Sadly, I agree. This has gone past serious.
Posted on 07/26/2010 7:06:40 AM PDT by SeekAndFind
Man, I miss the fiscal discipline of the Bush era!
Gulp.
I never expected to write those words. The Bush-era Republicans were out-of-control big spenders, fiending for appropriations, handing out largesse, creating giant new health-care entitlements here, building nations there, all with a devil-may-care attitude about where the money would come from. They were all carrot and no stick, cutting taxes but not doing a thing about spending.
A mid-year budget review by the Obama administration forecasts the deficit will be $1.47 trillion this year and $1.42 trillion next year as the U.S. struggles to recover from the recession.
This year’s budget shortfall is $84 billion less than President Barack Obama’s budget office projected in February because of lower than projected spending for unemployment and some government programs. Still, the total would be a record and represent 10 percent of gross domestic product.
That is from the Mid-Session Budget review, where the government checks in on the federal books and sees how closely they match up to the actual budget. Pretty close, in this case — unfortunately.
Let me see if I can type this right: $1,470,000,000,000.00 — and that is just the part of the bill that we do not know how to pay. The actual bill for government spending this year is more than twice that. We are borrowing 41 cents of every dollar we spend. We are spending $36,000 per household.
Okay, here is the ritual denunciation: That is the biggest deficit in the history of the United States of America, in gross dollars. For Pete’s sake.
And here is the reality: That is the biggest deficit in the history of the United States of America since World War II, as a portion of GDP. That deficit is about 10 percent of GDP; the Bush-era deficits were typically about 3 percent of GDP.
Heritage puts it this way:
These future deficits are driven almost exclusively by rising spending. President Obama’s budget would push inflation-adjusted federal spending past $36,000 per household by 2020—$12,000 above the level that prevailed under President Bush. Even President Obama’s enormous and anti-growth $3 trillion tax increase proposal won’t stop this spending spree from pushing the national debt to economically dangerous levels.
The Mid-Session Budget Review also confirms the failure of Obama’s economic agenda. The President concedes that the unemployment rate will remain at nearly 10 percent this year and not revert to pre-recession levels until 2016—and even that is based on the same optimistic Keynesian economic models that claim the stimulus created or saved 3 million jobs. If this is economic policy success, one wonders how failure would look.
I do not like to make predictions (because I am really bad at it, and the world is too complicated) but here is one: Obama will find it much more difficult to get himself re-elected in 2012 if the unemployment rate is 9.7 percent than if it is 7.7 percent. I have said, on several occasions, that the only way I expect a Republican to defeat Obama in 2012 is if unemployment persists at very high levels or if there is another major economic disruption. It must be clear, even to President Obama, that his program is not working. It certainly is clear to those members of his increasingly incoherent economics team who are skedaddling. For a guy who campaigned on hope and change, Barack Obama is proving to be absolutely pig-headed when it comes to sticking to what does not work. Memo to the president: This is no way to run a welfare state.
More words I never expected to type: Meanwhile, in the land of liberty, Canada:
Canada’s federal budget deficit amounted to $4.2 billion during the first two months of the fiscal year, much smaller than in the same period last year when the economy was mired in recession, the finance department reported Friday.
The Finance Department’s fiscal monitor noted the government spent $7.2 billion more than it took in during April and May of 2009 because tax revenues were down and social and economic spending to offset the slump was higher.
“The data is reassuring that the deficit should continue to narrow,” said Mary Webb, an economist with Scotia Capital. “And it continues a trend we saw in the last quarter of fiscal 2009-2010, which is that revenues were coming back reflecting the strength of the Canadian recovery.”
The improvement in the deficit year-over-year was most visible in revenues from personal income taxes and provincial sales and services taxes.
The government says the deficit includes about $1.7 billion in spending under the stimulus package introduced in January 2008.
Whatever you think about socialism, here is an undeniable fact: Canadians are better at it than Americans are. We are managing to inflict the costs of welfare statism on ourselves without even deriving any of the benefits: Heritage now ranks Canada’s economy as more free than that of the United States. Its government spending is only marginally higher than our own, and its government institutions are much cleaner and more effective. It went into the financial crisis with low levels of government debt and a sounder banking system, thanks in no small part to the fact that the Canadian government is not as dominated by narrow financial interests as the U.S. government is. (Question: Why is it that the lefties who rightly appreciated what a rent-seeking nightmare our financial system is do not see that they have just helped to create a substantially similar situation in the health-care industry? Just askin’.)
