the govt has done enough in recent history to teach me that i cannot trust it to be a referee. whether its under bush or obama. those $700B bailouts were ludicrous and thus far way too loosely regulated.

i dont want the govt giving away my money, ofc. there needs to be more govt watchdogs imo, both for the republicans and democrats.

i mean, honestly, didnt the whole tea party movement start start because people were tired of the govt overspending? (im not pro-tea, btw).

but the sad fact of the matter is that the govt isnt spending my money. theyre spending my grandchildren's money. and technically i guess, theyre spending china's money.

anyways, my main point being, stop the fucking deficit spending. we can achieve a hell of a lot in education, in industry, in banking, in military, WITHOUT spending these obscene amounts of money. more watchdogs on govt spending -> more efficiency in how we spend our money -> less spending.

and perhaps one of the roots of this deficit spending is reagan's trickle down effect. im not an economist, and my guess is that both republicans and democrats have spent gobs and gobs of money to produce statistics that say that it doesnt work and it does work.

but deficit spending is stupid, whether on a personal level or a federal level.

Ah monte I believe what you're upset by the fiscal=political strategy known as "starving the beast". It's considered by many to be a core of american conservative policy. Basically conservative legislators massively increase spending over a few decades so that ultimately the government goes into debt and then whatever the conservatives don't like can be cut under the guise of cutting expenditures. The cause of our massive debt has nothing to do with the measly 15% of the budget that's discretionary, it has everything to do with corporate handouts and no bid contracts and defense contracts. These are the corrupt aspects of our government that are ruining our way of life.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Starve_the_beast

Like I said, the government is the closest thing we have to a referee and in fact that was the whole intention behind creating a system of government. Obviously the people we have been electing to government haven't been taking their duties seriously and have used the institution to profit rather than protect. It's a grave injustice but there's not much we can do.. except vote for those we think have our best interests at heart. Anyway this whole public debt crisis was something the conservatives were working to achieve for some time, so props thraxle.

By the way the republicans were trying to get that balanced budget amendment passed in the 90s for this very reason, but I guess they couldn't pass it so they had to wait until now for the debt to become an unignorable issue.

You said I wasn't a conservative, remember?

look i agree with you about the 15% being the minor fraction. but its still a fraction. we need to cut EVERYTHING till we get the budget back to bill clinton levels. im technically a republican i guess, but i gotta say the military spending is off the charts.

i understand this will piss a shit ton of people off, because a lot of people's jobs rely on these handouts/contracts/whatever. but fuck you people, we cant just piss away our future money to have a good life now.

You said you're conservative, I just said that if you're for personal freedom that is not a conservative policy and you may not actually be conservative in that case. If you no longer consider yourself a conservative then I commend you on brightening your horizons and leaving behind the conservative ideology.

We need to switch to a flat tax or consumption tax. Kill the IRS (that will save money). Significantly reduce military spending. Eliminate earmarks. Curb the power of unions in every state.....unions are destroying jobs in this country. Reign in the healthcare industry, but do it without increasing spending. The current law is going to create more debt.

Make no mistake Joe, Obama is going to squeeze the next two years as much as possible to push through his agenda. Republicans will get their chance in 2012, but we'll just have to deal with this shit till then. It's all Bush's fault anyways.

im not totally republican tho. i still really hate bush's administration for pushing that first $700B bailout through. and i hate obama's for pushing the second one through. $1.4T is a shitload of money. for my family, that amounts to $14,000. i know its unrealistic to think of it that way, because the math is too simple.