Donald Douglas has a link to a graphic representation of President Obama’s budgetary plans.
President Barack Obama has repeatedly claimed that his budget would cut the deficit by half by the end of his term. But as Heritage analyst Brian Riedl has pointed out, given that Obama has already helped quadruple the deficit with his stimulus package, pledging to halve it by 2013 is hardly ambitious. The Washington Post has a great graphic which helps put President Obama’s budget deficits in context of President Bush’s.
What’s driving Obama’s unprecedented massive deficits? Spending. Riedl details:
- President Bush expanded the federal budget by a historic $700 billion through 2008. President Obama would add another $1 trillion.
- President Bush began a string of expensive financial bailouts. President Obama is accelerating that course.
- President Bush created a Medicare drug entitlement that will cost an estimated $800 billion in its first decade. President Obama has proposed a $634 billion down payment on a new government health care fund.
- President Bush increased federal education spending 58 percent faster than inflation. President Obama would double it.
- President Bush became the first President to spend 3 percent of GDP on federal antipoverty programs. President Obama has already increased this spending by 20 percent.
- President Bush tilted the income tax burden more toward upper-income taxpayers. President Obama would continue that trend.
President Bush presided over a $2.5 trillion increase in the public debt through 2008. Setting aside 2009 (for which Presidents Bush and Obama share responsibility for an additional $2.6 trillion in public debt), President Obama’s budget would add $4.9 trillion in public debt from the beginning of 2010 through 2016.
It should be noted that, even using President Obama’s much rosier estimates, the deficits projected during his Administration are always larger than the largest deficit run under President Bush, with the exception of the FY2009 deficit run up due to the financial system bailout. Even there, only part of that deficit can be credited to President Bush. While he signed the $700 billion TARP program into law, half of it was held in abeyance until released by President Obama. And the $787 Porkulus Plan was entirely President Obama’s doing, and responsibility.
Further, our new commander-in-chief plans to cut and run withdraw from the war in Iraq by the summer of 2010, but his projected deficits for FY2011, 2012 and 2013, when we’d presumably be out of Iraq, are all greater than President Bush’s worst deficits with us fighting in Iraq.
And, of course, there’s the little matter of the difference between the Administration’s estimates and those of the Congressional Budget Office; more often than not, the CBO — which is supposed to be non-partisan — comes closer to the final figures than does the Administration, which has a political incentive to minimize the projections.
From the Heritage Foundation:
Those four little words say all that need be said.
“You know, Paul, Reagan proved deficits don’t matter,”, Dick Chaney, Dec 2002. Republicans were busy writing apologetics for deficits four years ago.
Here’s what you don’t get, Dana – the possiibility of a repeat of the Great Depression. This is a greater problem than record-setting deficits, and it is what Obama’s policies are trying to avoid. Given that the US economy has been run on an expansion of fake money, and given that crony capitalism means that losses will be socialised, it is inevitable that the burden of the excesses of the last few decades – due to deregulation of the financial industry – will largely be met by taxpayers.
Your worry about deficits is a manufactured concern, parrotted from other people’s talking points and adopted so you can snipe at Obama. You weren’t worried about them before, nor do you comprehend enough about the situation to realise that they are the lesser of two evils.
You are conspicious in not offering an alternative, perhaps because you dimly realise that you don’t want to be associated with the results of not stimulating an economy spiralling downwards. Obama’s plans has serious, serious flaws – but thay’re not the ones you’re moaning about.
Phoe wrote:
Yet, amazingly enough, President Roosevelt’s massive public spending didn’t get us out of the Depression; Hideki Tojo and Adolf Hitler did that.
And heck, we could say that any recession might bring with it the “possiibility of a repeat of the Great Depression,” and use that to justify inordinate spending and deficits.
Well, at some point, this money has to be paid back; that, in itself, is recession-encouraging.
Phoe wrote:
.
Actually, yes I have: I said we ought to do nothing, and let the recession work itself out, as all recessions do. Then, when we’re out of the recession, we’ll be a couple trillion dollars less in debt.
