We Have a "Paying For It Problem"

Dave Ellis

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And the dem party put this moron in a position of leadership. That should you everything you need to know about the state of the dem party. Ran by, and consisting of fiscal fools.



Just pointing out for the record.... when Clinton left office in 2001, he had a 236 Billion Dollar Surplus.

When Bush left office in 2008, he had a 1.4 Trillion Dollar Deficit.

Currently, 4 years later, Obama is running a 1 Trillion Dollar Deficit, which is 400 Billion better than Bush, and the deficit is still falling.


I should point out I'm typically Center-Right wing, however the numbers don't lie.... If we're looking at fiscal irresponsibility, the Republicans take the cake.
 
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OldWiseGuy

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Did you have any thoughts on what those products or services could be?

Doesn't matter as long as trade is balanced. If we buy $1 in goods from them they must buy $1 in goods from us. Our goods will be more expensive than theirs and the trade might seem unfair. Consider a far eastern country that sells us woven baskets and buys medicine from us with those dollars. Medicine is more expensive than woven baskets and they will only be able to purchase a limited amount using dollars gained in trade with us. We cannot base our trade with them on what they need, but on what they can pay for. Otherwise you might get unbalanced trade, huge trade deficits, and an impossibly large national debt.........oh wait. :doh:

One of our problems is that we use trade as an arm of foreign policy, trying to lift nations out of poverty, but at the expense of our own economy. We want to flood these nations with western technology in hopes of making lasting allies. In this we have failed miserably. Instead of building infrastructure for the people we provide arms for their dictatorial governments.

We actually need Donald Trump as Secretary of Commerce. He seems to know how to 'deal'.
 
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contango

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Doesn't matter as long as trade is balanced. If we buy $1 in goods from them they must buy $1 in goods from us. Our goods will be more expensive than theirs and the trade might seem unfair. Consider a far eastern country that sells us woven baskets and buys medicine from us with those dollars. Medicine is more expensive than woven baskets and they will only be able to purchase a limited amount using dollars gained in trade with us. We cannot base our trade with them on what they need, but on what they can pay for. Otherwise you might get unbalanced trade, huge trade deficits, and an impossibly large national debt.........oh wait. :doh:

One of our problems is that we use trade as an arm of foreign policy, trying to lift nations out of poverty, but at the expense of our own economy. We want to flood these nations with western technology in hopes of making lasting allies. In this we have failed miserably. Instead of building infrastructure for the people we provide arms for their dictatorial governments.

We actually need Donald Trump as Secretary of Commerce. He seems to know how to 'deal'.

So are you saying that if we buy, say, $1m worth of plastic doodads from China then we can't buy anything more from China until we sell $1m worth of something, anything, to China? Or that our purchase of their plastic doodads is conditional upon their purchase of an equal amount of goods or services from us?

In theory it seems like a good idea but in practice it's hard to see how it would work. If the Chinese decide they don't want anything from us and just sell their wares elsewhere the result is that we lose the cheap imports, which means the price of everything rises, the consumer stops spending and the economy implodes. It essentially means we can't import anything unless we export something of comparable value and, if we currently don't have anything that other nations want (after all, if we did there wouldn't be a huge trade deficit), it's hard to see how it could work.
 
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GarfieldJL

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Just pointing out for the record.... when Clinton left office in 2001, he had a 236 Billion Dollar Surplus.

When Bush left office in 2008, he had a 1.4 Trillion Dollar Deficit.

Currently, 4 years later, Obama is running a 1 Trillion Dollar Deficit, which is 400 Billion better than Bush, and the deficit is still falling.


I should point out I'm typically Center-Right wing, however the numbers don't lie.... If we're looking at fiscal irresponsibility, the Republicans take the cake.

Your numbers are not accurate putting it mildly.


The Debt rose $4.899 trillion during the two terms of the Bush presidency. It has now gone up $4.939 trillion since President Obama took office.

