Asymmetrical Information

For some reason I thought that Hoover had actually increased federal spending. Didn’t FDR campaign against Hoover for his "reckless and extravagant" spending and accuse him of having "the greatest spending administration in peacetime in all of history?”

The sport of judging politicians by their rhetoric instead of their actions hasn't lost any of its popularity. Here are the federal surplus or deficit (-) numbers for Hoover's term, in millions of dollars:

1930 738
1931 -462
1932 -2735
1933 -2602

Of course, the only administration in several decades that has displayed anything like fiscal responsibility was Clinton's, so Dean is right in his main point. Bush II, especially, is displaying a shocking lack of concern for the debt burden he is imposing on future generations. But that's typical of a man who doesn't give a damn about anyone but himself and his cronies.

Amen Orbitron!

Absent the war, the tax cuts, and all the new security spending, the deficit would still be around $200m. Please, tell us which programs the fiscally responsible Democrats would be slashing, or which taxes he would have raised.

How interesting it is that now that Democrats finally come around to agreeing on the balanced budget, the Republicans turn around and perform a 180 on the issue, less than 6 years since it truly became popular...

Jane, I don't much feel like arguing hypotheticals when there is so much reality around. I'd rather focus on the real, ongoing irresponsibility of the current incumbent and his gang of fools and knaves.

Cite, Jane?

Also, Jane: how can you say this, since the costs of the Iraqi and Afghani wars are not in that estimate.

"Please, tell us which programs the fiscally responsible Democrats would be slashing, or which taxes he would have raised."

The answer is of course: none at all! The same Democrats screaming about Bush's social welfare spending would not hesitate in driving up costs even more.

I can understand President Bush's positioning for the next election. It might not thrill me, but sometimes a little bit of pragmatism goes a long way. However, the President must tackle these spending issues after his reelection if he is to be considered among our greatest national leaders

But they are, for this year. My figure was a one year number, from the OMB's Mid Year Budget Review, which breaks out the various revenue effects of its policy. If you add back in all the money for new spending on military and domestic spending, which I'd place at roughly $80b for this year (but this may be either an over- or under- estimate), you still get a $200b shortfall. Next year it actually gets bigger.

Orbitron wrote:

Of course, the only administration in several decades that has displayed anything like fiscal responsibility was Clinton's, so Dean is right in his main point

Untrue, since as we all remember from Clinton’s first term that when he proposed nationalizing one-seventh of the US economy under the guise of “health care reform,” it was going to come at a cost of about $500 billion a year to the deficit.

'Of course, the only administration in several decades that has displayed anything like fiscal responsibility was Clinton's, so Dean is right in his main point'

"Untrue, since as we all remember from Clinton’s first term that when he proposed nationalizing one-seventh of the US economy under the guise of “health care reform,” it was going to come at a cost of about $500 billion a year to the deficit."

And let's not forget that one of the first things Clinton did after whining "It's Nazi time out there!" regarding the 1994 Republican sweep in Congress was to submit a long term budget with $200 billion deficits as far as the eye could see, and that he fought tooth and nail to oppose the Republican plan to balance the budget in seven years, holding out for ten, then nine years before throwing in the towel. All of this was mooted by the booming economy and the pile of money it generated for the government, of course, but it makes the claim that Clinton was the soul of fiscal responsibility rather asinine.

“But that's typical of a man who doesn't give a damn about anyone but himself and his cronies.”

“...the current incumbent and his gang of fools and knaves.”

Oh my goodness, so that’s it? President George W. Bush is supposedly a scum bag looking out for his rich buddies. If this is indeed the campaign theme of the Democrats in 2004---they will be squashed like bugs.

You may not like it, but a majority of Americans don’t share this sentiment. A viable campaign against the present White House incumbent doesn’t stand a chance unless the Democrats can convincingly argue that they are able to do a better job.

I distinctly remember Clinton being forced by a Republican Congress to agree both to Welfare Reform and to sign the Balanced Budget Act. BBA imposed budget caps which more or less constrained spending for a good couple of years because the Republicans who controlled Congress adhered to them (again, more or less).

"For some reason I thought that Hoover had actually increased federal spending. Didn't FDR campaign against Hoover for his "reckless and extravagant" spending and accuse him of having "the greatest spending administration in peacetime in all of history?"

