Obama’s and Bush’s effects on the deficit in one graph
 

Good article by Ezra Klein of Washington Post (the cutest WaPo reporter since Robert Redford played Bob Woodward in ATPM)




Ezra's comments:
What’s also important, but not evident, on this chart is that Obama’s major expenses were temporary — the stimulus is over now — while Bush’s were, effectively, recurring. The Bush tax cuts didn’t just lower revenue for 10 years. It’s clear now that they lowered it indefinitely, which means this chart is understating their true cost.

Similarly, the Medicare drug benefit is costing money on perpetuity, not just for two or three years. And Boehner, Ryan and others voted for these laws and, in some cases, helped to craft and pass them.

To relate this specifically to the debt-ceiling debate, we’re not raising the debt ceiling because of the new policies passed in the past two years. We’re raising the debt ceiling because of the accumulated effect of policies passed in recent decades, many of them under Republicans.

It’s convenient for whichever side isn’t in power, or wasn’t recently in power, to blame the debt ceiling on the other party. But it isn’t true.

http://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/...OrYI_blog.html

but nooo Bush tax cuts would mean the rich would invest more and give the poor people jobs........................:(

LMAO the wars we're fighting in Lybia (ok that's invisible) Iraq and Afghanistan are completely missing from Obama's side. Unless all these wars are costing a total of zero or Obama is being babysat by Bush. Where's Fannie, Freddie Cash for Clunkers, Hi-Speed rail and how much money has been taken in for Obamacare v. distributed. Your chart is fantasy Once Again! :zz:

Yea just horrible lowering a 37% tax rate to 34% while almost half of households pay zero %. That was totally unfair!

So let's see how that worked for us? Bush gave big tax cuts to privates and business in 2001 and 2003. What happened to jobs? What did the "job creators" do with all that massive tax cut cash that made them "confident"?

If you could read, you'd be dangerous.

god knows i'll sleep better at night knowing which dipsh!t politician made the most mess. yep, that helps this country so much, assigning blame to whichever lying loser did what and when. we're broke and going broker, but it's not the current guy..nope, he hangs the ****ing moon.

Yeah he's awesome now. I'm convinced.

A douche and a turd...your choice.

and if you could be made gone by a simple eye blink, the wide awake REM at NT would cause a million ships to sink

It is just a preview of the 2012 campaign strategy. Turn the clock back to 2008.

The 2012 campaign strategy for Obama better be defending himself as remotely Democratic, and for the GOP candidate to not be simply crazy. Mitt and Jon could carry that off.

Obama is so weak right now all the republicans should do is stand behind him and give the :rolleyes: everytime he speaks. That and put up an old 'cash for clunkers' poster and the huge plans he had for cap and trade. Not to mention the new taxes related to Obamacare (that was supposed to be a money saver. :zz:) Lamer than a lame duck. Let's see how fast he can burn through $2 trillion?

And with this wake up call, let's stop allowing the SS fund to be the cash station for the gov. and cease the IOU's from the treasury. They (SS) have plenty of them already, in fact that's all they have!

It's a shame you still don't understand how the debt ceiling works, and what it is. That 2 trillion was spent a long time ago by our Congress. The bill is here. We have to pay it. We are not borrowing for future spending.

BTW, the "Ryan budget", once voted in, will have to have a debt ceiling raise nearly every year.

We need a debt-ceiling raise every month. That's the only way we'll control the crackwhore like spending and show we're on top of the debt.

Since we spent this $2 trillion :zz: long ago I trust there won't be any other crazy spending plans. Like paying people for their houses so the Fed can burn them making those people want to buy new domiciles :eek:

Guess IMO it comes down to military spending preserving independence while entitlement spending creating dependence. I'd rather be independent while some prefer a hangy, dried up tiat to suck on. Social Security and Medicare are not entitlements until they are not contributed to by their recipients. Currently they are victims. Being drained by the likes of cash for clunkers, Pakistan aid and forgiving Egypt's tab. Belly up Grandma and Grandpa!

Seeing as the debt ceiling has nothing to do with future spending, or the deficit, don't you think it would simply be better to plan the future spending in a more responsible way?

Just the current Ryan budget awaiting passage.