The latest posting from the Bureau of Public Debt at the Treasury Department shows the National Debt now stands at $15.566 trillion. It was $10.626 trillion on President Bush's last day in office, which coincided with President Obama's first day.

National Debt has increased more under Obama than under Bush - Political Hotsheet - CBS News

$4.899 trillion in 8 years

versus

$4.939 trillion in under 4 years


To claim that Obama has been more fiscally responsible than Bush is laughable. Btw, I don't consider accounting gimmicks to be responsible accounting, I consider it to be Bernie Madoff accounting.
 
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OldWiseGuy

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So are you saying that if we buy, say, $1m worth of plastic doodads from China then we can't buy anything more from China until we sell $1m worth of something, anything, to China? Or that our purchase of their plastic doodads is conditional upon their purchase of an equal amount of goods or services from us?

In theory it seems like a good idea but in practice it's hard to see how it would work. If the Chinese decide they don't want anything from us and just sell their wares elsewhere the result is that we lose the cheap imports, which means the price of everything rises, the consumer stops spending and the economy implodes. It essentially means we can't import anything unless we export something of comparable value and, if we currently don't have anything that other nations want (after all, if we did there wouldn't be a huge trade deficit), it's hard to see how it could work.

It couldn't be any worse than the 'theory' we're employing now. Our plan seems to be, "We need a bigger truck". :doh:

Regarding nations that won't play fair, I say cut 'em loose. We really should be rebuilding our domestic markets.
 
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contango

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It couldn't be any worse than the 'theory' we're employing now. Our plan seems to be, "We need a bigger truck". :doh:

Regarding nations that won't play fair, I say cut 'em loose. We really should be rebuilding our domestic markets.

How do you define "playing fair"? Our interests aren't their interests and they will look after their own interests just as we (in theory at least) look after ours.

I'm not sure if you're seriously suggesting that if we pay China $1m for a boatload of plastic doodads we should expect China in return to give us the $1m back in exchange for $50,000 worth of medicines just because "that's what they can pay", although reading your posts I can't be entirely sure. If that is what you're suggesting I can't see China being overly keen on the idea.

Ultimately when an economy is based on consumers borrowing and spending but doesn't make any of the things they buy the inevitable result is that the borrowed money floods out of the country, ending up in the countries that actually make the stuff people want to buy, and a trade deficit accumulates. Shifting the economy so it isn't so heavily focussed on debt would be a good thing, it's just a question of how (and whether) to ease the financial pain of those who bought assets with debt only to watch their value plummet as lenders use criteria more rigorous than "check species, check pulse, approve loan".
 
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Dave Ellis

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Your numbers are not accurate putting it mildly.


The Debt rose $4.899 trillion during the two terms of the Bush presidency. It has now gone up $4.939 trillion since President Obama took office.

The latest posting from the Bureau of Public Debt at the Treasury Department shows the National Debt now stands at $15.566 trillion. It was $10.626 trillion on President Bush's last day in office, which coincided with President Obama's first day.

National Debt has increased more under Obama than under Bush - Political Hotsheet - CBS News

$4.899 trillion in 8 years

versus

$4.939 trillion in under 4 years


To claim that Obama has been more fiscally responsible than Bush is laughable. Btw, I don't consider accounting gimmicks to be responsible accounting, I consider it to be Bernie Madoff accounting.


Do you have no understanding of economics? Do you understand the difference between deficit and debt?

If you take over a government that is making posting a 236 billion dollar surplus, and wind up with a 1.4 trillion dollar deficit, racking up nearly 5 Trillion in debt along the way, that is gross fiscal incompetence.

If you take over a government that is losing 1.4 trillion a year, it doesn't matter how good of an economist you are, it's inevitable you are going to pile on a ton more debt until you can right the financial situation. You simply can't balance that kind of deficit out overnight, it's going to take years to correct. The country was in such a state that it lost a couple hundred billion dollars before Obama was even able to get his first budget put together.

