Jackson Jambalaya

Those zany big spending Republicans! Cutting revenue and raising debt makes sense nationally and also in Mississippi under the tutelage of supersize Tater, R, Screwthemiddleclass.

IOKIYAR!

(Can we have some of them good cigars at the next fundraiser?)

Anyone with a lick of sense knows that we are never going to pay back the money we borrowed. We cannot even pay the interest on it.
The people decided they would saddle their children with a debt they never intended on paying.

When presented with the option of voting against deficit laden budgets because to do so would be to vote against pork for Mississippi, Cochran, Lott and Wicker (and Harper in the House) have voted for pork 100% of the time.

Crawford has NEVER written a column taking any of them to task for their votes in favor of deficit purchased pork for Mississippi.

It all depends on WHO benefits from racking up debt. Always has. Right now the national debt is just an afterthought since the priority is giving tax breaks to the richest segment of society and spending on the military industrial complex. If the middle and lower classes can exert enough influence at the polls to shift some government spending back towards their needs, the national debt will once again be recognized as a threat to all that is holy. In the meantime, the rich get richer and the ...

Government revenues went up substantially after Reagan cut taxes in 1982. The reason the deficit went up is because spending went up even more than the revenue did. To his discredit, he did not veto the spending bills that caused this. The Dems controlled the House then, and could not refrain from increasing and adding new spending programs when they saw the revenues increasing.

I'd like to see Crawford's columns from 2008 - 2016 decrying the annual trillion dollar increase in the national debt during the previous administration. Go ahead - we can wait while you dig them out.

In a few years there will be streets full of empty foreclosed houses in the suburban utopias. Obama managed to steer us back from going into another Great Depression but I have serious doubts the same will happen with Trump.

5:13 Why didn't he veto the spending? See 5:04. And the beat goes on.

...obama steered us from another great depression?! holy crap, what kind of drugs are you taking? How, pray tell, did he manage to do that?

Not see your comment was relevant 5:13, but you can see his not-anonymous columns at crawfolk.wordpress.com.

@ December 3, 2017 at 7:42 PM

@5:55pm is right - he did and he deserves credit.

@5:04pm is right too when they stated - "If the middle and lower classes can exert enough influence at the polls to shift some government spending back towards their needs"

We outnumber the 1% heftily, but we continue voting for policies that enrich them and keep us in the doldrums, assuming we will eventually be in that bracket and those policies will benefit out pockets. That window is closed. The tax cuts will go towards, hoarding more money, more job creation overseas, and the purchasing of more stock by the wealthiest Americans. We are not even in the ball game. But yet, Americans in the poor and middle classes keep sending people to Washington that do not and are not looking for their best interest. We are doing it here in Mississippi too.

We need politicians that will incentivize corporations that get that money to their workers in America, we need investment in our infrastructure - military, police, emergency services, water ways, bridges, roads, trains, airports, libraries, education, every day services. Those things keep our country working and protect our way life, they also help churn the economy and create other great jobs.

Time to change the narrative and get the focus back on the working poor and lower middle class.

Obama did steer us back from a recession, do you remember the mess Bush left in 2008. There is no doubt that the latest economic uptick is based on the assumption that a tax cut is coming. But face it things were already heading in the right direction when the current administration took over.

Politicians repeat the preamble from The Contract with America but they abandoned the rest of it.

The first two key " promises" were to repeal any law and not pass any law that didn't apply to Congress as well as to the American people.

But, the most important part of the contract was to agree to hire an independent outside auditor to audit our national budget. The results didn't involve across the board budget cuts and general tax cuts. It was strategically cutting government spending and size and putting sound accounting controls in place. That's who really " fixed" what was broken.

And, of course, there were the sections protecting social security and helping with child care. And, there were controls on how Congress worked like how long someone could chair a committee.

If you didn't read ALL the contract, you don't know why it worked.

You've all forgotten what happened to many of those 300 congressmen, especially the ones who were newly elected to make it happen like Joe Scarborough. Their party didn't support them for re-election but put up someone to run against them who would tow the party line instead. And, the party big money saw Newt taking total credit and getting " too big for his britches".

And, you've forgotten that the contract kept working and was improved under the Clinton administration by someone else you love to hate, Al Gore, who further reduced the size of government.

You don't want to believe that undeclared, unbudgeted wars especially the one in Iraq , so called "banking reform", licenses to steal disguised as " de-regulation" and " no new taxes" wrecked the economy before Obama took office.

You want simple solutions to complex problems and you don't trust expert help and you don't want to contribute one dime to solving our debt as you think you have no responsibility for our debt and you didn't help create it and you didn't ever benefit.

You want to blame somebody? I blame those who put party loyalty over results and who are so foolish as to believe whatever their party tells them without bothering to see if it holds up to a smell test. And, the biggest stink there is , is " voodoo economics" and that the GOP just " reformed" taxes instead of rewarding their deep pocket supporters.

Instead of " no new taxes" demand every candidate of every party pledges to reinstitute The Contract with America! Hell, we might ought to put it in the Constitution so we can't so easily get conned again.

Mississippi's Congressional Republicans have always talked a big line about deficits and the debt then voted for deficits and debt anyways. Crawford's bugged this time because there is no GOP foreplay before the screwing.

Granny troll makes an appearance.

If Trump is benefiting from Obama then surely Bill Clinton benefited from the tax increases that cost Bush 41 a second term. Can't have it both ways.

Under President Obama, the national debt grew the most dollar-wise. He added $7.917 trillion, a 68 percent increase, in seven years. This was the fifth-largest increase percentage-wise.

Obama +68% <$7.917T>

GWBush +101% <$5.849T>

Reagan +186% <$1.86T>
HWBush +54% <$1.554T>
Clinton +32% <$1.396T>

Carter +43% <$299B>
FDR +1048% <$236B>
Ford +47% <$224B>

Nixon +34% <$121B>

LBJ +13% <$42B>

Eisenhower +9% <$23B>
JFK +8% <$23B>
Wilson +727% <$21B>

Truman +3% <$7B>

Hoover +37% <$6B>

Harding <7%> $2B

Coolidge <26%> $5B

9:52 you are correct Clinton did benefit from the Bush tax increases, I am not denying that.