Posted on 07/30/2011 4:49:40 PM PDT by Para-Ord.45
Ezra Klein recently posted a New York Times graphic supporting his view that the deficit is primarily the fault of former President Bush and his predecessors, rather than President Obama. Interestingly, he makes no attempt to claim that Obama’s policies have reduced the deficit, just that Obama’s deficit increases were smaller than Bush’s.
Leave aside for a moment the fact that Bush’s entire eight-year record is being compared to policies enacted during Obama’s first two and a half years. The fundamental flaw in the New York Times graphic is that it assumes that a president’s fiscal policy is confined to “new” policies enacted under his watch. Every year, the president proposes a budget that contains a mix of new policies and old policies. The result is a comprehensive vision of what federal tax and spending policy ought to be. A president who simply continues the fiscal policy he inherits must bear his share of responsibility for its consequences.
A prime example of this is the “Bush tax cuts,” which the New York Times graphic charges solely to President Bush, conveniently ignoring the fact that President Obama supports making most of the cuts permanent and signed into law a two-year extension of all of them. President Bush also signed a new Medicare drug benefit into law. But President Obama didn’t repeal this new spending, he expanded it.
Below is a graphic that focuses on the results of fiscal policy, not simply on adjustments made on the margins of fiscal policy. If anything, the analysis is overly generous to President Obama because: (1) it assigns full responsibility for Fiscal Year 2009 to President Bush, despite the enactment by Obama of the stimulus, higher domestic appropriations and an expansion of TARP spending during that year; and (2) it gives Obama credit for the policies he intends to enact for the rest of his presidency, since we cannot judge his actual future record. The graphic compares the records of these two presidents based on the deficits, revenues and spending incurred by the federal government on their watch, expressed as a percentage of GDP.
The results show one surprise — thanks in part to the recession and tax stimulus measures which have temporarily lowered federal revenues, Bush and Obama tax policies yield virtually the same amount of revenues on average. But the real story is the comparison of spending. Obama’s policies result in historically high spending as a share of the economy, which in turn results in historically high deficits.
To President Obama’s credit, he has begun to embrace the need for a change in direction, though he was dragged there kicking and screaming by Republicans and continues to insist that significant spending cuts be linked to higher taxes. In contrast, Bush’s initiatives were opposed at every turn by congressional Democrats, who insisted on even higher spending.
Nice touch; changing party colors.
Here is link to one with years above the lines on deficit, and there is a link to the truth about Obama’s deficit next to it.
http://blog.heritage.org/2009/03/24/bush-deficit-vs-obama-deficit-in-pictures/
Get our money back from GM. If we have any interest....sell.
Get the stimulus money back. The projects didn't happen.
Sell the Whitehouse veggies on Saturdays.
Have Michelle were flip flops instead of $600 shoes.
And no more vacations except in State Parks...just like the real people.
“Get rid of Obamacare. It’s nothing more than Medicare from birth.
Get our money back from GM. If we have any interest....sell.
Get the stimulus money back. The projects didn’t happen.
Sell the Whitehouse veggies on Saturdays.
Have Michelle were flip flops instead of $600 shoes.
And no more vacations except in State Parks...just like the real people.”
Nice post, dead on the money!
Dang! A three-way triple post...has to be some sort of a record. Thanks to all of you for post the graphic.
Every dime and life we’ve spent in Afghan is because of that. We would never have given two s**ts about that worthless place but for 9/11.
bump.
I wasn’t a fan of Bush’s economic plan either. I endured eight years of “compassionate - conservationism” because John Kerry and Al Gore were unthinkable. The Bushes killed the Regan conservative movement in DC and were as a team very bad for the nation. It still does not change that resident Sotero is destroying the republic and that with malice. Just because the current occupant of the White house is an evil fraud does not make the Bushes 12 years good.
“WE” let them do what they did under totally different sets of verbiage.
One was slightly more effective than the other (Obama).
We need to set limits on government and not on ourselves.
We need a good balance between total anarchy and Conservative (republicanism) where government corrects inequalities and excesses but not much more.
Want to see even more? Go to Heritage and look here:
http://www.heritage.org/BudgetChartBook/contents
Somebody said we need to get the S**t out of the Senate. I think that is only about a third of the problem. We need to get the S**t out of the District of Corruption!
Haven’t we been lied to and taken from long enough?
What we need is to get back to the point where we are a balance between Anarchism and being a true republic.
WE need to have control over access of any kind and protections of personal rights. The less control the better but the line of rights must be a HARD LINE of rights verses a mushy political line of what best serves those in power.
(something like the Constitution).
Even worse. The 2009, 2010 and 2011 deficits are all President Obama's legacy (he signed the 2009 appropriations bill, not President Bush). What do they have in common? All 3 are TRIPLE the size of the last budget that President Bush signed.
He's got ONE YEAR to cut over $1.2 trillion in annual spending - after all, he campaigned on a pledge to cut the Bush deficit in half, by the end of his first term. Since the last Bush deficit was $440 billion, President Obama better get ready to cut the next budget - his current FY2011 deficit is somewhere close to $1.5 trillion. He's got a LONG way to go to get down to under $220 billion!
We are shortly going to be in a situation of fight or die (or live as subjects of who ever is in power at the time.).
Those graphs are extremely misleading as they do not show the enormous changes that actually took place.
Comparing all three: Revenue - Spending = Surplus/-Deficit
Year____Revenue____Spending___Deficit__%_Change_from_prior_deficit
2000____2,025.2____1,789.2____236.0____88.0%
2001____1,991.1____1,863.2____127.9____-45.8%
2002____1,853.1____2,011.2____-158.1__-223.6%
2003____1,782.3____2,160.1____-377.8__139.0%
2004____1,880.1____2,293.0____-412.9____9.3%
2005____2,153.6____2,472.2____-318.6____-22.8%
2006____2,406.9____2,655.4____-248.5____-22.0%
2007____2,568.0____2,728.9____-160.9____-35.3%
2008____2,524.0____2,982.5____-458.5____185.0%
2009____2,105.0____3,517.7____-1,412.7___208.1%
2010____2,162.7____3,456.2____-1,293.5___-8.4%
2011____2,173.7____3,818.8____-1,645.1___27.2%
2008 was Bush’s worst year for adding to the deficit at ($458.5) billion because he caved to Paulson’s calls for emergency outlays.
Under Bush, for 2005, 2006 and 2007, the deficit was actually shrinking, because tax revenue growth was outpacing spending growth.
Under obama, 2009, 2010 and 2011 jumped to the trillions in deficit alone. From 2008 to 2009 - the deficit grew by 208% - 3 times the size of Bush’s worst deficit in 2008.
Obama increased spending in 2009 by almost 18%, even though government revenue fell by over 16%.
With deficits no virtually locked in at well over $1 trillion per year, the financial demise of the Federal government is not long off. Extreme austerity on the part of the U.S. government will shortly be imposed by market forces. Most investment capital has moved or is moving to foreign nations that are perceived by the holders of the capital to be the successors to American hegemony, despite the fact that most of these nations have very poor historical observance of the legal rights of owners of private property. The owners of such capital could very well see themselves financially wiped out in some possible scenarios.
We are in a time with no historical precedent in U.S. history so most U.S. politicians are out of their bandwith of understanding. In order to understand what is going on, what has to use the collapse of prior empires as a working model, but few are willing to contemplate that in Washington, DC. The only possible survival of the nation ecnomically is through vast private sector political, societal and economic initiatives.
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