Bush Deficit Vs. Obama Deficit

H/T drillanwr at Dollard's.

Heritage Foundation:

Bush Deficit vs. Obama Deficit in Pictures

President Barak Obama has repeatedly claimed that his budget would cut the deficit by half by the end of his term. But as Heritage analyst Brian Riedl has pointed out, given that Obama has already helped quadruple the deficit with his stimulus package, pledging to halve it by 2013 is hardly ambitious. The Washington Post has a great graphic which helps put President Obama’s budget deficits in context of President Bush’s.

What’s driving Obama’s unprecedented massive deficits? Spending. Riedl details:

- President Bush expanded the federal budget by a historic $700 billion through 2008. President Obama would add another $1 trillion.

- President Bush began a string of expensive finan­cial bailouts. President Obama is accelerating that course.

- President Bush created a Medicare drug entitle­ment that will cost an estimated $800 billion in its first decade. President Obama has proposed a $634 billion down payment on a new govern­ment health care fund.

- President Bush increased federal education spending 58 percent faster than inflation. Presi­dent Obama would double it.

- President Bush became the first President to spend 3 percent of GDP on federal antipoverty programs. President Obama has already in­creased this spending by 20 percent.

- President Bush tilted the income tax burden more toward upper-income taxpayers. President Obama would continue that trend.

- President Bush presided over a $2.5 trillion increase in the public debt through 2008. Setting aside 2009 (for which Presidents Bush and Obama share responsibility for an additional $2.6 trillion in public debt), President Obama’s budget would add $4.9 trillion in public debt from the beginning of 2010 through 2016.

 

This is part of the change sponge-bama promised.This is change we DO NOT NEED!

Bush made several mistakes, but unemployment was below 4% in 2005, the economy was booming, the deficit was actually being reduced, the stock market was at record highs and confident, and he was in the middle of a war. And all this even with a Democrat majority in CONgress from 2006 on.

Bush may have been "bad" according to you leftist reprobates but, it is clear to me and many others that Obama and his den of thieves are rapidly becoming this countries worst nightmare.

Current unemployment rate is currently 9.5%, already on par with the worst recession since the Great Depression. Read more here; Unemployment Rate On Par With 1982 Recession.

Related: U.K. Bond Auction Fails for First Time Since 2002
 

Harsh Answers To A Harsh Economy

Harsh Answers To A Harsh Economy
by Garry

PoliTICKians know nothing about the free market economy. If Econ 101 was being rewritten today, that statement would be on the inside front cover. Or the sub-title perhaps, if the author was interested in truth in marketing.

When a poliTICKian tells me to turn left, I will normally go right. If they tell me to speed up I will slow down. etc.etc...

So now we have poliTICKians who created the current economic meltdown telling us they need to fix the problem by taking more of our money and in effect socializing private businesses in much the same way Hugo Chavez has and continues to do in Venezuela.

The amazingly obvious connection to the two circumstances seems to escape even the poliTICKians on the Right side of the aisle, which leads me to believe they may be on the right, but they are definitely wrong.

More taxes, (to provide a stimulus), more government intervention, (to safeguard the industries) and more corporate handouts (bailouts) to ensure workers don't lose jobs at companies which are failing because they are failures at standing up to over regulation and consistently bow down to the union thuggery at the national and local level.

When the poliTICKian tells me to turn left, I go right.

The answers are simple and obvious to me.

Re: The Big Three Automakers

Instead of bailouts for companies which are failing, let them fail. The assets of the company aren't going anywhere, they will just change hands.

Instead of protecting workers jobs who work for companies which are failing, let them lose the jobs and find something useful to do instead.

Instead of continuing a failing business model, start over from the beginning without the union thuggery which gives GM a workforce of 96,000 [+/-] and nearly 1,000,000 receiving retirement benefits. Just another Ponzi scheme doomed to failure and ratified as a failure in 2006 when the Federal Government chose the route of the “Pension Protection Act of 2006” signed by the Moderate Democrat President Jorge W Bushez.

Losing the current business model will allow GM at lest to lose all of the $70 per hour employees instead of a few of them.

The housing market is equally simple. (background)

The housing market problem began with the Community Reinvestment Act (CRA)of 1977. The CRA wasn't a terrible idea in itself, it was just wrongheaded from the beginning. Instead of encouraging people to work hard and save enough for a down payment, it relaxed the rules for home ownership and brought in people who might otherwise not qualify for home ownership. Again not a horrible idea, just wrongheaded.

Liberal Soft hardheadedness at work.

The clencher came though with the 110th congress and the Socialist Democrat agenda of "homes for all". Socialist Democrat Senators Chris Dodd and Barney Frank both were in the drivers seat for that fiasco, with the willing help of Nancy "The Red" Pelosi and Dirty Harry "Gimme Land" Reid.

When that disaster hit the fan, and the sub-prime market collapsed as it had to do someday, everyone with a recent mortgage based on hype inflated prices took a hit. The number of homeowners who are "underwater" (meaning they owe more than the home is worth) ballooned nearly overnight and lending institutions began to fail.

Answer: The poliTICKians tell me to turn Left, I turn Right.

The Federal Reserve (not the government) is lowering interest rates to spur lending (and also lower the Adjustable Rate Mortgage rates.)

The real answer is to raise interest rates again, let those who can't afford to own a home lose the house and sell it or give it back to the bank or lender. The lender in turn lowers the cost of the home to a rational price and sells it. On paper, some have lost a fortune in equity, but the equity was never really there in the first place except as a function of the housing boom brought about by government intervnetion paid for by the Federal Reserve and the governemtn borrowing money (mostly from China) through the sale of Governement bonds.

