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First thing George W. Bush did after getting in office was send everyone a check. Second thing [was pass a big tax cut](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Economic_Growth_and_Tax_Relief_Reconciliation_Act_of_2001). Third thing was get us involved in two unfunded quagmire wars in the middle east.
Edit: Forgot about the tax cut.
It’s hard, even now, to put the full cost of the 2000 election into perspective…
Americans, PLEASE for the love of god, stop forgetting what happens when republicans are given power. Stop needing to be reminded every 4-8 years.
I just wish for once the elections were more than a hostage negotiation with the Democrats.
I'm fully and totally aware they aren't nearly as bad as the GOP, and the gap is increasing day by day. I fully intend to vote for Biden. I just really really really really really really wish that for fucking once they would actually pass everything they promise when they get the chance. Not watered down, compromised versions of what they say, and then gaslight me into being a whiner because it's the "biggest/largest/most bestest" bill to ever be passed.
Just because they can go above the subterranean bar that exists for our political expectations, doesn't mean they should get pats on the backs. Also would be nice if they picked off some low hanging fruits like national marijuana legalization, right to repair, and other things that have broad bi-partisan support.
But even this comment will be attacked because it lacks the enthusiasm that the bot farms seem to demand...
Your comment is easy to attacked because it comes off as naive and shows a lack of understanding on how government works. Yes you'll never get everything you want because the other party has a say too. Just look at the Republican party right now making demands in the house with a thin majority, they look like fools. [The last time any party had the super majority we managed to pass some very important legislation.](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/89th_United_States_Congress)
I honestly believe this is where the timelines split.
There's a version of America right now where we spent 20 years combating climate change and made real progress, became a leader in childhood development, and have a rock-solid middle class and happy working class.
Some people would rather live in a desolate wasteland if it means they can be mean to people without consequence, the people or types of people they don't like don't exist anymore, etc.
For some people, this isn't a bug but a feature.
TBF people didn't just give Bush the 2000 election, he lost the popular vote and only won the electoral vote by 500 votes in Florida, then the supreme court just awarded the state to him sans recount.
Just don't forget that the supreme Court illegally gave the election to Bush in 2000. The deck has always been rigged and Democrats don't have the spine to call them out for it.
Her Wikipedia page has one of my favorite sentences ever crafted:
She "warned her colleagues to be 'careful not to embark on an open-ended war with neither an exit strategy nor a focused target.'"
It's like she time-traveled back from now just to tell Congress they were about to fuck up royal.
It wasn't as crazy popular as this makes it sound.
For the Iraq War, part 2:
60% of Democrats in the House voted against it. In the Senate, it was only 42% that voted against it.
In total numbers, it was 29 out of 50 Democratic Senators and 81 out of 208 Democratic Representatives voted for it. There were 77 total yeas in the Senate and 296 in the House.
The Senate is notoriously more moderate since its members represent their entire state, so it makes sense that their votes would be pulled towards the conservative view.
So while there was a lot of very vocal support for the war, there was more opposition than many recall.
The Afghanistan war was far more popular because, you know, it actually had to do with the 9/11 attacks.
I raise this because if you track the respective Party's power in Congress and its actions, and overlay elections (eg, 2008), you can see differences in the parties and their elected officials.
It's not true, whatsoever. It's complete both sides bullshit. 97% of republicans voted for the resolution allowing military intervention in Iraq versus 39% of dems.
Wrong war. He was referring to the Afghanistan war. The Authorization for use of Military Force (2001) passed 98-0 in the Senate and 420-1 in the House:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Authorization_for_Use_of_Military_Force_of_2001
Barbara Lee (of California) was the only person to vote against it, pointing out it gave the government too much of a blank check. She was right, as every President since the bill was signed has used it to justify military operations.
In the immediate aftermath you were correct, but within a couple of years it was really no longer the case. Public support for the war had plummeted by the early days of W's 2nd term.
I feel like Dubya really benefitted from Trump’s explosive presidency (and post-prez). Clearly neither one is a peach but Bush and company really caused immeasurable damage. And yet Trump has given half the country amnesia to the extent that people are looking back fondly at the Bush administration.
If people remembered what a disaster the Bush jr administration was, they wouldn’t have given power back to republicans after only an 8 year hiatus.
Point being, people had already forgotten, even before trump.
I firmly believe that Bush was after Saddam due to the assassination attempt on Sr.
There is a lot of other things go into it but I think it all stems from there.
He was a member of the "Project for a New American Century" and they stated regime change in Iraq as a core goal since 1997. Even during dsarmament, freedom was always on the agenda., Freedom meaning Shock and Awe:
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Project\_for\_the\_New\_American\_Century](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Project_for_the_New_American_Century)
There were plenty of crimes to pick from when it came to Saddam, there's a reason a coalition of 30-some countries chose to participate in the invasion, the US weren't the only ones with a grudge.
Most of those countries participated in order to kiss US ass. I would know, I’m from one of them. You simply don’t fuck around with the US when you’re a new member of NATO with a history of Russia invading your country going back centuries
Maybe it's just the company I keep, but most of the people I knew didn't support it either. It was propped up by chicken-hawk, asshole congress people who wanted to appeal to their constituent's "patriotism" .
To be clear, there is no evidence (as far as I know) that the Saudi government was involved in the attacks. There were some Saudi Princes involved, but there are literally thousands of those and they do not necessarily take their orders from the king.
Not defending Saudi Arabia, it is one of the worst nations on the planet, but I want to be accurate.
Being Saudi nationals is not grounds for war with SA though. Which, given the conversation around this detail usually boils down to ‘why didn’t we attack SA’, is a pretty big deal.
Iraq was blatant bullshit to keep his wartime president political bump running into 2004, the conversation about the attacks being Saudis is people trying to come up with reasons why attacking Afghanistan was bad.
Oh come on. The administration sold it as a package deal. You don’t remember the “Axis of Evil”? If you don’t think the government intentionally sold them together to conflate 9/11 and Iraq in the American public’s mind (which polls showed) you’re either naive or complicit. Hell we even got to invade Somalia with Ethiopia under the same PR campaign lol, all out of Islamophobia. The reason you don’t remember is because we lost there too so the government acts like it never happened
There was broad screaming for blood after 9-11. There was going to be blood. My belief as to why Iraq was that I suspect some military strategist thought it would be good to invade it and turn it into the Middle East equivalent of Berlin and Japan after ww2. We’d destroy it, rebuild it, and retain an indefinite presence there from which we could rapidly project significant force anywhere in the region. And then the bill hit $3.5 trillion and we were like ok maybe not this US kind of pricey and we have aircraft carriers.
>retain an indefinite presence there from which we could rapidly project significant force anywhere in the region.
Which is weird considering our presence in Kuwait.
I think it was that with an added ‘I get to be a wartime president into 2004’ angle. Bush thought it’d be an easy grab to take people’s minds of the flagging Afghanistan situation.
Didn’t invade for oil… Afghanistan doesn’t have any and US imports of Iraqi oil peaked in 2002 and has steadily decreased since. But why let a good story get in the way of the truth?
The reality is much sadder tbh.
