The major difference is in how the population is taxed. Conservatives believe in a ';flat tax'; or low taxes for the wealthy, while Liberals believe in a progessive tax schedule that taxes the wealthy at a higher rate than the poor. Conservatives will want to rely more on sales taxes (or ';consumption based taxation';) while Liberals will want to rely more on payroll taxes. When it comes to spending the two will spend about the same amount, but on different things.What is the difference between the liberal and conservative views on US federal budget?
basically, conservatives (like me) think it is too big and liberals think it is too small.
These days, liberals and conservatives believe a lot of the same things. Don't let the neocon Republicans fool you about liberals.
No differance. The conservatives want an ample military to provide for our nations security. The libs want to downsize the military, and pour the money into free programs so the poor stay poor. No differance.
Once upon a time in a galaxy far far away, level headed and responsible moderate Republicans like Ike and Nixon actually believed in fiscial responsibility, and that there would not be a significant debt to pass on to future generations of Americans...once upon a time long long ago and gone forever.
And that was a big difference between Dems and Repubs years ago, say during the Johnson era, when Dems ffavored a lot of social spending...but that was 40 years ago and this is now...
Now it seems that there is a sick corporate rading mentality desperation that has gripped the party like people abandoning a sinking ship called the USS United States Of America, and the Treasury of America has been turned into a corporate rading chest full of mad money.
No one in a position of power in the Republican party is giving a serious thought to tommorow and and burdens of future debt on the young. Excessive and insane spending along with stupid tax cuts that are designed to primarily benefit the very rich are loading the budget with decades of future debt, debt that like it or not YOUR KIDS and Grandkids will be paying for long after George W has gone on to his just reward.
ABC 20/20 John Stossel posed this same question in his episode John Stossel goes to Washington. You know what he found out? Conservatives tell people they spend less and liberals spend way more, but it's a lie.
Conservatives actually spend more and increase government by twice as much as liberals. They are never able to balance the budget like liberals, and always drive America into debt.
There are a lot of mistaken notions in some of the answers you have received. Take the term ';neo con';. It isn't classicaly applied to budget issues. People also confuse parties with philosophy. Take republican and conservative. The senate has a majority of republicans, but conservatives in the senate are outnumbered by liberals.
More to your question though. Conservative budgetary philosophy is premised on the idea that if you cut taxes the revenue to the government increases because the economy grows during tax cuts. This is true. Conservatives also believe that a smaller central government is best in a democratic republic, so spending must be cut. As we have seen though, republicans spend as much as democrats, and that is a prime reason that election watchers like myself think many conservatives won't show up on election day. The current congress is not truely a conservative congress in fiscal matters.
On the other hand liberal budgetary philosophy dictates that a strong central government should gather revenue from the masses and redistribute it to help as many people as possible. This is a new leftist liberalism and it is a departure from classical liberalism. This is one reason why so many people have left the democrats and gone republican in the past 10 to 12 years.
In sum, both parties have made a mess of things the last few years. The democrats will continue to have a hard time if they follow the Dean, Kerry, Gore slide to the far left. Clinton was a great politician who was a moderate liberal (DLC) and triangulated policy. The democrat party is split in two right now. (By the way, President Clinton and Senator Clinton are polor opposite types of democrats)! Republicans are split between their base (conservatives) and their office holders (moderates on fiscal policy). No one is happy right now.
By the way, I don't understand what you meant by ';they don't follow [the buget] anyway';. When the budget is set it gets administered by the departments in the executive branch. If it were not so we would have a constitutional crisis as the branches fought amongst themselves.
I hope this answer (while simplistic) is helpful.
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