Thread Midlife Erections

i find myself leery of people who align themselves with a single party. there's dipshits on both sides, and smart people on both sides.

i think the tea party is right on with a lot of what they preach, but the party is run by dip shits who will practice something else.
like witchcraft?
 
Its interesting but still not that simple. Rarely do potus policies have an immediate impact on such things. Also note that the figures aren't calculated the same way every year. Until 2000 they simply didn't count social security and medicare as debt, which is why we had a mythical surplus in clintons final years. Plus there a lot of other external factors at play that effect our gdp, none of which under the presidents control and most importantly, presidents don't set budgets. Congress does. The prez makes requests and signs things but there are a few hundred people to blame for the final tally.

This statement is not quite right. It's the type that I find in email chains all the time. Clinton erased the federal deficit no matter how you account for social security and medicare (cash or accrual basis).
 
This statement is not quite right. It's the type that I find in email chains all the time. Clinton erased the federal deficit no matter how you account for social security and medicare (cash or accrual basis).

he did not erase the federal deficit, it was an accounting trick. it does matter how you account for those things because they still have to be paid for.
 
he did not erase the federal deficit, it was an accounting trick. it does matter how you account for those things because they still have to be paid for.

What you're describing is the difference between accrual and cash basis accounting. It's no trick. David Blaine and Criss Angel weren't called in to make money disappear. And no matter how you slice it, he operated a surplus mostly as a result of the increased social security taxes. On a cash basis, his surplus was ridiculously high. On an accrual basis (the non-"trick" way), there was still a ~$60 billion surplus each year!
 
What you're describing is the difference between accrual and cash basis accounting. It's no trick. David Blaine and Criss Angel weren't called in to make money disappear. And no matter how you slice it, he operated a surplus mostly as a result of the increased social security taxes. On a cash basis, his surplus was ridiculously high. On an accrual basis (the non-"trick" way), there was still a ~$60 billion surplus each year!
No, there wasn't. It has jack shit to do with accrual accounting. Borrowing from Social Security is still borrowing. It's still fucking debt. Intra-governmental debt - ie, the money that the rest of the federal government owed Social Security - is still debt. To only count public debt is like saying you shouldn't count the fact that you borrowed ten grand from your grandmother to pay off your credit cards.

And even when you only count public debt, the surplus was never 60 billion. The budget was still 18 billion dollars from being balanced. We did not operate with a surplus.
 
No, there wasn't. It has jack shit to do with accrual accounting. Borrowing from Social Security is still borrowing. It's still fucking debt. Intra-governmental debt - ie, the money that the rest of the federal government owed Social Security - is still debt. To only count public debt is like saying you shouldn't count the fact that you borrowed ten grand from your grandmother to pay off your credit cards.

And even when you only count public debt, the surplus was never 60 billion. The budget was still 18 billion dollars from being balanced. We did not operate with a surplus.

In bold above would be considered debt and is part of the accounts payable on the balance sheet using an accrual accounting approach.

Here's fiscal year 1998 accrual accounting basis from the Treasury Department performed retrospectively showing ~$69 billion in surplus using accrual accounting of social security and medicare.
http://fms.treas.gov/fr/98frusg/98frusg.pdf

Here's the raw data from the CBO covering the relevant time periods for Social security data (cash basis).
http://www.cbo.gov/ftpdocs/108xx/doc10871/HistoricalTables.pdf

Now you show me where you think this -$18 billion comes from.
 
In bold above would be considered debt and is part of the accounts payable on the balance sheet using an accrual accounting approach.

Here's fiscal year 1998 accrual accounting basis from the Treasury Department performed retrospectively showing ~$69 billion in surplus using accrual accounting of social security and medicare.
http://fms.treas.gov/fr/98frusg/98frusg.pdf

Here's the raw data from the CBO covering the relevant time periods for Social security data (cash basis).
http://www.cbo.gov/ftpdocs/108xx/doc10871/HistoricalTables.pdf

Now you show me where you think this -$18 billion comes from.

http://www.treasurydirect.gov/govt/reports/pd/histdebt/histdebt.htm

If there had been a real surplus - ie, more money was brought in than spent - debt would have gone down. At no point did debt go down.

09/30/2001 5,807,463,412,200.06
09/30/2000 5,674,178,209,886.86
09/30/1999 5,656,270,901,615.43
09/30/1998 5,526,193,008,897.62
09/30/1997 5,413,146,011,397.34
09/30/1996 5,224,810,939,135.73
09/29/1995 4,973,982,900,709.39
09/30/1994 4,692,749,910,013.32
09/30/1993 4,411,488,883,139.38
09/30/1992 4,064,620,655,521.66

You are continuing to flat out ignore the intra-governmental debt. You cannot simply pretend that the debt didn't exist and the SSA buying treasury bonds means that the government actually took in that money.

http://www.craigsteiner.us/articles/16

http://mises.org/daily/542

At no point was our budget actually balanced. At no point was our debt reduced. At no point did the government actually take in more money than it spent. If you borrow money from your family to pay your bills, you are not operating on a surplus because you still owe your family money.
 
Funny though that not many of them know that the Obama administration has cut spending

ok, this is news to me. Did you mean spending in one particular area and exclude every other area? Cutting $17 billion in defense spending sounds great, but not against the $$TRILLIONS the administration is spending elsewhere expanding their ever-growing role in our lives.



large_CONGRESS_SPENDING.jpg





VOTE DEMOCRATS!! You can't trust your neighbor to spend their own money so let the Democrats do it!!
 
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you silly hard line republicans. when will you take your hands out of the pockets of middle class america? answer: never

funny thing is the only people who benefit from republican shenanigans are the top .5-1% of earners. they've duped so many sheep into doing their bidding. I can commend them on their mastery of mind control at the very least. do you fall into that category, amstel? the magic 8 ball says "all signs point to no".