Deficit spending means you have a increase in debt or the elimination of a surplus...
Not necessarily. If you are in a position of no debt and have money in the bank to cover the deficit, a deficit will not increase your debt. Of course that's not the situation the states are in, but while related, deficits and debt are not the same thing.
That would also generally mean you have added $20 to the debt...
Sure.
Seriously stop playing word games. Deficit spending is essentially where you are adding to your total debt. Deficit and Debt essentially both mean red ink. For all intents and purposes they are the same thing in the fact they both mean you owe people money.
As stated above, that's not always the case. And in the same sense, having a surplus does not equal having money in the bank in a no-debt situation. It's not word games.
How about you stop with the elitist attitude. Deficit and debt are essentially the same in the fact it means you are going to owe/currently owe people money.
Elitist attitude? I'm just trying to point out where you are are wrong. Surplus does not equal no debt, and on the flip side, deficit does not equal debt. They are different things, although they have relation to each other.
We also had the dot.com bubble bursting just before Bush took office, additionally in case you've forgotten 9/11 happened...
Absolutely, and if Bush had run a small deficit during the minor recession of the early 2000s I wouldn't have held that against him. Once the economy bounced back he should have gone back into a surplus position if he had stayed disciplined and responsible with his finances.
For example, our current Conservative government here in Canada had a surplus when they took office in 2006, they went into deficit when the recession hit, and are on pace to have it balanced by the March 2014 Budget. Our current deficit is roughly $25 Billion, versus roughly $1,000 Billion in the states.
However, our economic health here is because of policies that were enacted before the recession even hit by the conservative (and to be fair, the previous liberal) governments. We never had a single bank fail, and our housing market not only didn't crash, but stayed red hot throughout the entire recession. That's a direct result of not following similar policies put in place starting in the Clinton years, and carried through by Bush (i.e. subprime mortgages and other loose banking regulations).
In short, Bush's policies left the country vulnerable and turned what should have been an economic slowdown into a catastrophe the US is still digging out from.
Actually, Obama inherited a $700 billion dollar deficit + TARP... That money was paid back while Obama was in office so that means there was $700 billion dollars+ that make Obama's deficit numbers look much better than they really are.
I didn't address the TARP issue previously, however since you continually bring it up, I will.
You clearly need to check your facts on TARP. First off, $700 Billion was not spent on TARP, $700 Billion was authorized to be the maximum payout by Bush. Upon election, Obama reduced the maximum payout to $450 Billion in the Dodd-Frank Wall Street Reform and Consumer Protection Act.
Also, not all of the TARP Money was spent in 2009. In fact, only $154 Billion of it was. $115 Billion went out in 2010, and $64 Billion went out in 2011, and the 2010 and 2011 Figures would have been lessened by repayments that would have been coming in during that time. (source:
http://www.cbo.gov/sites/default/files/cbofiles/attachments/2011_Nov_MBR.pdf)
Government spending under Obama has dropped to 24.1% of GDP down from 25.2% under Bush's last year. And while the Deficit was stuck at around 1.3 Trillion for his first year or two in office, it has since fallen to 1.0 and is dropping steadily.
But anyway, your assertion that half of Bush's deficit was TARP is simply wrong. The total spending on TARP was in the 300-400 Billion range, and most of it was paid out after Obama took office.
I'm going to explain why you shouldn't buy what the White House is claiming later in the post.
ABC's John Karl called it "mostly fiction." He noted, for example, that Obama counts the $1 trillion budget cut deal he already signed with Republicans as part of his plan. And, he said, Obama counts $800 billion saved from winding down the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq, savings that were going to occur anyway.
Read More At IBD:
Obama's $4 Trillion Deficit Lie Exposed by His Own Budget - Investors.com
Of course they were going to occur anyway. Imagine that, costs drop when wars end. What's your point? And if you want to go down that road, the war in Iraq was an unneeded expense.
This is why Rush Limbaugh is actually more credible than most of the media.
I actually laughed out loud.
Anyways:
RUSH: Okay, now, ladies and gentlemen, everybody agrees. They might not all say it, but everybody now agrees that even with the sequester, the government is going to be spending more money. You heard Jonathan Karl of ABC News admit that even with the sequester, the government will spend $15 billion more this year than last. Now, $15 billion when compared to $3,700 billion is chump change.
But we're still going to be spending $3,700 billion this year! We're gonna be spending more this year than next, and even with sequester now, people are admitting it. But here's the AP's contribution to the sequester story today, and it's all wrapped up in their headline: "Government Downsizes Amid Republican Demands for Even More Cuts." The government isn't downsizing! The Republicans are demanding more cuts. At some point we're gonna have to.