You are approaching this as if they started in a similar situation. They didn't. Bush inherited the first u.s. budget surplus since the 1950s. Obama inherited the largest budgetary deficit in global history. So comparing the total debt during their time in office is a useless stat. The only way that would matter is if they both started off in a neutral and similar position.

Obama has managed to cut 400 billion from the deficit despite being mired in a recession. That in itself is pretty impressive. This number is continuing to fall, and should be under the trillion mark this year.

This isn't "madoff" economics. These are real numbers. The numbers say Clinton ran things fairly well economically, bush took a good situation and trashed it to an unprecedented amount, and Obama is slowly but steadily righting the ship.

Do I agree with all his economic policies? Not at all. But to say Obama is doing worse than Bush from an economic standpoint is simply absurd. Anyone looking from an objective viewpoint would say the same thing.
 
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OldWiseGuy

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How do you define "playing fair"? Our interests aren't their interests and they will look after their own interests just as we (in theory at least) look after ours.

I'm not sure if you're seriously suggesting that if we pay China $1m for a boatload of plastic doodads we should expect China in return to give us the $1m back in exchange for $50,000 worth of medicines just because "that's what they can pay", although reading your posts I can't be entirely sure. If that is what you're suggesting I can't see China being overly keen on the idea.

Ultimately when an economy is based on consumers borrowing and spending but doesn't make any of the things they buy the inevitable result is that the borrowed money floods out of the country, ending up in the countries that actually make the stuff people want to buy, and a trade deficit accumulates. Shifting the economy so it isn't so heavily focussed on debt would be a good thing, it's just a question of how (and whether) to ease the financial pain of those who bought assets with debt only to watch their value plummet as lenders use criteria more rigorous than "check species, check pulse, approve loan".

We have two choices: Fix the problem, or deny that we have one. So far we claim to have a problem but act as if we don't. Very confusing. :confused:
 
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GarfieldJL

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Do you have no understanding of economics? Do you understand the difference between deficit and debt?

There isn't exactly a difference between the two.

If you take over a government that is making posting a 236 billion dollar surplus, and wind up with a 1.4 trillion dollar deficit, racking up nearly 5 Trillion in debt along the way, that is gross fiscal incompetence.

There was only one year where Bush had a spending deficit of over a trillion dollars, and that was primarily due to TARP (which was $700 billion)...

If you take over a government that is losing 1.4 trillion a year, it doesn't matter how good of an economist you are, it's inevitable you are going to pile on a ton more debt until you can right the financial situation. You simply can't balance that kind of deficit out overnight, it's going to take years to correct. The country was in such a state that it lost a couple hundred billion dollars before Obama was even able to get his first budget put together.

Seriously stop misrepresenting the facts, there was only 1 year that Bush's yearly budget deficit was above a Trillion dollars and that was entirely due to TARP in 2008... Obama's was pulling trillion dollar deficits when TARP was paid back by the banks, otherwise Obama's deficit record would be even worse than it already is.
We all know about TARP, the Troubled Asset Relief Program, which spent $700 billion in taxpayers’ money to bail out banks after the financial crisis. That money was scrutinized by Congress and the media.
The true cost of the bank bailout | Need to Know | PBS

You are approaching this as if they started in a similar situation. They didn't. Bush inherited the first u.s. budget surplus since the 1950s. Obama inherited the largest budgetary deficit in global history. So comparing the total debt during their time in office is a useless stat. The only way that would matter is if they both started off in a neutral and similar position.


