Did Obama really raise the debt or deficit as much as my father (who has an IV to Fox News) tells me, compared with Bush? Or did the swelling of the budget in his first term reflect things that were set in motion already?
Regardless of your position, please point to good data sources and analyses. I’d prefer ignorance fighting to opinion spouting, despite the contentious nature of the question. Also, I prefer log charts to linear ones, because I’m not mathematically illiterate.
I have no dog in this fight; I just want to have a clearer understanding of the facts. I doubt they’re simple, though.
I suspect that Obamacare may swell the deficit, but doubt that’s happened yet to a substantial degree. I’m more interested in the current debt/deficit, to start with.
That looks pretty damning for Obama, though since the GDP shrunk between 2008 and 2009, one could argue that it’s not terribly fair. But showing the debt without correcting for growth will give an even worse image of Obama.
I guess the safest thing to say is that even if you half the quantity that is coming from Obama, we would only just now be to Bush’s worst year.
Here’s my view: Obama was dealt a bum hand due to the economy. He’s resisted Republican pressure to do stupid things that would slash the budget and lower the deficit, but also result in harm to important programs and more government layoffs. I’m glad he hasn’t gone along with those proposals, like the Ryan budget.
However, he’s the top dude in the government, and people in charge are responsible for what happens during their watch. Yes, the deficit is much higher today, but I understand the reasons why, and “cuz Obama did it” is not an accurate summary of why it is that way.
The latter. While I support Obama in general, the record needs to be set straight on a couple things here. Bush’s proposed budget was $3.1 trillion, not the $3.5 trillion that was eventually spent. Not sure how the war spending figures in there, but according to wikipedia it was on the order of $130 billion, so at least $270 billion or so of the spending was beyond what Bush requested. Furthermore, the budget wasn’t “set” already when Obama took office. The government operated under a continuing resolution until Obama signed the Omnibus Appropriations Act in March of 2009.
The spending of the stimulus (including the tax breaks) would be reflected mostly in 2009 and 2010. Even though the law was approved in 2009, deficit numbers reflect the actual expenditure of funds, which is actually continuing at a small rate even to today.
Part of the issue was also that Bush was a lame-duck president in 2008 and the impression I got was that his attitute was, “Fuck it. Let 'em do whatever.” especially about the bailouts so I think the spending authorized during that time (including the 2009 budget) speaks more about Congress than the President. But as Ravenman points out, he’s the man in charge and so even though he was laissez-faire about the budget, it is still his responsibility.
I would like to find out who originally published the graph. Maybe another member can do that.
Briefly, Obama’s 2010 deficit was, at 10.6% GDP, higher than any other peacetime deficit.
The WW2 deficits were:
1942: 15% GDP
1943: 31%
1944: 23%
1945: 22%
I tried to get details on this too, but goddam Google often isn’t what it’s cranked up to be as
a research engine. Per Wiki the budget finally enacted was 400 billion more than originally enacted,
but it does not say who was responsible.
Right, the 2009 budget included $400 billion in spending above what Bush requested. So that part we can pretty fairly put on Obama. Then revenues came in about $1T less than expected. That part is much more difficult to apportion.
On the contrary, since Bush was never going to run for office again, he could act on principle alone,
unrestrianed by the intellectual debauchery of Republican Party politics as usual.
You seem to have forgotten that the Republicans engineered the defeat of the first bailout bill, and it
was only after Bush literally begged for his own party’s support that enough of the motherfuckers finally
decided it was better to add a few 100billion$ to the US deficit that to see the entire international economic system collapse.
Wasn’t soon enough to keep the markets from losing half their value, though.
So the 2009 budget discussed above, is that Bush’s proposal, or what the Dem-controlled Congress passed? Perhaps $3.1B is what Bush proposed; $3.5B is what Congress passed. Or is that the difference between the planned budget and what actually was spent?
The charts based on GDP are very helpful. Yeah, I understand that a recession makes the deficits seem larger.
Bush proposed $3.1T, though that’s not particularly relevant since the question isn’t the total amount, it’s the amount that increases the deficit.
The one thing in Obama’s favor is that by the time he signed the budget, the budget had been on the table for nearly a year already. It may have been too late to change it anyways. Other than that, it looks like the budget is almost wholly the product of the Democrats (based on the vote results) and, of course, 2010 isn’t much different. If it was all the legislature’s fault, the years after 2009 wouldn’t reflect it so much.
2009 contained a lot of what was supposed to be ‘one time’ spending. Many of us argued at the time that the big problem with that is that it would be used as the new ‘baseline’ from which to judge future spending. And that’s exactly what happened.
A more fair way to look at what Obama is responsible for is to go through the budget line by line, looking at what was inevitable, what was optional, what should have been reduced after 2009 and wasn’t, etc. A simplistic comparison of 2009 to 2010 and 2011 isn’t really telling you much. But if you want to start with Bush’s proposed 3.1T as what he was responsible for, that means if Obama had held spending equal to what Bush wanted, the deficit would have been about 1T in 2009 and 2010, and about 700 billion this year. And there would be about 1.2 trillion less in debt, meaning the cost of servicing the debt next year (at 3% - The CBO predicts 10 year treasuries will rise to 5.4% by 2020) would be about 36 billion dollars lower - about the size of two NASAs in annual savings.
It’s also important to remember that the Democrats controlled both houses from 2006 until 2010, and it’s Congress that’s responsible for the budget, although the President can propose one. The last couple of budgets Obama has proposed have been shot down decisively and in non-partisan fashion (the last one 97-0 in the Senate). So to get a measure of what Obama thinks the government should do, it would be worthwhile to look at his own budgets and see what he actually proposed to spend.
From here, in 2010 President Obama submitted a budget that requested 3.55 trillion dollars in spending, which included a 14.9% increase in mandatory spending and a 13.8% increase in discretionary spending over 2009.
Obama’s 2011 budget request called for 3.83 trillion dollars in spending.
Obama’s 2012 budget request was for 3.729 trillion dollars in spending.
So it would appear that if Obama had his way, spending and the deficit would have been significantly higher.
BTW, Obama’s 2013 budget requested an even higher 3.8 trillion, and was shot down 414-0 in the House. That’s pretty sad. He couldn’t even find a single Democrat who would vote for it.
I think it’s fair to say that the Democrat’s spin of Obama as a budget hawk is pretty much nonsense.
There was little Obama could do about the ever growing cost of the wars in Iraq and Aphganistan, the cost of both wars without any tax money coming in was astronomical, and the cost goes on even today, and even if Romney gets elected the costs will still go on, people will find there is no Magical solution to the price of war, no one wants to pay higer taxes, but sadly it is necessary, one( or a country) cannot exist on borrowed money for very long.
Easy credit is partly the cause of so many people losing their homes etc. Big business moved a lot of jobs over seas and many people lost their jobs here. When ever they had to give a person more pay, they just raised the price of everything, Back in the 40’s i worked for $12.00 a week, as wages went up so did the price of things, and business still wanted large profits. Gas was about 15 cents a gallon, very few people living in towns owned a car,and I don’t know any one who had 2 cars during that time.Now as soon as a child is 16 it gets a car. I look in the school parking lots and it is full of cars kids drive.