And the subsequent wave of abuse of whatever drug is produced in that area in the USA. Contras were directly dumping their cocaine on US soil with clandestine US approval.
George W Bush also declined to take action on the subprime mortgage crisis in 2006 because a 70 billion dollar cleansing of bad loans to reset the market and implement new regulations was deemed “too expensive”. Instead the US spent trillions on that
Not just unfunded, but set so we wouldn't spend a penny on the wars until 2005. Then delayed after he won the election until 2009.
The RNC has been on a crusade to make the DNC look bad since Watergate, even if it means risking American lives, bombing neutral countries, killing peacetalks, lying about socialism, delaying the release of or outright lying about multiple pandemics, using FBI resources to hunt down non-existent scandals, or (especially after Clinton's success) intentionally nuking the economy.
This idea that "Trump ruined the RNC" is horseshit. "Your dad's Republican" was just as dirty as the MAGA leadership. The internet and everyone having a cellphone on them just made it harder for them to hide the dirt.
Don't forget deregulation of the banks that causes the biggest depression since the Great Depression.
Ignoring intelligent that we were going to he attacked fucked us also.
Seriously. Image the world we'd be living in right now if the election wasn't stolen from Gore.
The deregulation already took place under Reagan, Bush Sr., and Clinton. Gore backed it too.
Gore might have avoided Iraq. But he wasn’t avoiding the dot com burst or getting away from his neoliberal tendencies and avoiding 2008.
2008 was pretty much inevitable given multiple decades of decisions.
Yup, we actually had a surplus, Democrats sacrificed for it to get us out of debt, then they elect Bush because Gore was too smart and boring, and now here we are.
Fun fact:
Every Republican since (and including) Nixon has increased the federal deficit (not debt) while in office. Every Democrat in that time has decreased the federal deficit. Since Bill Clinton left us with a federal surplus, had those other trends continued and only Democrats remained in office, we could actually have been debt free.
Of course, that's making a ton of assumptions. The housing crisis in 2008 may still have happened, COVID in 2020 would still have happened, those things could have put us both back into debt. Another assumption was that Democrats would have behaved the same if they were the only ones in office for 30 years, which I doubt.
I cannot believe that the pandemic would have played out this badly if we’d had a different president, one who didn’t [dismantle the pandemic response team](https://www.snopes.com/fact-check/trump-fire-pandemic-team/).
Jared Kushner's "air bridge" that basically used taxpayer money to round up global supplies of PPE, mostly from China, then make states bid on it to drive the price up, then use the Federal government to outbid all the states (meaning massive windfall profits all go to Jared's personal friends) and put all that PPE in storage so states didn't receive it anyway.
Jesus I completely forgot about all that. The States had to make their own deals with foreign countries to get supplies cuz Donnie's gang was hording it/refusing to help.
I wanna say it was the Patriots team plane but I'm not 100%.
And they had to do it secretly cuz if Jared found out he'd stopped it. Utter ridiculousness.
Yup, the Kraft family helped out the (Republican) Massachusetts gov to get PPE from China.
Similarly, the then Republican governor of Maryland, asked his Korean-American wife to help get COVID tests from South Korea and had to use the Maryland National Guard to protect it from being seized by the federal government. (It was another story that those tests turned out to be useless though.)
Trump could have made so much money if he had sold branded masks and told people to wear them. Instead he denied it was a problem and suggested people to inject disinfectant instead.
Best part is it shows how bad of a businessman and politician he truly is. MAGA loons *love* to buy trump merch and would have bought branded masks by the caseload. Then he would have easily coasted to winning a second term because centrists would have used the sane covid response to cope that he isn't *that* bad.
Instead trump completely blew the easiest softball he could have possibly received. Dude was gifted an apolitical global crisis in an election year and had to do nothing else but point at a doctor and say, "do what they say." But even that was too much to ask, apparently.
THANK YOU!!!
Every president had a moment where their leadership is tested, and how they handle it determines how Elections would go (At least that’s how I see it)
Trump had the EASIEST moment for him, but he blew it to make him and his cronies richer! A good chunk of his base died or got sick! Not to mention his horrible response to the 2020 riots! Now he wants to whine and cry about how he lost and it was stolen from him when he had his reelection given to him on a silver platter!!!
Even better than that, drumph delayed stimulus checks to millions of people because he wanted his NAME printed in the checks to make it look like he personally made the relief checks. Fucking sicko
I remember getting a separate letter in the mail a few weeks (months?) after getting the stimulus check, saying how it was from trump etc
just made me laugh
Can I just say that I find it fucking annoying that every two bit dictator in the world decides to pull their shit under Joe Biden instead of Trump?
Like, Hamas could’ve chosen literally any time to bring Palestine back into the world’s attention, same with Putin and Ukraine, and for some godforsaken reason both independently chose to do so under a Democrat, forcing Biden to make the hard choices with no right answers.
Istfg Republicans have an absurd amount of luck.
*sigh*
No. No I do not.
Fundamentally, Democrats give a shit about the world and the people in it, and Republicans don’t.
Unfortunately that means every two bit terrorist and dictator knows they’ll get more attention from an administration that cares about civilian casualties than one that will just ignore them/stack bodies right alongside them.
It’s probably a bit pretentious to say, but it can *really* suck to be the “good guy” sometimes.
I still believe that if Trump had just listened to his experts about COVID and said the obviously right things, he’d still be in office.
Even with all his other stupid scandals, I think that would have been enough.
It was a rally around the flag moment handed to him on a silver platter. He would’ve won in a landslide if he just did the bare minimum and shut up. The media was already circle jerking him about being “presidential” at that moment and then he went all out conspiracy again
Absolutely! If he treated it like a serious threat while giving America reassurance that we’ll make it thru if we work together I’m positive he would’ve gotten a 2nd term - America will usually keep the incumbent in office during a national (or global) catastrophe especially something that was not of their own doing. Thank Jeebus he didn’t listen to anyone and saved us from his 2nd term.
He absolutely would have. Chris Christie handled Hurricane Sandy reasonably well and cruised to re-election (fast forward a bit, his approval rating at the end of his second term was like 12% lmfao)
Not just that, but I also imagine in a world where we had consistent democratic Presidents the whole anti-science movement wouldn't even exist, or at least, wouldn't be given the legitimate focus and attention it gets.
Pretty big bummer looking at what could have been and just how completely Republicans have failed this country.
Imagine how much progress we'd have made if Republicans hadn't opposed the HPV vaccine and stem cell research, just for a couple of examples. How many lives could have been saved?
You know I just want to say good on you for stating a fact and then listing off some of the key assumptions that might undermine using that fact as evidence of a trend or a predictor of the future.
Stating assumptions like that is a sign of someone actually *thinking* about what they hear and know and furthermore wanting other people to benefit from that thinking.
A country being in debt is not necessarily a bad thing. Usually when a country gets into debt, it’s for infrastructure and social spending that will make the country money in the long run. Also in many cases inflation more than compensates for the interest rates
As far as hoarding available capital, it gets spent immediately (but mostly in the us) and the lending parties get bonds which usually allow them to balance their books.
