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When you get that BS RW mantra shoved your way then go ahead and forward this:
United States National Debt
(1938 to Present)
An Analysis of the Presidents Who Are Responsible for the Borrowing
By Steve McGourty
Update History
6 May 2007, Third Revision
June 2006, Second Revision
April 2005, First Revision
July 2003, Original~SNIP~
Summary and ConclusionsThis missive is clearly biased against deficit spending. Getting past the hysteria, bias and rhetoric, certain facts about the United States national debt stand out:
1. Since the Neo-Conservative movement has become the dominant force in the Republican Party the national debt has grown and continues to grow at an unsustainable rate, by any measure you care to use.
2. Experience has shown that “trickle down tax cuts” only work to concentrate the nation’s wealth into fewer hands and never help to rebound the economy.
3. Mr. Bush has no viable plan to deal with the debt he has already created, and we cannot count on him to contain government spending in the future. (Perhaps the new Congress will help him here.)
4. The only time we have seen national debt reduction in the past 60 years was when Democrats were totally in charge of our government or when one party was in the White House and another ran Congress.
5. In the past 60 years when Republicans were in control of the presidency and both Houses of Congress, government spending was never reduced. The last time a Republican Congress reduced the national debt was in 1947, under Truman’s leadership.
6. The last time the debt was reduced was in 1961 during President Kennedy’s first year in office. It has been almost a half century, 46 years, since this nation has paid down any of its exponentially increasing debt. (Had President Bill Clinton been in office one more year we would probably have seen a debt decrease in 2001.)
Relatively recent history tells us that there is a simple solution to the growing debt problem: Congress must adhere to a ‘pay as you go’ rule regardless of the party in control. Unfortunately it requires a President like Bill Clinton, who was truly committed to balancing the budget, to lead the Congress, regardless of the party in charge, to do the right thing for the future of the nation.
Fortunately our nation is fundamentally strong and it has always had the strength to overcome bad presidents and their failed economic and foreign policies. Our economy can and will endure the downward vortex of this misguided Neo-Conservative trend as well. However, for the sake of our nation, our jobs, ours and our children’s future let us all hope that we see an end to the dominance of the short sighted, Middle Class-killing, Neo-Conservative economic polices soon.
http://www.cedarcomm.com/~stevelm1/usdebt.htm---