Are you fuckin soft? How many times have we gone over the same numbers? Look at Clinton's first term, it was STABLE. I already explained to you that given what he inherited from Reagan/Bush, it took a good deal of fiscal restraint(1993 reconciliation bill) to achieve this. Of course, there were still going to be deficits, and money added to the gross national debt, you can't undo 12 years in 4. However, as the chart shows, it had been increasing by leaps and bounds since 1980. Clinton stabilizes this, and then it drops, and somehow, this shows his policies were responsible for high debt%of GDP.
It rose each of the first three years Clinton was in office, so look again! In any event, you asked me to recalculate the numbers and that is exactly what I did. I did not make any comments at all on either presidents policies. All I did was show the numbers, pure and simple.
Only in your world is there any possible way that the numbers can reflect good on Bush and bad on Clinton. Even if the average was a bit higher, look at what each started with. As I said, if Bush had started at 66% like Clinton did, we would have had 73% by the end of his first term and 101% when he left office.
I never said one was good and the other was bad. Stop making things up. I already know what each started with. What you don't consider is the far more difficult crises that the Bush administration had to face while he was in office compared with Clinton, which would naturally make it more difficult to keep debt as a percentage of GDP from rising.
Regardless, all I did was recaculate the totals and point out the factual numbers. Its indisputable, and so its puzzling why it would upset you.
This is exactly why you are viewed as such a joke on here. Its not the numbers, its you using them to dispute that Bush ran up record deficits and debt, which can not be done. You are older than me, and you surely remember well the Clinton years with all the talk of debt and deficits going down, 2 balanced budgets and a surplus. The opposite happened when Bush came in.
Where did I dispute that the national debt and deficit increased while Bush was in office?
No one was really talking about declining debt, the end of a deficit or surplus until at least 1997. Then both the administration and congress battled over who would take credit for it. In 1996, both congress and the White House were still forcasting deficits for years to come!
Yes, surplus ended and the deficits returned in Bush's first term. The country was facing big international crises, involved in two wars, a very different environment from the Clinton years. Had such crises transpired during Clinton's time in office, there would have been no such thing as a Surplus!
But none of that was the point in my response. You asked me to recaculate the numbers and I did.
The averages for both Bush and Clinton are above 60% and neither can be consider good from a historical perspective!
You do not have to deny this.
WHERE DID I EVER DENY THIS?
It makes you look like a pathetic spinster when you do.
Except I never did deny this, yet you claim that I did. What do you think that makes you look like?
How about a discussion of Bush's POLICIES? Tell us why you think he did the best thing he could have done at the time, why you think x or y policy really did not have the influence some suggest, etc.
I've discussed many of Bush's policies in here, more than many would want me to. I don't think that Bush did the best he could have done on several things including the economy. But none of that changes what the numbers are which is all I was refering too!
Not that you have ever done that, most of what you do is cut and paste BS that you do not understand anyway.
Do you always exibit this type of behavior with people you disagree with? I post some simple factual numbers, and your lashing out at other people and making unsubstantiated claims about what they know and how they posts.
Now, no more numbers, we have been through them. No more averages, I have pointed you to the flaws.
There were no flaws in the calculations. I used the averages only to show that things were not as bad as people claimed!
Tell me how this somehow shows that a Bush Presidency was somehow better than a Clinton Presidency given the numbers you use.
It doesn't tell you that. I never tried to have the numbers show that either. The numbers for both administrations are actually very similar. I was only pointing out that the Bush years and the 00s were not the HORROR story economically, that so many people in here claim it to have been.
I know you will not do that, you will keep repeating the same things we have already been over, but such is the life of Strongbow. So every time from now on you just can not understand how I would make such wild accusations about you not discussing in good faith, I will point right to this. I do not make this stuff up. It is very clear you are still stuck on saying something entirely different than the facts happened during the Bush years.
Again, in this case, the point I was making with the numbers was very simple. That the 00s were NOT the Decade from Hell.
Unfortunately for some reason, you still don't understand that. All I did was mention the numbers, the factual numbers without making any claims at all from a political standpoint. You asked me to recaculate the 90s debt as a percentage of GDP and I did. I recaculated a few other numbers as well and posted them.
Then, we get a post from you filled with absurd personal remarks and other junk. All of that because of a post with basic numbers that made no claims about this President being better than that one or anything.
Why does the posting of something so basic and factual upset you?