Capitol Hill Blue Forums Hot Topics & Breaking News News US budget deficit hits $984 billion, highest in 7 years

Here is list of economic downturns in American history. History of Recessions
Here is a list of which party controlled Congress from 1855-2017 Party control of Congress from 1855-2017
In the last 120 years there have been 13 recessions. During that time the Democrats have had control of the House of Representative 10 times and the Senate 8 times with control of both houses 8 times. That means that the majority of times there has been an recession it was on the the Democrats, not the Republicans, watch. So, no it is not the case that Democrats are always cleaning up a Republican mess. Not when a majority of the recessions happened when the Democrats controlled Congress.

Not the concept Republicans and Mr Trump promoted. They maintained that by cutting taxes there would be an increase in revenue which would thereby pay for the increase in spending. I whole idea of trickle down is there will be increased economic growth which will offset momentary shortfalls in revenue. No where in the current administration is anyone talking about cutting the budget. What they want to do is cut some programs and transfer the monies to programs they where they want to spend money.


I hope you didn't buy into this nonsense .... o sorry too late ... I see the hook caught in your lip

Sure, the House has to originate all spending bills, the Senate has to sign, and then the President has to agree. or else Congress has to overcome a veto. But the President sets the broad agenda, and presents that to the public.

Or at least that's the way it's supposed to work. The Supreme Court just backed the President's right to take money Congress allocated for one thing and do something else with it. So all bets are off. If you strip the House Power of the Purse, then all they can do about the President diverting money is to impeach him.

Senator ... your comment is ludicrous.

No one really knows why economies expand or contract. If they did I would be making millions off that knowledge. To say any particular party in majority directs the economy to expand or contract is nonsensical. If they had such magical powers they would always expand the economy. I mean really ... this is commonsense.

The previous comments were about Republican tax abuses while in power, which has only minor impact on GDP. This is the scenario ... Republicans pass a tax cut ... revenues fall ... budget deficits result .... Democrats have to raise taxes to pay for budget. Now that you know what the context really is, do some research report back with the results. I seem to recollect in the minor context of just budget deficits, it is about evenly distributed between Democrats and Republicans.

But hey ... if you are all about destroying America ... vote for voodoo economics

In the sentence that rporter314 quoted I made a mistake. My mistake was I didn't say that the reduction in revenue from tax cuts is temporary. History has shown that when taxes are cut in the long run they do increase our government's revenue and that there is economic growth when people get to keep more of the money they've earned. The problem is and always will be that our government spends nearly $2 for every $1 it collects in taxes, regardless of who controls Congress or who our President is.

Sorry bud, but the President signs spending bills. I get that you can't handle the truth.

The truth that you can't handle is that whoever is our President, a Democrat or a Republican, the influence they have on the budget bill that Congress writes is extremely limited. More often than not when the budget bill, if Congress does pass one, lands on our President's desk he has the choice of signing it or to veto it. If a President vetoes the budget bill then our government shuts down. Most Presidents don't want our government to shut down so whether or not they like the budget bill they sign it. To blame any President for a recesssion because he signed a budget bill is naive.

First that is not true. If that were the case we would have a $4.5T deficit this year, instead we have about $1T deficit. There is an obvious statement which I will not type.

Regardless of who controls Congress etc. How is it you can recognize that and yet want to assign blame to political parties when they occupy either the WH or Congress for the economy etc? Sounds more like some conservative talking point than it does reality.


Regarding your ideological belief in voodoo economics here is the Tax Policy Center analysis. I would have included CBO analysis but it was spread out. I could have included right wing analysis but they typically only addressed the first part of the TPC analysis by simply saying revenues increased. Of course this is only for Trump's Tax Cut and did not included long term analysis which everyone now predicts will be worse than originally predicted.

There are a lot of problems with your statements.

BTW before you go ballistic on some partisan crapola, it is true and valid tax cuts do increase some things, however it does not do what people who believe in tax cuts believe it will do. Tax cuts have historically always come in far short of predictions and never achieve the results predicted. Even Enterprise Institute is predicting loong term increases in debt and deficits while assuming 4% GDP for the long term. That does not sound good considering current predictions for for an economic contraction in the near future. Think of the deficits then. Think 2008.

Interesting............. People are always talking about how much Obama added to the debt and he added A LOT! https://www.thebalance.com/national-debt-under-obama-3306293 On the other hand we were losing jobs bigtime. In 2008 we lost 2.6 million job alone. That went on for a while. Obama had to bail out the banks as well as get the economy going again. Trump inherited a climbing economy, which had been basically climbing out of a hole for 8 years. There are some that claim that we are living off, right now, the economy that Obama started when he took office. Anyway, Trump, and the Republican party, are going to win the race to be the greatest spendthrift of all time. I am not saying that the Dems haven't also contributed.

The simple fact, however, is that we gotta get it all under control and we are certainly not even vaguely there now. If we don't we will, eventually, have a debt to large that our interest payments alone will be greater that we can possibly sustain. When that happens we will default. If we do default the American dollar will be worthless and we will be in serious trouble.

My problem is that the Dems are promising everything. Bernie, for instance, wants to spend something like 30 trillion dollars (that we do not have) and that's just for just his healthcare thing. Warren isn't too far back from Bernie. Basically, if the Dems do win, they are not going to be able to do much more than try to control the debt. It will be interesting times.

If the Republicans win I can't even imagine the mess we will be in and how bad it can get under the most spendthrift group of politicians in the history of the nation. So much for the myth of Republican fiscal conservatism, that one is just gone.

It would, in other words, be very nice if both parties stopped the baloney and started to address our financial woes. The Republicans, I suspect, don't dare. The Dems, however, can and certainly should.

Eliminate the Trump Tax Cuts and you'll go a long way towards controlling the debt.