Archive for category Deficit
New Right-Wing Meme: Bush Added Only $455 Billion to the National Debt
Posted by Richard Warnick in Bush Administration, Deficit, Economy, Federal Budget, Lying, National Politics, Republicans, This Blog on February 15th, 2010
President Bush more than doubled our National Debt, but don’t tell that to the right-wingers. In a recent speech, Rep. Michele Bachmann (R-MN) claimed that the Bush administration added a mere $400 billion to the debt. Via Talking Points Memo (emphasis added):
“[I]f you look at the debt level accumulated under George W. Bush, 400 some-odd billion dollars, President Obama in his first year in office accumulated $1.4 trillion, over four times more than that big spending George Bush — and that was after 9/11 and the recessions and all that he had to deal with and the two wars. Over four times,” said Bachmann.
“As a matter of fact, President Obama spent so much money that if you took all the debt that we accumulated from George Washington, every president up until Barack Obama, President Obama accumulated more debt in eight months than all previous presidents combined. Combined. That gives you context for the times we’re living in.”
None of this is remotely true. President Bush added more than $6 trillion to the National Debt during his eight years in office.
Some right-wing bloggers are now claiming that the Congressional Budget Office (CBO) says Bush added only $455 billion to the National Debt. Actually, the CBO said that the Bush administration ran up a record $455 billion deficit for Fiscal Year 2008 alone.
The CBO also estimated that the FY 2009 deficit was $1.58 trillion, a new record, but less than earlier projections. Most of the FY 2009 spending was obligated by the Bush administration and inherited by President Obama. They now project a deficit of $1.38 trillion for FY 2010, which began on October 1, 2009.
National Debt, FY 2001 = $5.78 trillion
National Debt, FY 2009 = $12.31 trillion
Difference = $6.54 trillion (not $455 billion!)
The Bush administration crashed the U.S. economy and bailed out Wall Street, while doing nothing for Main Street. We are now two years into the biggest postwar recession, which came close to becoming Great Depression 2.0. The middle class is in very serious economic trouble. Consumers are tapped out. State and local governments are cutting back. Only short-term federal deficit spending can save us from a slow, jobless recovery.
I guess I ought to mention that President Obama also inherited the war in Afghanistan and the Iraq occupation from the Bush administration, not to mention the unfinished New Orleans reconstruction, etc.
Republicans: Let’s Get Rid of Social Security and Medicare
Posted by Richard Warnick in 2010 Elections, Conservatives, Deficit, Federal Budget, National Politics, Republicans, This Blog, congress on February 8th, 2010
Republicans have been trying to get rid of this country’s social safety net ever since it was first enacted. Now, they have a new proposal to benefit the wealthy at the expense of the working/middle class.
Rep. Paul Ryan (R-WI), the ranking member of the House Budget Committee, recently introduced the Roadmap for America’s Future Act of 2010. In a nutshell, this plan would:
- Privatize Social Security and Medicare for everyone under age 55, and increase the retirement age to 70
- Impose a freeze on non-security discretionary spending from 2010-2019
- Cap the top income tax rate at 25 percent for everyone who makes $50,000 or more
- Eliminate income and payroll tax exclusions for employment-based health insurance starting next year
“The Roadmap would put the federal budget on a sustainable path, generating an annual budget surplus of about 5 percent of GDP by 2080,” the CBO wrote in its analysis. Hey, that’s only 70 years from now! [It turns out that the CBO analysis is actually bogus - see update below]
Ironically, the spending freeze is similar to the one President Obama recently proposed, that Republicans and Democrats immediately denounced.
The House will vote down Rep. Ryan’s proposal, but really I think it deserves a series of town hall meetings. Let’s take this plan to the people and let them express their candid opinions in open forums across the nation!
Michelle Bachmann thinks the Republican Party ought to go all the way with this. Over the weekend she said, “[W]hoever our nominee is, is going to have to have a Glenn Beck chalkboard and explain to everybody this is the way it is.”
UPDATE: Josh Marshall speculates on whether the Dems can make this year’s election a choice between Ryan’s ideas and their own.
