That’s technically accurate. US Const, Art 1, Sec. 7, 8. However, the vast majority of spending corresponds with the Executive’s budget. Reagan campaigned on reversing Carter’s “catastrophic” deficits, and later chastised Congress for spending too much, but the (then unprecedented) deficits that Reagan rang up corresponded very closely with the budgets Reagan submitted.

This pattern has been followed for every Republican administration since. For a discussion of federal tax and spending practices since 1938, and whether Congress or the Executive is more responsible, look here. Here’s a brief excerpt:

Comparing the borrowing habits of the two parties since 1981, when the Neo-Conservative movement really took hold and government spending raced out of control, it is extremely obvious that the big spenders in Washington are Republicans and their party’s presidents. The only Democratic president since then, Mr. Clinton raised the national debt an average of 4.3% per year. The Republican presidents (Reagan, Bush, and Bush II) raised the debt an average of 10.8% per year.

(For what it’s worth, I would use the term “supply-side” where the author uses the term “neo-conservative.”)

I don’t know how much Congress actually spends itself, compared with what it appropriates for the Government.

The point is that the executive cannot collect what the legislature does not levy and it cannot spend what the legislature does not appropriate. So if the legislature actually cares to limit what’s collected and spent, it can do so.

“Saying “The 109th Congress spent more than the 108th Congress…” wouldn’t have had the same impact.”

Have the same impact? What impact are you trying to have? Blame the country’s ills on whatever executive administration is in power, or assess the blame where it belongs?

For one, I doubt that many people would be able to associate a particular Congress with the Party in power.

For past history, you’re likely correct. But people are generally aware of the identity of the party currently in control.

“By your standard, it’s “totally bunk” to say the average height of an adult woman is five feet 3.8 inches, since the majority of woman aren’t exactly that height, and a few exceptional women are 7 feet or 3 feet tall.”

And by your standard, a country of 10 people in which 9 make 1 dollar per year and one makes 100 million per year is a pretty rich country.

The question is, is the mean extremely far from the median? Put another way, is the average case ridiculously distant from the typical case?

In the example you mention — the case of the average income in a bar of typical Americans plus Bill Gates — the average is so far removed from the median as to be useless. But there’s no reason to think that’s the case regarding the Tax Policy Center analysis. For one thing, the TPC analysis was done in quintiles, which means that it’s never the case that Bill Gates’ income is averaged with someone making $20,000 a year.

You do come up with an example of how the TPC analysis might not apply — “If someone makes 250K/year on only capital gains and dividends, there’s no way his tax rate will only go up 12 bucks with Obama.” But that’s an extremely atypical case; the vast majority of Americans do not get 100% of their income from capital gains and dividends. Most Americans get most of their incomes from working at jobs; and the TPC analysis should apply well to that.

A bigger problem for the TPC analysis is that all they can do is calculate based on what the candidates and their staffs say; but how much will the real world resemble what’s being proposed here?

Unlike Jed, I do think there’s a difference between the candidates — I think Obama has a much better shot at getting a lot of his proposals through a Democratic congress than McCain does, for obvious partisan reasons.

Clearly this is not the case. In fact, the lower the legislatively guaranteed tax dollars, the higher the real-world tax revenues.

Although it’s a little hard to make out what you’re saying, this sounds like you’re claiming that lowering taxes leads to higher tax revenues. But that’s simply not true. From factcheck.org:

This economic theory is what George H.W. Bush called “voodoo economics.” We called it “supply-side spin” when we wrote about Republican presidential contender John McCain’s claim that President George W. Bush’s tax cuts had increased federal revenues. We found that a slew of government economists – from the Congressional Budget Office, the Treasury Department, the Joint Committee on Taxation and the White House’s Council of Economic Advisers – all disagreed with that theory, saying that tax cuts may spur economic growth but they lead to revenues that are lower than they would have been if the cuts hadn’t been enacted.

The supply-side theory that tax-cut proponents often espouse was demonstrated by the Laffer curve, named for economist Arthur B. Laffer. The curve suggests that a higher tax rate can generate just as much revenue as a lower rate. But most economists are not Laffer-curve purists. Instead, while they may believe in the power of tax cuts to create an economic boost, they don’t say that growth is enough to completely make up for lost revenue. For example, N. Gregory Mankiw, former chair of the current President Bush’s Council of Economic Advisers, calculated that the growth spurred by capital gains tax cuts pays for about half of lost revenue over a number of years and that payroll tax cuts generate enough growth to pay for about 17 percent of what is lost.

(There’s a more in-depth discussion here, but factcheck has the advantage of being non-partisan.)

Greg Mankiw is only one of a slew of Bush administration economists who have said that tax cuts do not pay for themselves. This is in contrast to Republican politicians, who frequently promise that there are no trade-offs for tax cuts, and in contrast to conservative publications, who forbid their writers from dissenting from the “free lunch” view of tax cuts.

Matt Yglesias said “There’s a systematic effort by the right to convince people that tax cuts are not merely beneficial in some ways or beneficial all things considered but that there are actually no tradeoffs whatsoever.” That’s a pretty good description of the “tax cuts increase revenues!” nonsense. In the real world, tax cuts — like everything else — come with costs.

Why? Because a group of new Congressmen led by Newt Gingrich all claimed that they were the real thing and that they were going to do business in a different fashion, and people believed them. Now, I don’t know what happened next. Did they all simply lie? Or did they get co-opted into the system? I’ll let the scholars sort that out.

