Please stop digging. It’s painful to watch.
Let’s also keep in mind that the deficit of $1.413T in 2009 was mostly due to The Stimulus. The deficit in 2008 was $458B. Still, Obama should get credit for steering the deficits lower and not making things worse. Things could easily have gotten worse with a less competent president in office.
The US ran trillion dollar deficits for four years, 2009-2012. Then they shrank massively.
Now they are set to go over a trillion again.
I think you’re missing an important bit of analysis here. The trajectory that Obama left the country on at the end of his term was not a healthy one, at least when it came to deficits. Here are the CBO estimates published January 2016. Please note the date - this was before “President Trump” was anything more than a laughing matter for most people. If you’ll refer to Table 1-2, on Page 149, you’ll see the CBO’s baseline budget projections. Here’s what they show for the projected deficits:
2016 = $544B
2017 = $561B
2018 = $572B
2019 = $738B
2020 = $810B
2021 = $893B
2022 = $1.044T
2023 = $1.077T
2024 = $1.089T
2025 = $1.226T
2026 = $1.366T
The budget deficit was already “set to go over a trillion again” regardless of the outcome of the 2016 election. Obama had left the next president a ticking time bomb.
Obama’s success with the economy is vastly underappreciated.
This isn’t really an argument, though. We know it’s something the States agreed years ago. That doesn’t justify why the US should continue to do so. That’s why the Founders ensured there was a means to alter the Constitution.
I’ve enjoyed the audacity of all the complaints about how slow his recovery was, without mentioning what it was a recovery from, or what resistance he faced from the people responsible for creating it.
So propose an amendment. We’ll see if your ideas are popular enough to change things. I’ll make a prediction that they are not.
And now the CBO has said the deficits will be even larger.
Either way, with a democrat as president I’m sure we would’ve had tax hikes on the wealthy, not tax cuts for them. So the deficits would’ve been smaller as they started coming
Yes, I’m sure we could have a fascinating conversation about the economic and legal changes and the effect they’ve had on the CBO’s projections in the last couple of years. That’s beside the point I was making though. You’re trying to blame Trump for our return to trillion-dollar deficits, but that was already “baked in” before President Trump won. Can you acknowledge that fact?
You’re saying Hillary woukd have raised taxes?
Okay, but let’s compare the old CBO predictions with those since Trump has taken office and Republican fiscal policy has bloomed.
2018 $965B ($393B worse than projected under Obama)
2019 $969B ($231B worse than projected under Obama)
2020 $1,056B ($246B worse than projected under Obama, and a $1 Trillion deficit two years earlier than Obama)
2021 $1,178B ($285B worse than projected under Obama)
2022 $1,139B ($95B worse than projected under Obama)
2023 $1,076B ($1B better than projected under Obama. Yay?)
2024 $1,144B ($55B worse than projected under Obama)
2025 $1,076B ($150B better than projected under Obama)
2026 $1,026B ($340B better than projected under Obama)
All up, Trump is $814 billion in the hole compared to the Obama-era projections over the projection window. If you account for the time value of money,* his performance is worse since the explodes the deficit soon in order to achieve hypothetically smaller deficits in the future. Trump boosters should not brag about the size of his fiscal policies.