Image by Preston Kemp via FlickrPresident Clinton on today's budget and why tea baggers are upset:
They [tea baggers] believe those in the Republican Party believe that they've talked a good game about balancing the budget, but the debt was quadrupled in the 12 years before I became president and then we paid down the debt for four years, paid down $600 billion on the national debt, and then my budget was abandoned and they doubled the debt again. So there's a good there. They're worried that utter--we've come out of this recovery to some extent, about 70 percent of our GDP growth has been regained from what was lost, but ordinary people aren't feeling it yet and they want to see some help for ordinary people. I get that.On the GOP agenda or lack thereof:
The Republican leaders in Washington, they've got a big agenda. They want to basically dismantle the federal authority except when it comes to defense and laying concrete, and cut taxes for the wealthiest Americans, and turn power over to the kind of folks that got us in trouble in the first place. I want to know where they stand, and we don't yet.On extending the debate and how we got the financial mess we have now:
That's why I think it's really important for the debate to go beyond where it is now. Where it is now is, the Republicans said, "We left them in a $3 trillion hole, they had 21 months to fix it, they didn't fix it, throw them out. And besides that, they're trying to have the government take over the country." Which is not so. The Democrats say, "Well, at least we stopped digging that hole and we're trying to build our way out. Give us a couple more years. If it's not better then, you can throw us out. But, after all, you left the Republicans in for a long time. At least give us four years to try to fix this mess."
*Update:
It seems Republicans (aka right wing nutjobs) are having a hissy fit over Clinton's statement that he paid down the debt. Most notably, NewsBusters and internment camp champion Michelle Malkin are ticked that Clinton can go on national television and claim he paid down the debt and not be asked to prove it. In their world, paying down the debt means you shrunk it. Cause everything to them is about shrinking stuff. Deficits, the size of government, the national debt, Ann Coulter's Adams Apple; all of it has to be shrunk or it doesn't count. That's what Republicans do. They shrink things. Everything, all things, it doesn't matter, they'll shrink it.
When you include reality then the Republican concern with debt and shrinking things gets a little murky.
Here's what
As you can clearly see from the charts the national debt increased under Clinton at its slowest rates in 50 years. So what? He never said he shrunk the debt or "declined" it. He said he paid it down, which he did. That's why it grew at very low levels because he paid on it. Most of what he paid was interest payments, again that's why it still grew but grew slowly. And the debt he had to pay was left over from the two Republican administrations who had nearly quadrupled the debt. But that's okay too cause it doesn't matter when Republicans grow debt or run up huge trillion budget deficits. What matters is how Democrats intend to fix Republican messes.Here are the facts. As you can see by the following charts taken from TreasuryDirect.gov, the gross federal debt never declined during the Clinton years:
Moreover, just because
And when we compare it to GDP, the national debt actually SHRUNK!!!!!
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| http://zfacts.com/p/318.html |
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