Helmsman Rebuttal

Quoting “Helmsman”:

“The Clinton administration left George W. Bush with the largest budget surplus in the history of the Republic. George Bush will leave the next President with the largest budget deficit in the history of the Republic. It's not silly to call that malfeasance.”

I would not defend Bush 43 as a fiscal Conservative. He did, after all, sign into law the largest expansion of Entitlements since LBJ.

But, those who regurgitate such shallow propaganda fail to understand the fundamental facts.

It is intuitively obvious that Medicare & Medicaid (both signed into law in 1965) are what sent this country on a path to never ending deficit spending.

Prior to those new Entitlements (excepting for World War II, which is not covered in this database), only two recessions produced ANY deficit spending. Subsequent to LBJ’s 1965 Entitlement binge, deficit spending became the ever expanding norm.

Click the image to enlarge and view the source:


The only significant exception to this new norm (mid 1997 to mid 2001) was brought about by the single largest speculative bubble ever known to humanity (the dot.com bubble). Clinton was the unwitting beneficiary of unprecedented revenues from day traders paying a small fortune in short term capital gains taxes.

Click the image to enlarge this chart of the NASDAQ bubble:

Click here to reproduce the above chart.
Select a custom time frame from 1/2/92 to 10/17/2002.

Clinton also benefited from serving the last 6 of his 8 years under a fiscally Conservative Congress dominated by Republicans in both houses. Aside from that, Clinton realized some additional savings by gutting our military (another area where Bush 43 had to pay the piper).

Defense spending as a percentage of GDP, click the chart to learn more:


2000 through mid 2003 witnessed substantial decreases in “Net Government Saving”.

Click the image to enlarge and view the source:


These deficits were exacerbated by:

1) The years long deflating of the NASDAQ bubble.

2) The terrorist attacks of 9/11/01.

3) The associated recession.

But, the real underlying culprit was the 800 lb. Gorilla that President Bush tried to address and which Congress was too cowardly to take on (Entitlement Reform). Whoever wins in November will inherit the same problem and, absent sweeping Entitlement reform, will produce similar deficits.

Clinton was not some economic genius who magically created giant surpluses from giant deficits (or wine from water). Clinton and crew were the unwitting beneficiaries of the single largest speculative bubble in the entire history of humanity. His surpluses were entirely a function of the giant capital gains taxes being paid by day traders full of “irrational exuberance”.

Bush 43 was merely the poor sap who got to pay the piper and suffer the hangover once the party was over.

Oh, and about all those jobs created under the Clinton administration…
Most of those jobs were as illusory as the “new economy” “new paradigm” where “eyeballs” on your web site replaced any need for profits. And, Bush 43, again, was the poor sap who paid that piper as well. The sock puppet is the only employee from Pets.com that still has a job created under Clinton. And Pets.com is a good example in microcosm for the fate of a large chunk of the purely illusory jobs created during the Clinton years.

Now that the party is over, we’re right back where we started from. We’re drowning in Entitlement spending. It WILL kill the goose that laid the golden egg:

Click the image to view the source:

Or, click here and read the CBO report.

Worse still, history PROVES we CANNOT tax our way out of this problem.

Think higher tax rates produce higher tax revenues?
Read about the (well proven) Laffer Curve & think again!
Click the image & read the facts:


Obama is promising MASSIVE new Entitlements at a time when it is a mathematical CERTAINTY that existing Entitlements are utterly unsustainable and WILL KILL US!