Iraq: WMDs, Imminent Threat, 9-11, Nukes, etc. Simply Put: We Were Lied To.

All that shilling must make a boy tired. Treeman, I don't know how much money you make, but if you're in the military, you didn't benefit too much from the last two rounds of tax cuts. Don't worry, you'll pay for it in later years in terms of interest payments on the debt and the evenutulal paying of the piper in 2025 when the government goes bankrupt. So consider it a bad loan.

Nobody argues a return to permanent surpluses. In fact, even if we had maintained the "surplus", we would still be in a deficit currently. So I don't know why you're arguing about it. Long term deficits, especialy the size the ones that the admin is planning on, are catastrophic; they crowd out private investment (because the government can borrow at better rates), among other things, and are going to eventually provoke massive tax increases or severe spending cuts that will return us to the pre-depression era. Why we should return to that era has not been justified, either by you or any number of ideologues.

If you have a choice, do you carry a balance on your credit card or pay it off every month? I do the latter, as I prefer not to piss my money away.

Let's go to your example though. Let's say your wealthy man is running 250 billion over budget before he decides to take a pay cut. Of course, he also decides to take some pay cuts in future years as well. After the first pay cut, he is now 450 billion over budget for the year, and will be over it for quite some time unless some of his investments turn around dramatically. . Then he decides to buy the Iraqi sports car, before he buys though, he doesn't tell his wife how much it will cost, but tells her that it will probably pay for itself.

Then he buys it and it ends up costing 87 billion this year, and untold billions in future years. Now he is roughly 532 billion in the hole for this year. BUt yet, he plans on taking pay cuts in the future. After all, he can borrow money from Japanese and Chinese bankers at interest rates higher than normal borrowers can pay.

Yes, this is a very very sound example. I am glad you thought of it treeman. You're right, I am a robin hood socialist and so is Robert Rubin and Paul Krugman and Alan Greenspan and Paul Samuelson and Klein and Kenneth Arrow and Joseph Stiglitz and George Akerlof. Socialists all of them.


Stick to speculatiing about intelligence.

EDIT: Treeman, of more immediate import to your wallet, you can thank the Bush Admin for siding with the Pentagon in their attempt to cut Combat Pay recently. Thankfully the senate defeated this plan.

 

Well, this isn't all bad (Reuters news wire)
---------------------------------
U.S. to Offer 'Political Horizon' for Iraq
Mon September 29, 2003 02:45 PM ET
By Jonathan Wright
WASHINGTON (Reuters) - The United States, in a new draft U.N. resolution on Iraq, will lay out steps to put Iraqis back in control of the country and give a bigger political role to the United Nations, a U.S. official said on Monday.

The resolution, which Secretary of State Colin Powell predicted will be ready within the next few days, answers European complaints that a previous U.S. draft was too vague about how Iraqis could replace U.S. occupation authorities.

The United States wants the U.N. Security Council to pass the resolution in time for a conference of donors of aid to Iraq, scheduled to open in Madrid on Oct. 23, State Department spokesman Richard Boucher said.

"Certainly having it before Madrid would make Madrid work a lot easier and a lot better," he told a daily briefing.

The current draft, circulated earlier this month, invites the Iraqi Governing Council to offer a timetable for drafting a new constitution and holding democratic elections.

But the United States did not call for a vote on it in the Security Council because France, Russia and Germany did not think it ceded enough power to Iraqis and the United Nations.

Boucher said: "The goal is to respond in some ways to the desire of other governments to have a sense ... of movement and momentum toward that political horizon, so we will be making appropriate modifications."

SHARE THE BURDEN

Another U.S. official, who asked not to be named, said: "We're trying to craft language that doesn't get too specific but could probably mention the constitution and elections and specifying how the United Nations would be involved. It's a response to the comments that the French have made."

The aim of the resolution from Washington's point of view is to persuade other governments to share the burden of running and rebuilding Iraq until Iraqis take over.

The United States wants foreign troops and pledges of money for reconstruction but so far offers have been meager.

The United States and Britain are providing about 140,000 of the 150,000 foreign troops in Iraq. While the Bush administration has asked Congress for some $20 billion for reconstruction, others have offered about $500 million.

Boucher said: "I don't think whatever has been committed so far ... we would want to take as the final answer. We'll always be looking for more substantial commitments."

