had balanced budgets and was on track to pay off the national debt in little more than a decade.

That was then. This is now. When the pubicans are in power, suddenly deficit spending doesn't matter.

I'd add only that the Bush-era deficit figures (those for FY 2004-08) exclude the $170 billion a year the imp was spending, on average, on the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan. That works out to an average of around 1.3% of GDP extra at the time.

On Rove's advice, Dubya kept those outlays off the books - and they've stayed there ever since.

Here's one showing the war-related appropriations for each fiscal year - which, until '09, were kept off the books by the Midland Idiot.

Just wow.
How have we survived pubican "presidents" all these years?
Democrats come in and clean up their disasters then are criticized by pubicans for not cleaning up their disasters fast enough!

"Vote for us," the thinly-veiled refrain goes, "not for those brown-skin loving, tofu eating, hybrid driving, fornicating, baby killing Democrats."

"And we'll do all the brown person bombing, baby killing, and fornicatin' instead."

Not the total cost of the DOD. According to the CBO the total cost of the military for FY2017 was $590 BILLION. For FY2019, Trump wants to raise it to $681 BILLION but at the same time withdraw half our troops in Afghanistan (about 7K) and virtually all from Syria. So he wants to spend almost $700 Billion for what's pretty close to a peacetime military. That's twice as much as China and Russia COMBINED. No wonder we can't have nice things.

That they're rackets.

And best of all, they got away with all that with absolute impunity.

Nice work if you can get it.

The first one just wasn't big enough...

hero type.

Lyin' Ryan math, it looks a lot worse, doesn't it?

"Taxing the rich" wont fix the problem. There aren't enough "rich" to tax.
And nobody wants anything they like cut, yet they also don't want to be the ones to pay for it.
We need a consumption tax. It would Catch the billions, if not trillions, of untaxed money out there. Not just "underground" money, but money not claimed on 1099 or W2 info.
THATS where the real money is.

Really? How many do we need?

I've read several times now that the top 26 individuals have as much money as the poorest 3.5 billion people.

Seems like they've got plenty of money that we could all use.

And if you suggest that we start taxing assets, that will be a mess. Of the few countries that HAVE had an asset tax; Austria, Denmark, Germany, Sweden, Spain, Finland, Iceland, and Luxembourg all recently dropped it.

Yes, there arent enough rich to tax enough to make a dent in the debt. Just look up the numbers of rich and super rich.

And we make plans for how to get by on what's left?

I don't like that idea.

In the Nordic & Eu countries where they do provide more EVERYONE pays into the system. Here, thats not the case. Millions pay nothing into the IRS.
A consumption tax taxes ALL income. Especially the huge money that some of the wealthy are able to hide.
But we just wont do that here. But I guess the shit wont really hit the fan till I'm gone.

Even after the cuts, federal tax revenue rose to an all time high. And the dollars from the upper segment has increased by even more. The % of income tax paid by the top 1% increased after the cuts.
I'm NOT defending the cuts, think their rates should have stayed right where they were. I also think high frequency trading should be taxed. (thats a whole different issue, but a HUGE one I think) I'm just pointing out that the debt isnt going to be impacted much by taxing them more, even at 70%, because there simply arent that many of them. We don't tax a ton of revenue. "Stated income" is the hidden revenue stream
The new tax law also took many more OFF the tax rolls as well

If we like the social services that some of the EU countries provide, then we also should take a hard look at how they PAY for them. EVERYONE pays. We don't do that here.

I didn't know the feds have been spending anything on infrastructure.

So they have had full control of the government for 2 years and the budget deficit is worse than ever.

Will voters ever realize these scoundrels are liars?

At least Republican deficits don't. Skeletor and the Paranoid Randroid said that.

Wolf

This BS started with Reagan and has been compounded by irresponsible redumbliCONS ever since. This country is going down the tubes unless we change our ways immediately.