[ExI] Welfare and the US budget/was Re: Donald Trump

[Dan TheBookMan]

On Sun, May 8, 2016 at 10:10 AM, spike <spike66 at att.net> wrote:
> From: extropy-chat [mailto:extropy-chat-bounces at lists.extropy.org] On
Behalf Of John Clark
>>…That reminds me of something from another thread.  Under Democrat
>> Bill Clinton the government ran a SURPLUS in 1998, 1999, 2000 and
>> 2001.  Republican George Bush was in power in 2002 and the government
>> ran a deficit that year and has been running a deficit every year since.
>> Ronald Reagan never managed to balance the budget for even one year,
>> but Clinton did it for 4.  John K Clark
>
> Heh.  John do you recall how that was done?  It was done by “welfare
reform.”
> The US removed all those people from the welfare rolls, which resulted in
lower
> federal expenditures and a balanced budget.  Hooray, a miracle it was!

Not my understanding. The welfare rolls were hardly changed and welfare
spending -- as in welfare for poor folks -- was always and remain and small
percentage of the overall budget. The bigger share goes to Medicare and
Social Security -- which are transfer payments to old folks not necessarily
poor folks and were mostly untouched by welfare reform during the 1990s.
The booming economy and the increases in taxes on that resulted in the
surplus. There was a decrease in the acceleration of federal spending too,
though most areas, including welfare (for the poor), increased.

Of course, since the federal budget is hard to piece together and total,
it's often hard to track the actual level of debt.

I also stress welfare to poor folks. Corporate welfare, as far as I know,
didn't drop under Clinton -- or any recent president -- and is massive.
Things like subsidies and bailouts are, of course, rarely discussed as
corporate welfare and few really want to get rid of these. One might call
them welfare for the middle class and for the corporate ruling class.

Regards,

Dan
  Sample my Kindle books via:
http://author.to/DanUst
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