.
Yesterday afternoon Daniel Gross criticized the Bush tax cuts in a piece on Slate. Readers of this blog (not that there are all that many), will recognize that I am not all that impressed by the Bush tax cut. I didn't give all my reasons yesterday, but Gross has given me the inspiration to go into a little detail. Gross is completely wrong on his criticism. And what is really bad is that he understands enough about economics to find some good sources, but in reality he wasn't paying attention when he was in Economics 101 in college.
First: My problem with the Bush tax-cut
It is not big enough to do enough; it is not big enough to force the government to cut spending on a few programs; and it is too complicated.
Big Enough: I could just talk about the equity issue of how much I am personally getting. A few hundred dollars is not going to change my behavior. In this sense, Gross is correct. Small tax cut changes have little effect on behavior. His mistake is that he links the wrong behavior to the wrong taxes and the wrong policy. But back to me. A cut of a few hundred dollars will only cause me to pay down a little debt and maybe buy that new DVD player I want to get. The DVD player is made in China and so the money goes right out the door. Sure, there is a cut in dividends and capital gains, but will anyone who actually realized a capital gain or owned stock in a company that had enough profit to issue a dividend please raise their hands? Don't get me wrong, in the long-run of about 5 to 10 years the capital gains and dividend tax-cut will be very good for the economy (more on that later when I take Gross to task), but in terms of immediate stimulation it does very little. And to make it worse, those clauses expire under the tax-cut law in about 3 years. Some good that does.
I have always felt that any tax cut should be measured on it's size relative to the economy. Since theoretically we are freeing up that amount of money to go towards the rest of the economy. The tax cut is a $350 billion cut over 10 years. So the real amount for this year is somewhat less than the total. The final numbers do not really matter, but let's just assume that half of the costs occur in year 1 -- $175 billion. The GDP is currently projected to be more than $10 trillion dollars for this year! The Federal budget is $2 trillion. So, even at $200 billion in tax cuts the amount of money returned to the economy or lost to the budget could be considered in percentage terms as only a 2% investment in the current economy. In reality the effect this year is more like $50 billion or half of a percent. In effect we are shifting the econoimic decision making for 0.5% of the economy away from the government and back to the people. Why not 5%? The existing tax cut is not big enough.
Spending Cuts: A tax cut with a 5% impact would force spending cuts and reduce the size of government. That would be a real change. Close down a few bureacracies and let some of those "smart" bureaucrats free to start businesses. In fact, you could give them each a very fat severance package just to soften the transition. Afterall if you didn't lay them off you would have to pay them for 20 years so why not buy off their cooperation with a severance check worth one year's salary? I bet you wouldn't find too many government workers protesting that. As I stated yesterday, government expenditures are growing at an incredible rate and it is time that we curb the appetite. A large tax cut would force some priortization on Congress.
Complicated: Because the tax cut is so small there needs to be a lot of fancy formulas in order to make it sound good. So, you need to make a certain amount of money and have a kid, or own some stock... The point is that in order to get your tax cut you will have to hire an accountant and by time you are done paying the accountant all of the tax cut will go to the accountant. Now, I personally have nothing against accountants since my wife is one and trust me we are excited about all the easy money coming our way, but why should a tax cut be so complicated? Make it larger and then you could just give everyone a big cut in rates and call it a day.
Now for Mr. Gross
The big mistake Mr Gross makes is that he confuses Supply Side economics with Keynesian economics. Let me try real hard to make this simple.
Keynes believed that in times of recession the government should run a deficit and stimulate demand. Demand is the aggregate desire of the entire economy to spend money on consumables and services. In good times consumers provide more than enough demand. But, every so often they become nervous and stop going to Wal-Mart. To be fair, and this is where people like Gross begin to get lost, Keynes did not mean that Uncle Sam should go to Wal-Mart and buy toilet paper, but he might as well have. Keynes understood that there was consumer demand and government demand that came together to create total demand -- C + G = D. If C drops then raising G can keep D high enough to stimulate the economy. In theory this is fine, but there are a few simple problems. G should drop back down as C returns to normal, but history tells us that it never happens and so we get inflation since D is now too great for the Total Supply (S). Time after time this puts in place a painful cycle of recession, growth, then inflation.
