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Republicans Confused About Government Spending - Business Insider
When I recently posted an analytical news story, The Claim that Barack Obama Is a Big Spender Is a Big Lie, numerous conservatives countered by citing commentaries from conservative News sources, such as Eric Bolling of Fox News, and an editorial in Investors Business Daily.
Those commentaries featured headlines designed to attract conservatives, such as Stop the Madness the Truth about Obama and Our National Debt, and CBO Refutes Obamas Slippery Spending Claims. All of these commentaries equated deficits with spending, implying that the two are the same.
However, deficits and spending are very different from each other, and this will be seen with particular clarity if you will click on the well-documented Wikipedia article History of the United States Public Debt, at the end of which is an informative one-page table titled Federal spending, federal debt, and GDP. This table is the clearest summary of the U.S. fiscal situation for each year from 1977 to the latest that I have seen anywhere.
If you will look there at the latest reported year, 2010, you will see that the Adjusted Federal Spending declined 2.4% in that latest year, but that the Federal Debt soared by 12.5% in that year, which rise was unprecedented except for Ronald Reagans 15% in 1983, 12.3% in 1985, and 13.9% in 1986. By contrast, for example, the Federal Debt declined in Bill Clintons last year, 2000, when federal spending actually went up by 2.5%. (The largest annual increase in spending, incidentally, was Ronald Reagans 1985 figure, 7.4%.)
Why is there this enormous discrepancy between spending and deficit, such that they can even go in opposite directions? The reason is that deficits result not just from too much money going out (big spending), but from not enough money coming in (too little in taxes). Republican propaganda-vehicles (such as Fox News and IBD) hide this reality, and pretend that deficits result directly from too much spending. They do this so as to fool conservative voters into thinking that the fiscal problem is not too little in taxes but too much in spending. This deceit of the public enables these propaganda-vehicles and their very wealthy owners (their ultimate bosses) to block Obama from getting his proposed tax-hikes on $250,000+ annual earners (the top 2%) passed in Congress. Its a self-interested deceit of the public by those owners.
All of this is acknowledged in policy-circles that are not themselves thoroughly corrupted by big money, but our craven News media have not pointed it out to their publics, because they dont want to seem partisan, even if the facts in this matter are entirely partisan. Thus, this crucial reality, of the difference between federal spending and federal deficits, remains effectively hidden from the general public. (Of course, the News media on the political right are just propagandists, and so they dont merely hide the difference; they actively pump the Republican lie on this, saying that more spending equals more deficits; theyre not passive about this lie at all.)
Read more: Republicans Confused About Government Spending - Business Insider
When I recently posted an analytical news story, The Claim that Barack Obama Is a Big Spender Is a Big Lie, numerous conservatives countered by citing commentaries from conservative News sources, such as Eric Bolling of Fox News, and an editorial in Investors Business Daily.
Those commentaries featured headlines designed to attract conservatives, such as Stop the Madness the Truth about Obama and Our National Debt, and CBO Refutes Obamas Slippery Spending Claims. All of these commentaries equated deficits with spending, implying that the two are the same.
However, deficits and spending are very different from each other, and this will be seen with particular clarity if you will click on the well-documented Wikipedia article History of the United States Public Debt, at the end of which is an informative one-page table titled Federal spending, federal debt, and GDP. This table is the clearest summary of the U.S. fiscal situation for each year from 1977 to the latest that I have seen anywhere.
If you will look there at the latest reported year, 2010, you will see that the Adjusted Federal Spending declined 2.4% in that latest year, but that the Federal Debt soared by 12.5% in that year, which rise was unprecedented except for Ronald Reagans 15% in 1983, 12.3% in 1985, and 13.9% in 1986. By contrast, for example, the Federal Debt declined in Bill Clintons last year, 2000, when federal spending actually went up by 2.5%. (The largest annual increase in spending, incidentally, was Ronald Reagans 1985 figure, 7.4%.)
Why is there this enormous discrepancy between spending and deficit, such that they can even go in opposite directions? The reason is that deficits result not just from too much money going out (big spending), but from not enough money coming in (too little in taxes). Republican propaganda-vehicles (such as Fox News and IBD) hide this reality, and pretend that deficits result directly from too much spending. They do this so as to fool conservative voters into thinking that the fiscal problem is not too little in taxes but too much in spending. This deceit of the public enables these propaganda-vehicles and their very wealthy owners (their ultimate bosses) to block Obama from getting his proposed tax-hikes on $250,000+ annual earners (the top 2%) passed in Congress. Its a self-interested deceit of the public by those owners.
All of this is acknowledged in policy-circles that are not themselves thoroughly corrupted by big money, but our craven News media have not pointed it out to their publics, because they dont want to seem partisan, even if the facts in this matter are entirely partisan. Thus, this crucial reality, of the difference between federal spending and federal deficits, remains effectively hidden from the general public. (Of course, the News media on the political right are just propagandists, and so they dont merely hide the difference; they actively pump the Republican lie on this, saying that more spending equals more deficits; theyre not passive about this lie at all.)
Read more: Republicans Confused About Government Spending - Business Insider