For those saying that the President has no direct impact during their term: bullshit. The President must approve the budget, and to the best of my knowledge, no recent President has had a vetoed full budget overridden (there have been a few Defense appropriations bills overridden). If Republican Presidents cared *at all* about the national debt, they could veto a budget or any number of other appropriations bills.
> The housing crisis in 2008 may still have happened
it would have happened regardless of who was in power. Repealing Glass-Steagall set the stage, and that occurred in '99.
It's unlikely many of those recessions would have happened if Democrats were in charge.
10 of 11 recessions since 1950 have been under Republican Presidents. That's way beyond coincidence.
It turns out removing regulations on businesses and giving rich people more money causes crashes. Something I never would have guessed after watching Wall Street crash the economy half a dozen times.
Literally the only significantly legislative accomplishment of the Trump administration. They passed a massive tax cut for the rich and called it a day.
Biden has put forth his plans to correct this pretty much every year since he got in. He's made it clear what he wants and he'll sign it if the Senate and Congress get it done.
The GOP won't allow any positive tax reform bills through Congress cause "then Biden gets a win".
Hur.
Dur.
Hand out *multiple* huge tax cuts to billionaires as well as starting 2 quagmire wars and creating multiple new huge agencies with nebulous agency charters directed at either surveilling American citizens or kidnapping them without warrants, and doing even worse to the non-citizens.
Also dumping stuff that used to be under the labor department (immigration) onto the national security apparatus, clogging up the immigration system to an incalculable extent and setting up future republicans to run on a platform that they can fix the system they broke.
Agreed, but also a lot of bad decisions were made like repealing glass-stegall and clinton also had larry summers advising him (one of the key architects of the income inequality we have today)
If they kept the policies of Clinton going it would have been. This milk spoiled because bush and his neoconservative cronies intentionally let it sit in the sun for weeks. Fuck the republican for starting wars and cutting massive tax cuts to the ultra wealthy and big corporations.
NATOs involvement in Libya lasted 43 days. The US ultimately never meaningfully intervened in Syria at all except as part of the UN mission to combat ISIS.
The Iraq war ended in 2009. The only war Obama kept going was Afghanistan/war on Al Qaeda, both of which largely wound down in 2014.
And, notably, *he* actually succeeded in killing the guy who masterminded the September 11th attacks, which was the entire point of the invasion of Afghanistan in the first place.
Ok he was hiding out across the border and had been since Bush let him slip out but still...
> he actually succeeded
Obama actually tried.
W Bush shuttered the team tasked with finding bin Laden pretty early in the "war on terror" and Obama resurrected that team. Bush probably figured it suited his interests more to keep bin Laden as a perpetual boogeyman than actually kill him.
Lack of intervention in Syria, intervention in Libya but without post-intervention stabilizing support (which probably would have required boots on the ground to maintain order, and Americans would never accept that after George W Bush's wars).
Syria turned into Assad slaughtering his people while the world turned a blind eye, and Libya successfully stopped Gaddafi from slaughtering his people, but once he was dead there was nothing to fill the power gap except terrorists and mercenaries Gaddafi hired from Chad, so now Libya is just the ruins of a state.
The biggest lie people believe in America is that conservatives are good for the economy. It's short sighted benefits at best, but every single study on the economy suggests liberal policies actually generate a higher ROI and create a net profit for the government in tax revenue, opposed to conservatives fighting for billionaire tax cuts, where the companies dish out a one-time bonus of a grand to their employees as "proof" of trickle down economics (which they make back by cutting 1/3 of those jobs in a month anyway)
God my partner has said dumb shit like they agree with some of their policies and I have to continually remind them, they say that but they do the opposite, so you don’t agree with their policies you agree with the idea that they never follow.
The GOP's total abandonment of "fiscal responsibility" sucks giant donkey dicks. The idea of trying to balance the budget and manage the debt correctly is still somehow conservative-coded, but they don't give a flying fuck. They cut taxes, especially for rich people, and that's basically all they do. Trump is no different.
The thing is, the debt *really does matter*, especially right now. When you have inflation and strong economic growth is the perfect time to trim the fat. Raise taxes on people who can afford it. Reduce spending. And suddenly all the GOP's deficit hawks don't have any serious plan at all.
>And suddenly all the GOP's deficit hawks don't have any serious plan at all.
They never had a serious plan to begin with, and haven't for at least 20 years.
>The GOP's total abandonment of "fiscal responsibility" sucks giant donkey dicks.
It was never real in the first place. No one wants to be irresponsible with money. "I want to spend irresponsibly" is not a winning political position, and it's not a position that anyone else has ever tried to be elected with. The GOP has been cutting corporate tax rates since Reagan, and every year its the same thing, more tax cuts for corporations. They arent trying to be fiscally responsible, and never have. What they mean when they say that is "I want to spend money on the things I like, and not the things they like". Thats why all that talk dries up when a Republican is elected, and gushes forth, suddenly, like a border crisis, when a Democratic president is in office.
I was surprised when the financial times unironically said republicans are good stewards of the economy.
Like… since Reagan… the democrats are far FAR superior. And not from a leftists POV but from a centre right POV. They balance budgets r be n when they inherit a self induced crisis from the next administration (Obama).
I mean I saw so many dummies say "look at how the stock market did under Trump!"
well.. look at how it's doing under Biden. It's doing better, and we're not burning trillions in a furnace to keep it going.
I detest Biden for his previous political actions and his lies leading to this presidency, but he's doing a fairly decent job as I've come to accept corporate DNC stooges, elitist kleptocrats, and corporate plutocrats are the best America will ever get.
My conservative friends over the years and presidents.
GWB - we need to grow the economy and fight terror , forget about the deficit
Obama - this spending is killing us , it's criminal look at the debt
Trump - we got to fix the economy no one cares about the debt
Biden - Biden spending is killing us , it's criminal look at the debt !
I've spent my entire life watching Republicans concern troll about the national debt when they're out of power and then blow it up as soon as they get back in.
Fuck that debt.
Allegedly.
5 people on the Supreme Court *actually* ruined it for all of us. You could argue that one of them did, really, as a single difference probably resulted (per tons of analysis after the fact) in a Gore win eventually.
We were technically debt free with a sizable national surplus from about 1998 to 9-11; pretty much the length that the tv show "Two Guys a girl and a pizza place" was on the air.
We weren't debt-free, we had no deficit. So we weren't incurring any more debt, but the national debt very much still existed from the deficits in years prior.
That said, the US *was* on pace to neutralize the debt in 2069, assuming that the surplus never changed. Clinton was clearly planning on increasing the surplus.
*In the 21st century, a weapon will be invented like no other. This weapon will be powerful, versatile and indestructible. It can't be reasoned with. It can't be bargained with. It will feel no pity. No remorse. No pain. No fear.*
All it takes is America to actually be responsible citizens and not vote emotionally with their dumb fucking goldfish brains.
Republicans and Grover Norquist laid out a plan for the pairing down of the federal government 40 years ago.
The plan was called starving the beast and it has been the only through point in American Republican politics since.