I decided to use three sets of calculations for each president: first, the deficit-to-GDP ratio from the fiscal year he took office to the fiscal year he left minus one (thus, for Reagan: 1981-88); second, from his first fiscal year plus one to the fiscal year he left (thus, 1982-89); and third, an average of the first two
Here are the ratios of deficit to GDP for the past five presidents:
Ronald Reagan
1981-88 4.2 %
1982-89 4.2
Average 4.2
George H. W. Bush
1989-92 4.0
1990-93 4.3
Average 4.2
Bill Clinton
1993-2000 0.8
1994-2001 0.1
Average 0.5
George W. Bush
2001-08 2.0
2002-09 3.4
Average 2.7
Barack Obama
2009-12* 9.1
2010-12 8.7
Average 8.9
*fiscal 2012 ends Sept. 30, 2012, so this figure is estimated
Source: Economic Report of the President, February 2012
The results for President Bush are skewed by the 10.1 percent deficit/GDP ratio in fiscal 2009. A large chunk of spending in that year went to the Troubled Asset Relief Program, or TARP. In fiscal 2009, TARP contributed $151 billion to the budget deficit, but in 2010 and 2011, $147 billion of that amount was recouped and thus reduced the size of the deficit during President Obama’s watch. (These calculations are complicated and are laid out by the Office of Management and Budget. See http://www.whitehouse.gov/sites/default/files/omb/budget/fy2013/assets/spec.pdf, p. 49.)

The Facts About Budget Deficits: How The Presidents Truly Rank - Forbes

Obama has managed to cut 400 billion from the deficit despite being mired in a recession. That in itself is pretty impressive. This number is continuing to fall, and should be under the trillion mark this year.

The President is not proposing to cut spending by $400 billion. He’s only proposing to reduce future spending growth by that amount. In other words, his “spending cut” is only a cut if you play the dishonest DC game of measuring “cuts” against a baseline of ever-expanding government.
To give you an idea of what this really means, here’s my chart showing the CBO projection of what will happen to spending if the budget is left on autopilot. That’s the blue line.
The red line, by contrast, shows the impact of Obama’s supposed $400 billion cut. Feel free to pull out a magnifying glass to examine the difference between the two lines.
Center for Freedom and Prosperity >> Obama’s Fiscal Plan: Real Tax Hikes and Fake Spending Cuts

This isn't "madoff" economics. These are real numbers. The numbers say Clinton ran things fairly well economically, bush took a good situation and trashed it to an unprecedented amount, and Obama is slowly but steadily righting the ship.

Last I checked Bush tried to fix the housing problem back in 2003 and was demonized by the media... Republicans in congress tried to fix the problem as well but were stonewalled by individuals like Barney Frank and Chris Dodd.

Furthermore, Obama hasn't righted the ship, the only reason the numbers show we're back to 2009 levels is because millions of Americans have given up looking for work.


Moreover, even this doesn’t nearly fully account for the 8.2 million Americans who have given up hope during the Obama term of office, and dropped out of the work force altogether. When you are considered out of the work force, you are no longer counted as unemployed, even though you still do not have a job, and you still want and are available for work.
The U6 unemployment rate counts only 2.5 million of those 8.2 million who have given up hope and dropped out during the Obama years. The ShadowStats website, which counts the long term discouraged workers the government doesn’t count, reports the total rate for the unemployed and underemployed (part time for economic reasons) as 22.8%.

Obama's Real Unemployment Rate Is 14.7%, And A Recession's On The Way - Forbes

Do I agree with all his economic policies? Not at all. But to say Obama is doing worse than Bush from an economic standpoint is simply absurd. Anyone looking from an objective viewpoint would say the same thing.

Look I know you'd like to believe things are starting to turn around, but the fact is that Obama's policies are driving us off a cliff. The economy didn't go south for the Bush Presidency until after Democrats had control of congress.

Democrats took control of the House and Senate in the 2006 elections, in case you've forgotten.

The reason why the numbers seem so good is because millions of Americans are longer counted since they've given up looking for a job out of despair.
 
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Dave Ellis

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There isn't exactly a difference between the two.