Very true, and one of the major reasons that-- while acknowledging that they were different in many ways--I view Ronald Reagan as the Republican counterpart to FDR. Of course, the legitimate reasons for saying this are rather secondary to the lovely shade of purple that liberals turn when I make this assertion within earshot. ]:-)

Orbitron wrote:

Of course, the only administration in several decades that has displayed anything like fiscal responsibility was Clinton's, so Dean is right in his main point.

Untrue, since as we all remember from Clinton’s first term that when he proposed nationalizing one-seventh of the US economy under the guise of “health care reform,” it was going to come at a cost of about $500 billion added to the deficit (corrected number but probably on the conservative side). On top of that we had about $250 billion a year in tax increases which did nothing to reduce the overall level of federal spending.

It should also be pointed out that any budgetary "reductions" during the Clinton years were mostly either reductions in military spending which were already occurring via the "peace dividend, no longer having to pay for the one-time cost of the S&L bailout (which would have occurred regardless of who was in office), and some creative account gimmicks (which to be fair we’re seeing here in Minnesota when we balanced our own State budget) by shifting some spending into later years. Let’s not also forget that within 24 hours of signing Freedom to Farm, Clinton promised to try and restore the farm subsidies which Congress has wrongly done which is making up a pretty sizable chunk of our future deficits.

More damaging though IMNHO is the reluctance on the part of any Democratic candidate to take a serious look at trying to reduce the unfunded liability of Medicare and Social Security, preferably by allowing younger workers to opt out and invest at least a portion of their payroll tax dollars. When Democrats start offering serious proposals for dealing with these ponzai schemes (rather than trying to increase them as Gore did and Senate Democrats have tried to do), as Bush has done at least partially (to his credit), then we can take them seriously when they profess to displaying “anything like fiscal responsibility.”

I'm confused. Was Bush running on Hoover's platform in 2000 when he promised to deliver a balanced budget?

At the time, Gore was the only who said that he would be willing to run deficits in case of a recession.

Jane Galt:

Absent the war, the tax cuts, and all the new security spending, the deficit would still be around $200m. Please, tell us which programs the fiscally responsible Democrats would be slashing, or which taxes he would have raised.

Reverse Bush's tax cuts, of course.

And the Scheiber piece is just moronic. Dean states clearly that Hoover was fiscally irresponsible. He's not claiming that balancing the budget is the paramount priority under all possible economic and social circumstances, he's claiming (correctly) that the Bush Administration's unbalanced budgets are fiscally irresponsible. And most "fiscal conservatives" seem to agree with him.

I think it's probably dangerous for Republicans to be making references to Herbert Hoover right now, seeing as how Bush and Hoover saw eye to eye on so many things, like volunteerism and self reliance.

Hoover gets a bum rap, though; he just happened to be the unluckiest president alive. He was an amazing, brilliant man; he almost singlehandedly fed Belgium, ran the Phillipines...

Let's see. Was it Hoover who stretched the Panic of 1929 into the Great Depression, whose worst years were 1937 and 1939? Was it Hoover who mishandled the defense of the country to such a degree that the Japanese felt they could attack us on 12/7/41? Was it Hoover who tried to pack the Supreme Court? Was it Hoover who started the shell game/Ponzi Scheme called Social Security? I don't think so.

In the words of that old song:

"Mister, we could use a man like Herbert Hoover again."

Hm. I'm finding it hard to agree with you about Roosevelt on most of those things, Robert. About the only one that a centrist (or lefter) could probably agree with you on is the Supreme Court packing...

But then, you probably weren't going for careful neutrality. ;)

I'm pretty sure that a great number of Japanese-Americans look more kindly on Herbert Hoover than on FDR--or Earl Warren, for that matter.

"Was it Hoover who mishandled the defense of the country to such a degree that the Japanese felt they could attack us on 12/7/41?"

In fairness to FDR, we were a lot more ready for war than we would have been if we had followed the mainstream Republican position at the time--or that of a lot of Democrats, for that matter. A review of Joseph Kennedy's biography from 1935 to 1940 is eye-opening (and I'm sure some of our friends on the left will be ready to bring up Prescott Bush). IMO, FDR was wrong about a lot of things, but he was right to go against the grain of public opinion and prepare us for war, even if we did get sucker-punched at Pearl Harbor.

