{"id":42197,"date":"2011-07-26T13:39:37","date_gmt":"2011-07-26T17:39:37","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/planetwaves.net\/news\/?p=42197"},"modified":"2011-07-26T13:58:23","modified_gmt":"2011-07-26T17:58:23","slug":"they-stole-it-fair-and-square","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/planetwaves.net\/news\/economics\/they-stole-it-fair-and-square\/","title":{"rendered":"They stole it fair and square"},"content":{"rendered":"

What Republicans who refuse to raise taxes or raise the debt ceiling are saying, in effect, is that they stole the deficit fair and square. These bars represent what was spent by Bush Jr. (left) and Obama (right, projected to the end of his presidency in fiscal year 2017). The money for the wars, the tax cuts and the big pharma donations (Medicare drug program) went somewhere. Someone got that money. And the people who got it were industrialists and bankers. And now they don’t want to pay it back. In the midst of all these discussions, the one thing that irks me the most is hearing John Boner accusing Obama of unchecked spending the past two years. When you hear that line flowing off his forked tongue, just remember old Dick Nixon telling us, “I am not a crook<\/strong><\/a>.” The numbers below speak for themselves — and remember the column on the right is projected through the end of Obama’s presidency<\/em>. And his stimulus spending and tax cuts were extensions of programs started by the prior administration.<\/p>\n

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Source: Center on Budget and Policy Priorities via New York Times<\/figcaption><\/figure>
\n<\/p>\n

Critics of President Obama never tire of blaming him for today’s high deficits. But if blame belongs with one president, it belongs with Obama’s predecessor, George W. Bush. The chart above, which the New York Times created based upon figures from the Center on Budget and Policy Priorities, illustrates this point very clearly. But it’s worth reviewing the history here, because while it’s familiar to most of us who follow politics it doesn’t seem to get a lot of attention in the political debate.<\/p>\n

By the end of the 1990s, the federal budget was in surplus for the first time in decades. Partly that was a product of unusually strong economic growth, during the internet boom, which had swelled tax revenues. But partly that was a product of responsible budgeting, presided over by the most recent two presidents, George H.W. Bush and Bill Clinton. In order to reduce deficits, lawmakers and those two presidents had agreed both to raise taxes and to reduce spending.<\/em><\/p>\n

Read More Here<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

What Republicans who refuse to raise taxes or raise the debt ceiling are saying, in effect, is that they stole the deficit fair and square. These bars represent what was spent by Bush Jr. (left) and Obama (right, projected to the end of his presidency in fiscal year 2017). The money for the wars, the … Read more<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"generate_page_header":""},"categories":[14],"tags":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/planetwaves.net\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/42197"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/planetwaves.net\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/planetwaves.net\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/planetwaves.net\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/planetwaves.net\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=42197"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/planetwaves.net\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/42197\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/planetwaves.net\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=42197"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/planetwaves.net\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=42197"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/planetwaves.net\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=42197"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}