Tuesday, April 10, 2012
Two Election-Related Items
Secondly, (in the same article) Newt Gingrich's campaign is $4.5 million in debt. How can he credibly say he's the right guy to turn the economy around if he can't stick to a budget?
10 Comments:
By 
, at
Tue Apr 10, 03:19:00 PM:
I'm happy both are out, but for different reasons. By the way, the fact that Gingrich can't manage a budget makes him different from which modern POTUS or other politician at the national level (taking Christie out of the running on the answer) ... ?
Here's hoping that Romney can reign in this disaster he'll inherit.
By 
Georg Felis, at
Tue Apr 10, 04:36:00 PM:
I thought according to the Democrats, running a budget deficit was a *good* thing?
Oh wait, I bet he's not qualified because he's not deep enough in the hole. A couple more billion dollars there Newt, and they may start to respect you.
/sarc
By , at
Tue Apr 10, 05:04:00 PM:
Well, not all candidates can get as much money from Wall Street, Big Oil, and unions as Obama, not to mention all the free press.
By , at
Tue Apr 10, 05:20:00 PM:
4.5 million is not that much. When Hillary left the race in 2008 she owed 26 million.
By , at
Tue Apr 10, 05:47:00 PM:
Loath as I am to defend Newt Gingrich, financing a primary campaign with debt is probably the only sensible way for anyone but the front runner to operate (and maybe even front runners as well). When you're campaigning in a primary, you're making an investment that you hope pays off with a spot in the general election. If you win that bet, the fundraising you do for the general election can easily pay off the few million dollars of debt you incurred in the primary. If you lose, you can still probably scrounge up enough money to pay off the debt, though apparently that can take years: http://www.npr.org/2011/07/05/137615746/presidential-campaign-debt-can-linger-for-decades.
So it's not a problem of budgeting (Newt's campaign budget probably planned on assuming debt), but rather one of being the loser.
By , at
Tue Apr 10, 07:05:00 PM:
"I thought according to the Democrats, running a budget deficit was a *good* thing?"
Actually, it was Dick Cheney who famously said in 2002 that "Reagan proved that deficits don't matter."
OCTOTWARSI
By Dawnfire82, at
Tue Apr 10, 08:45:00 PM:
I looked up the old Washington Post article where that quotation was given. It was accompanied by this gem: "Then-Treasury Secretary Paul H. O'Neill pleaded that the government -- already running a $158 billion deficit -- was careering toward a fiscal crisis."
Isn't that adorable? A mere $158 billion deficit was a fiscal crisis.
By Gary Rosen, at
Tue Apr 10, 10:52:00 PM:
"A mere $158 billion deficit was a fiscal crisis"
As Instapundit would say, heh.
By , at
Wed Apr 11, 08:14:00 AM:
"Then-Treasury Secretary Paul H. O'Neill pleaded that the government -- already running a $158 billion deficit -- was careering toward a fiscal crisis."
Yes, and a month later O'Neill was fired by Bush/Cheney for saying our loud that the growing budget deficits--and the proposed $1.7 trillion in tax cuts--threatened the economy.
By Dawnfire82, at
Wed Apr 11, 01:16:00 PM:
What's your point? Another childish poke at the Bush administration by an anonymous Internet commenter? Edgy.
And if so, please square the horrible sin of those tax cuts made during a recession, that resulted in increased revenue for the federal government, btw (an inconvenient truth that the media has black holed), and the extension of those tax cuts by the Obama administration in December 2010 plus annual deficits almost as enormous as the scary "1.7 trillion" you dropped.
If Bush's horrible plan resulted in such a loss over ten years, then surely Obama's plans resulting in 7 to 9x as much over ten years makes him 7 to 9x as bad as Bush, right?
"threatened the economy."
Maybe you were a kid at the time or something, but the economy during the Bush administration was pretty good, pushed along by the housing bubble. Unemployment was low, wages increased, inflation was steady, life was pretty good. And when it popped, it had nothing to do with federal deficits, which were declining at the time. O'Neill was wrong.
