GOP adds $1.5 trillion to the deficit

http://abcnews.go.com/Politics/senate-republicans-pass-budget-15-trillion-deficit-step/story?id=50600109

No surprise here.

Considering that the GOP did not repeal Obamacare, it's just like having the Dims in power, only, at least they were able to pass a budget.

So where does all those trillions of dollars go? It goes to the welfare state and the military, which is sort of a welfare program for the rest of the Western nations who let the US protect them instead of protecting themselves.

Lincoln warned us against the use of unrestrained warfare via the Executive branch. The US Congress has not declared war since WW2 yet they seem to have been on undeclared war every since.

"The provision of the Constitution giving the war making power to Congress was dictated, as I understand it, by the following reasons: kings had always been involving and impoverishing their people in wars, pretending generally, if not always, that the good of the people was the object. This our convention understood to be the most oppressive of all kingly oppressions, and they resolved to so frame the Constitution that no one man should hold the power of bringing this oppression upon us."

And Madison, the author of the general welfare clause, warned us against the oppression of the nanny state by saying:

"If Congress can employ money indefinitely to the general welfare, and are the sole and supreme judges of the general welfare, they may take the care of religion into their own hands; they may appoint teachers in every state, county and parish and pay them out of their public treasury; they may take into their own hands the education of children, establishing in like manner schools throughout the Union; they may assume the provision of the poor; they may undertake the regulation of all roads other than post-roads; in short, every thing, from the highest object of state legislation down to the most minute object of police, would be thrown under the power of Congress.......Were the power of Congress to be established in the latitude contended for, it would subvert the very foundations and transmute the very nature of limited government established by the people of America"

And as we see, both military expansion and the expansion of the welfare state are said to be done for our own good. Although not a Founding Father, C. S. Lewis once warned us about what was to come by saying:

"Of all tyrannies, a tyranny sincerely exercised for the good of its victim may be the most oppressive. It would be better to live under robber barons that under omnipotent moral busybodies. The robber baron's cruelty may sometimes sleep, his cupidity may at some point be satiated; but those who torment us for our own good will torment us without end for they do so with the approval of their own conscience. They may be more likely to go to Heaven yet at the same time likelier to make hell of earth. This very kindness stings with intolerable insult. To be "cured" against one's own will and cured of states which we may not regard as disease is to be put on a level of those who have not yet reached the age of reason or those who never will; to be classed with infants, imbeciles, and domestic animals"

So at what point is there too much debt?

As Ayn Rand once said, "People are not embracing collectivism because they have accepted bad economics,. They are embracing bad economics because they have embraced collectivism."

Power corrupts.

When you control both parties you have absolute power.

What Congressman or Senator or any other high level official isn't a millionare?

Originally posted by @eladar
Power corrupts.

When you control both parties you have absolute power.

What Congressman or Senator or any other high level official isn't a millionare?

I would add that the GOP's obsession with cutting taxes (especially for the rich) is going to leave America with even fewer dollars to pay it's bills.

Originally posted by @mchill
I would add that the GOP's obsession with cutting taxes (especially for the rich) is going to leave America with even fewer dollars to pay it's bills.

Debt is a function of too little money and too much spending.

Dems and Rep own the problem.

I'm drunk. I mean, like seriously.

Originally posted by @whodey
So where does all those trillions of dollars go? It goes to the welfare state and the military, which is sort of a welfare program for the rest of the Western nations who let the US protect them instead of protecting themselves.

Lincoln warned us against the use of unrestrained warfare via the Executive branch. The US Congress has not declared war since ...[text shortened]... of reason or those who never will; to be classed with infants, imbeciles, and domestic animals"

One can only assume that founding father Lewis was a complete and utter moron.

It’s better to live under robber-barons than to live under busy bodies with an intention to help you???

No wonder you yanks all sound like zombified inbreds.
“Oh, a founding father said... blah blah blah... own guns... yadda yadda yadda (little Seinfeld reference there for the fans)... property is holy... etc etc...”

