US Budget Deficits:

- Since 1960, the average annual US budget deficit has _increased_ by $30B under Republican administrations and _decreased_ $25B under Democratic administrations

If you thought that the statistic above is mainly because of Republican tax cuts, you would be wrong. It is mainly because of higher government spending and slower economic growth under Republican administrations.

US Government Spending

- Since 1960, government spending under Republican administrations has gone up every year on average by $60B, whereas it has gone up every year on average by $35B under Democratic administrations

US Growth in Real Incomes

- And, for _six decades_, while annual real incomes of the top earners have gone up by about the same under Republican and Democratic administrations, annual real incomes of middle-class families have gone up more than _twice_ as fast under Democratic administrations than under Republican administrations; and, even more remarkably, annual real incomes of the poorest 20% of families (i.e., those at or below the 20th percentile of the income distribution) have risen _six_ times faster under Democratic administrations than under Republican ones.

a. Regulation tends to prevent make-it-rich-easy-and-quick by scamming the unsuspecting, which is how Republicans like to strike it rich.

b. Perhaps more importantly, it allows big corporations to rake in profits by either scamming the public (as in the case of what has been happening at Wall Street lately), or by plundering the environment. These corporations then owe a huge debt of gratitude to their benefactors, the Republican anti-regulation brigade, and then funnel a part of such deviously generated profits into Republican party coffers. It is this last aspect that endears Republicans to deregulation.

How do Republicans sell deregulation to the public? With the ruse that regulation kills job and economic growth. Fierce anti-regulation of the kind that Republicans have espoused in the last thirty years leads to stuttered economic growth, mainly through booms and busts. Booms look very good and favor the wealthy lop-sidedly, but busts are extremely ugly and tend to devastate the unsuspecting not-so-wealthy lop-sidedly.

Everyone with even a little common-sense would understand that corporations, big and small, and even individuals tend to run amok when they are left completely unbridled / unsupervised. Greed is an intimate, albeit dark, part of human nature. Capitalism with common-sense regulation and strict enforcement can benefit everyone, but unbridled greed will ruin all except the ultra-wealthy and the ultra-powerful.

If we were to use up every single drop of oil from our reserves for 100% of our consumption today, our ENTIRE reserves will last us: 21B/21M = 1000 days = 2.75 years.

Even if we were to double the proven oil reserve volume to 42B barrels, it will still last us only 2000 days = 65 months = ~5.5 years.

Yet another piece of evidence that the drill-baby-drill crowd is clueless.

1. A $5000 tax credit is a mirage - it will benefit only those families that actually earn enough to pay $5000 or more in taxes.

The vast majority (quote statistics here) of families which don’t have health insurance today earn less than [$30,000] per year, and therefore on average pay [$3000] in taxes per year, and can’t take the full benefit of the “generous” $5000 tax credit John McCain is proposing.

2. Perhaps a bigger problem is that under the McCain plan, individual families would have to get their own health coverage directly from insurance companies. As a result, their purchasing (or bargaining) power will be weak, and their policy premiums high.  This is yet another example of John McCain’s hidden way of screwing families, diverting money from their pockets into the coffers of insurance companies, and turning around and cashing in himself by collecting millions in campaign contributions from them.

Under the Obama plan, however, since companies will be the ones negotiating for and buying policies for their employees and their families, they will be able to negotiate better group policy premiums from insurance companies. Any guesses why, even in such an anti-Republican year, the RNC has raised nearly 3X in contributions compared to the DNC?

2. If we stay for a 100 years in Iraq, like John McCain wants to, it has the potential to bankrupt our country.

2. While it is important to spend every penny the federal government receives wisely, will eliminating earmarks solve our deficit and debt problems? No.

3. The deficit, on the other hand, is $500B, ~15% of the Federal Budget.