Supply Siders looked at this and asked if there was a better way to resolve the cycle (pay attention Mr Gross). Instead of going to Wal-Mart and buying the toilet paper, why not cut the cost for Wal-Mart of doing business? Or more specifically, why not cut the cost for people investing in Wal-Mart? Keeping it simple. If Sam Walton only has one store and in good times he makes a $50K profit each year after paying $25K in taxes, but in bad years he makes nothing after still paying large amounts of taxes, what is he likely to do in bad years? Close the store? Stop taking returns? And what happens to all the cheery greeters? So, the idea behind Supply Side is to cut the taxes on the returns to investment in capital such as stocks, bonds, property, buildings, and equipment. Therefore, the threshold for being a profitable business is lowered and the engine of the economy is freed up. We can debate if Supply Side works or not (and to be fair my economics professors were not all convinced), but at least we should be correct about what a Supply Side tax cut or tax increase is.
The tax cuts that Gross sites are all consumer tax relief. Marginal rates on my salary only affect how many DVD players or Big Macs I can buy in one year. But, cuts in taxes on capital gains affect how willing I am to buy stock in a new business. The funny thing is that Mr Gross uses the Bush Sr. and Clinton consumer tax increases to show that there was no negative impact on the economy from raising taxes. But, he fails to mention that in 1994 the new Republican Congress passed a cut in Capital Gains taxes. Supply Siders have a good argument for saying that the Clinton economic boom in the late 90's is thanks to that tax cut. Despite my criticisms of Bush's tax cut because of size, at least this tax cut is mostly a supply side cut with a few consumer benefits to help sell it. The last Bush tax cut was only a consumer tax cut. There is hope for the future of this economy because of the new tax cut.
Jun 3, 2003
I AM BACK !
I have just completed a move from Texas to Utah. I apologize for being absent. I feared that during my move news would break and I would miss a chance to comment. While I have missed a few opportunities to catch Paul Krugman in an exaggeration or two, I have not missed anything that I consider to be earth shattering. To catch myself up I am going to make quick comments on various issues I have missed.
1. FCC Regulation Change
Am I the only one who noticed that the regulation change did not say "one company can own it all", but instead said instead of 35% a company can approach 45%? That hardly seems like enough of a difference to justify all the uproar amongst liberals. And what exactly does the 35% vs. 45% mean? It doesn't mean I can own 45% of TV stations in New York. Instead it means that I can own TV stations whose total potential viewers equal no more than 45% of the national population. It does not give ABC, for example, exclusive rights to 45% of the market, but the right to compete with others in 45% of the market. Don't confuse ownership with affiliates. Most ABC stations are affiliates who are owned by a third party and don't count in the 45%. Finally, why is the government regulating this anyway? Would it make sense to say to McDonald's that they can only build restaurants in 45% of the country? How about Wal-Mart? Since I recently moved how about this one: U-Haul can only serve moves from point to point in 45% of the market? Plain and simple it is ludicrous!
2. Tax Cut
This would have been big news if it were a bigger cut that really simplified the tax code. Yes, I know that if the sunset clauses are ignored that this tax cut will be really big, and that it cuts supply-side favorites, and that it gets money into people's pockets. But, at the end of the day it is actually small. And it makes the tax code more complicated. And finally where was the courage to offset the tax cut with some spending CUTS? This tax cut is better than nothing, but next time can we really cut and simplify?
3. Bush's WMD Problem
I think that William F. Buckley has something good to say about this. I was a big supporter of the war and I have no reason to doubt that we did the right thing. But, the image looks bad for Bush on this. The irony is that his Democratic attackers accuse Bush of over-selling the WMD issue and say he is the best marketer in politics. If that is the case, then why hasn't his marketing department figured out a better way to answer the accusations? I think the reason is that he really is not all that great at marketing and he got blind-sided. Buckley has it about right. Somewhere along the line the intelligence failed. And we need to figure out how to prevent that in the future because it raises all those questions about Iran and N Korea's nuclear programs and how good our intelligence really is on that.
4. My only criticism of Bush
Every so often I ask myself how happy I am with this elected official or another. I try to be fair since as a matter of personal philosophy I feel all politicians, regardless of party, suffer from a sickness of overestimating the ability of government power to do good. Consequently they often view the government as the way to solve problems. In a few cases they are right. But, often they are wrong and simply end up trying to impress voters. A detailed discussion of my views should appropriately be tabled for a future and lengthier column. My point in mentioning this, however, is to stipulate the observation that this is the greatest cause of the march from little government to more government. It is one of the greatest reasons that the Internal Revenue Code gets longer and never shorter. It is the reason that even in a Republican administration government can grow. So, the least I search for is an effort to lessen this seemingly inevitable growth of government. All of that being said, my real point is that we have a problem. Government is growing like crazy. There was a time when Conservatives lamented that Bush had never used the veto in his battles with Senate Democrats. Now that Republicans control both houses of Congress it would seem politically odd for the President to veto something from Congress. But spending is out of control. And NOT because of tax and spend Democrats. Bush needs to get nasty with some of the pork barrel. Bush needs to get nasty with a few unneeded government programs. Bush needs to veto on the principle of fiscal responsibility.
