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teplightyear t1_j4dpquq wrote

Reply to comment by Is12345aweakpassword in Paul Ryan says he 'had too much power' as House speaker by bomberesque1

Mine was "Then why did we have trillion dollar deficits from 2016-2018 when you had so much power and McConnell and Trump held the keys to the other two levers of power, Mr. Fiscal Responsibility?"

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printers_rock t1_j4ej9r1 wrote

Well if we give a shit at all about being right specifically, not just generally... Deficit by year:

Year Deficit (in Billions)
2016 585
2017 665
2018 779

Accuracy matters, otherwise you're not helping. You're one of those people where a lot of us end up in a position of "I agree with your overall point but I fucking hate the way you made it"

Not a good person to be, imo.

A better version of that general argument would be to simply ask why deficits rose during his speakership. Should also lump in 2015 at $442B and 2019 at $984B, to make the point even more obvious. You could, of course, make a very concrete form of that argument by laying out the premises that he is both a fiscal conservative as well as acknowledges directly himself that he wielded a tremendous amount of power. But we're not exactly interviewing him, so that's a bit unnecesary.

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