Hacker News Reader

Comment by davidu | Hacker News Reader

Because raising taxes has only resulted in more spending, not balancing the budget.

That's not true. Bill Clinton both slightly raised taxes and significantly lowered spending in relative terms, balancing the budget in the process.

Obama also cut the deficit by more than half. It didn't get all the way to a balanced budget because of how bad of a mess Bush left to clean up, but it was moving in the right direction.

And as a sibling post noted, Bush senior also both raised taxes and lowered spending on a relative basis. So the original assertion is decisively disproven -- half of our modern era presidents (along with the Congress they presided over) did not behave the way they said "only happens".

Incentives are key. If Congress does not present a balanced budget then there has to be consequences. Many other countries work this way. No balanced budget forthcoming? Then there is an immediate collapse of the current government or ruling party and run-off elections to replace them.

The issue with requiring balanced budgets at the federal level is there are a number of situations where, by any economic theory, you want to run deficits.

So what you really need is an impartial Fed-budgetary-counterpart arbiter that declares when balanced budget rules are and aren't in effect.

And probably toss in what target percent of debt needs to be paid down too.

The impartial arbiter is the voting public.

The voting public doesn't know shit about economics or budgets.

To give credit though it was a largely republican congress that did it. You just need a democrat in the White House to motivate them.

Bill Clinton and Newt Gingrich.

Perhaps the best left/right cooperative government of our lifetime.

Skeptical? Review the famous Contract with America.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Contract_with_America

Contract with America convinced enough rubes in America that Republicans actually had a plan (which netted them Congress!) It was a giant failure in terms of actually accomplishing a fraction of the goals it set out, though.

One result was the small surplus in the budget.

Does Clinton deserve a. Ok the credit, for signing off on it? No, of course not. He deserves some of the credit. The rest goes to the Republican congress, which did the budgeting.

Credit where credit is due.

This ignores history. We did raise taxes in the 90s and were paying off our debt. Bush senior made the big boy decision and it left us in amazing shape. Clinton handed over a government to W that was paying off debts and had surplus from 1998-2001.

Slight note that Bush Senior also got tossed out of office in part for being fiscally responsible.

We probably want to fix that quirk, if we want politicians more reliably doing the fiscally sound thing.

Absolutely. One note though - it wasn’t just the raised tax, it was that he very explicitly promised to not raise taxes. Maybe doesn’t get elected without that promise but I really don’t know enough about politics before Clinton/Newt Gingrich.

The US had a balanced budget in 2001, after decades of most people claiming that was impossible. The problem with a balanced budget is we all have to live in the real world. The actual real world that you can measure, not each individual's theoretical world of choice.

But stories are much more fun than data, and we put everything on the credit card, and here we are.

But cutting taxes has also resulted in more spending.

All sibling comments are untrue, because it is the legislative branch that has the "power of the purse", including the ability to raise/lower taxes and pass budgets for spending.

So whether an executive makes campaign promises, takes credit for signing the bills into law, or championing the bills and advocating that Congress pass them, it is ultimately Congress--the House with the Senate--that has done these things with taxes and the budget.

It's common practice to refer to terms by the president of the period even if they're much less responsible for the effects than is implied.

Taxes went up and relative spending went down during the period when Bush Sr was president and Democrats controlled the House & Senate.

Taxes went up and relative spending went down during the period when Clinton was president and Republicans controlled the House & Senate.

This was not true when they had a trifecta. There are reasons many Americans prefer the parties split power.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com