200+ bloody years ago!
Get a grip and see what they said in perpespective (breaking away from England and creating a state farmed by slaves for WASPs).

As for the debt... the money doesn’t even exist.
It’s a digitalized nightmare which makes a small group of individuals very wealthy, keeps a far larger group of people poor and the whole kabudel is kept in balance by perpetual war, fed by fear.

Just you watch out for that phantom nanny state, whilst the robber barons feed you angst, shove historic patriotism down your throats and rob you blind.

Originally posted by @mchill
I would add that the GOP's obsession with cutting taxes (especially for the rich) is going to leave America with even fewer dollars to pay it's bills.

But does it matter?

Dick Cheney famously said that Reagan proved that deficits no longer matter. Is that true? Both parties seem to think so.

Keep in mind, Obama also extended the Bush tax cuts. Why? To help stimulate the economy, something we hear from the GOP.

The bottom line is, people like "free" things, which is how they are presented to them, which is a lie. They want the dangling carrot and are told they won't have to ever pay for it., something both sides do.

I realize you are fixated on the GOP, but it takes two to tango. I also realize that the demagoguery is pretty much the main difference between the two partiers. The GOP whines about entitlements and the Dims whine about defense spending and cutting taxes. But at the end of the day, the GOP passes massive entitlements like the Drugs for Seniors Program and Dims go to war, like in Libya and continue old wars like in Afghanistan as both give us "tax cuts".

As I've said in past thread, the IRS is nothing more than a way to reward your political allies and punish your political foes. Both sides will continue to use it as such until they are disbanded.

Originally posted by @whodey

Dick Cheney famously said that Reagan proved that deficits no longer matter. Is that true? Both parties seem to think so.

When was the last election you didn't vote in favour of higher deficits?

Originally posted by @whodey
But does it matter?

Dick Cheney famously said that Reagan proved that deficits no longer matter. Is that true? Both parties seem to think so.

Keep in mind, Obama also extended the Bush tax cuts. Why? To help stimulate the economy, something we hear from the GOP.

The bottom line is, people like "free" things, which is how they are presented to ...[text shortened]... unish your political foes. Both sides will continue to use it as such until they are disbanded.

But does it matter?

Yes Whodey, it matters a lot. Regardless of what Dick Cheney says, the American taxpayer has to pay massive amounts of interest money on this debt, this is money we could have spent elsewhere.

Originally posted by @kazetnagorra
When was the last election you didn't vote in favour of higher deficits?

I once had a candidate, Ron Paul, who was dedicated to lowering the debt.

Outside of that, neither party has offered anyone, and probably won't again.

It appears to me that both parties are carbon copies of each other when it comes to the size and scope of the national debt.

Originally posted by @eladar
Debt is a function of too little money and too much spending.

Dems and Rep own the problem.

Not too little money - too little income.

If the government sacrifices its income, then it cannot expect to balance its budget.

But revenue spending is balanced by revenue income (taxes) and not by any aspect of debt except interest charges, where these are payable.

Debt is not balanced by income - it is balanced by assets.

If you are concerned about debt, then you should be concerned about the uses of debt. Military spending and warfare, for example, is not a great investment and the USA is outspending the rest of the globe on that futility. There are better ideas. Investment in health care, for example, is positively associated with economic success and the reason is obvious. In the USA, medical bills account for a huge proportion of bankruptcies for example, and that is not a factor in any other developed economy.

These are simple enough concepts to grasp if you were to think this through.

Your politicians are lying to you. Why is that not obvious? Because you fail to do the thinking.

Originally posted by @whodey
I once had a candidate, Ron Paul, who was dedicated to lowering the debt.

Outside of that, neither party has offered anyone, and probably won't again.

It appears to me that both parties are carbon copies of each other when it comes to the size and scope of the national debt.

Well, in the 2016 election there was one candidate strongly in favour of increasing the deficit, while the other candidate proposed further reducing it, and you did not vote for the latter candidate. Indeed, you said that you were pleased by the victory of the pro-deficit candidate. So either you don't think deficits are that important or you are just a little bit dim.