The upshot? Canada already is packing in its stimulus measures. And tiny little Canada is creating more jobs than is the United States:
Canada has recouped 403,000 jobs, or 97% of those lost in the recession. Employment rose by 93,200 in June – a number five-times greater than economists had expected – following a gain of 24,700 in May and a record-high surge of 108,700 in April.
By comparison, the United States, which has a population 10-times larger than Canada’s, only added 83,000 jobs in June. And if you factor in the loss of 225,000 temporary Census jobs, the United States actually lost 125,000 jobs. Worse, if you include “discouraged workers” who haven’t looked for a job in the past four weeks, the U.S. labor force has shrunk by 974,000 in the past two months alone.
Canada’s unemployment rate slid to 7.9% in June compared to 9.5% in the United States. … Canada has already begun the process of reigning in its stimulus measures. The Bank of Canada (BOC) yesterday (Tuesday) raised its key interest rate a quarter of a point to 0.75%. That was the second such high in as many months.
If you want to emulate Canada, emulate the parts that work: clean government, balanced budgets, low debt.
– Kevin D. Williamson is deputy managing editor of National Review.
Sadly, I agree. This has gone past serious.
There was no Bush era fiscal discipline. And the fact that Obama is worse doesn’t change that.
I still do. That doesn't mean the Obammunist isn't light years worse, but let's not look fondly back at the cyanide we took yesterday, just because a gun's pointed at our heads today.
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The Democrats said that in 2004 about Bush. Then they went and nominated John Kerry. The GOP's chances in 2012 will also depend on who they nominate.
In other words you want your BDS
The 2002 through 2009 budgets were passed on Bush's watch. If that's your idea of fiscal discipline then you have no concept of the term.
I MISS CHENEY
I MISS AMERICA
We're not doing ourselves any favors by pretending Bush was a conservative. He wasn't. By and large, he was a disaster as a president, and he set disastrous precedents.
Just because Bush was a little better than what we have now doesn't mean we shouldn't set our sights higher, and demand more from our would-be leaders. I won't settle for another Bush, whether his name is Bush, McCain, Romney, Giuliani, Gingrich, or whatever. While we'll never have another Ronald Reagan, I will demand whoever I support tries his or her damnedest to live up to his legacy.
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Jan 5 ,09 ...Today, President-elect Obama is moving forward with what he has billed as his top priority: an economic stimulus package called the “American Recovery and Reinvestment Plan.”
So when CAN we say “its no longer Bush’s fault?”
I agree, of course, that the degree to which we will beat Obama will depend on the GOP nominee. But I really see Obama's chances as very weak, largely because his base has crumbled and I don't see how he gets enough strength back there to be a strong contender. I'm more worried about Hillary at this point.
I think Bush can share the blame for this. The whole TARP bailout bill was signed by him. Obama piled the spending on, there isn't any argument about that. But Bush started the ball rolling, and that was just a continuation of the out-of-control spending that went on through his entire administration. By any stretch of the imaginiation, "George W. Bush" and "fiscal responsibility" are a contradiction in terms.
So now I’m not even allowed my own thoughts?
Great!
There are a lot of people , me included that do not lump Tarp in with the rest of the stuff...Tarp WAS needed to prevent more of a meltdown
If we are right about that then you should thank God everyday that Bush was our President and stop cursing him
There are a lot of people , me included that do not lump Tarp in with the rest of the stuff...Tarp WAS needed to prevent more of a meltdown
If we are right about that then you should thank God everyday that Bush was our President and stop cursing him
And no doubt a lot of Obama supporters will swear up and down that all the stimulus spending was absolutely vital to head off a major depression. But at the end of the day it's both supporting government spending money is doesn't have.
Besides, add in the wars, No Child Left Behind spending, Prescription Drug plans, and God knows what else and you still have a president who hadn't any interest in fiscal responsibility.
TARP was not part of a Keynesian mentality; it supported the supply-side, not the demand side.
Some think we would have been better off had more huge banks failed, spurring smaller ones to fail, generating bank runs and small business lines of credit to collapse throughout the country. Don't think so.
Then the socialists won’t have any excuses.
On May24, 2001, Traitor Jim Jeffords defected to the Democrats and President Bush dealt with a majority Dem Senate throughout his presidency. The Dems control was even absolute when you consider the spinelessness of the GOP members of Congress.
One of the problems we have as a country is that anyone can justify any level of government spending on the grounds that it was ‘necessary’. That doesn’t make it prudent or responsible. And as I said, TARP was just the tail end of Bush’s term in office, which was marked with increased spending and growth in government from the first day to the last.
And the president can veto it.
How on Earth did you infer that? I was agreeing with 2/3 of what you said.
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