To make my point take a look at the Office of Management and Budget's website. Granted the wastebasket and other efforts featured on this site are positive steps in the right direction. However, if you look at these charts you can see the incredible growth of spending since Bush took office. In fact, in an attempt to deflect Democratic criticism that tax cuts are causing deficits to return, Bush's OMB makes the case for me. Sure, they point out that this trend began in 1998, but Bush hasn't stopped. In fact, it appears to have accelerated. I think Conservatives should be concerned. Using data from this document let me put it into a simple perspective. In 1988, towards the end of Ronald Reagan's presidency the total budget was just over $1 trillion in today's dollars (meaning that it was not literally that amount, but when comparing the value of today's dollar with the value of 1988's dollar it would be this amount). In 1998 (the starting year for the OMB's fancy graphs mentioned earlier) the total budget was $1.6 trillion. Today it is over $2 trillion. On the one hand one might defend Bush 2 by saying that from Reagan to Bush 2 the budget doubled so shame on Clinton. But, to be fair, Bush Sr.'s last budget (1992) comes in at $1.38 trillion, and Bush Jr. takes over with his first budget in 2001 at $1.86 trillion. And now it is projected for 2003 to be $2.14 trillion. To be fair, the last year and first year of a President's budget deserve to be fairly credited for overlap, but my point is not to do anything other than point out that the rate of spending has increased far too fast under Bush 2.
Bush is so concerned about avoiding confrontation that he has handed everyone a blank check. The Democrats are wrong, deficits are not here because of the Bush tax cuts, but Bush is wrong as well, the deficits are not solely because of the economy either. The return to deficits is because Bush and Congressional Republicans have abandoned the Conservative commitment to make government smaller and spend less taxpayer money. Shame on the Republicans. Shame on George W Bush.
5. Socialism Fails Again
Here is one more example of why socialism fails.
Finally
I want to make some observations about my drive across part of the country. In Texas the State flag of Texas is prominently displayed everywhere. I wonder if the Liberal's will ever pick on this symbol of independence. In no other state that I passed through (or for that matter that I have ever been in), did I see such a symbol of state heritage. I will miss this about Texas -- it is no wonder to me why the Bush clan made Texas their adopted home.
I also noticed that there is a lot of open country. In fact, there is a section starting in Kansas and heading into Colorado where I am sure that there is no more than one radio station. Yes, this is Bob Dole country. Just farm land as far as the eye can see.
Wyoming has nice roads. I know that seems a silly thing to say about a state, but made driving an easy thing and I appreciated it.
There is a lot of open space and a lot of beauty to behold in this country. Not that similar things do not exist in other countries, but I don't think recognizing that means I can't love this country and enjoy the beauty that I see. God bless the USA.
I have just completed a move from Texas to Utah. I apologize for being absent. I feared that during my move news would break and I would miss a chance to comment. While I have missed a few opportunities to catch Paul Krugman in an exaggeration or two, I have not missed anything that I consider to be earth shattering. To catch myself up I am going to make quick comments on various issues I have missed.
1. FCC Regulation Change
Am I the only one who noticed that the regulation change did not say "one company can own it all", but instead said instead of 35% a company can approach 45%? That hardly seems like enough of a difference to justify all the uproar amongst liberals. And what exactly does the 35% vs. 45% mean? It doesn't mean I can own 45% of TV stations in New York. Instead it means that I can own TV stations whose total potential viewers equal no more than 45% of the national population. It does not give ABC, for example, exclusive rights to 45% of the market, but the right to compete with others in 45% of the market. Don't confuse ownership with affiliates. Most ABC stations are affiliates who are owned by a third party and don't count in the 45%. Finally, why is the government regulating this anyway? Would it make sense to say to McDonald's that they can only build restaurants in 45% of the country? How about Wal-Mart? Since I recently moved how about this one: U-Haul can only serve moves from point to point in 45% of the market? Plain and simple it is ludicrous!
2. Tax Cut
This would have been big news if it were a bigger cut that really simplified the tax code. Yes, I know that if the sunset clauses are ignored that this tax cut will be really big, and that it cuts supply-side favorites, and that it gets money into people's pockets. But, at the end of the day it is actually small. And it makes the tax code more complicated. And finally where was the courage to offset the tax cut with some spending CUTS? This tax cut is better than nothing, but next time can we really cut and simplify?