Let's Just Freeze Spending - The Rush Limbaugh Show
I completely agree spending should be cut. I also think taxes should be raised as they are at historic low points. I completely buy into the ideology that low taxes help stimulate business growth, however there is a point where it becomes too low. I think the U.S. is under that threshold right now.
The deficit hitting 1.4 trillion was during 2008, and half of that was due to TARP, which banks have largely repaid...
And as I described above, your fact is blatantly wrong, and I backed it up with a paper from the congressional budget office, which is a better source than FOX News is....
Except that money was scheduled to be saved anyways, additionally those "savings" include the loan repayment from Bush's TARP where the banks are repaying the money they owe...
While Democrats controlled the House, Senate, and Presidency, we actually had no budget.
Since Republicans have taken the House, they have passed a budget every year, the problem is Harry Reid just sits on it.
The TARP impact you are speaking of is negligible. You are correct in stating that repayment money is counted as revenue, however as stated above, most of that money went out during Obama's presidency. The $154 Billion that went out under Bush and was repaid under Obama over multiple years is a drop in the hat to the overall budget.
Read the article again, the numbers were actually being favorable to Obama.
I know they were favourable to Obama... that was what I was pointing out.
Considering how much he hiked spending that wouldn't be hard to do...
According to the White Houses own figures (see table S-1 here for 2011 to 2013, and table S-1 here for 2010), the actual or projected deficit tallies for the four years in which Obama has submitted budgets are as follows: $1.293 trillion in 2010, $1.300 trillion in 2011, $1.327 trillion in 2012, and $901 billion in 2013. In addition, Obama is responsible for the estimated $200 billion (the Congressional Budget Offices figure) that his economic stimulus added to the deficit in 2009. Moreover, he shouldnt get credit for the $149 billion in TARP (Troubled Asset Relief Program) repayments made in 2010 and 2011 to cover most of the $154 billion in bank loans that remained unpaid at the end of the 2009 fiscal year loans that count against President Bushs 2009 deficit tally.
Adding all of this up, deficit spending during Obamas four years in the White House (based on his own figures) will be an estimated $5.170 trillion or $5,170,000,000,000.00.
The Cost of Obama | The Weekly Standard
Except you're using two different sets of statistics here.... You're conflating an increased deficit with increased spending.
For example: If your spending stays the same, and your tax revenue drops, you will have an increased deficit with no additional spending.
What you need to look at is spending as a percentage of GDP, which has dropped from 25.2% in 2008 to 24.1% currently (I grant you there were minor increases in spending in 2010 and 2011).
The legacy left by Bush was one of historically low tax levels, and historically high government spending. The problem is, you can't simply slash hundreds of billions of dollars in spending without damaging the economy further. Obama had to get things under control, and how that they are, the deficit, and government spending is steadily falling.
Here's a good article related to spending, TARP and all that:
FactCheck.org : Obama’s Spending: ‘Inferno’ or Not?
Ok, so they identified a problem as early as 2003. What were the reasons for the bills being killed seeing as the Republicans had control of the House, Senate and Presidency from Nov 2002 to Nov 2006?
The Republicans could have passed the oversight legislation easily if they wanted to, and doing so would have likely prevented a lot of the damage caused in the 2008 crash. This is an example like I listed above of poor policy decision throughout the Bush years that I talked about above.
Let's see gas prices going up, the EPA trying to claim water is a pollutant, yeah these sure help in getting the economy working...
lol, I hate to tell you, but your gas prices are not expensive. Try checking the rest of the world as a reference. The US has some of the cheapest gas prices going.
Additionally, I found two articles about the Republican efforts to prevent the housing crisis, I really don't feel like looking for the actual bills, but if you really want me to, I can do that.
I don't need to see the Bills, I want to know why they were killed in a republican controlled congress if the republicans thought it was such a big issue.
You mean like the ones that left out the entire state of California in their unemployment figures? Sorry, but I think the state of California being left out (considering how bad their economy currently is) to be a very big problem.
Which again, is misleading bull**** put out by the Republicans.
Here's an article from Business Insider that spells out what happened.
What Happened With Jobless Claims - Business Insider
California was included in the report, however according to the Labor Department not all of the Data had been processed by the time the weekly report had been issued. That means California's numbers had been under-reported by 15000-25000 from the 339,000 that were reported from California in the report. That being said, even with the complete and therefore corrected data which appeared the following week, the Job totals still exceeded the expectations of economists.
So, the assertion that the entire state of California was left out is a blatant lie. And for someone who should know what they're doing to make a claim like that, must know they were lying when they said it. This is why, as someone who leans center-right, I can't trust the right wing sources in the states. They are simply full of it way too often in order to score cheap political points among the uninformed to be trustworthy.
Check your sources and read both sides before making up your opinion. That's the biggest problem among your electorate.