Here is some good news from the new Harper’s Index (Oct. 2011):
* Seventy-one percent of current U.S. debt was accumulated during Republican presidential terms.
* Two-thirds of debt-ceiling elevations since 1960 have been signed into law by Republican presidents.
* In 1961 the percentage of corporate profits paid in taxes was nearly forty-one; now it is less than eleven.
* Seventy-five percent of the increase in corportate profit margins since 2001 has come from depressed wages.
* The value of government subsidies that will go to oil and gas industries between now and 2015 is estimated at $78,155,000,000.
And, while we’re at, it:
* There is not a single state in the union in which less than twenty percent of adults are obese. O for fifty.
What a country!
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Don’t forget the most telling stat: 86% of college English professors consider Harpers a reliable source.
“* There is not a single state in the union in which less than twenty percent of adults are obese. O for fifty.”
At my parish it’s more like over 50%.
On the carbon footprint scale it’s an inverse ratio, the less body fat the fatter the carbon footprint.
We’re not just a wee bit partisan, are we?
True. But facts do have a demonstrated liberal bias.
Oh I get it, all those Democratic Congresses were just passive onlookers while the nasty GOP rang up the debt.
Both parties are equally to blame for the budget crisis.
Wingnut 101: When in doubt, don’t challenge the data, attack the messenger, then change the subject.
“Seventy-one percent of current U.S. debt was accumulated during Republican presidential terms.” Don’t forget that a significant fraction of the debt accumulated during Clinton’s term was due to interest on the debt accumulated by Reagan & Bush I. Without such interest payments, the pre-Reagan debt would have been paid off !
So what percentage of our debt was rung up by Democratic Speakers of the House? Why is Presidential debt the only stat cited? Presidents are not Constitutionally empowered to spend ONE DIME.
JC
“Presidents are not Constitutionally empowered to spend ONE DIME.”
Remember that next time you hear FOX “NEWS” rail on our current prez about the debt.
I don’t know, but Speaker Hastert (actually Speaker deLay) sure helped ring up some debt with the support of the Bush tax cuts ($1.6 trillion and counting) and the support of the Iraq War ($2 trillion and counting). And, of course, from 1981-87, Republicans didn’t just control the Presidency, they controlled the U.S. Senate, a fact other Republicans love to pretend doesn’t exist.
It is simply NOT TRUE that “both parties are equally to blame for the budget crisis. George W. Bush and his cronies racked up tremendous debt for the country by plunging us into wars without paying for them, and giving millionaires and billionaires literally trillions of dollars in tax cuts that also were not paid for. Then he topped it off by plunging us into what would have been a second global Depression if President Obama and the Democrats hadn’t rescued us all. There’s no equivalence whatsoever.
Continuing to refer to the Democrat Party as “liberal” and Republican Party as “conservative” is only slightly more hilarious than referring to the current Chinese government as “communist”.
No, the Demopublican -Reprocrat consolidation should adopt the Ostrich as a third party bait and switch under the banner of Ironocons.
By all means, lets keep blaming the farce on partisan opponents, if it makes us feel better
Let’s be honest here.
Clinton was the only administration that got to a point of cutting into the debt for the past 30 years. Bush took something that was doing well and utterly destroyed this. Arguing against either of these two points just points out how far out of sync with reality you are.
But keep reading the next 3 bullets, which is pointing more to the root cause of the issues we are seeing currently. The corporations have people thinking that party X or party Y is to blame, or that they are all the same, so let’s ignore the problem.
Those 3 bullets are the types of information people need to focus on if they are actually interested in getting their country back.
It really doesn’t matter which party is in power. Without a Christians ethos to hold the appetites in check, greed will always win.
Zach, Congress appropriated LESS than Reagan asked for in his Budget proposals. It’s NEVER the Republicans’ fault. How about some PERSONAL RESPONSIBILITY!