I rest my case.... There is a major difference. If you don't know the difference between deficit and debt, you have no right to start yammering on about the economy. It's clear you have a lack of a basic understanding of how it works, and as shown by the rest of the data in this post, you are prone to using bad statistics.

Oh, and just so you know, Deficit is the amount of money the government spends over and above it's available revenue on an annual basis. So, for example, say this year the government brought in $100, but they spent $120, they would have a deficit of $20.

Debt on the other hand is the accumulated long term money that you owe people. So, for example, all the combined money we've had to borrow to fund the deficits that we have not paid back yet is the debt. We also pay interest on the debt, the same way you would pay interest on any loan you receive.

So, say in the year we were talking about above, if you had a debt of $5,000 already, with a $20 dollar deficit, that means you have a debt of $5020 next year.

Likewise, if you have a budget surplus as the country did under Clinton (i.e. the government brought in $100 and spent $90), you can use some of the extra money to pay off the outstanding debt.

So in the case of Bush, he inherited a country with a $230 Billion Surplus, and in the span of 8 years racked up a $1400 Billion Deficit.

Obama inherited a country with a $1400 Billion Deficit, and reduced it to roughly $1000 Billion. It's projected to fall further to $980 Billion by the end of the fiscal year. That's a 30% deficit reduction since he took power.

However, even though he's cut the deficit by 30%, he's still piling on close to a trillion in debt annually, due to the leftover deficit from the Bush years that he is trying to bring under control.

There was only one year where Bush had a spending deficit of over a trillion dollars, and that was primarily due to TARP (which was $700 billion)...

That is correct, the recession played a fairly large contributing factor to the huge jump in deficits during the later bush years. However the deficit steadily grew during his presidency even when the economy was still good.

Seriously stop misrepresenting the facts, there was only 1 year that Bush's yearly budget deficit was above a Trillion dollars and that was entirely due to TARP in 2008... Obama's was pulling trillion dollar deficits when TARP was paid back by the banks, otherwise Obama's deficit record would be even worse than it already is.
We all know about TARP, the Troubled Asset Relief Program, which spent $700 billion in taxpayers’ money to bail out banks after the financial crisis. That money was scrutinized by Congress and the media.
The true cost of the bank bailout | Need to Know | PBS

If you want to talk about Obama's deficit record and how fast he's getting it under control, I refer you on to this article "US Deficit shrinking at the fastest pace since World War Two" from Investors Business Daily:

U.S. Deficit Shrinking At Fastest Pace Since WWII, Before Fiscal Cliff - Investors.com

P.S. Simply stating Bush only racked up a trillion dollar deficit once isn't really a great defense. In this example it means he took a good situation in his early years and it went so far south that in his last year of presidency he became the first president to rack up a trillion dollar plus deficit.

I decided to use three sets of calculations for each president: first, the deficit-to-GDP ratio from the fiscal year he took office to the fiscal year he left minus one (thus, for Reagan: 1981-88); second, from his first fiscal year plus one to the fiscal year he left (thus, 1982-89); and third, an average of the first two
Here are the ratios of deficit to GDP for the past five presidents:
Ronald Reagan
1981-88 4.2 %
1982-89 4.2
Average 4.2
George H. W. Bush
1989-92 4.0
1990-93 4.3
Average 4.2
Bill Clinton
1993-2000 0.8
1994-2001 0.1
Average 0.5
George W. Bush
2001-08 2.0
2002-09 3.4
Average 2.7
Barack Obama
2009-12* 9.1
2010-12 8.7
Average 8.9
*fiscal 2012 ends Sept. 30, 2012, so this figure is estimated
Source: Economic Report of the President, February 2012
The results for President Bush are skewed by the 10.1 percent deficit/GDP ratio in fiscal 2009. A large chunk of spending in that year went to the Troubled Asset Relief Program, or TARP. In fiscal 2009, TARP contributed $151 billion to the budget deficit, but in 2010 and 2011, $147 billion of that amount was recouped and thus reduced the size of the deficit during President Obama’s watch. (These calculations are complicated and are laid out by the Office of Management and Budget. See http://www.whitehouse.gov/sites/default/files/omb/budget/fy2013/assets/spec.pdf, p. 49.)


