Budget with a Gore presidency

  • Thread starter Deleted member 1487
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Deleted member 1487

Had Gore won the presidency in 2000 what would the budget look like today? I'm assuming there isn't tax cuts, the surplus such that it is is used to help make SS solvent (Gore's campaign promise about the surplus) while that surplus erodes due to the stagnating economy after the dot com bubble bursting. Perhaps by 2008 there is another cyclical downturn related to real estate, but not as bad as IOTL. Without the Bush Tax Cuts (ostensibly to reinvigorate the economy) what would the budget and overall economy look like? Let's say the 9/11 attacks are thwarted for the sake of argument, so there is no Afghanistan or Iraq invasion or War on Terror (though perhaps a drone assassination of Bin Laden).
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bin_Laden_Issue_Station
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bush_tax_cuts
 
Here you go.
  1. Make America Debt Free by 2012.
  2. Protect Social Security and Medicare Surpluses via a “lockbox.”
  3. Double the Number of Families with Savings in Excess of $50,000 via new, 401(k)-style, Retirement Savings Plus accounts.
  4. Reduce Income Taxes on the Typical Family to the Lowest Level in 50 Years with $480 billion in targeted tax cuts.
  5. Raise Family Incomes by One Third over the Next Decade
  6. Enable 7 in 10 Families to Own a Home -- a new record
  7. Lift College Attendance and Graduation Rates to New Records via tuition tax credits
  8. Reduce Poverty to Below 10% for the First Time Ever by raising the minimum wage and other reforms.
  9. Cut the Gap Between What Men and Women Earn by 50% Over the Next Decade
  10. Create 10 Million New High Tech, High Skill Jobs

Some tax cuts yes, but the trillions spent on Iraq alone is enough to get a handle on things. Economy should be looking fairly good. Infrastructure spending if the economy goes south would revive it much faster than tax cuts and hopefully divert some construction from the housing bubble (can Greenspan be tossed? His idiotic inflate new bubbles every couple years plan was terrible). However Gore almost certainly wouldn't do anything about the banks, so that'll still happen (albeit to a USA with a much better balance sheet itself) to a large extent.
 

Deleted member 1487

Here you go.
  1. Make America Debt Free by 2012.
  2. Protect Social Security and Medicare Surpluses via a “lockbox.”
  3. Double the Number of Families with Savings in Excess of $50,000 via new, 401(k)-style, Retirement Savings Plus accounts.
  4. Reduce Income Taxes on the Typical Family to the Lowest Level in 50 Years with $480 billion in targeted tax cuts.
  5. Raise Family Incomes by One Third over the Next Decade
  6. Enable 7 in 10 Families to Own a Home -- a new record
  7. Lift College Attendance and Graduation Rates to New Records via tuition tax credits
  8. Reduce Poverty to Below 10% for the First Time Ever by raising the minimum wage and other reforms.
  9. Cut the Gap Between What Men and Women Earn by 50% Over the Next Decade
  10. Create 10 Million New High Tech, High Skill Jobs

Some tax cuts yes, but the trillions spent on Iraq alone is enough to get a handle on things. Economy should be looking fairly good. Infrastructure spending if the economy goes south would revive it much faster than tax cuts and hopefully divert some construction from the housing bubble (can Greenspan be tossed? His idiotic inflate new bubbles every couple years plan was terrible). However Gore almost certainly wouldn't do anything about the banks, so that'll still happen (albeit to a USA with a much better balance sheet itself) to a large extent.

Even if half of that gets close to being done the country is far less shitty than today it would seem.
 
Even if half of that gets close to being done the country is far less shitty than today it would seem.

Clinton and Gore run into an article of faith on the American Right - Democrats always bust budgets, and Republicans always balance them. There's very little evidence for this through the last few administrations, but there you have it. A Gore Presidency, continuing on right years of Clinton, leaves one a far more solvent and far less indebted USA, and one where the 2008 bubble had been less inflated. Still bad, but not quite as catastrophic, happening to a country that hadn't put several trillion dollars of idiocy on the credit card.
 
Economist Paul Krugman says that during a serious downturn, you can't ramp up infrastructure spending quickly enough to make any kind of real difference.

