'"conservative" is about far more than just taxes.'
I explain why there's a lot of definitions of the term, and your response is to... explain why one of my lines was wrong?
'If you want to compare government spending and fiscal responsibility then Democrats are by far the more "conservative" party.'
Do you live the in the same world I do?
Now, you might think I'm going to take exception to the idea that (D) spends less than (R). In fact, my incredulity is prompted by your "by far the more". From where I sit, neither party seems to have met a spending bill they didn't like, except briefly by the (R)s in the 90s which they quickly seem to have gotten over.
(And whatever credibility the (D)s may have had on this issue just got squandered these last couple of weeks, with this "stimulus" bill that, even if you accept Keynesian economic theory, won't do a damn thing to help.)
That's actually my point, there's significant things called "conservative" that haven't been tried lately, small government merely being at the top of the list.
(Oh, and part of the reason I said "make a real definition" is to head off things like saying conservatives are "anti-environment". Nobody of any importance is "pro-pollution". (I don't know of anybody, but it's best to be careful with absolute statements.) They just disagree about priorities or effects. That sort of thinking leads to letting demagogues make up your mind for you.)
Edit: I used "anti environmentalism" because while I don't think they hate the environment rather they see little value in protecting it. There could be some pro environmental movement (R)'s out there but I have never heard of any of them. The 1930's US dust bowl (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dust_Bowl) is really the first case where we noticed a problem and attempted to reverse the effects of changes to our environment by planting trees. You could also look at the creation of the national park system as part of the same movement.
Note: This rest of this is a long rant but I am not going to delete it.
OK, they all all corrupt bastards. Both the stimulus bill and the bailout package are supported by both sides. They like to talk shit, but watch who votes for it. Anyway, it's not a long term issue so moving on:
The federal government has a 400 billion dollar budget deficit. Now let's forget about the huge unfunded liabilities from the Iraq war, the stimulus package etc but just look at that number. We spent ~800 billion on national defense. Inflation is one thing but "President Clinton's FY 1998 budget requests $250.7 billion in budget authority and $247.5 billion in outlays for the Department of Defense (DoD)." Granted the we are fighting 2 wars for some reason. Now, if we cut defense spending by 1/2 we would have zero budget deficit. No single Republican bill in the last 20 years would reduce the size of the federal government by that much hell all of them put together is smaller than that single change.
When the Republicans wanted to improve the national heath care system with their prescription drug plan they prevented the agency from using it's size to reduce drug prices. This is standard practice for all inshurance companies but for some reason they felt it was unimportant.
Obama's plan is require private heath care companies to cover people with prior medical issues. Regulation with Zero cost to the government which actually fixes a major problem. The other issue is letting inshurance companies drop people who become expensive to treat. You might take issue with this, but having inshurance that becomes unfordable when you develop a problem sounds like not having any inshurance at all. That's like your car inshurance saying we will pay for 5% of the damage but we decided to drop your coverage in the middle of the accident because it would have looked like you where going to cost us money.
When Oil was over 100$ a barrel GB kept increasing the size of the national reserve even when it was running out of capacity. Rather than using it as a strategic asset and bursting the Oil bubble sooner he decided to increase the problem by reducing the worlds oil supply costing us money and gaining an asset that's drooped to 1/3 of it's original value.
PS: The federal budget is also this out of whack while they have reduced funding for state programs. Yea, let's talk about states rights but at the same time let's cut the purse strings.
I explain why there's a lot of definitions of the term, and your response is to... explain why one of my lines was wrong?
'If you want to compare government spending and fiscal responsibility then Democrats are by far the more "conservative" party.'
Do you live the in the same world I do?
Now, you might think I'm going to take exception to the idea that (D) spends less than (R). In fact, my incredulity is prompted by your "by far the more". From where I sit, neither party seems to have met a spending bill they didn't like, except briefly by the (R)s in the 90s which they quickly seem to have gotten over.
(And whatever credibility the (D)s may have had on this issue just got squandered these last couple of weeks, with this "stimulus" bill that, even if you accept Keynesian economic theory, won't do a damn thing to help.)
That's actually my point, there's significant things called "conservative" that haven't been tried lately, small government merely being at the top of the list.
(Oh, and part of the reason I said "make a real definition" is to head off things like saying conservatives are "anti-environment". Nobody of any importance is "pro-pollution". (I don't know of anybody, but it's best to be careful with absolute statements.) They just disagree about priorities or effects. That sort of thinking leads to letting demagogues make up your mind for you.)