Pho throws a dig:
From the Heritage Foundation:
Those four little words say all that need be said.
Hmmm, the Heritage Foundation used BO’s numbers and the CBO numbers. I guess you are implying the Foundation made up the chart from thin air. What this chart says is that BO is manufacturing money from thin air to pay for a Socialistic Society that is not wanted here.
You are conspicious in not offering an alternative
Actually, there always was an alternative: bankruptcy. These companies deemed “too big to fail” have hampered the system’s mechanisms for fixing these problems.
Ugh. Bad times ahead for all of us. Stop this train I want to go home.
[...] View Original Article Blogged with the Flock Browser [...]
I don’t think anyone on the left fails to understand the massive debts that are being acquired. The only question is whether it’s worth it or not, which is where we disagree of course.
Actually, Dana, Tojo and Hitler had nothing to do with getting us out of the Depression, which technically ended in 1933. The reason people tend to consider the Depression as lasting until the second world war is because we were so deep in it by 1933 that even eight straight years of expansion couldn’t get us back to where we were in the early ’20s…
Remember, this is spending, the increased taxing comes next to try to pay for this. Cap and Trade TAXES will sink marginal incomes to nothing, and reduce the standard of living for all. Hello Third World? And if you think spending by people will create jobs, think again, they may have just enough for basics, and those who can’t make basics will give up. Can we spell D-E-P-R-E-S-S-I-O-N?
According to the chart, BO will have higher deficits in the first two years than W had in all eight years. Good bye standard of living!
From the Franklin D. Roosevelt Library and Museum, hardly a non-partisan source of information regarding FDR and the Great Depression, we find this excerpt:
So, if Jeff’s story is accurate, and the FDR library is accurate, the Great Depression worsened in 1933 and also ended in 1933, the same year FDR took office. That, in itself, is a very huge assertion. And, according to recent UCLA studies, FDR’s actions prolonged the depression several years beyond when it would’ve naturally ended.
There appear to be several matters that don’t mix. And all matters from liberal sources. (Don’t even try to say UCLA is not liberal.)
Our public school system has turned out such an uneducated set of voters that even this won’t make sense to them. Opponents will just deny the evidence and accomplices in the media will not investigate any deeper. Otherwise, how could Obama stand up before the nation and say that he will cut the deficit in half when in each year the actual deficit (by his own figures) will increase.
MAS1916:
Our public school system has turned out such an uneducated set of voters that even this won’t make sense to them. Opponents will just deny the evidence and accomplices in the media will not investigate any deeper. Otherwise, how could Obama stand up before the nation and say that he will cut the deficit in half when in each year the actual deficit (by his own figures) will increase.
Shit floats to the top sometimes, and it does here. BO quadruples FY08 Deficit in FY09. So by FY12, the defecate is half of FY09′s Defecate. All Bullshit, All the Time. Yup, it’s half of FY09, but still double FY08. Only the gullible will believe the blue smoke and mirrors this guy is blowing up our butts.
The reason people tend to consider the Depression as lasting until the second world war is because we were so deep in it by 1933 that even eight straight years of expansion couldn’t get us back to where we were in the early ’20s…
Which, of course, leads to ,a href=”http://geezeo-cms.s3.amazonaws.com/JobLossesRecessions.jpg”>this fascinating graph.
“Do nothing” is not credible. I urge the Republicans to associate themselves with it at every chance they can as people’s jobs and lives are ruined…
“Do nothing” is not credible.
This of course is the mantra of the big government neo keynesian. Instead let’s create $ 10 trillion in new debt over the next 10 years, $30,000 for each person in the US on top of what we already owe. Think that will have any effect on our currency or perhaps on our ability to get others to finance this ridiculous expansion.
This of course is the mantra of the big government neo keynesian.
One that can remember history from less than a century back. “Intellectuals”, in Republican-speak.
“One that can remember history from less than a century back. “Intellectuals”, in Republican-speak.”
But yet can’t remember the history of the last century of his own country, one that seemed to do much better once the government monkey was off its back.