gbaji wrote:
Again, you're conflating two very different things. The idea of being fiscally conservative is one thing. The idea that the federal government should only act in areas that the federal government *needs* to act is another. Can you understand that conservatives can pursue both at the same time?
You can't both increase spending and decrease total spending at the same time. It can work if you're actually reducing the role of government, and decreasing the total spending overall, but again, that doesn't seem to happen much.
gbaji wrote:
It's only arbitrary if you don't think that maximizing individual liberty is important. Is that the case? And if it is, then what sort of principle do you think we should be using to define the role of government?
Don't invoke government unless absolutely necessary. Use it only when there's no other means to accomplish something, or when other means lead to a grossly inefficient or otherwise unworkable outcome.
gbaji wrote:
Then by all means argue about spending too much money. But don't support this argument by claiming that the GOP is being hypocritical because their spending violates their small government principles. Because, that's not actually what "small government" is about.
I'll continue to do so as long as I think they're using the phrase disingenuously. They know it means different things to different people, and they'll continue using it because hearing it draws in voters, voters who don't realize they're using to mean something else. They have no real motivation to clarify, because it'll lose them votes, so they're perfectly happy to continue using it despite knowing it's misleading people. So yes, being hypocritical or maybe deceitful. Probably some better word for it in there somewhere.
gbaji wrote:
If you actually allowed the GOP to remain in power for more than a few years at a time, and in more than just one branch here or one part of a branch there, you'd see a massive difference in total spending. It just hasn't happened (certainly not since the adoption of fiscal conservatism by the GOP).
Dude, we gave baby Bush 8 years to do it, and he didn't. There's a point you have to stop lying to yourself about it. If he really wanted to cut spending he would have, he didn't want to, and he didn't do it. Didn't take Clinton that long to draw back military spending. Maybe ya'll should ask him for some tips or something?
gbaji wrote:
What I find amazing about this is that we can see two semi clear examples of that difference just in the last 15 years. The difference between spending increases during the Bush years and Obama years is absolutely massive. And the difference in terms of impact on our debt has been massive as well. It's just not fair to say that they are the same. Is the GOP "perfect"? No. But that's not as much the point as the question "which party will be closer to my idea of low spending?". And that answer is obviously the Republicans.
Do you honestly think the GOP introduces new things to spend money on at nearly the rate as the Dems?
They seem to not mind spending. At least there's no major changes there to make me think they're really committed to it. From what I can tell the two parties are basically identical. The only one in the last 50 years or so that looks like he's cut relative spending to any degree is Clinton, and that'd be mostly because of the post cold-war draw-down of the military if memory serves me right (coupled with a robust economy, in the case of the GDP-normalized graph).
Edited, Apr 29th 2016 10:54am by someproteinguy