Friday, November 27, 2009

When Deficits Attack

Am I correct in assuming that the Liberal Party of Canada is furious over the latest deficit numbers that were released? I am not back in Canada to have their outrage spoon fed to me by CBC Newsworld. How we got to this deficit seems to be quite a simple equation. Recession decreases tax revenue by 20%, Liberals threaten to collapse the government unless they introduce 20-30 billion dollars in stimulus which the Tories do, and increased unemployment increases costs to the government. Even if our deficit for the year reaches 50 billion dollars, the United States will run a deficit of 1.75 trillion dollars. As big of a number as 50 billion dollars is, it is still a tiny fraction of the deficits abroad. Unfortunately the Tory Government cannot slash program spending at the necessary rate to balance the books because the "big government" opposition would surely oppose that. Ignatieff will not state a position on whether we should raise taxes or cut spending, so how exactly are we to negotiate a game plan?

I recall with great detail the speech when Iggy stated that if the government did not pursue a stimulus program he would withdraw support and force an election. Now that we have a deficit, a tiny fraction of that of our southern neighbours, the opposition seems to forget that their fingerprints are on the murder weapon. What would the Liberals do differently?

That's what I'd like to know, but they won't say. This is what I wrote about the stimulus when Iggy demanded we do it.

2 comments:

  1. 'I recall with great detail the speech when Iggy stated that if the government did not pursue a stimulus program he would withdraw support and force an election.'

    And I bet there is a CPC attack ad in the vault, with that speech as the main event.

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  2. Once again, the Libs don't have a coherent, consistent narrative. Whatever position they finally settle on regarding the deficit, it will be a piece of cake to piece together fairly recent quotes from Iggy, where he took the opposite side.

    It's the same thing with the HST, EI-360, the carbon tax, the coalition, etc etc. And of course, the CPC has lots of donated money to use in countering the Lib propaganda machine, aka the CBC.

    So far, the Lib "communication strategy" under Donolo looks pretty well the same as it was before--nitpick some aspect of the PROCESS, while saying nothing substantial about the POLICY.

    Watch the Libs, for example, when Flaherty tables his budget. We will hear how he is playing politics by releasing it early (if it's in Feb before the Olympics) or if it's late (he waited 14 months since the last one, totally irresponsible, blah blah). It's easy to write the Liberal spin on anything well in advance.

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