On Sunday Powell told ABC's This Week program: "I think within the next few days we will come up with a second version of the resolution, based on the consultations we had last week." Powell and President Bush were in New York for the annual session of the U.N. General Assembly.

But Boucher said: "I can't give you a specific timetable, whether it's this week or next week, but we are looking to do that (circulate a draft) in the next few days."

 

Oh God. I ask what the Democrats would do differently in Iraq, and Sam Fisher wants to go into a lecture on economics.

Dude, would you quit trying to change the subject? What is your problem with going off on tangents? Are you incapable of staying on topic?

OK, tax cuts. Let me ask you this: if we can't afford it, then why would Congress OK it? (assuming that they will - and they will, I assure you) We can afford it, you don't need to raise our friggen taxes to do it.

Also, let me ask you this: instead of eliminitang the tax cuts and raising our taxes so pay for something we can already afford, why not eliminate useless government programs such as the National Endowment for the Arts to reduce fiscally irresponsible government spending? Why automatically go after tax cuts?

Out of curiosity, do Democrats just hate wealthy people? I am serious about this - do they? The tax cuts don't really benefit me too much, but does that mean that I should not want them to help anyone else? My father paid about $50,000 in taxes last year, and the tax cut sure would help him. Are you saying that his taxes are not high enough, Sammy boy?

Do you know what he would like to do with that money? Invest it. Put it back into the economy, instead of forever taking it out and putting it into a crackhead's hands, never to see a return. You guys want to help the economy by increasing taxes and increasing government spending, but you don't think for a minute that private citizens and companies could invest that stolen money with far more wisdom than a government bean-counter ever could.

Agh, whatever. I'm not going to sit here and argue economics with you. The issue is what would Dems do differently in Iraq, and all you can come up with is an unrelated domestic spending issue - one that was in the Democratic agenda before Iraq even became an issue. You've still got no ideas on Iraq, and you will not be able to hide that fact forever. Ducking the question and misdirecting the answer will only work for so long.

 

Oh, this is going to be fun; Look, I'm no economist but I am out of your league here.

Hilarious, all you can do is parrot "we can afford it" because "Congress OK[ed] it." Yeah, sure Tree, if congress ok'd it, it must be ok. Naivete.

FYI, here's a link to the CBO's website. Do some reading and then tell me that we can afford it:

www.cbo.gov

Have fun.

Ahh, the cumulative effects of republican propaganda.

Uh, because discretionary social spending is the smallest portion of the budget, and are a drop in the bucket next to tax cuts. Treeman, 200 BILLION dollars worth (from the first tax cuts) of the deficit is directly attributable to tax cuts. You want to know the yearly budget for the NEA? 117 million out of a 2 trillion dollar budget. http://www.acenet.edu/hena/issues/2002/02-11-02/budget.cfm.

We could eliminate the whole NEA 200 times over and not make a half a dent in the budget.

Or let's look at the prescription drug plan. Hatch's drug plan is project to cost just over 1 billion for TEN YEARS. so, if you repealed the tax cut, we could get, oh, say 2,000 years of prescription drug coverage. Not too shabby.

So why go after it? Because that's the cause of the problems. Simple, huh?

Wow, your fathers a hero. Guess what, I have no dependents, work on wall street, and rent an apartment in Manhattan. I know what it's like to pay a whole bunch of taxes. And I don't b****, as I realize that I am still paying the lowest taxes since the postwar period and lower than anybody else in the Western world. All I ask is that you guys do the same and don't b****, as I enjoy having roads, schools, courts, police, and all that other "big government" crap that taxes buy me.

Yeah, the government gives money to crackheads, uh huh. What does your father think about paying off interest on the budget deficit with his money?

Increasing Spending? what a joke. Again, go to the CBO, you'll find that government spending as a % of GDP declined throughout the 90's, and was at a postwar low until George started ramping it up again.

I deal in facts, you deal in propaganda and platitudes.

Good, because you weren't, really.

I thought the issue was that we were lied to, no?

But anyway, let's concede your point that President Clark would rebuild Iraq in the exact same way, so the issue is a washout.

Well, I guess we'll have to turn back to domestic politics then to come up with a difference between democrats and bush. Let's start with tax cuts and deficits.....