You mean, independent like ... oh, Haliburton? Lockheed? TASC? :D

Ah, found this quote today:

The debt deal just done has guaranteed our continuing crappy recession and continuing unemployment for the next couple of years. Enjoy the fruits of a proven-disastrous financial ideology.

lol

don't hold your breath. it's funny, the last couple of years our govt has been telling us that in times of trouble, they're supposed to boost spending. of course, we're supposed to pretend they followed the other half of that axiom, that in times of boom, the govt. cuts back.

oops.

Clinton did. It worked. If only Bush had held that course.

And the House walked the eff out of there today on vacation for a month, leaving 4,000 FAA employees "furloughed" with no pay and no resolution, because our House couldn't get it's freaking act together in the past two weeks.

The House had it's work week changed this Congress by Speaker Boehner, to a 4-day work week, with two weeks on, one week off.

I've had it with most of them.

Clinton was the weather man in San Diego, anybody could look good under those circumstances. Does not make him a better meteorologist than the guy in Minnesota, just has an easier time at work is all.

True. But he made it better, stronger and didn't abuse it. He also beat Newt into submission.

Yesterday the House went home leaving 4,000 FAA employees, and 90,000 civilian contractors unemployed. I hope the Senate did something today day before they left, but I don't know if they can do it without the House.

I give Speaker Boehner credit for adding 94,000 to the unemployed just yesterday, by literally simply ignoring them and not being able to multi-task. Yay, debt ceiling! While 94,000 wish they had paycheck this week. Oh, but the House has it's month vacation. These current building projects - runways, safety improvements - may not get finished by this winter now, either. But hey, the House is tired from all it's arguing over nothing - they cut out of Washington before the Senate voted this morning.

That's a rotten, bald exposure of how important this whole debt-ceiling-fake-dog-and-pony-show-created false "disaster" was, while real Americans are idle, furloughed, while the House lays back. Disgusting.

And if the media in this country had any journalistic integrity or balls, they'd be mentioned every single night on the evening news, "Day 14 of the FAA furlough, Congress won't be back for another three weeks ... " and interviewing live every FAA and private construction employee they can.

4000 represents less than 10% of their workforce. I suspect like most other Fed agencies they are overstaffed (padded) by 30% plus in addition to being overpaid with far too many beni's. If these workers are not missed they should then be put on permanent furloughs with no pay and pension credits where they stand. Move on to the next department/agency and repeat. The House is smarter than you think! ;)

I'd say those people are indeed being missed, as we have safety people continuing to work to protect you ass today at airports at NO PAY right now, just because it must be done or risk the publics life. They don't have to be there - they are furloughed.

And we also have those 4,000 supervisors and 90,000 contractors who had to walk away from construction projects in progress (runways, safety) just abandoning them in the middle. Makes it fun for the airports, huh? Makes it even more fun if the projects are not finished and have to be held over?

And how about that $30 million a day in the FAA fees we are NOT COLLECTING. The airlines, by the way, have raised their own fees to keep fares the same and are currently gouging the customers by taking those FAA fees for themselves.

So a good days work by our current Congress: 94,000 people laid off, millions being lost daily in revenue, projects delayed and made more expensive, safety of public at risk without the dedication of these employees over money.

And Congress went on vacation and left these people hanging.

Yay! What complete fecking idiots. I cannot wait until 2012.

why don't you show a chart of spending as a percentage of GDP?

:tro: Winner

Because we were talking about what happened to job growth during the Bush years as a result of his massive tax cuts.

So I posted a chart about job growth.

Job growth tanked after the massive Bush tax cut givaways of 2001 and 2003.

Oh, but it should have grown! Giving massive tax cuts to the "job creators" makes jobs appear! At least according to the Republican economic platform.

Except it's been proven that it does not. How many times did Reagan have to raise taxes?

Remember? there was an attack on the World Trade Center, 9/11/01, when we were attacked for the first time since Pearl Harbor? :zz:

Yea reduce the military budget some more and for God's sake, free paps smears for all, finally!

Geeshus cripes: First, No, that was not the first time we were attacked on our homeland for the first time since Pearl Harbor. Go google: terrorist and World Trade Center, and look before 09-11-01. Get back to me on that one.