Bush spent? Carter spent? Seems to me that “Congress spent” would be more appropriate. That’s where the spending bills come from. Sure, the President can refuse to sign a bill or even veto it, but you can only run the country on continuing resolutions for so long. At some point if the Congress doesn’t vote up lower spending the President is going to sign the bill he gets.

I’m not shocked. I am pissed, though.

The American public thought they were electing a conservative Congress; instead, they got a Republican one.

But why did they think that? When has a Republican government ever spent less that the governments that came before them?

G. H. Bush spent more than Reagan did. Reagan spent more than Carter did. Ford spent more than Nixon who spent more than Johnson did. Eisenhower spent more than Truman.

And now we’re shocked, shocked I say, that G. W. Bush is spending more than Clinton did.

Well, but that changes the entire proposition. After all, governments build toll roads. If governments are building roads that they directly charge you to use, why not let private companies do so and see if they can do it cheaper/better?

At the start of American history there were many private toll roads. We got away from that when we started building public free roads, and that’s fine - it’s a defined function of our governmental system that the government builds and maintains roads, for good reason. But once you bring toll roads back into consideration, why should they have to be public?

In at least two instances as we can see up thread, there are at least two governments that have said “Gee, they don’t”.

Here in Illinois our toll roads were originally set up that way so that the tolls would pay off the bonds that were sold to finance construction. The voters were promised that once the bonds were paid off the roads would become freeways. That turned out to be a blatant lie, of course. Once politicians get a revenue stream they don’t let go. Those bonds were paid off long ago. So I tend not to trust Illinois politicians, no matter what office they are running for.

Further, I think cleaning up Bush’s mess will be far too expensive not to raise taxes.

McCain would also have the same problems.

No, because neither candidate has the right idea totally (lower everybody’s), so I pick the guy who lowers mine.

So, although (by your reckoning) Obama’s tax plan would increase productivity for 85-95% of Americans, you put a measly twelve bucks ahead of that?

That’s awesome. That’s patriotic. Way to put the country first.

—Myca

How many examples do we have of private organizations building roads for public use do we have that we can test this proposition?

See? They’re so bad at it, they know not to even try.

Of course, it’s an unfair comparison. They’re not going to even attempt it, because there’s no incentive for them to do it — they’re in it for the profit, and there’s no profit to be had. (Toll roads aside; that’s what I meant by “public use”. Perhaps I should have said “free use” instead.)

Governments are really, really good at some things, and it’s dishonest to selectively ignore those things when you’re comparing public vs. private efficiency.

And by your standard, a country of 10 people in which 9 make 1 dollar per year and one makes 100 million per year is a pretty rich country.

Here’s one, RonF
You’ll be able to recognize it as soon as you hit it. It’ll be the one with no potholes or construction hangups.

Which assumes that every dollar in legislatively spent monies is counterbalanced by one in legislatively guaranteed tax collections. Clearly this is not the case. In fact, the lower the legislatively guaranteed tax dollars, the higher the real-world tax revenues.

“The right wing focus on “taxation, taxation, nothing but taxation” is simply voting for the politician who tells the biggest lie.”

In some aggregates of the American economy, maybe, I don’t know. In this one, the ‘right-wing focus’ is completely correct. I’m in property management/contracting business. If taxes on, for instance, corporate capital gains, go up, OK. Fine. We just stop new construction and sales and shift capital into areas that show demonstrable losses, like rentals.

Functionally, Obama raises corporate capital gains, we show no capital gains. What happens on the ground is, instead of hiring contractors and subcontractors to build us houses and office buildings, we hire maintenance men for upkeep on already improved properties. It isn’t me who suffers, it’s the guy making 15 bucks an hour laying brick.

No, because neither candidate has the right idea totally (lower everybody’s), so I pick the guy who lowers mine.

It may have. I checked out the link and the Tax Policy Center’s site. I see that, yes, they do have some very rigorous analyses that take into account a wide variety of factors. But I have no idea whether or not that particular table used one of those analyses, although maybe I just overlooked the evidence.

I still think it’s both bunk and simplistic. Or bunk because it’s simplistic. You can’t boil down something so complex into an average. I mean, what’s a guy gotta do to at least get a median around here? The average is perhaps the most overly used and most meaningless statistic in existence, at least when presented in the absence of accompanying stats.

I have no objection to complex analyses. But I do when they are presented in oversimplified and, by extension, misleading formats.

OT - why can’t I seem to get italics, bold, and the like to work. What am I doing wrong?

How many examples do we have of private organizations building roads for public use do we have that we can test this proposition?

Actually, here in Illinois we are doing something like that. IIRC Mayor Daley essentially sold off (via a 99-year lease) the Chicago Skyway tollway to a private company. Chicago gets the lease payments and the private company gets the tolls and the headaches of operating and maintaining it. So we’ll see how that works out.

The Chicago Skyway being part of the Interstate system - 7.8 miles of I-90 from the Indiana state border to the Dan Ryan Expressway in Chicago (I-57). Don’t ask me how he swung that, Daley pretty much does WTF he wants to.

Understand that McCain is the son of someone who became an Admiral. But he was never an Admiral until McCain was out of college. His father was a Captain for most of that time, and IIUC McCain spent most of his youth living in (mostly crappy) military housing on (mostly crappy) low-level officers’ pay.

No, McCain isn’t an average fella. No Senator is. Nobody running for Senator is. For all his “aw shucks” mannner and Texas accent and unsophisticated style President Bush isn’t an “average fella” either. But there’s a difference between not being an average fella and being an elitist, someone who thinks that the elite class has a right and obligation to rule.