2010
02.01
02.01
I discovered this nice little piece by Jim Treacher today, but in all fairness to our messianic leader’s astute attribution of responsibility in spending, I felt it necessary to add the following edits to the budget graph:
That can’t be right, the blue stripe only appears in that first year. That implies that next year, and the following year, and the one after that, he won’t still be complaining about what a deficit-fueling spendthrift Bush was. But we both know he will.
True that, Dave – makes 2012 look like a real bargain!
Remember, the 2009 budget wasn’t passed until AFTER Obama took office. It was HIS budget passed by a Democratic-dominated Congress.
Eh? the 2009 budget was passed by a Democratic-dominated Congress, too.
How about the same graph the last 20 years but show who controlled congress. The house controls the money not the president.
There’s a fundamental problem though. That “deficit” by Bush was mostly what? Forced loans to the banks/financial institutions that they had to take. They already paid those back. If you’re blue lining it the first year, then you have to stack that as a surplus (they would have come back) the next year. The only reason they haven’t, is because Obama wants to spend that too.
So much of Bush’s “deficit” was short term loans. Most of Obamas are long term spending that is borrowing money not only from today, but long into the future to pay for his pet programs; assuming they stay on budget and don’t grow. (Like when has that ever happened)?
… oddly enough, the Dem-controlled Congress was in charge of the 08 and 09 ‘Bush’ budgets as well, were they not? *looks at chart again*
And lets not forget the cause of the “housing bubble”. While it is complex and multifaceted : a significant part of it was because of CRA required Banks to loan to high-risk/low-income people, Fanny/Freddy snapping up these sub-primes and repackaging them with good loans into Mortgage Backed Securities (which other institutions copied and magnified), Sox and mark-to-market all making sure the next downturn would be a death-plummet. All Democrats pet programs. I don’t think the Republicans are close to innocent in all this : but the Democrats were the outright advocates and defenders of everything that went wrong (and resisted all efforts to avoid some of the problems) : then they took zero-responsibility and blamed only the other side instead of helping. Go team!