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Well, real financial conservatives don't like them, but those are now mostly in the Democratic Party, where the label "conservative" doesn't get used much. The leading example is, of course, Bill Clinton.

Reaganomics picked up on and extended a Nixonian attitude (which Nixon claimed was "Keynesian") toward deficit spending. The Reagan and two Bush administrations added about $10 trillion to the national debt. This has several attractions for them:

- When in office, they can rail against government spending while refusing to match it with government income (taxes).

- When out of office, they can scream about the debt while pretending they had nothing to do with it.

- Because every cent borrowed and spent goes into someone's pocket, while the debt can be handed on, they can transfer huge amounts of money from one social class to another. This does not count as "redistributing wealth" because they use the technique to concentrate rather than distribute it.

- If the mess is sufficiently crippling, they can count on the cleanup to occupy all the attention of any opponents who get into office, and then run against them with the argument that they've accomplished too little.

The fundamental lie behind this is that tax cuts stimulate the economy. Only tax cuts designed to stimulate the economy are effective that way, and the only clear example in U.S. history happened in the Kennedy administration. (The Obama stimulus might be a second case, but it will be hard to be sure of its effects given the train-wreck economy handed him.)

Note that Sarah Palin (pushing her book up here in my neck of the woods) yesterday promised to reduce the debt by lowering taxes: the same nonsensical rant we've heard from the others.

Why don't you ask your sadist in chief president? He has created more debt and encumberances than every single president in the history of the nation combined. The stimulus has LOST us 7 million jobs and real unemployment is now at 16%. Hows that hope and change working out for you?

Someone with a fifth grade education and two brain cells to rub together could tell you that the destruction of the economy rests squarly on obamas head and he needs to take responsibility for crushing, under the weight of government, the best damn country in the world.

The best thing he could do for this country is to leave office and go run the UN. His anti-American world view will be held in much higher regard there.

ha ha wonderful. you think conservatives are out to take away programs that help the poor. wrong. conservatives are out to take away programs that have clearly failed their goal and are now a burden on our society that will only continue to take away taxpayer dollars. and FYI, under what Obama and the Dems. have spent, the American people would have to give about 90% of their yearly income to balance the debt by the time Obama is out of office, assuming he went both terms (which he wont). people look at what conservatives are trying to cut out and say oh wow, they hate the poor and the sick. but if you were to look at the results from the programs they're cutting out you'd say oh wow, why do we still have those? Conservatives are simply cutting out what no longer makes sense. raise taxes, seriously, maybe you can afford to lose more money from your checks and good for you but there a couple hundred million Americans who cant afford to be taxed any higher or else they lose thier homes. as for cutting defense spending...does that honestly make sense or are you one of those "we can all be friends if we work at it" type of people

Unfortunately, Obama's own estimates disagree with what you are saying.

We were running deficits in the $300 Billion to $450 Billion range under Bush. Obama is running two back to back $1.2 Trillion deficits. And then for the rest of his term and beyond, he's projecting deficits usually in the $800 Billion range.

There are tens of thousands of programs to help the poor and unemployed all put in place by democrats and their evil ilk. They want to keep people enslaved to the government and continue to buy votes. One day people will stand on their own two feet but only after liberalism is destroyed and we get back to the founding principles.

They just think that if everything was done in the style of Reagan and Bush II--we'll all be singing "Kumbiya" and be ten times poorer while the rich become 100 times richer.

Oh... I get it. We have to line special interest's pockets with trillions of dollars to REDUCE deficits.

What humor... On one hand you accuse others of naivety, yet then go on to state that our current government programs go to help the poor and unemployed.

Perhaps a small drop in the bucket go to help (assuming that by "help" you mean creating dependence by providing handouts) But maybe you should take a few minutes to look at a break-down of the Federal budget.

If you believe that Obama's plans to stimulate the economy to continue economic growth, then you'll have no difficulty believing that Berine Madoff's little scheme was to make his clients rich .

Obama's plan is to spend our way into prosperity. Explain how that works. If I go out and buy 5 cars and get loans for each of them, and I can't afford them, would you expect me to emerge prosperous when I come out the other side?

Do liberals actually like larger long term deficits? Because that's exactly what your guy has done to us. Nice going liberals, you elected a guy that is destroying this country. Geez