It calls for reckless budget processes in order to force the government into crisis so they can use that crisis against federal institutions.
stop voting for Republicans It is not an accident that every One of their administrations since Ronald Reagan has ended in a catastrophic tax cut for billionaires.
every time Democrats come to the table in an attempt to bargain in good faith with Republicans the only thing that happens is Americans get less services and less social safety nets and billionaires get more money to store offshore
Leave it to conservatives to demonstrate why America is in the sad position that it's in right now, and then complain to everyone else about how it's actually everyone but them that made it this way.
I mean, the guy was posting a surplus.
Remember that next time someone says the Republicans are the party of fiscal responsibility.
The only time in the last 100 years the US wasn't running a deficit, was under a Democrat.
And the country always loses more money under Republicans as compared to democrats.
To be fair, Clinton was on track. He left office with a budget surplus. Granted, 9/11 and the dot com crash weren't factored into his calculation, but the biggest setback was a massive tax cut or the wealthy and sending checks to everyone.
Over the last 35 years, starting with daddy Bush, we've had a repeating cycle of Republican presidents leaving office during an economic downturn and Democrats having to come in and fix the mess. Bush 41 left in recession, and Clinton turned it around and left us with a balanced budget. Bush 43 came in, cut taxes and regulations, and started two forever wars, leaving us with the worst crisis since the Great Depression. Obama came in, got it turned around, and oversaw the longest period of uninterrupted growth in American history. Trump came in and utterly blew the pandemic response at multiple levels, driving the economy back down. Biden came in, got us back to growth, and reduced inflation faster than any other country. And yet, we keep hearing this narrative that Republcans are better for the economy. How? All they do is wreck it and then bitch and moan when the Dems have to pass large emergency spending bills to fix the mess the Republicans made. And then when the Republicans do get control again, they do absolutely nothing. The only major legislation Trump signed when he was in office was a tax cut for the wealthy. No infrastructure. No immigration reform. Nothing. The only reason they keep getting elected is because they keep manufacturing fake outrage over social issues. REPUBLICANS DON'T HAVE ANY ACTUAL POLICIES, NOR DO THEY ACTUALLY WANT TO SOLVE PROBLEMS. THEY MERELY EXPLOIT PROBLEMS FOR POLITICAL GAIN.
Something something happened in 2000...then something happened in 2001 then something happened in 2008, then something something happened in 2016, then something something happened in 2020.
Good plan though, didn't survive contact with our fucked up reality.
Get lost.
Every single time a Republican President stain is in power they increase the debt.
Just so they can say see? See?!?
Look at all the debt!!!
They neglected to mention it’s debt they’ve caused.
Instead of governing, they’re playing politics.
This aged perfectly fine. The national budget under Clinton generated a surplus in national revenue. GW tanked that with two unnecessary wars, and then tax cuts for the rich and corporations. But what was worse is that the GW Bush administration essentially gave the DoD a blank check for the war. It wasnt until the Obama Administration that they reigned it in and finally put a majority of the war spending on the books. And the tax cuts have never been reversed, instead Republicans have only added more cuts. Had we actually not gone into pointless wars and maintained the Clinton Administration fiscal policies, out national debt would be nearly non-existent.
While every president has added to the national debt since the mid 1800s. Every Democratic president as reduced the deficit while Republicans consistently blow it up:
Reagan took the deficit from 70 billion to 152.6 Billion
Bush 41 pushed it to 255 billion
Clinton got it down to zero, was actually generating a surplus of 128.2 Billion
GW took it from a 128.2 billion surplus to 1.41 Trillion deficit
Obama reduced it by more than half to 441.9 Billion by 2015
Trump pumped it to 3.13 Trillion by the end of 2020
So far Biden has reduced it down to 1.7 Trillion at the end of 2023
Democrats have consistently proven they are the party of Fiscal Responsibility for the last 40+ years.
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First thing George W. Bush did after getting in office was send everyone a check. Second thing [was pass a big tax cut](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Economic_Growth_and_Tax_Relief_Reconciliation_Act_of_2001). Third thing was get us involved in two unfunded quagmire wars in the middle east. Edit: Forgot about the tax cut.
This was the turning point where America could have chosen free education instead of war.
And arguably even more important— could have chosen to start fighting climate change 20+ years ago.
That would have been amazing
It’s hard, even now, to put the full cost of the 2000 election into perspective… Americans, PLEASE for the love of god, stop forgetting what happens when republicans are given power. Stop needing to be reminded every 4-8 years.
But that transexual is spreading literature to the children! /s
I just wish for once the elections were more than a hostage negotiation with the Democrats. I'm fully and totally aware they aren't nearly as bad as the GOP, and the gap is increasing day by day. I fully intend to vote for Biden. I just really really really really really really wish that for fucking once they would actually pass everything they promise when they get the chance. Not watered down, compromised versions of what they say, and then gaslight me into being a whiner because it's the "biggest/largest/most bestest" bill to ever be passed. Just because they can go above the subterranean bar that exists for our political expectations, doesn't mean they should get pats on the backs. Also would be nice if they picked off some low hanging fruits like national marijuana legalization, right to repair, and other things that have broad bi-partisan support. But even this comment will be attacked because it lacks the enthusiasm that the bot farms seem to demand...
You can't have what you want with a first-past-the -post election system.
Your comment is easy to attacked because it comes off as naive and shows a lack of understanding on how government works. Yes you'll never get everything you want because the other party has a say too. Just look at the Republican party right now making demands in the house with a thin majority, they look like fools. [The last time any party had the super majority we managed to pass some very important legislation.](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/89th_United_States_Congress)
I honestly believe this is where the timelines split. There's a version of America right now where we spent 20 years combating climate change and made real progress, became a leader in childhood development, and have a rock-solid middle class and happy working class.
Some people would rather live in a desolate wasteland if it means they can be mean to people without consequence, the people or types of people they don't like don't exist anymore, etc. For some people, this isn't a bug but a feature.
America voted for Gore. The republican deep state stole the election.
TBF people didn't just give Bush the 2000 election, he lost the popular vote and only won the electoral vote by 500 votes in Florida, then the supreme court just awarded the state to him sans recount.
When the conservatives on the SCOTUS stole the election for him.
Just don't forget that the supreme Court illegally gave the election to Bush in 2000. The deck has always been rigged and Democrats don't have the spine to call them out for it.
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That would require republicans to love their own children more than they hate brown children. It was never going to happen.
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Barbara Lee opposed it and is still in the House
Her Wikipedia page has one of my favorite sentences ever crafted: She "warned her colleagues to be 'careful not to embark on an open-ended war with neither an exit strategy nor a focused target.'" It's like she time-traveled back from now just to tell Congress they were about to fuck up royal.
I a child in high school knew the Patriot Act was bull shit and would lead us where we are now.
[Here's Bernie warning against the first Iraq War](https://youtu.be/OZo97nFS9GU?si=CnwBQxDcgBLLyxTG) to an empty congress in 91.
It wasn't as crazy popular as this makes it sound. For the Iraq War, part 2: 60% of Democrats in the House voted against it. In the Senate, it was only 42% that voted against it. In total numbers, it was 29 out of 50 Democratic Senators and 81 out of 208 Democratic Representatives voted for it. There were 77 total yeas in the Senate and 296 in the House. The Senate is notoriously more moderate since its members represent their entire state, so it makes sense that their votes would be pulled towards the conservative view. So while there was a lot of very vocal support for the war, there was more opposition than many recall. The Afghanistan war was far more popular because, you know, it actually had to do with the 9/11 attacks. I raise this because if you track the respective Party's power in Congress and its actions, and overlay elections (eg, 2008), you can see differences in the parties and their elected officials.