3. Bush's WMD Problem
I think that William F. Buckley has something good to say about this. I was a big supporter of the war and I have no reason to doubt that we did the right thing. But, the image looks bad for Bush on this. The irony is that his Democratic attackers accuse Bush of over-selling the WMD issue and say he is the best marketer in politics. If that is the case, then why hasn't his marketing department figured out a better way to answer the accusations? I think the reason is that he really is not all that great at marketing and he got blind-sided. Buckley has it about right. Somewhere along the line the intelligence failed. And we need to figure out how to prevent that in the future because it raises all those questions about Iran and N Korea's nuclear programs and how good our intelligence really is on that.
4. My only criticism of Bush
Every so often I ask myself how happy I am with this elected official or another. I try to be fair since as a matter of personal philosophy I feel all politicians, regardless of party, suffer from a sickness of overestimating the ability of government power to do good. Consequently they often view the government as the way to solve problems. In a few cases they are right. But, often they are wrong and simply end up trying to impress voters. A detailed discussion of my views should appropriately be tabled for a future and lengthier column. My point in mentioning this, however, is to stipulate the observation that this is the greatest cause of the march from little government to more government. It is one of the greatest reasons that the Internal Revenue Code gets longer and never shorter. It is the reason that even in a Republican administration government can grow. So, the least I search for is an effort to lessen this seemingly inevitable growth of government. All of that being said, my real point is that we have a problem. Government is growing like crazy. There was a time when Conservatives lamented that Bush had never used the veto in his battles with Senate Democrats. Now that Republicans control both houses of Congress it would seem politically odd for the President to veto something from Congress. But spending is out of control. And NOT because of tax and spend Democrats. Bush needs to get nasty with some of the pork barrel. Bush needs to get nasty with a few unneeded government programs. Bush needs to veto on the principle of fiscal responsibility.
To make my point take a look at the Office of Management and Budget's website. Granted the wastebasket and other efforts featured on this site are positive steps in the right direction. However, if you look at these charts you can see the incredible growth of spending since Bush took office. In fact, in an attempt to deflect Democratic criticism that tax cuts are causing deficits to return, Bush's OMB makes the case for me. Sure, they point out that this trend began in 1998, but Bush hasn't stopped. In fact, it appears to have accelerated. I think Conservatives should be concerned. Using data from this document let me put it into a simple perspective. In 1988, towards the end of Ronald Reagan's presidency the total budget was just over $1 trillion in today's dollars (meaning that it was not literally that amount, but when comparing the value of today's dollar with the value of 1988's dollar it would be this amount). In 1998 (the starting year for the OMB's fancy graphs mentioned earlier) the total budget was $1.6 trillion. Today it is over $2 trillion. On the one hand one might defend Bush 2 by saying that from Reagan to Bush 2 the budget doubled so shame on Clinton. But, to be fair, Bush Sr.'s last budget (1992) comes in at $1.38 trillion, and Bush Jr. takes over with his first budget in 2001 at $1.86 trillion. And now it is projected for 2003 to be $2.14 trillion. To be fair, the last year and first year of a President's budget deserve to be fairly credited for overlap, but my point is not to do anything other than point out that the rate of spending has increased far too fast under Bush 2.
Bush is so concerned about avoiding confrontation that he has handed everyone a blank check. The Democrats are wrong, deficits are not here because of the Bush tax cuts, but Bush is wrong as well, the deficits are not solely because of the economy either. The return to deficits is because Bush and Congressional Republicans have abandoned the Conservative commitment to make government smaller and spend less taxpayer money. Shame on the Republicans. Shame on George W Bush.
5. Socialism Fails Again
Here is one more example of why socialism fails.
Finally
I want to make some observations about my drive across part of the country. In Texas the State flag of Texas is prominently displayed everywhere. I wonder if the Liberal's will ever pick on this symbol of independence. In no other state that I passed through (or for that matter that I have ever been in), did I see such a symbol of state heritage. I will miss this about Texas -- it is no wonder to me why the Bush clan made Texas their adopted home.
I also noticed that there is a lot of open country. In fact, there is a section starting in Kansas and heading into Colorado where I am sure that there is no more than one radio station. Yes, this is Bob Dole country. Just farm land as far as the eye can see.
Wyoming has nice roads. I know that seems a silly thing to say about a state, but made driving an easy thing and I appreciated it.
There is a lot of open space and a lot of beauty to behold in this country. Not that similar things do not exist in other countries, but I don't think recognizing that means I can't love this country and enjoy the beauty that I see. God bless the USA.
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