[h8kurdt]

Originally Posted by SuchFriendsAreDangerous

Something that is really starting to piss me off. Whats up with Republicans suddenly pretending that they honestly care anything about debt? They are masquerading their bigotry and prejudice against non-white folks and poor folks under this current banner of "austerity" Who invented sky-rocketing deficit spending? Oh right, Ronald Reagan. Who balanced the books? Oh right, pimpin Bill Clinton. Who got it going in the negative again? Yes sir, Bush II. Now Barry Obama has unfortunately kept it running at essentially the same rate, though given, this is a Depression so debt is a better strategy than it was for Reagan and Bush II..

These Republican dudes keep talking about deficits and debt like (a) at any time in their history they have ever substantively done anything about it and (b) like it wasn't a total crock of shit. Debt is part of doing business, period, whatever the scale. The country has always been in debt, it always will be in debt. Now deficit spending, that is different, and that is a long-term problem if it is structural (like it was under Reagan and now clearly under Bush II/Obama) so that needs to be rightfully addressed. Come on over to California and see what two decades of deficit budget spending does to a once beautiful place.

However, when these guys say they want to cut debt, they are being manipulative. Further, there are these bullshit statements you hear from everyday folks who say, "If our household income declines, we have to tighten our belt, not get into more debt." That is simply bullshit, Americans LIVE on debt, for cars and houses and credit cards and all kinds of things. Essentially, the government and the national debt (including the concept of the ceiling) is the same thing. The government routinely borrows and repays monies to pay its bills. When revenue is strong, everything is fine, when revenue is down, then it adds to long-term debt. However, we will always be borrowing, and will always repay our current debts with priority. To say that when Americans are short of cash they don't also borrow is simply ridiculous and further is not a fair comparison to government borrowing and spending. Lying assholes

Bullshit.

You seem to think that any debt is good debt and acceptable. There is good debt but the debt most countries are in is crippling. You only have to look Spain, Greece and Portugal to see what debt is doing.

And the fact is that one of the reasons we're (Brits and Americans alike) in so much debt and the recession has hit so hard is that people were borrowing more than they could ever afford.

Whilst the republicans idea of clearing the debt is basically lower taxes and have huge swathes of cuts mostly affecting the poor and middle class is a bad idea and has been proved to not work (you only have to look at the stumbling Britain's economy is going through). You can't just spend willy nilly in the hope something will get better.