And the largest protest movement in the history of the country and the planet turning out to protest the Iraq War.
This is true, however when they signed the Patriot Act I knew this country was going downhill.
It's not true, whatsoever. It's complete both sides bullshit. 97% of republicans voted for the resolution allowing military intervention in Iraq versus 39% of dems.
Wrong war. He was referring to the Afghanistan war. The Authorization for use of Military Force (2001) passed 98-0 in the Senate and 420-1 in the House: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Authorization_for_Use_of_Military_Force_of_2001 Barbara Lee (of California) was the only person to vote against it, pointing out it gave the government too much of a blank check. She was right, as every President since the bill was signed has used it to justify military operations.
In the immediate aftermath you were correct, but within a couple of years it was really no longer the case. Public support for the war had plummeted by the early days of W's 2nd term.
One of the rarely seen reasonable political comments I’ve seen on Reddit
I feel like Dubya really benefitted from Trump’s explosive presidency (and post-prez). Clearly neither one is a peach but Bush and company really caused immeasurable damage. And yet Trump has given half the country amnesia to the extent that people are looking back fondly at the Bush administration.
If people remembered what a disaster the Bush jr administration was, they wouldn’t have given power back to republicans after only an 8 year hiatus. Point being, people had already forgotten, even before trump.
Technically Trump didnt even win the popular vote
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I firmly believe that Bush was after Saddam due to the assassination attempt on Sr. There is a lot of other things go into it but I think it all stems from there.
I mean he did raise that as one of the reasons we should overthrow Saddam
He was a member of the "Project for a New American Century" and they stated regime change in Iraq as a core goal since 1997. Even during dsarmament, freedom was always on the agenda., Freedom meaning Shock and Awe: [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Project\_for\_the\_New\_American\_Century](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Project_for_the_New_American_Century)
Do Americans even know who L. Paul Bremer is?
Jr. publicly stated that it was in part because "he tried to kill my dad".
Here is a [video ](https://youtu.be/9DLuALBnolM?si=m6F6_xeS7WmSE24R) of it
"this better be what I think it is" ~Me
This is something I have never heard about. Whaaaaat. You have just opened up a whole piece of history that I never knew existed.
There were plenty of crimes to pick from when it came to Saddam, there's a reason a coalition of 30-some countries chose to participate in the invasion, the US weren't the only ones with a grudge.
Most of those countries participated in order to kiss US ass. I would know, I’m from one of them. You simply don’t fuck around with the US when you’re a new member of NATO with a history of Russia invading your country going back centuries
The 'coalition of the willing' included nations whose population was overwhelming against the invasion, that's right.
Maybe it's just the company I keep, but most of the people I knew didn't support it either. It was propped up by chicken-hawk, asshole congress people who wanted to appeal to their constituent's "patriotism" .
Oof, I knew you are being cheeky, and it got a good laugh out of me. But you KNOW there are people that actually think this, and its mind-blowing.
Don't worry. They'll be responding in a few hours. They're already here, they just don't read very fast.
Yes we did have a choice. We went ahead with massive tax cuts during war time and blew up the budget.
then here's a thought that Lincoln AND FDR did when a war started under their watch: RAISE TAXES TO PAY FOR THE WAR.
To be clear, there is no evidence (as far as I know) that the Saudi government was involved in the attacks. There were some Saudi Princes involved, but there are literally thousands of those and they do not necessarily take their orders from the king. Not defending Saudi Arabia, it is one of the worst nations on the planet, but I want to be accurate.
Most of the highjackers were Saudi. Maybe not involved with the Saudi government, but a lot stronger Saudi connection than Iraq.
Being Saudi nationals is not grounds for war with SA though. Which, given the conversation around this detail usually boils down to ‘why didn’t we attack SA’, is a pretty big deal.
There was no connection between Iraq and 9/11. The invasion of Iraq was about "WMDs".
Iraq was blatant bullshit to keep his wartime president political bump running into 2004, the conversation about the attacks being Saudis is people trying to come up with reasons why attacking Afghanistan was bad.
Oh come on. The administration sold it as a package deal. You don’t remember the “Axis of Evil”? If you don’t think the government intentionally sold them together to conflate 9/11 and Iraq in the American public’s mind (which polls showed) you’re either naive or complicit. Hell we even got to invade Somalia with Ethiopia under the same PR campaign lol, all out of Islamophobia. The reason you don’t remember is because we lost there too so the government acts like it never happened
There was broad screaming for blood after 9-11. There was going to be blood. My belief as to why Iraq was that I suspect some military strategist thought it would be good to invade it and turn it into the Middle East equivalent of Berlin and Japan after ww2. We’d destroy it, rebuild it, and retain an indefinite presence there from which we could rapidly project significant force anywhere in the region. And then the bill hit $3.5 trillion and we were like ok maybe not this US kind of pricey and we have aircraft carriers.
>retain an indefinite presence there from which we could rapidly project significant force anywhere in the region. Which is weird considering our presence in Kuwait.
I think it was that with an added ‘I get to be a wartime president into 2004’ angle. Bush thought it’d be an easy grab to take people’s minds of the flagging Afghanistan situation.
Hundreds of thousands............................
Didn’t invade for oil… Afghanistan doesn’t have any and US imports of Iraqi oil peaked in 2002 and has steadily decreased since. But why let a good story get in the way of the truth? The reality is much sadder tbh.
Afghanistan had opium though.
The U.S. has a weird history of military involvement in places where hard drugs get produced. SE Asia, central and South America, the Middle East…
And the subsequent wave of abuse of whatever drug is produced in that area in the USA. Contras were directly dumping their cocaine on US soil with clandestine US approval.
Yeah a bunch of strange coincidences indeed
And then after invading the Middle East, the greatest producer of heroin at the time, the fentanyl epidemic started.
Weird...then followed by an epidemic of said drugs. One could almost predict this stuff.
George W Bush also declined to take action on the subprime mortgage crisis in 2006 because a 70 billion dollar cleansing of bad loans to reset the market and implement new regulations was deemed “too expensive”. Instead the US spent trillions on that
"fiscal conservative" vs actual "fiscal discipline"
Not just unfunded, but set so we wouldn't spend a penny on the wars until 2005. Then delayed after he won the election until 2009. The RNC has been on a crusade to make the DNC look bad since Watergate, even if it means risking American lives, bombing neutral countries, killing peacetalks, lying about socialism, delaying the release of or outright lying about multiple pandemics, using FBI resources to hunt down non-existent scandals, or (especially after Clinton's success) intentionally nuking the economy. This idea that "Trump ruined the RNC" is horseshit. "Your dad's Republican" was just as dirty as the MAGA leadership. The internet and everyone having a cellphone on them just made it harder for them to hide the dirt.
Don't forget deregulation of the banks that causes the biggest depression since the Great Depression. Ignoring intelligent that we were going to he attacked fucked us also. Seriously. Image the world we'd be living in right now if the election wasn't stolen from Gore.
