I've written about deficit spending int he past and argued that it isn't necessarily bad, long or short term, but I still agree with President Clinton when he admonishes the current government for over-spending.
On the US budget, Clinton warned that the federal deficit may be coming untenable, driven by foreign wars, the post-hurricane recovery programme and tax cuts that benefitted just the richest one percent of the US population, himself included."What Americans need to understand is that ... every single day of the year, our government goes into the market and borrows money from other countries to finance Iraq, Afghanistan, Katrina, and our tax cuts," he said.
"We have never done this before. Never in the history of our republic have we ever financed a conflict, military conflict, by borrowing money from somewhere else."
Clinton added: "We depend on Japan, China, the United Kingdom, Saudi Arabia, and Korea primarily to basically loan us money every day of the year to cover my tax cut and these conflicts and Katrina. I don't think it makes any sense."
All true, and it doesn't make sense. Where I'd differ is that Mr. Clinton probably wants to increase taxes to reduce the deficit, whereas I think we should focus on slashing spending. (And no, tax cuts don't count as "spending".) Most of the blames rests with Congressional Republicans, but the President himself has motivated loads of new spending (like the prescription drug plan) and he hasn't vetoed anything that's hit his desk.
DeoDuce has more about Clinton from the same article, getting caught in a big fat lie.
