'Cause you can't... Iggy offers up ammunition fro sarcasm every time that he speaks to the media.
Liberals Preparing For A Summer Election
- Thread starter Liberalman
- Start date
'Cause you can't... Iggy offers up ammunition fro sarcasm every time that he speaks to the media.
Well, the Liberals left a ten billion dollar surplus. I don't know exactly what the corporate tax cuts cost, I'm guessing 18 to 20 billion. Cutting the GST probably cost 16 or 17 billion. Add them all up and you can find a good part of the fifty billion dollar deficit that Flaherty didn't want to tell us about.
That has been perennially the problem with Conservatives Juan, since the days of Mulroney and Reagan. Conservative answer to any economic problem is cut taxes and increase spending (and conservative tax cuts usually favour the rich disproportionately). Indeed, Conservatism has become synonymous with borrow and spend.
I cannot think of any major Conservative leader in recent memory who has done a good job of fiscal management, whether it is in USA (Reagan, two Bushes) or Canada (Mulroney, Mike Harris, Harper).
Several times a liberal had to clean up the gigantic mess left by conservatives (thus Clinton cleaned up the mess left by Reagan and Bush, Chrétien cleaned up the mess left by Mulroney, McGuinty cleaned up the mess left by Harris). It remains to be seen how much damage the Messiah does before he leaves office. It wouldn’t surprise me if it is left to another liberal to clean up the mess.
You fail to mention the mess that Harris and Mulroney had to clean up when they took office....
Sure you could ,but as the stock market is fluid your answer would be out of date as soon as you gave it.
From the govt's point of view they really can have no idea of the size of the deficit
until they know the size of their income(i.e.tax base) which is as fluid as the stock market.
What mess did Mulroney and Harris cleaned up? They made it worse, much worse. Mulroney came to office with a 20 billion $ deficit, by the time he left, the deficit was 40 billion.
When Mike Harris came to office I don’t remember what the deficit was, but I don’t think it was anywhere near 6 billion. Harris tried to balance the budget solely on the back of the poor people, the first thing he did was that he cut the social assistance payments substantially.
For some incomprehensible reason, Harris had it in for the doctors, he tried to cut the OHIP payment to the doctors substantially. However, nobody messes with the doctors. Mike Harris suffered a humiliating defeat against the doctors. He instituted several cuts to OHIP program as soon a he got to power. Within a couple of years, he had to retreat on every single one of them.
But he did not touch the benefits to the rich (the corporate welfare) or to the middle class. And he was a total failure, he left the office with 6 billion $ deficit (which the Conservatives fraudulently claimed to be 2 billion $ during the election campaign).
Both Mulroney and Harris inherited a bad situation and made it worse.
Stock market may be fluid, but I can calculate assets as of a certain date. I can say that as of today, I am worth so much.
Same thing can be done with the deficit. Harper could make a realistic estimate of tax revenues and say that the deficit is 50 billion $ or 60 billion $ whatever, assuming the tax revenues are so much. I don’t think anybody would have a problem with such a conditional estimate.
But he realizes that the answer he gives will probably prove to be unpopular. He is already behind in polls, he doesn’t want to compound the problem.
If he did give us a figure which he already has (50.2 billion$) it doesn't mean much. There's umpteen different methods of accouting to begin with. For instance S.J. I could owe $1000 you could owe $10,000 but your house is worth $3 million and mine is worth $100000.............get the picture?
Prime Minister Harper likes the photo opps and the press releases but he doesn’t like to answer question.
I was watching Question Period in the House of Commons yesterday and Jack Layton leader of the NDP stated that the federal government only sent out about 20% to 30% of the money allocated for the 2007 and 2008 budgets.
Stephen Harper’s excuse was that all paperwork had to be in order before the money goes out so in essence he is saying that all the elected mayors in the villages, towns and cities of Canada are obtuse which means stupid.
The opposition parties supported the 2007 and 2008 budgets because they had the faith that the government will keep their promise and deliver the much-needed money.
What is the Conservative party hiding?
Where is our hard earned tax dollar money?
It’s time for Stephen Harper to tell the Canadian people the truth.
I was watching Question Period in the House of Commons yesterday and Jack Layton leader of the NDP stated that the federal government only sent out about 20% to 30% of the money allocated for the 2007 and 2008 budgets.
Stephen Harper’s excuse was that all paperwork had to be in order before the money goes out so in essence he is saying that all the elected mayors in the villages, towns and cities of Canada are obtuse which means stupid.
The opposition parties supported the 2007 and 2008 budgets because they had the faith that the government will keep their promise and deliver the much-needed money.
What is the Conservative party hiding?
Where is our hard earned tax dollar money?
It’s time for Stephen Harper to tell the Canadian people the truth.
You omit the biggest and most damning contribution that Trudeau and the liberanos left as their legacy... Close to a 200 billion dollar debt amassed during boom times and connected to an interest rate up to 21%. (and lets not forget that the Canadian gvt was the single largest employer in the nation - compared to every industry and sector - and we all know how efficient gvt is, right?)
... Care to defend your patriarch on this, or, lemme guess, it was Mulroney's fault.
I think it's best we all just hang and rattle for awhile. I was involved with bureaucracy for 35 years and have some understanding of the hoops and hurdles that have to be made before anything happens. Anytime a project takes place where a shovel load of soil is moved has to be approved by dozens of different agencies and even if you know damn well they are not involved they have to be sent a letter and given a reasonable time to respond. I would expect that any projects that were planned last fall will not realistically get underway until this fall. That has absolutely nothing to do with the Prime Minister, that's just protocol that's been around for years.
Yep, Old Pierre just pissed it down the urinal like there was no tomorrow, but then arrogance can do that.
Were you able to watch the CBC evening news (Mansbridge) and the round-table of analysts?
It seems that even the CBC (read: The Liberal Ministry of Truth) doesn't buy Iggy's bluff and condemnations of Harper's gvt.
JLM
This may be true for the 2008 budget, but what about the 2007 budget?
75% of the money of the 2007 budget is still with the government, this money could have helped create jobs this year.
This may be true for the 2008 budget, but what about the 2007 budget?
75% of the money of the 2007 budget is still with the government, this money could have helped create jobs this year.
JLM,
In the end, the past is the past.... However, when all the arm-chair-quarterbacks (myself included) like SJP proffer their subjective analysis, I enjoy asking some tough questions.
I doubt that he'll respond in any objective manner, more likely he'll seek to deflect the issue and vilify another target.
So Nunavut, the NWT, the City of toronto, and the Arizona Legislature are not democracies I take it?
What rules says that a Parliamentary system must necessarily be partisan? The only reason the Canadian Federal government is plagues not only by partisanship, but blind worship of the party even, is because we the people have ignorantly chosen to give parties that much power.