Republicans bewailed the deficit & the debt all through Clinton admin, then when Bush...

[Hissyspit]

was installed for eight years, it was "deficits don't matter," "we're at war," "now is not the time."

Now that the Dems are in power again, it's back to the remonstrations and moaning and deflection about the deficit and the debt.

What utter hypocritical horseshit.

http://www.ontheissues.org/2004/Dick_Cheney_Budget_+_Economy.htm

Cheney to Treasury: "Deficits don't matter"

Former Treasury Secretary Paul O'Neill was told "deficits don't matter" when he warned of a looming fiscal crisis.

O'Neill, fired in a shakeup of Bush's economic team in December 2002, raised objections to a new round of tax cuts and said the president balked at his more aggressive plan to combat corporate crime after a string of accounting scandals because of opposition from "the corporate crowd," a key constituency.

O'Neill said he tried to warn Vice President Dick Cheney that growing budget deficits-expected to top $500 billion this fiscal year alone-posed a threat to the economy. Cheney cut him off. "You know, Paul, Reagan proved deficits don't matter," he said, according to excerpts. Cheney continued: "We won the midterms (congressional elections). This is our due." A month later, Cheney told the Treasury secretary he was fired.

The vice president's office had no immediate comment, but John Snow, who replaced O'Neill, insisted that deficits "do matter" to the administration.
Source: (X-ref O'Neill) Adam Entous, Reuters, on AOL News Jan 11, 2004

http://www.businessweek.com/magazine/content/04_52/b3914021_mz007.htm

DECEMBER 27, 2004

ECONOMIC VIEWPOINT
By Robert Kuttner

What Killed Off The GOP Deficit Hawks?

"The Republicans are now the ones making excuses for big deficits"

Last month, I posed a rhetorical question: Whatever happened to fiscally prudent Republicans? The question deserves a proper answer. In the early 1990s the bipartisan, business-led Concord Coalition made the accumulated Reagan-Bush deficits a major public issue. George H.W. Bush had to break a pledge and raise taxes because of mounting concerns in financial markets. H. Ross Perot put the deficit center stage in the 1992 election, helping to defeat Bush I and elect Bill Clinton. He made fiscal responsibility his signature issue.

Inflation-Adjusted Per Capita Debt Chart

1950 13,616
1951 12,552
1952 12,429
1953 12,456
1954 12,555
1955 12,451
1956 11,805
1957 11,248
1958 11,166
1959 11,096
1960 10,889
1961 10,717
1962 10,780
1963 10,709
1964 10,653
1965 10,527
1966 10,251
1967 10,199
1968 10,442
1969 9,660
1970 9,419
1971 9,651
1972 9,862
1973 9,611
1974 8,798
1975 9,124
1976 10,002
1977 10,423 CARTER
1978 10,400
1979 9,697
1980 9,334
1981 9,287 REAGAN
1982 10,128
1983 11,662
1984 12,686
1985 14,071
1986 16,092
1987 16,896
1988 17,778
1989 18,555 BUSH SR.
1990 19,333
1991 20,772
1992 22,153
1993 23,140 CLINTON
1994 23,760
1995 24,268
1996 24,448
1997 24,614
1998 24,428
1999 24,065
2000 23,114
2001 23,084 W. BUSH
2002 23,973
2003 25,411
2004 26,523
2005 27,299
2006 28,190

[mike_c]

1. it doesn't matter one bit....

After watching Reagan campaign on fiscal responsibility, then run up the largest national debt in history, then run on the same goddamned message and GET ELECTED AGAIN-- I have zero faith in peoples' ability to separate fact from sound-bite fiction. All a republican has to do is repeat the "tax-and-spend liberals" mantra while he raids the Treasury like a pirate and people will claim that the smoke he's blowing up their butts smells like roses, every time. It's the one and ONLY economic principle of Reagan's that ever actually worked, but it works a charm, without fail.

[mediaman007]

2. Wow, great research!

That damn Internet that Al Gore created. Look what you can find with a little digging!

Suddenly, Cheney will be irrelevant to the Republicans.

[babylonsister]

3. Rec'd! nt