It depends on who is nominated, but given the current crop of Democratic candidates, I’m very likely to be satisfied with the Democratic nominee, at least on fiscal issues. And divided government does tend to result in better fiscal policy.
I think Obama is uniquely bad on fiscal issues in a way a Democratic governor who has had to balance budgets won’t be. Or a Clinton.
The stimulus spending was less than one trillion and 3/5 of it was tax cuts supposedly included in part to appeal to Republicans. Much of the rest of the spending increases since 2008 were institutional obligations that Obama inherited. Why is entrenched Fed spending such as for the two wars that Obama inherited attributed to Obama included in the myth that Obama is a big spending socialist. Socialists would not cut taxes in a stimulus nor would they continue a conservative Republucan war.
There’s two ways that the Democrats hid the ball on spending from 2009 to the present:
http://www.reuters.com/article/2009/03/11/us-usa-budget-idUSN1054411920090311
“It takes care of these government agencies that have been, over the Bush years, so underfunded,” said Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid, referring to President George W. Bush’s administration.
Many Republicans fought against the bill because it raised government spending by 8 percent above fiscal 2008 levels. They said it added more money to programs already funded by the $787 billion economic stimulus package approved last month.
I’m not sure where your getting #1 from the article. It mentions that they passed an appropriations bill for $400 billion, not that they increased the budget by that much. I’d love to see a cite for claim #2.
Only a trillion? I had no idea it was such a trifle.
The stimulus cost the equivalent of the budget of Brazil, the fifth largest country in the world. The stimulus was not 60% tax cuts, it was 37% tax cuts and 63% spending increases.
Spending is not “inherited”. Every year the budget can be totally changed. The only inherited spending is the interest on the debt. If Obama had the votes the spending could have been anything he wanted it to be. Spending on the wars has been cut in half since 2008, yet overall spending has soared since then. The war spending went down 90 billion dollars and the total spending went up 1.2 trillion dollars.
Wrong. In 2009, Congress passed the defense appropriations bill and a couple others before the election. The rest of government was running on a continuing resolution. The $400 billion referenced in the article is the funding provided to replace the continuing resolution, and did not add that figure to those agencies existing budgets. In other words, if the $400 billion were not provided, most of government would have shut down.
Name them.
Bush asked for $3.1 trillion for FY2009:
http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=18672648
Actual spending was $3.5 trillion in 2009. As the article states, the Democrats wanted to jack up spending in a lot of areas and waited until bush left office to do so.
As for the higher baselines:
President Obama sold the $862 billion in stimulus spending as “targeted, timely and temporary.” Critics said that was highly unlikely, and now the 2011 Obama budget has proven them right.
To wit, the White House is proposing to convert spending sold as a one-time economic boost into a permanent feature of future government growth. As both the Tax Policy Center and the Committee for a Responsible Federal Budget have pointed out, supposedly temporary parts of the stimulus—expansions of the earned income tax credit, the child tax credit and Pell Grants for college students—have now found their way into the budget baseline.
If you don’t like the WSJ, just look at the budget numbers. $300 billion in increased spending is pretty huge. So naturally, if it’s truly temporary, spending would drop when the stimulus ended. That didn’t happen. Instead, the President added more spending on top of that in his subsequent budget requests. The stimulus became the new baseline, not temporary at all.
I think you’re trying to lump in non-discretionary, mandatory spending (SS, Medicare, etc., that the president nor congress has much immediate control over) with discretionary spending. I don’t doubt that gov’t outlays have increased and sustained since the crash, but you would have to show that discretionary spending has as well to back your claim. Mainly, you would have to show that gov’t departments have had their budgets increase and sustained at stimulus levels. I still haven’t seen a cite for that (I can’t access your wsj article).
Clinton’s first budget that had a surplus spent 19.1% of GDP. To have an equivalent budget today would mean cutting spending by 3.6% of GDP. Thats a cut of 586 billion dollars. People would be starving in the streets. You crazy libertarians, if you want to live like that, move to Somalia.
It’s true that a lot of it was mandatory spending, but a lot of the eligibility requirements for mandatory spending were changed, thus the huge increase, besides the recession. The disability rolls continue to go up, food stamp eligibility was increased, unemployment went to 99 weeks and I believe remains there for now. With the exception of unemployment, which is bipartisan, the eligibility changes were the result of Democratic changes to the law.
The only difference between mandatory spending and non-mandatory spending is that non-mandatory spending has to be budgeted and voted on every year. There is no difference in control. If Congress and Obama wanted to cut mandatory spending to zero next year, they could do that and if they wanted to double mandatory spending next year they could do that too. Politicians are in full control of the all the money spent by the government.
Er, no, that wouldn’t happen, unless you decided to take it mostly out of antipoverty programs. To get spending down to 19.1%, the first thing you’d want to do is eliminate any program that started in 1998 or later. We didn’t need those programs then, frankly we probably don’t need them now.
The next thing you’d do is give every program an increase from 1998 to now of inflation + population growth. I can’t be bothered to find out what that exact figure is, but let’s just pull a number out of my butt and call it 12%. Any program that increased by more than 12% would have to be justified by changing circumstances. The spending could be made up by reducing programs that have outlived their usefulness even more.
In the end, we’d still be above 19.1%, probably about 20%, due to aging of the population.
Setting aside adaher’s prolific commentary following his resurrection…
I offer a prediction. The mass media will glom on to this story within the next couple of months. Not because they have discovered numeracy. But because the deficit will drop “surprisingly” because of late 2012 tax planning. Many of the well heeled sold stock and took profits in anticipation of higher rates for 2013. So expect the deficit numbers to improve. (The stock market didn’t drop because it’s easy to sell one stock and buy another with similar risk characteristics. This is especially true if you are swapping mutual funds.)
In general, changes in tax rates have the greatest effect on such tax planning. Their effect on substantive economic behavior in contrast is difficult to discern empirically, notwithstanding the breathless claims of various supply siders.
Of course the deficit is shrinking. It was inevitable after the great policies put into place by Obama and the democrats like the ACA and wall street reform. Only Republicans would dispute than and their credibility is non-existent. I’m especially impressed that, facing an unprecedented and traitorous opposition, he was still able to get so much stuff done
“Only a trillion” and “trifle” are your words not mine.
You are correct. I meant to write 2/5 on the percent of tax cuts in the stimulus. My point stands. Since when do republicans oppose tax cuts?
What does the Budget of Brazil have to do with anything?
All spending for 2009 was set when Obama took the oath of office, except what he and the Democratic Congress initiated at the the start of his term. What spending can you identify that was not inherited?
SS and Medicare checks are not something the President can reduce just because we are in a recession, nor would he/she want to.
What adds up to your $1.2 in additional spending by Obama?
The numbers don’t lie: The President requested $3.8 trillion, Republicans gave him $3.5-3.6 trillion each of the last two years. $200 billion less per year is the difference between deficit reduction and little or no deficit reduction.
Ergo, the President’s preferred policies do not reduce the deficit. Republican intransigence reduces the deficit.
What Contributed to the Federal Deficit in 2007… When Bush Took Office he inherited a Budget Surplus.
What from 2008 continued to contribute to the Federal deficit in 2009, 2010, 2011 and 2012?
Loss of revenue to the US Treasury caused by the Great Bush Recession was not an Obama inititiative.
Subtract ‘loss of revenue’ from what you can credit as Spending for his initiatives and get back with us.
Subrtract the cost of the war in Iraq… I’ll accept the War in Afghanistan’s costs as Obama’s.
Subract the cost of the Bush Tax Cuts for the top 2% - You know the Job Creators. That Cost has not produce a ROI… So why blame that cost on Obama?
adaher, perhaps you missed it. I too would like you to answer Ravenman’s question in post #26
Key Words. “Republicans Gave Obama $3.55 Trillion…” And Because Obama opened negotiations $200 bn higher than the settled amount… Obama is an out of control socialist hell bent on destroying America But Republicans are stewards of small and fiscally responsible government. Republicans ‘gave’ it to him you say.
Second point is that Obama’s plan is one that is supported by the electorate as we saw in the last election. It is to increase the revenue to help reduce the deficit by raising taxes on those on top who have been paying a low relative rate, such as Mitt Romney’s 13%.
Republican intransigence on Obama’s fair-minded and sensible plan has ostructed deficit reduction in real numbers.
By your measurement process… Bush Took Clinton’s growing $230 billion surplus in 2000 and turned it into a $459 bn deficit which amounts to **$689 bn increase **in federal budget deficit in 8 years without putting Iraq and Afganistan on the budget.
So I will start with Obama as inheriting a $1 trillion budget deficit as his admin’s starting point. So Obama’s record budget deficit went up to $1.4 trillion. That is $200 bn below Bush’s accomplishment over 8 years.
And now we know the Obama deficits are going down rather quickly ’ falling to 2.4 percent of GDP by 2015" or Obama’s last full year in office.
This beat’s the hell out of Bush’s record.
And any common sensed person would recognize that it is much more difficult to turn things around when starting with a huge deficit and high unemployment as Obama did compared to starting with a surplus and decent employment numbers as Bush did.