Just For William
So we had the debate today between the Drexel Republican(s) and the Drexel Democrats, and it went great! The ABC producer said that the short video of the whole thing will be put on the ABC website this Friday, and of course we'll have the link and a longer analysis then. However, in the meantime, I promised William Mulgrew some information that he apparently hadn't come across during his studies.
I'll present it in graphical form, because it makes for such a nice image.
Click "There's more..." for the rest of the good stuff.
I'll present it in graphical form, because it makes for such a nice image.
Click "There's more..." for the rest of the good stuff.
The above chart plots the federal budget deficit (in real dollars) each year since 1989. Anyone can look at that chart and see the emptyness of Mulgrew's cries that those irresponsible Democrats caused the terrible national debt. Mulgrew may ignorantly claim that it was the Republicans in congress that restored fiscal discipline in the 90's, to which I would explain further that that the trend began in '93 and '94, before the republicans were in congress. More importantly, the reduction in the budget deficit was the direct result of the "Omnibus Budget Reconciliation Act of 1993." This bill passed the house without a SINGLE REPUBLICAN VOTE. That's right, all 175 Republican congressmen voted against the measure, and it passed the house 218 to 216. The act raised taxes on wealthy individuals and corporations, and the budget deficit began to fall.
Combined with economic growth during the 1990's, Clinton was actually able to run a budget surplus by 1998 to help pay down the debt. Then those crazy republicans got worried about paying down the debt too fast, and passed Bush's tax cuts without triggers to repeal them if the surplusses disappeared, and the rest is history. Republicans washed their hands of his '93 tax plan, and now Mulgrew wants to take credit for it?
There were a bunch of other frustratingly ignorant things that Mulgrew said, and when we get some video of the debate I'll write more (depending on what clips get included in the final cut, obviously).
I thought that this debate was great, and I think Mulgrew did his side no favors with his aggressively rude and patently silly arguments. His own teammate was embarrassed and rolling his/her eyes (don't want to incriminate anyone, but it's on tape...) when Mulgrew spoke.
I would love to do more debates, hopefully they can be tailored more narrowly so that Mulgrew can only lie about one thing at a time.
Your moment of Zen: Mulgrew asserted that more Americans die (he didn't say "are murdered," he said die) in Philadelphia each year than in Iraq, but you don't hear the Democrats calling for withdrawal from Philadelphia.
I leave it as an exercise to the reader to find the holes in Mulgrew's "logic."
