Wednesday, August 05, 2009
Flashback: Cheney-- "Deficits Don't Matter"...
I was just thinking about that famous line. It's hard not to double-think that line looking back.
via On The Issues
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
And yet, heading into his eighth month in Office, it is OBAMA's ECONOMY, and the ads are asking if we've "had enough of Big Government Liberal Spending, yet?"
Oi!
I remember Republicans telling me, "Bush inherited the recession, what's he supposed to do so soon? Fix it? He gave you a big Tax refund."
Yeah. With the House, Senate and SCOTUS all firmly Republican/Conservative, I sort of expected him to NOT give away the revenue as a recession was coming on.
I heard this sort of thing a lot, too: "What could he have done to protect us from 9/11 when he was only eight months into his Presidency? What did you want him to do? Take his PDBs seriously?" Which reminds me-- Happy August 6th PBD Day. 9th Annual, doncha know.
Getting back on topic, Obama has, at least, slowed the crash enough to gain some breathing and thinking room. That's better than not. I don't like his sops to the Republicans and the Corporations and Banks that got us into this mess in the first place, and are proving to be major flaws in turning the ship around at enormous waste, but all that is about to abruptly end soon enough, as we enter Act II of the Bush Depression.
The old Democratic adage proves true, still-- "The Republicans borrow and spend,and war us into horrible deficits, and then the Democrats are called in to fix it," sadly, in part, by restoring or increasing Taxes. It seems to me, that since Nixon, or so, those deficits keep getting deeper and deeper, causing any Progressive fix to be more costly to achieve Tax-wise. This time round, I think they've finally achieved their mission. It's unfixable, without drastic cuts and changes. I think that we are getting close to the Republican dream. California seems to be leading the way.
I hope their screaming, and scare tactics wear off before they get any worse. They've run out of civil ceiling space way too soon.
Well. That was pretty free-flow thought. I guess it's time to go to bed.
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Labels: Collapse, Deficits, Dick "dick" Cheney, Fiscal Irresponsibility