Haha, oh no you don't.

The statistics above are flawed, and flawed due to reasons you have already brought up in this very post.

You can't go by the span of an entire presidency. As you've already stated, bush ran reasonable deficits throughout most of his presidency and they only got out of control towards the end. So, using the average of his presidency is a flawed number, it hides the fact things got worse and worse under his administration, and it hides the recession his policies contributed a lot to creating.

Likewise, it makes Obama look far worse, as the deficit numbers only appear during his presidency.

However, what is telling within your stats is the difference between your first number, and your second number. That exposes the change from a year to year basis and gives more of a true picture here (the truest picture would be to involve year by year figures)

The difference between bushes 2001-2008 and 2002-2009 numbers is 1.4%, that's a huge deficit jump given the fact it's one year in an 8 year average. Whereas with Obama, the 2008-2012 to 2010-2102 is a 0.4% reduction, showing a deficit drop, and if the stat was correct to the other ones and included 2013, you'd see far more than a 0.4% drop.

The President is not proposing to cut spending by $400 billion. He’s only proposing to reduce future spending growth by that amount. In other words, his “spending cut” is only a cut if you play the dishonest [snip]

Apparently you fail to recognize this isn't a proposal. This has already happened.

So, if you want to go on about describing dishonest games and all that, check your own stats. The deficit has fallen by $400 Billion during his presidency, and it is continuing to fall at the fastest rate since WW2.

Last I checked Bush tried to fix the housing problem back in 2003 and was demonized by the media... Republicans in congress tried to fix the problem as well but were stonewalled by individuals like Barney Frank and Chris Dodd.

What did they propose, and what was the rationale for stopping it? And I want data, not assertions about some lefty conspiracy or whatever.

Furthermore, Obama hasn't righted the ship, the only reason the numbers show we're back to 2009 levels is because millions of Americans have given up looking for work.

You're correct, he hasn't righted the ship, however it is clearly on route to being righted. And do you have data to back up your last assertion?

Moreover, even this doesn’t nearly fully account for the 8.2 million Americans who have given up hope during the Obama term of office, and dropped out of the work force altogether. When you are considered out of the work force, you are no longer counted as unemployed, even though you still do not have a job, and you still want and are available for work.
The U6 unemployment rate counts only 2.5 million of those 8.2 million who have given up hope and dropped out during the Obama years. The ShadowStats website, which counts the long term discouraged workers the government doesn’t count, reports the total rate for the unemployed and underemployed (part time for economic reasons) as 22.8%.

Do you have stats to back up your assertions that these workers have dropped out because they've "given up hope"?

The article you linked is playing statistical games with population numbers to create stats it wants to. Go look at the actual data from a first-source like the agency that tracks national employment numbers.


Look I know you'd like to believe things are starting to turn around, but the fact is that Obama's policies are driving us off a cliff. The economy didn't go south for the Bush Presidency until after Democrats had control of congress.

Democrats took control of the House and Senate in the 2006 elections, in case you've forgotten.

The reason why the numbers seem so good is because millions of Americans are longer counted since they've given up looking for a job out of despair.[/quote]
 
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GarfieldJL

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I rest my case.... There is a major difference. If you don't know the difference between deficit and debt, you have no right to start yammering on about the economy. It's clear you have a lack of a basic understanding of how it works, and as shown by the rest of the data in this post, you are prone to using bad statistics.

Deficit spending means you have a increase in debt or the elimination of a surplus...

Oh, and just so you know, Deficit is the amount of money the government spends over and above it's available revenue on an annual basis. So, for example, say this year the government brought in $100, but they spent $120, they would have a deficit of $20.

That would also generally mean you have added $20 to the debt...

