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Originally Posted by ANONONE
He was a republican and not a conservative.
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(referring to Nixon)
Exactly!
During his first term, Nixon declared himself a Keynesian and called for a large expansion of government spending. Here's an excerpt from his 1971 State of the Union address:
"We should take no comfort from the fact that the level of unemployment in this transition from a wartime to a peacetime economy is lower than in any peacetime year of the sixties.
This is not good enough for the man who is unemployed in the seventies. We must do better for workers in peacetime and we will do better.
To achieve this, I will submit an expansionary budget this year--one
that will help stimulate the economy and thereby open up new job opportunities for millions of Americans.
It will be a full employment budget, a budget designed to be in balance if the economy were operating at its peak potential. By spending as if we were at full employment, we will help to bring about full employment.
I ask the Congress to accept these expansionary policies--to accept the concept of a full employment budget. At the same time, I ask the Congress to cooperate in resisting expenditures that go beyond the limits of the full employment budget. For as we wage a campaign to bring about a widely shared prosperity, we must not reignite the fires of inflation and so undermine that prosperity.
With the stimulus and the discipline of a full employment budget, with the commitment of the independent Federal Reserve System to provide fully for the monetary needs of a growing economy, and with a much greater effort on the part of labor and management to make their wage and price decisions in the light of the national interest and their own self-interest--then for the worker, the farmer, the consumer, for Americans everywhere we shall gain the goal of a new prosperity: more jobs, more income, more profits, without inflation and without war.
This is a great goal, and one that we can achieve together."
Yes, he actually said that if we spent as though the economy were operating at full employment, we could thereby bring about full employment in the economy!
(To fans of Keynesian "stimulus" packages: How did that one work out?)
At the same time, he pressured the Burns Fed to goose monetary policy in order to assure his re-election in '72.
Some conservative!
Quote:
Originally Posted by ANONONE
GW was not a conservative. He went against traditional conservative thought at nearly every turn.
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When GWB took office in 2001, the federal budget was about $1.8 trillion. By 2008, it had expanded to about $3 trillion. Between 2003 and 2006, we saw the most rapid year-over-year spending increases in modern history. And people still think those guys were conservatives!
Quote:
Originally Posted by ANONONE
Heck, the government grew larger under him than any recent president since FDR--left or right. He spent money like a drunken sailor on liberty.
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Indeed. (Although it pains me to see drunken sailors so gratuitously insulted. My Dad was one in 1944-45, and he tells me he and his buddies were able to put away quite a bit of brew!)
But spending like drunken sailors isn't good enough for this new crew. They're intent on spending like drunken SMU trust fund brats!