 

Dude, I just said I am not going to get into an argument on economics with you, at least not here - that is not the topic at hand. You are a Democrat who wants higher taxes, I'm an independent who wants lower taxes. We are obviously not going to see eye to eye on that, and I am not going to help you derail the conversation.

You are arguing here not because of any interest in Iraq policy, but because of interest in getting tax cuts nixed. That is fine, you are perfectly welcome to your opinions on that, but this is a discussion of Iraq policy. I suspect that you would drag up the tax cuts over any discussion of any issue that had a government spending component, though. Well, sorry, I want this discussion to stay on topic. For once. We can argue tax cuts in another thread, although I must warn you that I don't care all that much about the issue... Because we can afford it.

I see that you concede that nothing different will be done in Iraq. And that you have no friggen ideas. That is all that I wanted to show - that you have no ideas and that your Democratic contender friends are blowing smoke out of their asses. Thanks for the help.

Now, does anyone else want to address the main question here:

What would the Democratic contenders do differently in Iraq?

Since they are full of criticism, they must have another plan...

 

Wrong, I am a democrat who wants BALANCED BUDGETS and realizes that long term deficits ARE ECONOMICALLY DAMAGING. If taxes have to remain at the same level that they did throughout the longest postwar economic expansion in history, then so be it.

Wrong. I'm demonstrated it to you 87 different ways that we can't. THis is not some he said-she said, czech intelligence dispute, it's a fact. We don't have any money. Why? because we gave it away to the rich. 200 > 87.

You're right, I concede that Republicans are the true geniuses of nationbuilding and have great ideas.

Now what are those ideas? They sound very expensive and an awful lot like "big government" programs. Please recount them for me though as I want to hear about them.

 

Yeah, you're right. We're broke. We can't afford to pay for the war. I mean, we can afford to pay for free health care for millions of illegal immigrants, but God Forbid we pay for a friggen war...

We can afford it. We might have to run a deficit (since we won't be allowed to cut back on wasteful spending - thanks Dems!), but we can afford it. I'd rather run a defecit for something that has to be paid for than to have a surplus and lose the war.

Do you dispute that losing Iraq/ the war would have far greater long-term economic consequences than running a temporary deficit? Think hard before you answer that one.

What I want you to concede is that there is no other way to resolve the Iraq issue than the way that we are doing it now. We are committed, and the money has to be spent. The blood has to be spent. Any other way will produce failure - there are no easy answers. That is what you guys refuse to admit - that there is no easy way out of this. The contenders do their best to appear to offer a rosy alternative, but they stop short of actually saying what they would do. Those who don't advocate a pullout and defeat, that is...

And if war sounds like a big government program - well, it is. Wars tend to be huge endeavors. I'm sorry, do you have another way of doing things?

You still have nothing.

 

treeman, I deal in facts, you traffic in garbage and propaganda.

Please explain to me, via data from the CBO, CRS, OMB, GAO, hell, any disinterested party: the budgetary ramifications of illegal immigrant healthcare that you allege and its long term effect on our federal fiscal policy.

Here's a timesaving hint: there isn't any data that says this, as it has no appreciable effect (and is dwarfed by the MASSIVE efficiency gains to our economy from having a cheap labor supply.)

It's a red herring that you threw out, based again on some crap you have heard/read from right wing demagogues, that you don't really know anything about.

I never said we should pull out of Iraq. I haven't said that since day one. You break it, you buy it.

And hence I am focused on being able to pay for it. Which we currently are not.

 

Nothing, nothing, nothing. You still cannot answer the question.

I repeat, I am not going to argue economics with you here. I have neither the time nor the inclination to do so, and it would not address the question at hand. That question you cannot answer, you know the one?

 

What would the Democratic contenders do differently in Iraq?

The Foreign Policy statements of every Democrat contending for the White House

http://www.cfr.org/campaign/campaign2004.php

And here's the case for war updated with current intel.. point by point... Enjoy..

http://www.foreignpolicy.com/story/story.php?storyID=1381

 

Nor do you have the ability, expertise, or comprehension to do so, apparently. You haven't tossed out cliches about "welfare queens" yet though so I'm still waiting on that one.

I've answered your question., but I'll do it again. You break it, you buy. We bought it. Now we have to pay for it.

As for how, I'm not so sure, that's why I asked you what exactly the overall theme of the Bush administrations nationbuilding plan was.

Nothing, nothing, nothing. You stil cannot answer the question.