Thursday, April 13, 2006

Guns and Butter

Looks like the W, Rove and Co is going to shovel their problem onto the next president. But then again, we already knew that. Here's a good line of questioning that recieves no legit answer:
Q Does the President think that he can continue to conduct a war without end, without raising taxes, which money -- the cost of this war is expected to go up -- almost $2 trillion. Guns and butter, you cannot -- who is going to pay for this?

MR. McCLELLAN: You bring up a very good point.

Q Future Presidents?

MR. McCLELLAN: You bring up a good point. We are a nation at war, and that's why it's important that we keep our -- that we make sure we meet our priorities --

Q Who is paying for it?

MR. McCLELLAN: That's what I'm getting to. It's important that we meet our most important priorities during this time of war, and it's also important that we work extra hard to hold the line on spending elsewhere in the budget. And that's why the President talked about the importance of making sure that we're spending the taxpayer dollars wisely. And earlier today, he talked about how over the last two budgets, we have actually cut non-security discretionary spending. This last budget, we were able to get Congress to pass a reduction in the growth of mandatory spending, as well. That's a significant step forward. It's a good start. But there is more to do. And the President is going to continue urging the importance of, one, keeping our taxes low, and, two, spending the taxpayer dollars wisely --

Q That will handle the cost of the war?

MR. McCLELLAN: It's absolutely critical to keeping our economy strong. Our economy is strong. The President talked about that earlier today. We saw just on Friday that more than 200,000 -- well, 211,000 jobs were created in the month of March alone. We've had more than 5.1 million jobs created over the last two, two-and-a-half years. And so we have an economy that is moving forward, it is growing very strong, and if we're going to keep it strong, then we need to keep taxes low.

And this is an important debate that comes up in a year like this: who is going to protect our taxpayer dollars. And the President laid out what the debate is. The debate is between those who want to keep taxes low to keep our economy growing, and then those who want to raise taxes. And we've seen many Democrats --

Q You can have the guns and butter --

MR. McCLELLAN: -- many Democrats want to raise our taxes. And the President has pointed back to what they said a few years ago, when they said that tax cuts would do nothing to create jobs. Well, more than 5.1 million times, they have been proven -- they have been proven wrong.

And we are engaged in a global war on terrorism. And the cost of inaction is far higher -- we are laying the foundations of peace for generations to come. But we're going to make sure that our troops and our military has everything they need to complete the mission and do the job when it comes to prevailing in the war on terrorism. And that's why the President has outlined budgets that meet our most important priorities and hold the line on spending elsewhere.
The Democrats have not raised taxes in the last five years, but some one is going to have to do something to mitigate the cost of this "war on terror" and shrink the debt we owe to numerous foriegn countries. I would suggest to you that "tax and spend" is a better principle than the republican format of "spend and spend." If you follow the W, Rove and Co model of economic sustainablity you would have filed for bankruptcy long ago. But the treasury can always print more cash, no?

2 comments:

Anonymous said...

What a sorry performance on Scott's part. He doesn't answer the question...twice, and then deflects into this irrelevant stuff about job creation and the strength of the economy.

After each of your briefing analysis, I'm always tempted to write an Elisa program that approximates McClellans verbal calesthenics. :-), but then nothing substitutes for the real thing, huh?

Anonymous said...


'Borrowing' is just another name for 'taxes.'

Instead of calling spend-and-spend 'borrowing,' we should call spend-and-spend 'taxes.' Borrowing means future taxes.

Paying now is painful, but paying later means adding interest and foregoing future cash flow (the payments) that would otherwise have been available. There's no 'free lunch' in avoiding a current payment through acquiring debt. Debt doesn't pay, it costs.