"“But that's typical of a man who doesn't give a damn about anyone but himself and his cronies.”

"“...the current incumbent and his gang of fools and knaves.”

"Oh my goodness, so that’s it? President George W. Bush is supposedly a scum bag looking out for his rich buddies. If this is indeed the campaign theme of the Democrats in 2004---they will be squashed like bugs.

"You may not like it, but a majority of Americans don’t share this sentiment. A viable campaign against the present White House incumbent doesn’t stand a chance unless the Democrats can convincingly argue that they are able to do a better job."

- Posted by David Thomson at July 17, 2003 06:31 PM

David, as far as I know I have no influence over the Democratic Party's campaign strategy, and I am in fact lamentably ignorant concerning same. I was speaking for myself. But yes, I do consider the current president unqualified for the job, to say the least. If the majority of the voters next election disagree, too bad for me, but it won't make me think they are right.

Orbitron, if you want to keep the focus on Bush, don't bring up Clinton. "I only want to talk about things that allow me to vent my hatred of Bush" is not a compelling rationale for discussion. There is plenty of blame to be pasted on Bush for too much spending, or too many tax cuts, depending on what line you take. But the fact is that if you (like most of us) consider Afghanistan and increased security to have been necessary, more than half the budget deficit isn't Bush's fault. And if you add in spending that Democrats are in favor of, the Democrats aren't going to do much differently. They certainly aren't going to be any more fiscally responsible than Bush. Nor does it look like Clinton was particularly fiscally responsible; non-discretionary non-military spending was growing faster than it did throughout the Reagan years, and without the internet bubble, the budget would have remained in deficit. The only thing that shrank was the military, which doesn't, er, seem all that responsible.

Don P, that $200b deficit is after you've reversed all tax cuts and spending done by the administration. Tell me, where would Gore have cut? Especially given teh $850b in new spending he was proposing -- would he have rolled that back, plus his $400b tax cut, and then raised more taxes and cut more spending? And would you have approved of this?

“But that's typical of a man who doesn't give a damn about anyone but himself and his cronies.”

As a free market mouseketeer, I hope that Bush has a heaping helping of self-interest...

Bush's legacy is squat unless he a) wins election and b) has a reasonably successful second term. To do that, he must deal with Iraq, North Korea, Iran, and the economy, while holding rabid democrats at arms length. Plus, one significant terrorist attack on US territory, and he is toast, politically.

I'm happy about Iraq. I'm optimistic about the economy, not because I believe Bush has any control over it, but because it is a cyclic thing, and we are about due. That leaves North Korea, Iran, and the inevitable problems that pop up when least expected.

This will require some significant motivation to pull off -- the sort of motivation from having your own skin in the game. From going to sleep every night knowing that one wrong move, or just a little bad luck, and history will bestow upon you the scarlet L.

The Republican Party eats its own when they fail, and isn't fond of excuses. Look at Newt. Look at Trent. Good for the Republican Party.

On the other hand, Democrats should stop digging themselves into a hole. They managed to lose the presidency to the worst Republican candidate in the last thirty years, and screw up the last election, too. Now they are working as hard as possible to negate any advantage the Republicans or fate might hand them.

" At the time, Gore was the only who said that he would be willing to run deficits in case of a recession. "

Not true, he said the opposite. He made the biggest howler of the campaign by claiming he'd raise taxes if there was a recession.

I believe that FDR initially campaigned on a balanced budget platform, but was converted to the Keynesian view that running government deficits during a recession was actually a good policy.

This has been the policy of most Democrats even since, until very recently. It's kind of strange to see Democrats as balanced-budget hawks. Why the change? Are there new theoretical models that challenge the countercyclical spending belief? Or is it all just purely political?

Jane, I'm not interested in guessing what Gore would have done if he were in Bush's place, because he's not, even though I wish it were the case.

I brought up Clinton because Dean said the Democrats were more fiscally reponsible than the Republicans, and you appeared to think that some arm-waving about Hoobert Heever refuted his main point, which is that the Republicans talk a good game concerning fiscal responsibility, but when they are actually called upon to perform they don't deliver the goods. The only president in recent memory whose budget was anything like responsible was a Democrat.