Debt on the other hand is the accumulated long term money that you owe people. So, for example, all the combined money we've had to borrow to fund the deficits that we have not paid back yet is the debt. We also pay interest on the debt, the same way you would pay interest on any loan you receive.

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.

So, say in the year we were talking about above, if you had a debt of $5,000 already, with a $20 dollar deficit, that means you have a debt of $5020 next year.

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.

Likewise, if you have a budget surplus as the country did under Clinton (i.e. the government brought in $100 and spent $90), you can use some of the extra money to pay off the outstanding debt.

So in the case of Bush, he inherited a country with a $230 Billion Surplus, and in the span of 8 years racked up a $1400 Billion Deficit.

We also had the dot.com bubble bursting just before Bush took office, additionally in case you've forgotten 9/11 happened...

Obama inherited a country with a $1400 Billion Deficit, and reduced it to roughly $1000 Billion. It's projected to fall further to $980 Billion by the end of the fiscal year. That's a 30% deficit reduction since he took power.

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'm going to explain why you shouldn't buy what the White House is claiming later in the post.

However, even though he's cut the deficit by 30%, he's still piling on close to a trillion in debt annually, due to the leftover deficit from the Bush years that he is trying to bring under control.

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


This is why Rush Limbaugh is actually more credible than most of the media.

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

That is correct, the recession played a fairly large contributing factor to the huge jump in deficits during the later bush years. However the deficit steadily grew during his presidency even when the economy was still good.

The deficit hitting 1.4 trillion was during 2008, and half of that was due to TARP, which banks have largely repaid...


If you want to talk about Obama's deficit record and how fast he's getting it under control, I refer you on to this article "US Deficit shrinking at the fastest pace since World War Two" from Investors Business Daily:

U.S. Deficit Shrinking At Fastest Pace Since WWII, Before Fiscal Cliff - Investors.com

P.S. Simply stating Bush only racked up a trillion dollar deficit once isn't really a great defense. In this example it means he took a good situation in his early years and it went so far south that in his last year of presidency he became the first president to rack up a trillion dollar plus deficit.

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.


Haha, oh no you don't.

The statistics above are flawed, and flawed due to reasons you have already brought up in this very post.

You can't go by the span of an entire presidency. As you've already stated, bush ran reasonable deficits throughout most of his presidency and they only got out of control towards the end. So, using the average of his presidency is a flawed number, it hides the fact things got worse and worse under his administration, and it hides the recession his policies contributed a lot to creating.

Likewise, it makes Obama look far worse, as the deficit numbers only appear during his presidency.

However, what is telling within your stats is the difference between your first number, and your second number. That exposes the change from a year to year basis and gives more of a true picture here (the truest picture would be to involve year by year figures)

The difference between bushes 2001-2008 and 2002-2009 numbers is 1.4%, that's a huge deficit jump given the fact it's one year in an 8 year average. Whereas with Obama, the 2008-2012 to 2010-2102 is a 0.4% reduction, showing a deficit drop, and if the stat was correct to the other ones and included 2013, you'd see far more than a 0.4% drop.


Read the article again, the numbers were actually being favorable to Obama.

Apparently you fail to recognize this isn't a proposal. This has already happened.

So, if you want to go on about describing dishonest games and all that, check your own stats. The deficit has fallen by $400 Billion during his presidency, and it is continuing to fall at the fastest rate since WW2.

Considering how much he hiked spending that wouldn't be hard to do...


According to the White House’s 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 Office’s figure) that his economic “stimulus” added to the deficit in 2009. Moreover, he shouldn’t 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 Bush’s 2009 deficit tally.
Adding all of this up, deficit spending during Obama’s 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

What did they propose, and what was the rationale for stopping it? And I want data, not assertions about some lefty conspiracy or whatever.

Would you like Bush's 2003 warning, the 2005 bill, the 2006 bill, or the proposals in 2007?