Rather infrastructure spending is valuable in its own right to build the economy. And it makes sense to do so while resources are cheaper and readily available, although we're not going to pay workers on the cheap.

will try and find reference. And I do realize this conflicts with how we commonly view the New Deal's CCC, WPA, etc.
 

Deleted member 1487

Economist Paul Krugman says that during a serious downturn, you can't ramp up infrastructure spending quickly enough to make any kind of real difference.

Rather infrastructure spending is valuable in its own right to build the economy. And it makes sense to do so while resources are cheaper and readily available, although we're not going to pay workers on the cheap.

will try and find reference. And I do realize this conflicts with how we commonly view the New Deal's CCC, WPA, etc.
If the downturn is long enough it would make a difference; much like the 2008 Stimulus did they sought out shovel-ready projects, which still took at least a year to implement. Planned long term upgrades would take at least 2 years to implement if not longer; that works for a Depression, not a Recession. Still starting it during a recession is a good idea as it will help the recovery in the long run and general economy.
 
Here's a Daily Kos article to what Krugman was saying in Dec. 2008:

Krugman-Obama-s-Infrastructure-Stimulus-Won-t-Work

Dec 15, 2008 8:21am PST by ThinkFirst

http://m.dailykos.com/story/2008/12/15/673252/-Krugman-Obama-s-Infrastructure-Stimulus-Won-t-Work

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Obama's infrastructure stimulus is predicated on "shovel-ready" projects that can begin immediately to create jobs and income. *But Professor Krugman argued that only approximately $100 Billion of "shovel-ready" projects are actually available based on his analysis of the data.

The dilemma, he said, is that the Federal government simply can't spend money fast enough on infrastructure to provide the necessary stimulus for the economy. While George Will scoffed at this idea, he offered no refutation.
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So, if we're looking for something to provide a quick jolt to the economy, we may want to keep looking. One idea I've heard is a cut on income taxes along with a cut on withholding. That might take four weeks to get through Congress and another four weeks to implement, and them in 8 weeks that's actual money in consumers' hands which can spent.
 
Here's a Daily Kos article to what Krugman was saying in Dec. 2008:

So, if we're looking for something to provide a quick jolt to the economy, we may want to keep looking. One idea I've heard is a cut on income taxes along with a cut on withholding. That might take four weeks to get through Congress and another four weeks to implement, and them in 8 weeks that's actual money in consumers' hands which can spent.

Well, considering the fact that the U.S was one of the few nations that didn't re-enter a recession after 2008, reality disagrees with Mr.Krugman.

Also, this is a political issue. Bring it to chat (not the thread, but this discussion on infrastructure spending).
 
Alright, I think Gore may have had one tax cut in 2001.

But I don't think he would have had additional tax cuts in 2002, 2003, 2004, and 2005 like I'm pretty sure Bush had. Honest to gosh, during his early years, it seems like Bush had a tax cut every single year.
 

jahenders

Banned
It clearly proved true that the infrastructure spending couldn't happen fast enough -- 'shovel ready' projects were almost all FAR from 'shovel ready.'

There were a lot of differences between the CCC, WPA era and 2007-2008. First, government wasn't as big and could move a bit faster. Also, people's attitudes towards the efforts was far different because the poverty back then was far more 'real' -- i.e. people actually starving to death in numbers. People in the CCC (like my dad) wore uniforms, lived 20-30 men to a big tent or ramshackle building, worked long hours in dangerous tasks, and got little pay for it. They accomplished some amazing things very much 'on the cheap.' Today, the projects they did would cost many billions because they'd have to be high paying union jobs, they'd have to live in 1 man apartments, you'd have 10 safety supervisors, 10 people watching for environmental mistakes, and you'd have 20 government departments involved, etc.

Economist Paul Krugman says that during a serious downturn, you can't ramp up infrastructure spending quickly enough to make any kind of real difference.

Rather infrastructure spending is valuable in its own right to build the economy. And it makes sense to do so while resources are cheaper and readily available, although we're not going to pay workers on the cheap.

will try and find reference. And I do realize this conflicts with how we commonly view the New Deal's CCC, WPA, etc.
 
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