The equity loss is the loss of a mirage, a whisper of wind in the trees, a pile of plain old paper. The assets aren't gone, they just change hands. And just like the failing business model, the housing market is able to recover because the artificially low interest rates are gone and only those with good credit who can actually apy back the loans can now buy a house. Just like it's been since before the Socialist Democrat Social Engineering Experiment in Housing began in 1977.


* The bottom line in all of the answers will be for the Government to step back from the problem and allow the market to correct itself.
* The likelihood of that happening even if Mitt Romney had been elected was close to zip, zero, nada.
* For it to happen with the Fuddmeister Liberal Democrat McCain in office was a lightly negative number.
* For a market correction to occur with a full blown Marxist/Socialist BHObama in office is beyond the realm of consideration.

My belief system tells me the odds of the Rapture occurring while the BHObama is in office is more likely to happen than a true Free Market Response.

Big Government is the Answer! Just Look at these Headlines

If you are a fan of Big Government, it looks like Obama is your man....

.....if you wonder how we are going to pay for it???????

Never mind, we will just print more money, that works doesn't it?

# Commission Urges Obama to Enforce Fair Housing

# Obama’s ‘New Deal’ Not Likely to Cure Economy or Unemployment Rate, Free Market Economists Say

# President-Elect Obama Will Meet with Al Gore to Discuss Climate Change

# Obama Urged to Create Anti-Hacker Office in White House

# Obama Will Help Homeowners Facing Foreclosure

# Obama Helping to Bail Hillary Out of Her Campaign Debt Before She Becomes Secretary of State

Obama's New Deal Will Not Work: Free Market Economists

CNSNews.com - Obama’s ‘New Deal’ Not Likely to Cure Economy or Unemployment Rate, Free Market Economists Say

Tuesday, December 09, 2008
By Matt Hadro



(CNSNews.com) - President-elect Barack Obama has announced an economic plan comprised of massive public works programs to stimulate the economy and create 2.5 million jobs, at an estimated cost of $1.2 trillion.

Some analysts are calling it a New New Deal, comparing it to Franklin Delano Roosevelt's New Deal response to the 1930s Depression. But government data show that FDR's programs did not substantially reduce unemployment, and some economists think such programs actually prolonged the Depression and kept unemployment high.

In a radio address on Saturday, available on his change.gov Web site, Obama said that he and his economic advisers had crafted an economic recovery plan “that will help save or create at least two-and-a-half million jobs, while rebuilding our infrastructure, improving our schools, reducing our dependence on oil, and saving billions of dollars.”

Robert Higgs, a senior fellow at the free market Independent Institute, told CNSNews.com that “Obama’s plan for a large public works program certainly resembles some of the Roosevelt efforts, especially in 1935-1940, under the WPA, the Works Progress Administration.”

“I think there’s a very high probability that this kind of proposal will actually make matters worse,” said Higgs.

Lee E. Ohanian, professor of economics at UCLA, agreed that Obama’s plan shared similarities with Roosevelt’s “New Deal,” which expanded the federal government with the creation of 36 agencies, such as the Federal Emergency Relief Administration, the Federal Housing Administration, the National Industrial Recovery Act, the Public Works Administration, and the Social Security Administration.

In addition, Roosevelt presided over the creation of the Civilian Conservation Corps, the National Labor Relations Board, the National Recovery Administration, the Tennessee Valley Authority, the United States Securities and Exchange Commission and the Works Progress Administration.

The Roosevelt administration launched those myriad programs to stimulate the U.S. economy out of the Depression and get unemployed Americans back to work, but data from the Bureau of Labor Statistics show that the yearly rates of unemployment during the New Deal in the years before America entered World War II did not decline to the rates prior to the Depression.

In fact, the unemployment rate stayed in double digits until 1941 and did not fall to a rate prior to the 1929 market crash until 1943, when America was heavily invested in a world war economy.


Former President Franklin D. Roosevelt
From 1929-1944, the rates of unemployment in the United States were as follows:

1929 ... 3.2%
1930 ... 8.7%
1931 ... 15.9%
1932 ... 23.6%
1933 ... 24.9%
1934 ... 21.7%
1935 ... 20.1%
1936 ... 16.9%
1937 ... 14.3%
1938 ... 19.0%
1939 ... 17.2%
1940 ... 14.6%
1941 ... 9.9%
1942 ... 4.7%
1943 ... 1.9%
1944 ... 1.2%

Source: Bureau of Labor Statistics

“As far as President-elect Obama, he wants to increase federal spending on various projects ranging from putting more computers in classrooms to making buildings more energy-efficient,” said Ohanian. “And he intends these to be sort of the foundation of a long-term recovery.”

“I don’t agree with that, in the following sense,” said Ohanian. “It may well be a good idea to invest in infrastructure, but what people sort of forget about federal jobs is that essentially the government’s going out and hiring people, but households are paying that bill through higher taxes.”

Ohanian also warned that the government’s effort to expand employment will increase debt. “On net, will it really increase employment?” he asked of Obama’s plan. “I don’t expect it will very much.”

“I disagree that this can be the foundation of promoting long-run economic growth,” said Ohanian.

Among the efforts promised that Obama referred to in his remarks to the nation about the economy are the following:

· “A massive effort to make public buildings more energy-efficient.”
· The creation of “millions of jobs by making the single largest new investment in our national infrastructure since the creation of the federal highway system in the 1950s.”
· “The most sweeping effort to modernize and upgrade school buildings that this country has ever seen.”
· A renewal of “our information superhighway.”

“These are a few parts of the economic recovery plan that I will be rolling out in the coming weeks,” Obama said in his radio address. “We need to act with the urgency this moment demands to save or create at least two-and-a-half million jobs so that the nearly two million Americans who’ve lost them know that they have a future.”

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