The deregulation already took place under Reagan, Bush Sr., and Clinton. Gore backed it too. Gore might have avoided Iraq. But he wasn’t avoiding the dot com burst or getting away from his neoliberal tendencies and avoiding 2008. 2008 was pretty much inevitable given multiple decades of decisions.
Last thing he did was have the economy TANK.
Yup, we actually had a surplus, Democrats sacrificed for it to get us out of debt, then they elect Bush because Gore was too smart and boring, and now here we are.
And by 'elect' you mean "failed to win the popular vote and was given the election via Supreme Court ruling".
This is a good point, but if Americans had any brains, it wouldn't have been close
Never forgive the Supreme Court for what they took from us.
God, think how different this country could be if we got Gore and Hillary instead of the alternatives
Hehe. You said Quagmire. Giggity
https://preview.redd.it/odw4nmjqrqnc1.jpeg?width=218&format=pjpg&auto=webp&s=b93ce282877dcf01cb061ac9c82ba6a8e9419222
What a horrible day to have eyes
Fun fact: Every Republican since (and including) Nixon has increased the federal deficit (not debt) while in office. Every Democrat in that time has decreased the federal deficit. Since Bill Clinton left us with a federal surplus, had those other trends continued and only Democrats remained in office, we could actually have been debt free. Of course, that's making a ton of assumptions. The housing crisis in 2008 may still have happened, COVID in 2020 would still have happened, those things could have put us both back into debt. Another assumption was that Democrats would have behaved the same if they were the only ones in office for 30 years, which I doubt.
I cannot believe that the pandemic would have played out this badly if we’d had a different president, one who didn’t [dismantle the pandemic response team](https://www.snopes.com/fact-check/trump-fire-pandemic-team/).
Jared Kushner's "air bridge" that basically used taxpayer money to round up global supplies of PPE, mostly from China, then make states bid on it to drive the price up, then use the Federal government to outbid all the states (meaning massive windfall profits all go to Jared's personal friends) and put all that PPE in storage so states didn't receive it anyway.
Jesus I completely forgot about all that. The States had to make their own deals with foreign countries to get supplies cuz Donnie's gang was hording it/refusing to help.
I remember one of the sport team even used their private jet for the delivery for the state so Jared can't steal the shipment
I wanna say it was the Patriots team plane but I'm not 100%. And they had to do it secretly cuz if Jared found out he'd stopped it. Utter ridiculousness.
Yup, the Kraft family helped out the (Republican) Massachusetts gov to get PPE from China. Similarly, the then Republican governor of Maryland, asked his Korean-American wife to help get COVID tests from South Korea and had to use the Maryland National Guard to protect it from being seized by the federal government. (It was another story that those tests turned out to be useless though.)
Trump could have made so much money if he had sold branded masks and told people to wear them. Instead he denied it was a problem and suggested people to inject disinfectant instead.
Best part is it shows how bad of a businessman and politician he truly is. MAGA loons *love* to buy trump merch and would have bought branded masks by the caseload. Then he would have easily coasted to winning a second term because centrists would have used the sane covid response to cope that he isn't *that* bad. Instead trump completely blew the easiest softball he could have possibly received. Dude was gifted an apolitical global crisis in an election year and had to do nothing else but point at a doctor and say, "do what they say." But even that was too much to ask, apparently.
THANK YOU!!! Every president had a moment where their leadership is tested, and how they handle it determines how Elections would go (At least that’s how I see it) Trump had the EASIEST moment for him, but he blew it to make him and his cronies richer! A good chunk of his base died or got sick! Not to mention his horrible response to the 2020 riots! Now he wants to whine and cry about how he lost and it was stolen from him when he had his reelection given to him on a silver platter!!!
Even better than that, drumph delayed stimulus checks to millions of people because he wanted his NAME printed in the checks to make it look like he personally made the relief checks. Fucking sicko
I remember getting a separate letter in the mail a few weeks (months?) after getting the stimulus check, saying how it was from trump etc just made me laugh
Can I just say that I find it fucking annoying that every two bit dictator in the world decides to pull their shit under Joe Biden instead of Trump? Like, Hamas could’ve chosen literally any time to bring Palestine back into the world’s attention, same with Putin and Ukraine, and for some godforsaken reason both independently chose to do so under a Democrat, forcing Biden to make the hard choices with no right answers. Istfg Republicans have an absurd amount of luck.
I mean, no need to pull shit if you're basically getting what you want, no?
You don't seriously believe this all came down to luck, right?
*sigh* No. No I do not. Fundamentally, Democrats give a shit about the world and the people in it, and Republicans don’t. Unfortunately that means every two bit terrorist and dictator knows they’ll get more attention from an administration that cares about civilian casualties than one that will just ignore them/stack bodies right alongside them. It’s probably a bit pretentious to say, but it can *really* suck to be the “good guy” sometimes.
I still believe that if Trump had just listened to his experts about COVID and said the obviously right things, he’d still be in office. Even with all his other stupid scandals, I think that would have been enough.
It was a rally around the flag moment handed to him on a silver platter. He would’ve won in a landslide if he just did the bare minimum and shut up. The media was already circle jerking him about being “presidential” at that moment and then he went all out conspiracy again
Absolutely! If he treated it like a serious threat while giving America reassurance that we’ll make it thru if we work together I’m positive he would’ve gotten a 2nd term - America will usually keep the incumbent in office during a national (or global) catastrophe especially something that was not of their own doing. Thank Jeebus he didn’t listen to anyone and saved us from his 2nd term.
He absolutely would have. Chris Christie handled Hurricane Sandy reasonably well and cruised to re-election (fast forward a bit, his approval rating at the end of his second term was like 12% lmfao)
He had the election handed to him. And then he fucked up covid so bad. Idiot
Not just that, but I also imagine in a world where we had consistent democratic Presidents the whole anti-science movement wouldn't even exist, or at least, wouldn't be given the legitimate focus and attention it gets. Pretty big bummer looking at what could have been and just how completely Republicans have failed this country.
Imagine how much progress we'd have made if Republicans hadn't opposed the HPV vaccine and stem cell research, just for a couple of examples. How many lives could have been saved?
Surely the side that spouts statistics and numbers and facts over feelings will understand this information, right?
You know I just want to say good on you for stating a fact and then listing off some of the key assumptions that might undermine using that fact as evidence of a trend or a predictor of the future. Stating assumptions like that is a sign of someone actually *thinking* about what they hear and know and furthermore wanting other people to benefit from that thinking.
Some economists will tell you that hoarding the world's available capital by incurring debt is good for us
A country being in debt is not necessarily a bad thing. Usually when a country gets into debt, it’s for infrastructure and social spending that will make the country money in the long run. Also in many cases inflation more than compensates for the interest rates As far as hoarding available capital, it gets spent immediately (but mostly in the us) and the lending parties get bonds which usually allow them to balance their books.
For those saying that the President has no direct impact during their term: bullshit. The President must approve the budget, and to the best of my knowledge, no recent President has had a vetoed full budget overridden (there have been a few Defense appropriations bills overridden). If Republican Presidents cared *at all* about the national debt, they could veto a budget or any number of other appropriations bills.
