rdmcandie wrote:
Are you joking?
No, I'm not.
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Even if you ignore 2009, Spending under Bush increased 1.1 Trillion by 2008. In his first 3 years spending increased by a total of about 400Billion. (600Billion by year 4). With the projected 2012 Budget expected at 3.7Trillion Obama over the same first term has increased spending by 200 Billion. Over 3 years (with 2013 being his 4th and obviously no data can be confirmed until years end).
So Bush's spending increase was moderate, yet Obamas Spending increase is out of control.
Yes, that is correct. I already mentioned this. You can't just put markers in the calendar and calculate the differences between the values on those days. I'll also point out that while you are ignoring 2009 for Bush, you'd not ignoring it for Obama as his starting point. Use 2008 (which is still somewhat of an outlier, but at least somewhat usable in this case) and you get a $615B yearly spending increase ($720B if we use the projected 2012 number you mentioned). How many years we count that as gets tricky though.
It's not just about dollar spending increase over time (although Bush's was pretty standard for 8 year periods of time relatively speaking). It's about what the actual value is relative to the economy as a whole. Look at spending as a percentage of GDP and there's a whole different picture. Historically, spending in the US tends to sit around 20%. The highest spending rate in the past 40 years (prior to the last few years) was in 1983 at 23.5%. Spending went up again in the early 90s spiking to 22.3% in 1992 (this is why Clinton's spending record looks so good btw, he also started at a high point). Spending under Bush was historically very very low. It was only in the 20s two years out of 8. Interestingly enough it was 20% or higher for every single year from1975 to 1996. It was then under 20% for every year until 2006. Then dropped below for one year, then the recession hit in 2008 and it went over again. I could point out the correlation between this and GOP influence/control in congress, but it would be a bit too obvious.
Spending spiked in 2009 to 25.2%. The problem is that instead of dropping back down, it's stayed in that range since then. It was 24.1% in both 2010 and 1011. Now, some of that is low GDP growth, but remember that spending is above the trend line and has stayed there as well. You can't discount this. Obama took a one time spending increase and turned it into the "normal" spending level.
That's why it's absolutely correct to say that spending has increased under Obama. Because it has. In every measurement that actually matters. Worse, his spending increased and stayed increased during a time period when revenues were down due to recession. This has created massive debt. Deficits and debt were falling during the last few years of Bush's term. That trend reversed and has been speeding out of control since Obama took office. Sure, you can say it was because of the recession and whatnot, but it's presumably Obama's job to counter such economic problems and not just use them as an excuse.
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Both parties agreed to TARP, and it is about the most bi-partisan act that has happened in the last decade...
You're kidding, right? Do you remember anything that went on in 2008 with regard to TARP? You don't remember Bush coming up with a plan, with modest spending that targeted just those assets in the marketplace that had become massively undervalued? You don't remember this plan being simple and relatively inexpensive? And you don't remember the Democrats (who controlled congress at the time) swooping in and writing their version of TARP, which bore little resemblance to the original, spent far more money than was needed, but did at least deal with the problem (but in a less efficient way)? You don't remember this being used as a political club by Democrats in the middle of a presidential campaign to force Republicans to go along with this? You don't remember congressional Democrats berating McCain for wanting to be involved in the process (the news reported them saying that he "wasn't wanted in Washington").
To say TARP was bi-partisan is a joke. Only in the sense that both parties had to vote for it because it really was necessary. But the GOP had a radically different plan they had wanted to implement. But the Democrats controlled congress and got to write the law, and who was going to vote against it in the middle of a financial crisis? Don't take that to mean that both parties were equally responsible for the details of the law, or both agreed equally to all parts of it.
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...both parties and their leadership should be held accountable for the gross spending increase because of it (and its gross not because of the amount, its gross because it went no strings attached. Unlike Obama's Stimulus package that Republicans staunchly opposed, that is now actually making the government money through stock options that GM in particular still has not purchased back).
Yes. The auto bailouts in TARP were one of the things the Democrats added to the original plan. So how about we place blame on the guys who used the crisis and the need to pass TARP to insert wasteful spending into it? That would just be crazy!
You get that all the evil big banks have paid back their TARP money with interest, right? Absent the money handed to the auto companies and teachers unions (yes, TARP money was spent propping up teacher union pensions, did you know that?), the US government would have made money on TARP, not lost money.
The big spending occurred *after* Obama took office. TARP didn't hurt us much in the big picture. The recovery act, and numerous other spending bills and amendments passed in 2009 and 2010 added up to a very significant increase of
ongoing spending. That's why our spending levels haven't dropped to what they should be.
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As for the reason that the government spending has maintained its height, the states themselves are bleeding money, in order to keep state level programs running they turn to the federal government for loans, directly increasing the amount of cost to the federal government. This is why moving programs to the state level is redundant, all it does is sweep the cost under the rug. Move health care to the state level, and you now have it as a state loan on federal receipts instead of Health Care.
Yes. I get that. There obviously is automatic spending that is related to economic factors. Point being that Obama choose to pass his health care bill during the same time period instead of waiting until things had settled. He choose to pass his big green energy initiative during the same time period instead of waiting for things to settle. Need I go on? When money is tight you don't go out and buy a new car. You make do with the one you have because you realize that other costs are more important.
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You really have no idea how Macro-Economics works do you? Of course you would first need to understand simple addition and subtraction to begin to understand that.
I understand macro economic better than you do. I also understand that no amount of fiddling with the numbers to find a result that fits what you want to say changes the very real fact that total spending as a percentage of GDP over time has increased since Obama took office and yearly deficits as a percentage of GDP has increased over that same time period. Also total public debt has increased over that time period. Those are the numbers that matter. We can sit here and quibble out each set of dollars of spending or dollars of revenue that contribute to that fact, but at the end of the day we hold the party and president in power responsible for those outcomes. His job is to prevent exactly the sort of economic problems we're having. His party line has been to keep insisting that the problem was so big, so massive, that it's not his fault that he wasn't able to fix things.
But that's what he's supposed to do, right? He's supposed to be fixing these things. But instead he's making excuses for why he can't fix things while pursuing an agenda that at best doesn't help us and at worse hurts us quite a bit.
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How rich, Bush ramping up spending 400 billion is moderate, Obama adding 200Billion is out of control...you are a funny guy Gbaji ill give you that.
How rich that you are repeating the exact flawed calculation that I thoroughly debunked in the first page of this thread. Maybe you should read through it again?
Do you even understand that the big spending is still yet to come? Obamacare will come into effect next year. We will see spending significantly increase from that. We're in bad shape right now. We haven't recovered as we should have. So lets' just spend more money? He's spent the last 4 years spending money to buy votes so he could get another 4 years. Now what? Keep making excuses for 4 years and then hand over a complete disaster to whomever takes over after he leaves?
We should be fully recovered
right now. We're not even remotely close. And that's absolutely Obama's fault. And now the spending that he deliberately pushed out to after the 1012 election is going to come due (along with all the other stuff pushed to after the election). It's going to get really really ugly.
Edited, Dec 14th 2012 1:50pm by gbaji