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Originally Posted by CorsiHockeyLeague
None at all? It seems to me that no matter what your politics, it matters a great deal what the deficit was incurred for.
I mean, even taking your point about Klein, it's not like the NDP got into office and said, "wow, we really need to borrow a bunch of money to catch up on infrastructure that's lagging behind", and went on to spend money to achieve that end. They were borrowing to cover operating expenses. And that's leaving aside the $2.2 billion borrowed on behalf of the balancing pool to address a payable incurred through sheer incompetence.
It just doesn't seem to me to be a reasonable stance to take, unless you can explain why the source of these astronomical debt figures seems to you like good money to spend.
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It can be equally as unreasonable as a citizen and voter to be ok with indiscriminately slashing budgets just so you can say you are balancing things out earlier than the next guy. Which we have all seen ad nasuea with previous Conservative regimes.
The UCP are going to find out the hard way that without oil royalties rolling in like they used to, running a balanced budget is going to be near impossible, especially when you're cutting the corporate tax rate by 4% right off the bat. I'm still sitting on the fence in terms of where to cast my vote, however, I do know that voting for a party who is blindly picking fights with Ottawa that will not be won, is a complete insult to every voters intelligence. Making up for this lost tax revenue is going to come squarely off the backs of every one of the average joe's that are currently all wound up about the carbon tax in the first place. Either directly through new taxes the UCP needs to bring in or indirectly through slashed programs, services and infrastructure.
A party that still thinks the creation of a multi million dollar Alberta "oil sands war room" will change public perception, tells me just about everything I need to know in terms of where not to vote....which may be the best I can hope for this time around.