===============
That's NEVER, George. Not Reagan, Bush, Coolidge, or whoever. Clinton
deserves some of the credit, period. BTW the LAST balanced budget existed
under Democrats also, didn't it?
===============
the last annual dubget surplus before came under the Nixon administration
actually, but Nixon was a liberal republican by today's standards.
before oil-prices caused terrible inflation in the 70's, we
routinely had balanced budgets and even surpluses during peacetime. Most of
the national debt was accrued during wars, borrowing money to increase the
budget for military building. enter Ronald Reagan. and we get
unprecedented peacetime military budgets. the national debt from
1776 to 1980, over 200 years worth of accrual, stood at $980 billion
when reagan entered the white house. that's less than $1 trillion.
when reagan left, the debt stood at $3.8 trillion, that's 4x what
it was when he started. In 8 years, his policies accrued new debt
that was 3x as large as the entire history of the country before him
had accrued. Ever corrected for inflation, this is huge.
Unemployment stood at greater than 7 0uring the entire 80's, the highest
of any decade since the great depression.
>>Do you recall an
entity called the Soviet Union? The Cold War? The Berlin Wall? Do you
realize that Reagan was president during a time when HUGE military
budgets were an absolute necessity?
no they were not a necessity. our defense against the USSR was
mutual-assured-destruction by nuclear weapons, and we had enough
to wipe them out 40 times over when reagan took office. moreover,
it was reported widely in the european press that the USSR was
crumbling and unviable 6 years before it was reported in the US.
while europeans were pondering the fall of the USSR, reagan was
spouting off about the evil empire to justify the huge military
budgets. no wonder some americans think they were necessary.
but if those unprecedented peace time increases in military spending
were so necessary, why didn't the soviets attack us during the carter or
nixon years? Answer: we already had an arsenal of nuclear missiles
capable of wiping them out 40 times over.
Joseph
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