In fact the Republicans are embarked on a frighteningly irresponsible course of action on just about every policy front.

Sweet Lou, glad you're happy about Iraq. Which part makes you the happiest? The American soldiers who die every day for no clearly articulated reason? Or was it Bush in his jet fighter pilot costume?

David Foster wrote:

This has been the policy of most Democrats even since, until very recently. It's kind of strange to see Democrats as balanced-budget hawks. Why the change? Are there new theoretical models that challenge the countercyclical spending belief? Or is it all just purely political?

Political in that it is an excuse for some to justify trying to raise taxes to feed the beast. The majority of all federal spending is for income-transfer programs and when you convince your targeted base that they are “owed” an unearned, unpaid for federal subsidy and that those who pay taxes really have no legitimate claim to their own money (“winner of life’s lottery” or some such nonsense), then you can rationalize trying to confiscate even more wealth to pay off the voters.

I think both sides need to consider whether either part of the combination of Speaker Gingrich and President Clinton would have resulted in as small and quickly balanced a set of budgets as the U.S. actually ended up with without the other. Gingrich alone is more likely than Clinton alone, but not by much.... it is much, much easier to run against a president of the other party than against one of your own, and it doesn't seem likely he'd have gotten to where he did absent Clinton and the failed medicare expansion to run against.

Now, now Orbitron...if you are trying to bait me, you'll have to do better than that. Me and my lefty kin get in all sorts of slanging matches, and I know when they trot out the righteous moral indignation(tm), they're on the ropes.

Why do you think that I might be happy about dead American servicemen? The folks who went on record as being cheerful about that sort of thing were exclusively on the left -- and not too many there, either, to be fair. As for Bush in his flight suit, whydja bring that up? You into that sort of thing?

Think happy thoughts, Orbitron! Some ideas to get you started:

-- No women & children being put in mass graves. Lefties like women and children, remember?

--One reason Biological and Chemical weapons have been so hard to find as of late is because terrorists aren't using them on us.

--The Arab street that was going to rise up and smite us? Kind of quiet lately.

--Dean running on Hoover's platform. Hoover won, didn't he?

See? Not too hard if you try. I hate to see you get so worked up about one little sentence in my comment, but I suppose there is a lot of that going around lately...

Sweet Lou wrote:

-- No women & children being put in mass graves. Lefties like women and children, remember?
--One reason Biological and Chemical weapons have been so hard to find as of late is because terrorists aren't using them on us.
--The Arab street that was going to rise up and smite us? Kind of quiet lately.

How about also:

- Iraq is not going to be able to develop nuclear weapons like North Korea did
- We have a chance to remove our troops from Saudi Arabia
- The sanctions can now be lifted without fear that Saddam Hussein will be able to use the oil revenue to build WMDs
- We have a chance to see if it is possible to build a republican Arab government that isn't a theocracy or a dictatorship thereby changing the paradigm in the region
- One less regime that harbors and sponsors terrorism and
- The other regimes in that region which harbor and sponsor terrorism realize that they do so at their own peril

I'm wondering if Jane, or any of the commenters here, have a reply to a recent PLA post (which responds to a post of Jane's) that finds: "The performance under Democratic presidents was superior to the performance under Republicans in each of those measures." What measures?
Unemployment, inflation, GDP growth, overall federal spending and federal non-defense spending, budget deficits, and increases in federal non-defense employees... stock market returns.
http://www.pla.blogspot.com/2003_07_06_pla_archive.html#105778843621430685

Oh, I just saw Jane's more recent post.
But when you want to argue that a president is good for the economy, you cannot just point to the fact that the economy was good while he was president, QED.... Why, it is difficult, my little chickadees; that is why people have to get PhD's and things.

Does Paul Krugman count? Furthermore, I'm still waiting for a counterargument to this, "Thus, the probability that every Democrat would outrank every Republican by operation of mere chance is the product of each of those six chances. If my math is correct, the probability of every Democrat outranking every Republican through random chance is about 0.05% or about a 1 in 2,000 underdog."

