Republican capitalize on CBO numbers

The following is my comment that I submitted to this blog post on MSNBC's First Read Blog listing a few quotes from John McCain, John Thune, and John Boehner about the CBO estimates for Obama's montrous budget. You have to read through some of the comments (almost all liberal) to get an idea of what I was responding to.

Obama and the Democrats are proving that while there are enough moderate Republicans that even under a Republican president and Congress, spending can go up if there is not the political will to fight off Democrats' attacks and find places to cut spending, Democrats are 10 times worse when it comes to big spending. Trusting Democrats to limit spending is truly putting the fox in charge of the hen house.

The Iraq and Afghanistan wars have cost approx $100 billion per year, which is chump change compared to the TRILLIONS that Obama is planning to spend, and much less than the other increases in spending over the past 8 years. Through 2007, annual spending had gone up by about 1 Trillion dollars while federal revenues increased by $700 Billion. The deficit was actually down around something like $150 until the housing market collapse.

The Bush tax cuts spurred the economic growth that led to the significant increase in government revenue. You can't call raising more government revenue through lower tax rates generational theft. Indeed, higher taxes that stunt economic growth "steal" a ton of money from future generations. Most of the comments here act like tax rates have no effect on economic growth.

Honestly, it really irks me when people say something like, "Well, we didn't hold down spending with Republicans in charge. Lets give the Democrats a chance." The problem was not the Republican party as a whole, but a lack of Bush using the veto pen, and the moderate Republicans who would never go along with cutting spending. As soon as you single out something to cut spending on, you are instantly targeted by those who benefit from that spending. Name one area in any government budget that doesn't seem like a good idea at some level.

Have you ever thought about how hard it is politically to try to cut housing subsidies, welfare payments, unemployment benefits, social security benefits, food stamps, health insurance like medicaid or medicare, funding for national parks, or even something like the National Endowment for the Arts? I'm not saying Republicans couldn't have done a better job, but come on, does anyone seriously think that Democrats do a better job of holding the line on spending than Republicans.

For those most upset about increased federal spending over Bush's tenure, the obvious answer was to vote for more conservative Republicans and for John McCain.

At the end of the day, during Bush's tenure, there were only 2 years where Republicans had a big enough Senate majority (55-45) in order to be able to pass stuff through without Democratic support, and even then there were enough moderate Republicans that we couldn't even get to 50 on no-brainers like ANWR & making tax cuts permanent, much less hold the line on spending.

Again, the obvious answer for those concerned about spending was to vote a few more conservative Republicans into the Senate, and then press Bush hard to cut spending, or if that failed, wait and elect John McCain.