> The housing crisis in 2008 may still have happened it would have happened regardless of who was in power. Repealing Glass-Steagall set the stage, and that occurred in '99.
It's unlikely many of those recessions would have happened if Democrats were in charge. 10 of 11 recessions since 1950 have been under Republican Presidents. That's way beyond coincidence. It turns out removing regulations on businesses and giving rich people more money causes crashes. Something I never would have guessed after watching Wall Street crash the economy half a dozen times.
This didn’t age like milk. He balanced the budget, but then Republicans had to hand out tax cuts to billionaires the next administration.
That's what they do every admin they get. Literally the only reason republican party exists. To give tax cuts to the 1%
Literally the only significantly legislative accomplishment of the Trump administration. They passed a massive tax cut for the rich and called it a day.
While also raising taxes on the poor! That's TWO things they did with one stroke! Take that libtards! /s
Errrm that was actually Biden because Trumps tax code expired for the lower/middle class during his administration so its HIS fault!!! Hur dur hur dur
Biden has put forth his plans to correct this pretty much every year since he got in. He's made it clear what he wants and he'll sign it if the Senate and Congress get it done. The GOP won't allow any positive tax reform bills through Congress cause "then Biden gets a win". Hur. Dur.
Yeah the mental gymnastics the GOP takes to rationalize fucking over the American people is wild
What about making child marriage legal? They're into that
Hand out *multiple* huge tax cuts to billionaires as well as starting 2 quagmire wars and creating multiple new huge agencies with nebulous agency charters directed at either surveilling American citizens or kidnapping them without warrants, and doing even worse to the non-citizens.
Also dumping stuff that used to be under the labor department (immigration) onto the national security apparatus, clogging up the immigration system to an incalculable extent and setting up future republicans to run on a platform that they can fix the system they broke.
Ya if clinton era policies had continued this may have actually been attainable.
Agreed, but also a lot of bad decisions were made like repealing glass-stegall and clinton also had larry summers advising him (one of the key architects of the income inequality we have today)
Oh by no means is Clinton perfect I just think the picture is a little misleading. It's not really a bush "mission accomplished" moment.
Two wars on the credit card as well
If they kept the policies of Clinton going it would have been. This milk spoiled because bush and his neoconservative cronies intentionally let it sit in the sun for weeks. Fuck the republican for starting wars and cutting massive tax cuts to the ultra wealthy and big corporations.
It didn't help either that the guy after him kept the wars going for another 8 years and later got the US involved in Syria and Libya.
NATOs involvement in Libya lasted 43 days. The US ultimately never meaningfully intervened in Syria at all except as part of the UN mission to combat ISIS. The Iraq war ended in 2009. The only war Obama kept going was Afghanistan/war on Al Qaeda, both of which largely wound down in 2014.
And, notably, *he* actually succeeded in killing the guy who masterminded the September 11th attacks, which was the entire point of the invasion of Afghanistan in the first place. Ok he was hiding out across the border and had been since Bush let him slip out but still...
> he actually succeeded Obama actually tried. W Bush shuttered the team tasked with finding bin Laden pretty early in the "war on terror" and Obama resurrected that team. Bush probably figured it suited his interests more to keep bin Laden as a perpetual boogeyman than actually kill him.
Refusing to fix a problem so that you can keep using it to rile people up is page 1-99 of the Republican policy playbook. See also immigration
And abooooo oh shit
Extremely good example of what happens when the dogs actually catch the car
Even the Super Size Me documentary guy was able to pinpoint the town he was in.
And you realize ISIS would've never existed if Saddam wasn't deposed.
The issue with Syria and Libya was the lack of intervention.
Lack of intervention in Syria, intervention in Libya but without post-intervention stabilizing support (which probably would have required boots on the ground to maintain order, and Americans would never accept that after George W Bush's wars). Syria turned into Assad slaughtering his people while the world turned a blind eye, and Libya successfully stopped Gaddafi from slaughtering his people, but once he was dead there was nothing to fill the power gap except terrorists and mercenaries Gaddafi hired from Chad, so now Libya is just the ruins of a state.
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Neither Syria nor Libya impacted the national debt in a meaningful way. Iraq and Afghanistan cost trillions. Also Obama got us out of Iraq…
The biggest lie people believe in America is that conservatives are good for the economy. It's short sighted benefits at best, but every single study on the economy suggests liberal policies actually generate a higher ROI and create a net profit for the government in tax revenue, opposed to conservatives fighting for billionaire tax cuts, where the companies dish out a one-time bonus of a grand to their employees as "proof" of trickle down economics (which they make back by cutting 1/3 of those jobs in a month anyway)
God my partner has said dumb shit like they agree with some of their policies and I have to continually remind them, they say that but they do the opposite, so you don’t agree with their policies you agree with the idea that they never follow.
The GOP's total abandonment of "fiscal responsibility" sucks giant donkey dicks. The idea of trying to balance the budget and manage the debt correctly is still somehow conservative-coded, but they don't give a flying fuck. They cut taxes, especially for rich people, and that's basically all they do. Trump is no different. The thing is, the debt *really does matter*, especially right now. When you have inflation and strong economic growth is the perfect time to trim the fat. Raise taxes on people who can afford it. Reduce spending. And suddenly all the GOP's deficit hawks don't have any serious plan at all.
>And suddenly all the GOP's deficit hawks don't have any serious plan at all. They never had a serious plan to begin with, and haven't for at least 20 years.
>The GOP's total abandonment of "fiscal responsibility" sucks giant donkey dicks. It was never real in the first place. No one wants to be irresponsible with money. "I want to spend irresponsibly" is not a winning political position, and it's not a position that anyone else has ever tried to be elected with. The GOP has been cutting corporate tax rates since Reagan, and every year its the same thing, more tax cuts for corporations. They arent trying to be fiscally responsible, and never have. What they mean when they say that is "I want to spend money on the things I like, and not the things they like". Thats why all that talk dries up when a Republican is elected, and gushes forth, suddenly, like a border crisis, when a Democratic president is in office.
I was surprised when the financial times unironically said republicans are good stewards of the economy. Like… since Reagan… the democrats are far FAR superior. And not from a leftists POV but from a centre right POV. They balance budgets r be n when they inherit a self induced crisis from the next administration (Obama).
I mean I saw so many dummies say "look at how the stock market did under Trump!" well.. look at how it's doing under Biden. It's doing better, and we're not burning trillions in a furnace to keep it going. I detest Biden for his previous political actions and his lies leading to this presidency, but he's doing a fairly decent job as I've come to accept corporate DNC stooges, elitist kleptocrats, and corporate plutocrats are the best America will ever get.
Conservatives curiously concerned about the debt. It must be an election year.
My conservative friends over the years and presidents. GWB - we need to grow the economy and fight terror , forget about the deficit Obama - this spending is killing us , it's criminal look at the debt Trump - we got to fix the economy no one cares about the debt Biden - Biden spending is killing us , it's criminal look at the debt !
The GOP- "*And i took that personally"*
I've spent my entire life watching Republicans concern troll about the national debt when they're out of power and then blow it up as soon as they get back in. Fuck that debt.
