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Clintonites to Obama: Cut the Deficit

August 27, 2008 RSS Feed Print

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Just bumped into Leon Panetta, noted budget hawk and former Clinton chief of staff. He urged Barack Obama to focus more on cutting the budget deficit. "He has got to take the hit in his first term," Panetta says. That means higher taxes and bigger spending cuts. (Obama so far has taken an "investment first, deficit second" approach.) Panetta says he and other former Clinton economic advisers are especially concerned that the issue of the budget deficit, which he believes could be $600 billion or more next year, has gotten almost zippo attention at the convention so far. Panetta also thinks Obama would be smart to go after entitlement reform right away.

Tags:: 2008 presidential election,; Bill Clinton,; deficit and national debt,; Barack Obama

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"Liberals "shifted spending so as to give the appearance,..." ????
What on earth are you talking about?"
Methinks you don't understand governmental accounting. It is legal for government agencies to shift debits and credits around depending on when debts will be settle . Besides, the surplus was "projected". It didn't take into consideration any type of spending that would occur in a future Congress and also didn't make any assumptions on discretionary spending made in the last term of Clinton's administration. It also did not make any considerations about long-term liabilities such as Medicare and Social Security. So, the projected budget surplus is a accounting trick. If businesses did this they would be in all kinds of trouble. In fact, they were. See Enron, Worldcom, Adelphia, Qwest, ImClone, Global Crossing, etc.
For more information on this, go to www.gao.gov and do a search on "2000 budget surplus" and read the ENTIRE pdf file which features Congressional testimony of then Comptroller General David Walker.

Chris of AZ 5:11PM August 28, 2008

Liberals "shifted spending so as to give the appearance,..." ????
What on earth are you talking about?

of 3:03PM August 28, 2008

"The "liberals" balanced your budget and the neocons maxed out all the credit cards."
No, the "liberals" shifted spending so as to give the appearance that they balanced the budget, the conservatives just lowered taxes, but kept spending at the same level without cutting spending. Both parties believe in using credit to spend money (this has been the case ever since Keynesian economics took root in governmental economic policy).

Chris of AZ 1:29PM August 28, 2008

Clintonites to Obama: Cut the Deficit

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