Can McCain save America ?
- Thread starter Humpy
- Start date
He has been arch enemy #1 of pork spending for years. He also just released an econ program a few days ago that cuts spending in several areas including a one year freeze on discretionary spending, and no earmarks at all.
In fact, the only reason Mac was against the Bush tax cuts in the first place was because it didn't include any cuts in spending.
Vehn, this stuff has been all over the news for quite some time.
every republican politician says he is going to cut spending. none ever do. even reagan failed to cut spending. bush increased spending when he had republicans in control of all branches.
do you realize how little discretionary spending is of the budget?
Very often you have a Democratic Congress with a Republican President. The Congress is the main culprit here: the President asks for $10B to fuel alternative energy research and Congress adds another $5B of ridiculous pork to it. What's he going to do? Stop his agenda for those idiots? He yields, most of the time.
Now, don't get me wrong: The Republicans are the same kind of pigs as the Democrats - pork is what keeps them employed, that's what their special interests (the people who fund their campaigns) demand.
All in all, imo, McCain has the best chance of really fighting to curb spending because he's a maverick by nature and because he may opt not to run again in a few years, he may go back home to play golf for the rest of his years.
Now, don't get me wrong: The Republicans are the same kind of pigs as the Democrats - pork is what keeps them employed, that's what their special interests (the people who fund their campaigns) demand.
All in all, imo, McCain has the best chance of really fighting to curb spending because he's a maverick by nature and because he may opt not to run again in a few years, he may go back home to play golf for the rest of his years.
how will mccain accomplish anything at all? he will face a democratic congress and senate and since mccain wants to continue bush policies including the war the democrats will not give him an inch of slack. result= 4 more years of what we have now.
I have to, respectfully, take issue with both of these remarks. The heavy borrowing that recent Republican administrations have engaged in has been for defense (where the word defense is used as a euphemism for either "arms industry subsidy" or "aggression".) As such this is money spent on wasting assets, not on true investments that will yield a positive return over time. It is true that Reagan spent on "defense" while the congress simultaneously spent on domestic issues so that both are jointly responsible for the heavy Reagan deficits, however the congressional spending would have better fit the description "investment" than the spending Reagan championed. The kind of supply-side, trickle-down, economics promoted by Reaganites has been thoroughly discredited.
Your second remark is technically correct but misleading when applied to the present. The fact is other economies are growing much faster than the US economy and will eventually overtake our own in both size and strength. On a per capita basis we are not doing so well. I am not the first to observe that whenever an institution begins to think of themselves as the "biggest and best," and tirelessly repeats that mantra, that that is the beginning of the end of their dominance.
I happened to watch the "debate" from Philadelphia last night. I was struck by the emphasis on questions stemming from media theatrics that have nothing to do with real issues that impact US citizens lives (the Bosnia lie, the "bitter" remark, the "elitetist" label, the "flag", can Obama Win, etc.) Thankfully there were some substantive questions too.
The U.S. has become so anti-intellectual and so dumbed down that i am wondering if they deserve anything better than Dick Cheney and George W. Bush (or Ralph Nader). Are, perhaps, Ron Paul, John McCain, Hillery Clinton, and Barrack Obama, all much better than America deserves?
1. Spending on defense (and we, Americans are the ones to decide what action is "defensive" and tops our priorities) is mandatory. The money goes mostly to salaries (would have spent that anyway) and weapons/ammunition etc from American companies which build factories and employ lots of people locally. Yes, the first expenditure is less palatable than, say, building a bridge or creating a school, but not by much. America is self sufficient, for the most part, in defense goods and services. Of course, we expend fuel and ammunition, health care, pensions for those who are hurt, etc. Don't get me wrong: war is always a tragedy, but most Americans believed at the time that this was the right thing to do, and I don't want to revisit that. I personally am against war (all wars) but I also agree with those that say that, under the circumstances, we did the best we could. Still, what Bush did was to also lower taxes and not to stop investing in other vital projects, in order to get our economy running again, which he accomplished (years 2002-2007) brilliantly and deserves a lot of credit for that. Now we have an economic cycle "hiccup - this too shall pass, as they say.
2. Some large economies are growing faster than ours (eg, Brazil, India, China) but they are at a much "younger" stage. We are growing faster than Europe and Japan, and that's what counts. Per capita numbers are misleading because they don't factor in very heavy tax systems (eg, Belgium with ~70% taxation). What matters is net per capita bottom line purchasing power, and none of those other countries (again, Japan, Europe) compares with us. The rest of that paragraph of yours is meaningless to me: sometimes being assertive is right and positive, and sometimes it is not. Imo, we deserve the "being the best" distinction, but you may disagree.
3. You miss the point entirely here: who cares about the pre-packaged, pseudo economic or pseudo-defense etc pronouncements that the candidates parrot straight out of the notes that their staff gives them... they all have them and no one should believe a word that they say because each of them will do different things when in power.
The first thing that matters is character, and we can have a glimpse of that now, especially in those "aha" moments that we occasionally catch. The Clintons have a problem telling the truth, but we already knew that. Obama sat in that church for 20 years, listening to the most vile, anti-American, racist sermons imaginable, and now we know what he's thinking about those issues too. Not to mention the terrorist connection with Bill Ayers, anti-semitic racist connection with Louis Farrakhan, the latest Pennsylvania debacle, etc. Those show his character or lack thereof.
We also want to see where they want to take this country in an economic sense, and both Democrats are big tax-and-spend types, which is the last thing, imo, this country needs. On the other hand, McCain is more centrist than GWB, actually by far the most centrist of all the candidates, and that's a welcome change, that's the real reason his Presidency will be very different than his predecessor's.
4. The last paragraph must have come out of some liberal talking points: I think GWB and Chenney are great, and their legacy will be extremely hard to beat, that's why the liberals hate them so much. McCain is fantastic too, and I hope he wins. I also like Ron Paul in a small way, because he stuck to his guns and counter-intuitive positions --- very old American frontier type. Oh well, he's gone now, he made us laugh.
