The GOP Budget Deal Throws Fiscal Sanity Out The Overton Window

[corbe]

The GOP Budget Deal Throws Fiscal Sanity Out The Overton Window
 
President Trump signed a deal to avert a government shutdown for another two years by basically giving the Democrats all the spending they wanted.

By Robert Tracinski   
February 9, 2018
 
They told me if I didn’t vote for Donald Trump, Washington DC would go on a massive, unsustainable, Big Government spending spree — and they were right!

Early this morning, Congress passed and President Trump signed a deal to avert a government shutdown for another two years by basically giving the Democrats all the spending they wanted and increasing discretionary spending by $150 billion a year.

There are also reports that Republicans are working on a bill to bail out Obamacare, and we haven’t even gotten to Trump’s $1 trillion infrastructure plan yet. But no big deal. Rush Limbaugh says he isn’t worrying about the debt because “all of the apocalyptic warnings I grew up hearing have yet to happen.”

Limbaugh knows full well why the budget apocalypse hasn’t happened yet. In the 1990s a Republican Congress restrained spending just enough so that a growing economy could outpace growing government. More recently, the budget showdowns of the Tea Party era led to a “sequester” that also restrained spending. In other words, we have staved off disaster by doing the exact opposite of what Republicans just did. As to why Limbaugh is fine with the new direction — well, he’s not the only public figure who has made a career as a bold, politically incorrect truth-teller while actually telling his audience whatever they want to hear at the moment. That turns out to be pretty much the same explanation for why Republicans just passed this deal.

I knew we were doomed when Republican lawmakers and a lot of my conservative friends got really excited about an idea to add a new government benefit — paid family leave — to Social Security. It was not just a reluctant acceptance of the giant middle class entitlement state. It was an attempt to embrace that system and show that they, too, could shower goodies onto the American public, just in a more fiscally responsible way.

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http://thefederalist.com/2018/02/09/the-gop-budget-deal-throws-fiscal-sanity-out-the-overton-window/

[INVAR]

Eventually this government is going to runout of other people's money, regardless of whether it is at the helm of Democrats or Republicans - which is a useless differentiation since both parties are actually part and parcel of the same giant Statist Big Government behemoths that both of them grow, simply at different rates of tyrannical increase.

[DB]

It worked Venezuela for awhile until it didn't. And when it didn't there was no way of avoiding the extreme consequences to follow. People think they can print their way to prosperity and it never works... The bigger they are the harder they fall...

Voters vote for the people who offer the most free stuff and then blame the politicians when it all eventually goes to hell taking everyone with them...

[INVAR]

It worked Venezuela for awhile until it didn't. And when it didn't there was no way of avoiding the extreme consequences to follow. People think they can print their way to prosperity and it never works... The bigger they are the harder they fall...

Voters vote for the people who offer the most free stuff and then blame the politicians when it all eventually goes to hell taking everyone with them...

Venezuela is a great and very recent and ongoing example to look upon for what portents are coming as a result of our own brand of big government statism.   It always reaches that stage of critical mass where the laws of economics and the laws of morality having been broken and replaced by counterfeits - reassert themselves and exert a cost far greater than anyone is capable of preparing for, both in terms of an economy and in terms of blood.

[LMAO]

Comparing us to Venezuela or Greece is not entirely accurate. We still have enough free market capitalism, we haven’t nationalized our industries or economy, we can print money plus we are  the dominant world economy, and our dollar is world’s reserve currency

 But I do agree with this article.

[Concerned]

Comparing us to Venezuela or Greece is not entirely accurate. We still have enough free market capitalism, we haven’t nationalized our industries or economy, we can print money plus we are  the dominant world economy, and our dollar is world’s reserve currency

 But I do agree with this article.

Just wait until our country takes (an inevitable IMO) left turn in 2020:  we’ll then be rushing towards Venezuela and Greece.  Our debt-to-GDP ratio is currently forecast to exceed 150% in 30 years.  Sometime prior to that, our debt-to-GDP ratio will exceed that of Greece’s when they had their debt crisis.  I think it’ll be impossible to avoid our own debt crisis when we have supposedly "conservative" Administration’s borrowing $1T per year.   

[INVAR]

Comparing us to Venezuela or Greece is not entirely accurate.

In a few years, when the laws of economics comes crashing down upon our heads - you are not going to be able to notice any discernible difference - except in level of magnitude.

[EasyAce]

OK, that's unfair---to drunken sailors, that is. They only spend their own money and don't spend what they don't have.

[Concerned]

OK, that's unfair---to drunken sailors, that is. They only spend their own money and don't spend what they don't have.

Rather than drunken sailors, I'd say the Republicans are spending money like a drunken Obama, who I suspect loves this budget deal: