You know its coming. Actually, its already here. But you know its only going to gain traction and get worse in the coming weeks and months, until finally, like all lies, its completely impossible to make out the truth. You hear it all the time: "Obama is irresponsible" "Obama is destroying the economy" "Obama is ruining our futures". Well, its time we set these folks straight.
The New York Times has published an interesting article - http://www.nytimes.com/... - which discusses its analysis of CBO reports of the last decade. The results of their analysis are fairly obvious, but still in this day and age its too much to ask that the truth be the basis of political discourse. So, my friends, armed with the truth, let's take it to the streets and beat these fools on the right back.
According to the article, the budget surplus of the Clinton years is a victim of four things:
You can think of that roughly $2 trillion swing [800 billion surplus when Clinton left office in 2001 to $1.2 trillion deficit this year] as coming from four broad categories: the business cycle, President George W. Bush’s policies, policies from the Bush years that are scheduled to expire but that Mr. Obama has chosen to extend, and new policies proposed by Mr. Obama.
Interesting stuff. I wonder what their findings will say about the relative responsibility of Bush and Obama (and the business cycle for that matter).
The first category — the business cycle — accounts for 37 percent of the $2 trillion swing. It’s a reflection of the fact that both the 2001 recession and the current one reduced tax revenue, required more spending on safety-net programs and changed economists’ assumptions about how much in taxes the government would collect in future years.
This is a very large chunk that can in no way be attributed to President Obama. However, one might argue that Bush's failed policies at the very least made the recession much more intense than it otherwise would have been. In this sense, he should get some blame for this 37%. Let's give him 10% of this.
In fact, the article attributes 33% of the deficit directly to Bush policies.
...legislation, like his tax cuts and the Medicare prescription drug benefit, not only continue to cost the government but have also increased interest payments on the national debt.
Two things. 1) 33% is a whole lot of juice. I wonder if any Republicans ever talk about this, and 2) does anyone still believe that tax cuts increase government revenue?
So far we have accounted for 70% of the swing from surplus to deficit. What about the remaining 30%? Well much of that (20%), the Times says, comes from Obama's continuation of Bush polices. What policies? The Iraq war for one. Another policy? tax cuts for folks making less than $250,000. That's right, 20% of President Obama's contribution to the deficit is due to a war he inherited (and as we all know, opposed from the beginning) and you know, giving a tax break to regular Americans.
Some may be asking, "what about the final 10%?". Well, here you go:
About 7 percent comes from the stimulus bill that Mr. Obama signed in February. And only 3 percent comes from Mr. Obama’s agenda on health care, education, energy and other areas.
The article goes on to criticize President Obama for not fixing the problem. And to be honest, I am no economis so I cannot say how much blame he desrves for not fixing the problem (you know in his first 100 days or something). I think the article is well worth a read and encourage you all to do so - http://www.nytimes.com/...
Whether or not he deserves blame (I would hope he would be given a little more time before being judged on this) I think the point stands: Republican fools who keep trying to say Obama is reckless and destroying the economy are complete buffoons. Yes, we all knew this already. But now we have a little something more to break them down with. So, go out there and take back the discourse. Bush fucked us and now we are in for some hard times. But don't blame Obama, at least not yet.
p.s. please forgive any typos etc. This was a rather quick diary and I am not a frequent diary contributor.