Secondly, what the holy eff does that have to do with tax cuts and job growth?

Go have another drink.

Go google economic effects of 9-11, first for the travel business and then for business as a whole. That's what it has to do with job growth or the lack of it you fool!

Tomorrow is Miller night.

You are seriously taking the position that 9-11 is the cause of the recession and the loss of hundreds of thousands of jobs.

Seriously?

:tro::wf

well, i guess the defense of 'it would have been worse without the cuts' wouldn't fly? it works so well when the stimulus comes up.....

but since they did nothing, it makes one wonder why the next prez continued the cuts. or maybe not!

since this thread deals with the deficit, i thought it was a good place to put this...now, my husband and i live out in the country, so we have satellite internet. right now, with the intense heat, we lose signal in the afternoons. hubby is fed up, went to the hughes site, and look what's on there:


Exclusive savings for eligible customers
You may be eligible for substantial savings with the help of the Recovery Act program.
In an effort to make high-speed Internet available to millions of Americans who don't have access, the Federal Government has made it possible for eligible households that qualify to get satellite Internet at a significantly reduced price. This limited-time opportunity is made possible with the direct assistance of the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act (ARRA).

Find out if your address is eligible to benefit from the Recovery Act program.




so...we're broke, but our taxpayer dollars are going towards high speed internet...unbelievable. wonder what james madison would say about that!

We are one of the most technologically backwards first world countries in existence as far as equal citizen access. We are not even in the top twenty in healthy infants, healthcare access, science and math and reading education. Our bridges and roads are patched, unsafe holdovers from 1950's and 1960's. We have difficult alternative energy access. One-quarter of our children live in poverty. We have little to none of our historical manufacturing sector left. Our economy? A fifth of it is based upon providing the most expensive healthcare in the world to some of the unhealthiest people in the world, who are suddenly living less long that the previous generation.

Some of us want America to step into the 21st century.

Some of us are sick to death of America dying, and the effing GOP and idiot blue dogs trying to kill off the barely-breathing carcass remaining. Banks and the wealthy are hoarding 1.4 trillion dollars out of the economy.

We are a terribly wealthy nation. Yet only the top few have all the money. And they are not spending it on anything, let alone "job creation".

Wake up and look at this country we love with objective eyes. The end of the Monopoly game is at hand, and only 1 or 2 people have all the money, all the hotels, and all the railroads - and they aren't hiring, thanks.

Our Congress - so proud to just cut spending! - just laid off thousands of people, out of political spite! - and have already spent $250 million in uncollected American income in another partisan hostage crisis to save 12.6 million and coddle Delta Airlines lobbyists.

Why isn't every single American burning up the phone lines and marching on Washington over that? Telling Congress that they are our employees, and we say to get their damn asses back in Washington to at least sign a 30-day holdover so those thousands of American can work until they stop their petty squabbling over giving Delta lobbyists their desires?

We stop spending - for gods sakes, the idiots of both parties in Washington just decided that was what we needed NOW? - and we will be in a Great Depression for another 10-15 years.

Good lord, what the hell happened to Hoover? He started to budget cut, and economic disaster. Hooverville. What happened to FDR? The economy started to turn around, he started to budget cut, and bam, we were screwed for a decade, only saved by a World War.

It is 1937 all over again, and the fat, uneducated, unworldly, backwards haters of this country are calling the President of the United States a communist Muslim Kenyan socialist, one political party is actively and proudly making "his failure" their number one publicly-stated policy priority, and the media pays attention to it. While "real" America is starving and homeless in the streets.

I don't want this country to "go back to 1950" Or 1850, or 1776. I want it to catch back up to the other first world countries.

"The greatest dangers to liberty lurk in the insidious encroachment by men of zeal, well meaning but without understanding."
~Justice Louis D. Brandeis

I'm sick of this meme that the stimulus "did nothing". We'd be in a depression for 2 years if it wasn't there. The stimulus is ending now, and look what the hell is happening with removal of those funds from the economy. And Congress just cut spending even more.

We are doomed to repeat our arrogant idiocy of our recent past financial disasters. Un-effing-believable.

and you completely missed my point. if the stimulus kept things from getting worse, couldn't the same be said about the tax decrease?? i guess not. yet if it did nothing, it was continued-why was it continued if it was a mistake? your remark about the gop being the reason for our issues is laughable, they didn't accomplish this on their own. yet i'm the one who needs to be objective??

and as for your lengthy post just above this one, yes, our infrastructure needs help. what that has to do with tax payer dollars going to provide low income homes with high speed internet i don't know. i thought that was why libraries put all those computers in with internet that we're paying for? if folks are low income, exactly how are they supposed to access the high speed internet? i guess we buy the computers too, then people in more households can get on facebook and watch youtube..we don't have enough of that already. that'll certainly help get us back on the road to prosperity.

this is from an article i just read about future spending deals:

The $1.2 trillion in automatically triggered budget cuts don't take effect until January 2013. That is exactly when broad tax cuts worth trillions of dollars, enacted under President George W. Bush, expire. Those two events could push lawmakers to strike a deal that marries spending reductions with the renewal of some of those tax cuts.

A complete deadlock that leaves the spending cuts in place and fails to renew Bush's tax cuts would save the government huge sums.



...here's hoping they let the tax cuts expire, as they should have the last time they came up.


http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/44008921/ns/politics/


having tax cuts while waging two wars was a huge mistake...you can't spend more while taking in less-as we can see. an exploding deficit doesn't help the economy. and we're continuing to spend on those, with our govt continuing the tax cuts.

I think not stopping the tax cuts, at least for the rich, was a huge mistake by Obama, that has harmed this country irrepairably.

Well, that was directed to the general "you", not the specific "you";).

But yes, unlike you, I think there is a vast difference between the goals and methods of the two major political parties in the country. They have never been further polarized and apart.

But where the worse the far right can do is bring down the country irrepairably (IMO) with dangerous, proven-unworkable fiscal policy and direct attacks on the poor, old, and have-nots; the worse the far left could do to me would be give me universal health care.

Yes, I agree many politicians from both sides are simply corporate lobbyist-owned whores. But there are good politicians in Washington, trying to do the right thing.

The internet is considered "essential infrastructure" in other first world countries. Like telephone? Roads? Electricity in the 1940's? I can talk to people around where I live in Kentucky, and the old ones remember when the federal government made a point of paying to get electricity to every individual rural farm out in the country and middle of nowhere. It was life-changing for the country. Called a spending fiasco by some. That is the internet, now, for first world countries.

It's about the only way to find a job nowadays. We are a world community and economy, no longer separate countries who can keep their borders closed and their states separate from all other interaction. And that connection is essential. That type of connection is what just enabled the Arab Spring.

Face it - America has fallen far behind other first world countries in most objective measurements of those things that build a quality life, and happiness. The rest of the world looks at us and thinks we are crazy. They wonder why we have destroyed our greatness.

And the GOP has become so far right and polarized, compared to where they have been throughout my lifetime, that they now are just a shell company shilling for the wealthy. They have lost all humanity and social consciousness (health care and good social programs have been Republican goals for much of my lifetime) My politics haven't changed - the GOP is now irrelevant and blatently counterproductive to any progress and growth of this country at all, and I'm left with trying to work with what's left. Part of the Democratic party has moved so far right to embrace many of my political views. BTW, even our Democratic party views is considered "far right" or "very conservative" in many other first world countries.

In the late 1940's and 1950's, our federal policies created a great, upwardly mobile middle class. That - enabled consumerism - is what grows a country and creates jobs. And it did. We boomed.

We have spent the past 40 years, however, destroying those policies that created and enable the middle class, thus our middle class is now practically gone - our incomes haven't moved upwards in decades. The top 1% hold all the money. There is nobody left to be a consumer and grow the economy. Thus we are imploding. It's as simple as that.

In the Monopoly game, when one person has all the wealth, the game is over. That's where we are in America.

Should the holder of the wealth give money away to others, to keep the game in play? No, of course not.

But the game should be set up to allow everyone to play. And, if you read the real rules of Monopoly, something we all do not do, when you land on a property and can't afford to buy it, is that the property is supposed to be auctioned to the highest bidder among the other players. We don't do that, when we play Monopoly.