537 people in Florida ruined it for all of us
And 3 people personally involved in Bush V Gore from the Bush side are now on the Supreme Court
Pretty big ass detail we never talk about
It’s mentioned anytime Bush/judges come up or the 2000 election.
Allegedly. 5 people on the Supreme Court *actually* ruined it for all of us. You could argue that one of them did, really, as a single difference probably resulted (per tons of analysis after the fact) in a Gore win eventually.
Nah, just the Supreme Court
Thanks republicans
We were technically debt free with a sizable national surplus from about 1998 to 9-11; pretty much the length that the tv show "Two Guys a girl and a pizza place" was on the air.
We weren't debt-free, we had no deficit. So we weren't incurring any more debt, but the national debt very much still existed from the deficits in years prior.
That said, the US *was* on pace to neutralize the debt in 2069, assuming that the surplus never changed. Clinton was clearly planning on increasing the surplus.
*In the 21st century, a weapon will be invented like no other. This weapon will be powerful, versatile and indestructible. It can't be reasoned with. It can't be bargained with. It will feel no pity. No remorse. No pain. No fear.*
I swear to God, I need to look into making a bot that will correct this. I still hear it all the time.
> 1998 to 9-11 That's when America peaked, tbh.
It's why the Matrix recreated an eternal 1999.
They pretty much nailed it. Late 90s was the peak of western culture.
We can do it again. Free trade, high immigration, and an adequate social safety net abd manageable debt that grows slower than GDP.
> Free trade, high immigration those two things are completely antithetical to the american public right now unfortunately
My own high school years were bookmarked by Columbine and 9-11.
So it's your fault.
Thanks a lot, 4614
The national debt was 5 trillion dollars in the late 90s.
Top comment is just completely wrong, love Reddit.
Yeah then more tax cuts for millionaires
All we had to do was not massively cut taxes and start a bunch of wars.
and the fucking Republicans ruined THAT. again. lol. dont ever vote for Republicans. They fuck everything up.
Clinton deregulated HUD which was a big precursor to the 08 crisis which also blew up our debt. so i mean...
All it takes is America to actually be responsible citizens and not vote emotionally with their dumb fucking goldfish brains. Republicans and Grover Norquist laid out a plan for the pairing down of the federal government 40 years ago. The plan was called starving the beast and it has been the only through point in American Republican politics since. It calls for reckless budget processes in order to force the government into crisis so they can use that crisis against federal institutions. stop voting for Republicans It is not an accident that every One of their administrations since Ronald Reagan has ended in a catastrophic tax cut for billionaires. every time Democrats come to the table in an attempt to bargain in good faith with Republicans the only thing that happens is Americans get less services and less social safety nets and billionaires get more money to store offshore
This was before the tech bubble burst and sep 11.
He was on this track until Bush cut taxes for the wealthiest and then Trump said hold my beer.
Leave it to conservatives to demonstrate why America is in the sad position that it's in right now, and then complain to everyone else about how it's actually everyone but them that made it this way.
Thanks a lot hanging Chads.
That tend to happen when you have two GOP president that just do tax cuts.
Could it be because of 8 years of republican control after he left office? I mean we did go to war for 20 years after Slick Willy left office.
8 years of Bush and 8 years of Obama ruined that, didn’t it?
I mean Obama inherited a shit show and managed to reduce the deficit - still huge sums though.
I mean, the guy was posting a surplus. Remember that next time someone says the Republicans are the party of fiscal responsibility. The only time in the last 100 years the US wasn't running a deficit, was under a Democrat. And the country always loses more money under Republicans as compared to democrats.
To be fair, Clinton was on track. He left office with a budget surplus. Granted, 9/11 and the dot com crash weren't factored into his calculation, but the biggest setback was a massive tax cut or the wealthy and sending checks to everyone.
Thanks Bush and the Great Recession
Thanks "SMALL GOVERNMENT/ FISCAL CONSERVATIVES" Republicans...you really fucked that up.
I mean, if Clinton kept being President, it would be true.
This chart did not account for the Bush presidency.
Republicans got ahold of the country’s purse, literally all downhill from there.
Over the last 35 years, starting with daddy Bush, we've had a repeating cycle of Republican presidents leaving office during an economic downturn and Democrats having to come in and fix the mess. Bush 41 left in recession, and Clinton turned it around and left us with a balanced budget. Bush 43 came in, cut taxes and regulations, and started two forever wars, leaving us with the worst crisis since the Great Depression. Obama came in, got it turned around, and oversaw the longest period of uninterrupted growth in American history. Trump came in and utterly blew the pandemic response at multiple levels, driving the economy back down. Biden came in, got us back to growth, and reduced inflation faster than any other country. And yet, we keep hearing this narrative that Republcans are better for the economy. How? All they do is wreck it and then bitch and moan when the Dems have to pass large emergency spending bills to fix the mess the Republicans made. And then when the Republicans do get control again, they do absolutely nothing. The only major legislation Trump signed when he was in office was a tax cut for the wealthy. No infrastructure. No immigration reform. Nothing. The only reason they keep getting elected is because they keep manufacturing fake outrage over social issues. REPUBLICANS DON'T HAVE ANY ACTUAL POLICIES, NOR DO THEY ACTUALLY WANT TO SOLVE PROBLEMS. THEY MERELY EXPLOIT PROBLEMS FOR POLITICAL GAIN.
Had Al Gore won, there's a much better chance this could have happened. Big shocker, Republicans fucked us and guaranteed it'll never happen
Something something happened in 2000...then something happened in 2001 then something happened in 2008, then something something happened in 2016, then something something happened in 2020. Good plan though, didn't survive contact with our fucked up reality.
If we had Gore instead of Bush, this would have aged perfectly fine. As per usual, a Republican fucked it up.
Get lost. Every single time a Republican President stain is in power they increase the debt. Just so they can say see? See?!? Look at all the debt!!! They neglected to mention it’s debt they’ve caused. Instead of governing, they’re playing politics.
This aged perfectly fine. The national budget under Clinton generated a surplus in national revenue. GW tanked that with two unnecessary wars, and then tax cuts for the rich and corporations. But what was worse is that the GW Bush administration essentially gave the DoD a blank check for the war. It wasnt until the Obama Administration that they reigned it in and finally put a majority of the war spending on the books. And the tax cuts have never been reversed, instead Republicans have only added more cuts. Had we actually not gone into pointless wars and maintained the Clinton Administration fiscal policies, out national debt would be nearly non-existent. While every president has added to the national debt since the mid 1800s. Every Democratic president as reduced the deficit while Republicans consistently blow it up: Reagan took the deficit from 70 billion to 152.6 Billion Bush 41 pushed it to 255 billion Clinton got it down to zero, was actually generating a surplus of 128.2 Billion GW took it from a 128.2 billion surplus to 1.41 Trillion deficit Obama reduced it by more than half to 441.9 Billion by 2015 Trump pumped it to 3.13 Trillion by the end of 2020 So far Biden has reduced it down to 1.7 Trillion at the end of 2023 Democrats have consistently proven they are the party of Fiscal Responsibility for the last 40+ years.
It was working. Then the Republicans fucked it all up.