You're correct, he hasn't righted the ship, however it is clearly on route to being righted. And do you have data to back up your last assertion?

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... :doh:

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.



Do you have stats to back up your assertions that these workers have dropped out because they've "given up hope"?
The article you linked is playing statistical games with population numbers to create stats it wants to. Go look at the actual data from a first-source like the agency that tracks national employment numbers.

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.
 
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contango

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Deficit spending means you have a increase in debt or the elimination of a surplus...

That would also generally mean you have added $20 to the debt...

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.

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.

Not really true.

Debt is the accumulated deficit. So if you ran a $100 budget surplus for three years and then ran a deficit of $50 for four years you'd still be ahead by $100.

Deficit spending merely means money out exceeds money in. Debt is when money out exceeds money in over a period of time.

Deficit spending isn't a problem when there's money to fall back on. When there isn't money to fall back on it's a bigger problem.

There's also an important difference in that if the deficit is cut to nothing it still doesn't repay a penny of the debt. To repay the debt the deficit must be cut to zero and then further cuts must be made to generate a surplus which can be used to repay the debt.

I cut the rest of the post as national economies don't tend to turn on a dime so there's little point criticising this president or that president for what happened to take place on their watch. As people have said the dot-com boom straddled Clinton and Bush, 9/11 happened under Bush, the subprime fiasco happened under Bush but the seeds were sown way back when, and so on.

Since there's a Democrat in the White House it's not surprising that the Democrats look at all the good economic data and claim credit for it due to Obama's great policies and blame all the bad stuff on the mess left by Bush, while the Republicans look at the good news and claim it's the result of Bush's great policies and blame all the bad stuff on Obama ruining the great legacy that Bush left him.
 
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GarfieldJL

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I cut the rest of the post as national economies don't tend to turn on a dime so there's little point criticising this president or that president for what happened to take place on their watch. As people have said the dot-com boom straddled Clinton and Bush, 9/11 happened under Bush, the subprime fiasco happened under Bush but the seeds were sown way back when, and so on.

I also left out the Enron scammers got caught when Bush took office as well.

Since there's a Democrat in the White House it's not surprising that the Democrats look at all the good economic data and claim credit for it due to Obama's great policies and blame all the bad stuff on the mess left by Bush, while the Republicans look at the good news and claim it's the result of Bush's great policies and blame all the bad stuff on Obama ruining the great legacy that Bush left him.

There is a stark difference, and that is the behavior of the President while in office.

I don't remember President Clinton bashing former President George H.W. Bush after Clinton took office, nor do I recall President George W. Bush publicly blaming Clinton left and right for his problems. Obama on the other hand seems to like to blame his predecessors for everything.
 
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contango

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I also left out the Enron scammers got caught when Bush took office as well.

True.

There is a stark difference, and that is the behavior of the President while in office.

I don't remember President Clinton bashing former President George H.W. Bush after Clinton took office, nor do I recall President George W. Bush publicly blaming Clinton left and right for his problems. Obama on the other hand seems to like to blame his predecessors for everything.

I don't follow US politics closely enough to comment on the behaviour of the President while in office in any detail, my observation was more about the people who support one party or the other. It worries me to see the tribal support on both sides where people seem unable or unwilling to accept that their guy could do anything wrong or that the other guy could do anything right.

Such polarisation of society does little more than reduce complex issues to clever but meaningless soundbites and set people against each other in ways that are totally unproductive.
 
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Dave Ellis

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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 House’s 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 Office’s figure) that his economic “stimulus” added to the deficit in 2009. Moreover, he shouldn’t 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 Bush’s 2009 deficit tally.
Adding all of this up, deficit spending during Obama’s 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?

Would you like Bush's 2003 warning, the 2005 bill, the 2006 bill, or the proposals in 2007?

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... :doh:

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.
 
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Here is data:

toronto-fo0127_stateoftheun.jpg
 
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