Anyway, on the TNR piece, they sure have an axe to grind against Dean. I'd like to see the full interview (the NY Times article doesn't provide it.) It seems to me the quote is two thoughts: the current president is as fiscally irresponsible as Hoover, and Democrats, not Republicans, balance budgets.

Jane Galt:

Don P, that $200b deficit is after you've reversed all tax cuts and spending done by the administration. Tell me, where would Gore have cut?

I don't know. I can't speak for him. There are obviously any number of areas of the budget that he might have cut. He might also have raised taxes. Or he might have accepted a $200 billion deficit. Obviously, a $200 billion is not nearly as bad as a $455 billion deficit. It seems strange for a supposedly nonpartisan fiscal conservative to be talking as if there is no meaningful difference between them.

And would you have approved of this?

I favor more taxing of the rich and more spending on the poor. I'm a tax-and-spend liberal. I'd have to examine any particular proposal in detail before I could say whether I approved of it or not.

"I hate to see you get so worked up about one little sentence in my comment, but I suppose there is a lot of that going around lately..."

- Posted by Sweet Lou at July 18, 2003 01:50 PM

Sweet Lou, that "one little sentence" is one in which you stated you were happy about a war. I find such a sentiment appalling. War is sometimes necessary and just, but it is never something to be happy about. That's just my opinion, of course. Whatever floats your boat.

And Bush's "one little sentence" that you allude to was put in his State of the Union address for a reason. It didn't just happen to find itself there. It's entirely legitimate to ask what that reason was and who put it there.

SInce you object to that "one little sentence" so much, does that mean that it's the only part of the whole speech with which you can find any objection? And therefore, can we conclude that you approve of the rest of it, at least as far as national security and Iraq are concerned?

As for Dean running on Hoover's platform-- not surprising. A standard Democrat strategy to take the centeris to steal your opponent's ideas and make them your own. Since the Dems have been running against Hoover in every election since 1928, his are the only opposition ideas they know about.

I wish I had access to Nexis, as it will be entertaining to see how often "Herber Hoover" comes out of the Dems' mouths in the coming months.

"SInce you object to that "one little sentence" so much, does that mean that it's the only part of the whole speech with which you can find any objection? And therefore, can we conclude that you approve of the rest of it, at least as far as national security and Iraq are concerned?"
- Posted by Raoul Ortega at July 20, 2003 02:56 PM

If I were to point out that you mistakenly capitalized the second letter in the first word of the first sentence of your post, that would in no way imply that your post contained no other errors.

Orbitron wrote:

If I were to point out that you mistakenly capitalized the second letter in the first word of the first sentence of your post, that would in no way imply that your post contained no other errors.

Perhaps not, however it is an old debating trick that when you cannot defeat the substance of the argument, you try and tear apart the weakest point being made (regardless of whether or its inclusion affects the rest of the argument being made) to give the illusion of successfully refuting the argument.

Since no one has challenged the rest of Bush’s speech – nor for that matter have we heard anyone really suggest that Saddam Hussein was not trying to obtain uranium, merely whether or not the CIA were able to verify the intelligence from MI5 – it seems logical to conclude that if Bush’s detractors objected to the rest of the Iraqi portion of his SOTU they would have raised those objections already.

In which case, unless anyone has any reason to show why we should distrust the intelligence information provided by our closest ally or is willing to state uncategorically that Saddam Hussein wasn’t trying to obtain uranium, the quibble is irrelevant. Even more so since its inclusion (or not) does not appear germaine to the decision to overthrow the Iraqi regime.

Thorley Winston, its almost painful to watch you tie yourself in knots trying to exculpate Bush. Factually challenged or willfully blind?

"Since no one has challenged the rest of Bush’s speech – nor for that matter have we heard anyone really suggest that Saddam Hussein was not trying to obtain uranium"

How about, um for starters, the director of the CIA early in September 2002?
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A40684-2003Jul10.html?nav=hptop_tb
I really have to ask you, do you read the news? This has been all over the place.

As for the rest of the speech and the veracity of the deluge of claims made by Bush, Cheny, Rice, Rumsfield et el - theres this great site called 'google'. you might have heard of it? Repeat after me: 'pattern of deception' 'pattern of decption' etc...

dave from Ireland wrote:

Thorley Winston, its almost painful to watch you tie yourself in knots trying to exculpate Bush. Factually challenged or willfully blind?

