They "have" the house NOW genius. They voted for a balanced budget amendment and your beloved democraps voted against it. Again, that whole HERE and NOW thingy.
Okay, by your reckoning the Democrats controlled congress during the year Bush had his $1.4 trillion deficit. See how easy it is to play this game? The reality is that neither political party is the slightest bit fiscally responsible. If the Republicans really believed in balanced budgets they could have balanced it when they controlled congress. And if the Democrats believed in balanced budgets they could have balanced it in the last two years of the Bush administration, or the first two years of the Obama administration. If the Republican voters really believed in cutting federal spending 90% of them would be voting for Ron Paul. Of course that's not happening either. In the unlikely event that a balanced budget amendment to the Constitution was passed there would be an immediate bipartisan effort to put most of federal spending off budget so as to "balance the budget" while continuing to borrow $1 trillion a year.
No.A big part of Bushs deficit is from his unfunded wars,his tax cuts and his unfunded medicare that were passed while republicans had The White House,The House and Senate but democrats had to continue to pay for after republicans lost congress.Tax revenues dropped due to the economy making the bush taxes hit the deficit even harder,we had the surge and more defense spending and more people were on medicare in Bush's final 2 years when democrats had congress but all those costs are from acts made by bush and republican congress
Carter had a nearly balanced budget and left office with less then a trillion dollar national debt Reagan had massive record breaking deficits and he and bush 1 tripled the national debt Clinton fixed the mess that Reagan and bush left and left office with a budget surplus Bush took a budget surplus and turned it into a 1.4 trillion dollar deficit Obama took a 1.4 trillion dollar deficit and lowered it 2 out of his 3 years in office and his current deficit is 500 billion less the Republican bushs last deficit of 1.4 trillion
Only problem is I think this obstetrician would throw out the baby with the bathwater. Using another medical metaphor, since he wants to cut a trillion dollars from the deficit in the first year alone, I think his version of chemotherapy would not only kill off the disease, but also the host. I think Paul has some good ideas, but they go to the extreme. As with other Republicans, but in obviously different ways, he veers to extremes rather than balance. Most workable solutions to real-world problems are somewhere in the middle ("balance"). Just my opinion.
I don't agree with Paul on everything but I would accept social spending cuts and temporary economic pain in exchange for a president who would stop The US from being the world police and drastically cutting military industrial complex spending,fighting to restore our civil liberties and ending TSA/Patriot Act etc , making changes to the drug war ,ending corporate welfare etc He wont be able to end SS and medicare so I can accept his other cuts
Democrats were just as eager as the Republicans to vote for the Medicare D prescription program, instantly creating trillions in unfunded liabilities and no new taxes to pay for it. Plenty of Democrats also voted for those wars. Yes, Carter had smaller deficits than any president since, including Bill Clinton. So what? Hoover had even smaller deficits. Does that prove anything? Only a fool thinks that he'll get fiscally responsible government if only he gets enough mainstream Democrats elected, or enough mainstream Republicans elected.
So it would kill the host to have a deficit about what it was during most of the Bush years? Who knew then that we weren't borrowing enough?
But Paul is committed to never support higher taxes, even though they are lower than they have been in decades. http://www.ronpaul2012.com/the-issues/taxes/ So the pain he prescribes will principally hurt the people who are hurting already, because his spending cuts will not be even approached, let alone met, with tax increases for those who have been enjoying a sweet ride for the last decade. That's just wrong from the get-go. I agree that military spending should be cut. But on the matter of foreign policy, I think Paul is something of a pollyanna. Responsible First World countries should act in cooperation with one another when matters of global consequence and humanitarianism are involved. However, there is no need for the US to always lead the pack and thereby incur the highest expenditures.