Reduce spending to kill the deficit

When I was younger I was very concerned about the deficit. In the late 1970s and early 1980s the deficit increased exponentially. We had a major problem with inflation, and the government's excuse was these were its measures to get inflation under control. Still, the deficit looked like the government was headed for bankruptcy. I'm going to get partisan here, because I have to. Brian Mulroney and his Conservatives were elected in 1984 on a platform of reducing government spending, and reducing the number of individuals hired in the federal civil service. Most importantly he promised to eliminate the deficit, reduce the debt, and reduce taxes. After two full terms of government, both with majority governments, he had increased spending, increased the deficit, doubled the debt, and increased taxes. Tax increases included increasing personal income tax, introducing the GST, and introducing the federal individual surtax. Many people forget about the surtax, because finance minister Paul Martin got rid of it. He didn't do so by increasing other taxes or creating a new tax; he did so by cutting spending. Paul Martin succeeded in reducing government spending, reducing the civil service, eliminating the deficit, reducing the debt, and reducing taxes. Brian Mulroney did the opposite of everything he campaigned for; Paul Martin delivered.

I joined the Liberal party after Paul Martin became Prime Minister. To be blunt, I noticed when Paul Martin was removed from the finance portfolio his replacement, John Manley, had undone much of his work. In the six months between John Manley being appointed and his first budget, John had increased the civil service back to 1993 levels (levels the Conservatives had set), increased spending, and reduced the surplus to $3 billion. Well, at least he didn't increase taxes and didn't eliminate the surplus entirely. That was why so many Canadians wanted Paul Martin to become Prime Minister. To restore the good work he had done while he was finance minister. While PM, he did reduce spending somewhat, did increase the surplus to $12 billion, and did reduce taxes. However, it wasn't as much as people expected. However, Prime Minister Paul Martin only had a minority government, and the NDP were nipping at his heals. Jack Layton demanded he increase spending dramatically, increase taxes to pay for it, and run a deficit. That would have been political suicide for Mr. Martin. Eventually Jack's demand that Mr. Martin go the opposite of what voters demanded forced an election.

Now we don't have Jean Chrétien or Paul Martin. Now we have Michael Ignatieff, and a Conservative government under Stephen Harper. What did Harper do? Cut taxes in an attempt to completely eliminate the surplus. Remember the surplus is a payment to the principle of the debt. Reducing interest payments for the debt are as important to creating the surplus as economic growth. Killing debt payments means the government doesn't have the surplus with which it can cut taxes. Killing the surplus kills the goose that lays the golden eggs. Despite all their efforts to kill the surplus, the economy was so strong that surpluses kept coming in. So they kept cutting taxes until they won, they killed the surplus entirely. There are some taxpayers who think this is good, but realize what this means. A recession was bound to happen, now it's here. We should have dramatically reduced the debt while we had money to do so, now we don't. Now we have a deficit. Despite all the promises by Conservatives that they would never, ever, ever run a deficit, here it is. Now people are talking about increasing taxes to eliminate that deficit.

The reason for posting the message is my plea to not do that. We don't have to. Conservatives have dramatically increased spending again, increased spending to an all time high. This is what the Mulroney Conservatives did: talk about financial responsibility but in fact spend like a drunken sailor. (Apologies to anyone in the naval service. The cliché is too good to pass up.) In 1993 through 1997 the Liberals cut spending to eliminate the deficit, then continued to cut spending through year 2000 to raise the surplus to $17.1 billion. We need to do that again. And we can; we did it before, we can do it again.

I could go on about my great plans, but this threat has one simple point: cut spending, not increase taxes.

You left out the fact that Martin downloaded onto the provinces.
I do agree the spending is out of control.
I do not believe these stimulus packages are going to work and is just pissing money away that would better go to school's,roads and the most important health care.
The American car companies have failed to adapt and are paying for it with our money.

Not quite. Given the almost yearly 20 billion dollar deficits it was clear the provinces weren't shouldering their fair share.

Winnipeggers post is quite correct in analysis.

Harper's mistake was he reduced taxes without significantly cutting government enough. But he could only do so much in a minority situation. I think a Conservative majority would take (sometimes unpopular) slashes to a multitude of government programs returning us to a surplus position where we can pay down the debt.

Liberal party members campaigning on CKA again, what's the matter that fund raising thing not going to well? Maybe Iggy should lead the way and finally cut a cheque out of his own pocket.

Its always funny that you guys claim Harper did more with his minority then any other and that because of so many Liberal abstaining he pushed a lot through except when the topic is "why did he not do what was right".

The public has spoken. Even with the worst ever Liberal threat Harper managed only a slim win and his polling has gone south in a big way.

NOBODY wants a con majority.

Harpers mistake was being Harper and trying to install a Harper ideology.

wasn't it something about a global recession?

and I seem to remember the opposition wanting to bring the government down because they weren't spending it fast enough :roll: