Pro-Obama Think Tank: Only 35% of Deficit Is Bush’s Fault, 65% Obama…

When the Center For American Progress’ best spin blames only 35% on Bush then you know it’s pretty much all Obama’s doing.

(Washington Examiner) — Most of the soaring $1 trillion federal deficit is the blame of President Obama’s spending and political deals according to a pro-Obama think tank that pegged former President George W. Bush’s responsibility at just 35 percent.

While opening its analysis by blaming Bush and showing pictures of Senate GOP leaders, the Center for American Progress said that the other 65 percent of the deficit surge came on Obama’s watch, a combination of high spending, extension of the Bush tax cuts and additional defense spending.

“The analysis reveals that events that occurred before January 2009, including the onset of the Great Recession and increased spending—especially on the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq—attributed to 35 percent of the swing from surplus to deficit,” said the center founded by long-time Obama advisor John Podesta.

That isn’t what it says

For one thing it says:

“Tax cuts are far more to blame for our current deficit than any increases in spending,” he said. “And if we continue to pile up tax cuts on top of tax cuts, it will have the same effect in the coming decade as it did in the last one: huge deficits and a growing debt.”
In defending Obama, he added, “The narrative that an ‘Obama spending spree’ caused our deficit problem is utterly false.”

Then it says:

By the time Obama took office in January 2009, the budget projection for 2012 had already deteriorated dramatically. By inauguration, the CBO was projecting a 2012 deficit of $264 billion. In other words, the projected surplus was already gone by the time Obama set foot in the Oval Office.

Most of that swing from surplus to deficit was the result of the Great Recession’s onset. Between September of 2008 and January of 2009 alone, economic conditions prompted the CBO to revise estimates of 2012 revenue collections downward by over $240 billion.

and then it says:

The remainder of the deterioration did happen after 2009, but higher spending wasn’t even close to the main culprit. The real problem was lower-than-expected revenues.

We can’t win votes by spreading lies. This is exactly the kind of thing that gets thrown back in our faces once the swing voters start to pay attention (next summer).

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