That's like America - the rules have been changed to favor one person owning everything, rather than interactive, thriving growth among all.

The GOP has spent forty years changing the rules to favor that, and the left has passively allowed them to do it. Now we are there. The vast wealth of this country, trillions, are in the hands of the few. The GOP attacks the left for wanting them to give away their money. No, that's false (but it's a good straw man) - the left just wants the rules to be fair.

The amazing thing, in that You Tube clip I posted about wealth, is that out of the top 400 wealthiest Americans, 200 of them are "progressive" or "liberal", and want different policy. How come they can't force that? Think about it.

Who's the one person? People are making fortunes everyday. In fact some smart traders, who took tomorrow off and came to the lake tonight, made millions and millions today! And those (retirees included) also at dinner tonight, who took their money out a month ago, knowing what this ceiling raise would mean are smiling. Again not rocket science!

The current President, albeit a failure, is the son of a mother who married an absentee, polygamist, husband. He has an accused rapist brother, who can't travel to England much more the US and a aunt he doesn't know who was living here illegally in US PAID now SS Fund credits, public housing and is now here legally and still living off US PAID now SS Fund credits, rent payments

A President who was a lawyer who never tried a case. A Harvard grad with no transcripts. Meanwhile having a wife who had a 200K plus healthcare job yet never stepped foot in medical school :zz:

Of course he's playing Candyland and thinks it's Monopoly. But he still was able to stumble into the game. Of course bailing out the idiot next to him, who thought railroads were the way to go, cost him the game.

Bottom line here is a CEO has the same amount of votes as a bum that has been on welfare and has never paid a dime in taxes. So the Dems want us to get to the point where more than 50% of the country doesn't pay taxes and all these bums will vote for the Dems because they have no pride. Us hard working Republicans are going to be screwed in the future....ouch

I call Red-Board

No worries. The way we are headed you may not have to work as hard at as you will have no job. Unless you move to China or India.. Unfortunately the barrier to a non citizen getting a job in those countries is quite high as they protect their workers and thus their economies. As a matter of fact such barriers exist in most places except the Good Ole USA where legislation is for sale and the 1% profit wildly from the destruction of the American Economy... As a Republican more damage is being done by your/our own party then anything.. I refuse to be a pawn in the Republican/Democrat battle becuase that is just what they want, focus on that while both absolutley pound the living piss out of you/us.

:tro::tro::tro:

http://www.nytimes.com/2011/08/07/op...pagewanted=all

What Happened to Obama?By DREW WESTEN
Published: August 6, 2011
Drew Westen is a professor of psychology at Emory University and the author of “The Political Brain: The Role of Emotion in Deciding the Fate of the Nation.”



an excerpt:

Like most Americans, at this point, I have no idea what Barack Obama — and by extension the party he leads — believes on virtually any issue. The president tells us he prefers a “balanced” approach to deficit reduction, one that weds “revenue enhancements” (a weak way of describing popular taxes on the rich and big corporations that are evading them) with “entitlement cuts” (an equally poor choice of words that implies that people who’ve worked their whole lives are looking for handouts). But the law he just signed includes only the cuts. This pattern of presenting inconsistent positions with no apparent recognition of their incoherence is another hallmark of this president’s storytelling. He announces in a speech on energy and climate change that we need to expand offshore oil drilling and coal production — two methods of obtaining fuels that contribute to the extreme weather Americans are now seeing. He supports a health care law that will use Medicaid to insure about 15 million more Americans and then endorses a budget plan that, through cuts to state budgets, will most likely decimate Medicaid and other essential programs for children, senior citizens and people who are vulnerable by virtue of disabilities or an economy that is getting weaker by the day. He gives a major speech on immigration reform after deporting a million immigrants in two years, breaking up families at a pace George W. Bush could never rival in all his years as president.

THE real conundrum is why the president seems so compelled to take both sides of every issue, encouraging voters to project whatever they want on him, and hoping they won’t realize which hand is holding the rabbit. That a large section of the country views him as a socialist while many in his own party are concluding that he does not share their values speaks volumes — but not the volumes his advisers are selling: that if you make both the right and left mad, you must be doing something right.