Neither although it seems that Dave from Ireland seems to be doing a little selective butchering of my posts in order to set up a strawman as we see from his misquoting of my previous post:

"Since no one has challenged the rest of Bush’s speech – nor for that matter have we heard anyone really suggest that Saddam Hussein was not trying to obtain uraniummerely whether or not the CIA were able to verify the intelligence from MI5 – it seems logical to conclude that if Bush’s detractors objected to the rest of the Iraqi portion of his SOTU they would have raised those objections already."

The portion of the sentence in bold was chopped off by Dave from Ireland when he supposedly was quoting me and is key to understanding my claim.

How about, um for starters, the director of the CIA early in September 2002?
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A40684-2003Jul10.html?nav=hptop_tb
I really have to ask you, do you read the news? This has been all over the place.

I read the article and it does not contradict what I said since there is nothing really in it which suggests that Saddam Hussein wasn’t trying to buy uranium” but rather arguing about “whether or not the CIA were able to verify the intelligence from MI5” which seems to be at the heart of this non-issue.

As for the rest of the speech and the veracity of the deluge of claims made by Bush, Cheny, Rice, Rumsfield et el - theres this great site called 'google'. you might have heard of it? Repeat after me: 'pattern of deception' 'pattern of decption' etc...

Sorry but if you’re going to claim that the rest of Bush’s SOTU which dealt with Iraq is somehow wrong (and this point, I don’t believe we even know for certain that the uranium portion was – merely that it has not been proven which is not the same as it having been disproven), then it is up to you to provide evidence to support it.

But frankly, considering how you tried to set up a strawman argument by so dishonestly and clumsily chopping off the portion of my sentence which established its full context, I doubt you’d be able to do that as well.

Someone above earlier asked why Democrats are suddenly the keepers of the Balanced Budget. That's easy: The Budget Hawks convinced a lot of us Dems, including Daniel Patrick Moynihan. It was never a solely Republican conviction, though it was actually pretty unpopular on both sides: in terms of the supply-siders and in terms of the Keynesians.

I don't see the Keynesian economics has ever really worked in practice; we love to keep spending, but we never seem ready or willing to pay back. Republicans angle for more and more tax cuts, Democrats angle for more and more spending, and the country goes down the tubes because the only people who cared about this were so stupid they tried to impeach a president over a blowjob.

Really. I say Gingrich in 2004! Now that we know what it's like under Hastert/DeLay, anyway.

"Don P, that $200b deficit is after you've reversed all tax cuts and spending done by the administration. Tell me, where would Gore have cut? Especially given teh $850b in new spending he was proposing -- would he have rolled that back, plus his $400b tax cut, and then raised more taxes and cut more spending? And would you have approved of this?"

This is misleading; no one, to my knowledge, has suggested entirely balancing the budget during the current (short-run) downtown.

The objection is to the long-run deficits due to the tax cut/spending increase combo. Remember all those suggestions of a short-run SS withholding holiday?

"The majority of all federal spending is for income-transfer programs and when you convince your targeted base that they are 'owed' an unearned, unpaid for federal subsidy and that those who pay taxes really have no legitimate claim to their own money ('winner of life’s lottery' or some such nonsense), then you can rationalize trying to confiscate even more wealth to pay off the voters."

Fascinating. So Winston is saying that the average person who earns $100,000 a year does so by working 4 times harder each day than the average person who earns $25,000 a year, and that the average millionnaire does so by working 40 times harder each day? And that, for that reason, the richest American and the poorest American should pay exactly the same total dollar amount in taxes? Lest we forget, Thorley, the only reason people want to get rich is that it enables you to earn more money for less effort -- which means, in turn, that there is absolutely nothing immoral in saying that you ought to pay more in taxes and give some of it to those who are working harder for less money. The limits that should be placed on this at some point are entirely practical in nature (can you say "Adam Smith" and "Laffer Curve"?) -- they have nothing to do with your literally imbecilic attempt at moral philosophizing.

The rest of our conversion follows a similar vein. Instead of going through line by line, let's just compare end results: when the transition is complete, the code that used to read:

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