UPDATE: The CBO analysis of Rep. Ryan’s proposal is bogus. The right-wing fantasy of supply-side benefits resulting from tax cuts for the rich were simply assumed without evidence.
For their analysis Ryan provided CBO with a remarkable assumption: he asked CBO actuaries to assume that the major tax cuts he calls for won’t create any change in federal revenue over the next two decades–at all.
Death by a Thousand Paper (Dollar) Cuts
Posted by shane in Bush Administration, Bush Failures, Deficit, Democracy, Economy, Hypocrisy, Party Politics on February 1st, 2010
The moon base, as Richard has pointed out, is history. We just can’t afford it.
As a geek at heart, I feel bad about that, but the truth is that unmanned missions do a better job. I am a geek, but also a Daoist, and frankly many sensitive to the ideas have been advocating sharpening our senses (radio telescopes for example) and sending remote senses (unmanned craft) rather than spending extra time money and effort just to say “Kilroy was here” on other planets for over 60 years now.
A little sad, but not terribly.
Frankly, we have bigger problems.
Read the rest of this entry »
They Are Still The Party of NO
Posted by Richard Warnick in Barack Obama, Bush Failures, Deficit, Economy, John McCain, National Politics, Republicans, This Blog on January 28th, 2010
Party of NO at SOTU
Sam Stein on HuffPo mentions one of the genuinely funny and ironic moments of last night’s State of the Union:
When Republicans didn’t even applaud on behalf of his tax cuts, Obama pointed to the GOP side of the chamber and expressed surprise: “I thought I’d get some applause on that one,” he said.
The Party of NO won’t agree when President Obama does exactly what they want, and cuts taxes. They won’t even agree when he proposes a spending freeze, which has been a Republican mantra ever since the start of Bush’s Great Recession.
Another moment of irony came when President Obama again ad-libbed to address the phony objection that his proposed freeze doesn’t take effect until FY 2011: “That’s how budgeting works.” Duh.
The Party of NO complains constantly about Democratic policies, but they can’t take any criticism themselves, not even if it’s merely implied. President Obama recited the facts last night:
“By the time I took office, we had a one year deficit of over $1 trillion and projected deficits of $8 trillion over the next decade. Most of this was the result of not paying for two wars, two tax cuts, and an expensive prescription drug program. On top of that, the effects of the recession put a $3 trillion hole in our budget. All this was before I walked in the door.”
From Think Progress:
Senator John McCain went on Fox News and talked to Sean Hannity after the speech. “What we’re hearing tonight is ‘BIOB’ — let’s call it that from now on. Blame it on Bush. Whatever has gone wrong, let’s blame it on Bush,” McCain moaned.
(1) President Bush’s catalog of fiascoes is impossible to ignore, and (2) McCain must have forgotten that former Republican Presidents Ronald Reagan and George W. Bush also did not hesitate to point out things that had gone wrong in the prior administration.
UPDATE: President Obama did get Republican applause for his Orwellian statement describing nuclear power, offshore oil and gas drilling, and coal as “clean energy jobs.” Seriously, why didn’t we just elect McCain?
UPDATE: Today, a Senate majority voted to reinstate pay-as-you-go rules (PAYGO), which stipulate that all spending increases will be offset by either budget cuts or taxes. Every Republican voted NO on PAYGO– even the ones who voted for it in 2004.
Why Not Freeze Military Spending?
Posted by Richard Warnick in Barack Obama, Deficit, Military, Military Industrial Complex, National Politics, This Blog, War on January 26th, 2010
In a surprise exercise in Hoovernomics, President Obama wants to freeze federal discretionary spending for three years, “to signal his seriousness about cutting the budget deficit,” officials told The New York Times. Last night, Rachel Maddow described the idea as “completely, completely insane.” Paul Krugman says, “this looks like pure disaster.”
USS Dwight D. Eisenhower
But the news gets worse. There are exceptions. All “security-related programs” are exempted from the freeze, which means it does not apply to the military, the intelligence budget, the Surveillance State, or foreign military aid. As Glenn Greenwald points out, the military accounts for over 50 percent of discretionary government spending.
In FY08, the U.S. Department of Defense (DOD) budgeted $623 billion while all other nations in the world put together racked up $500 billion in military expenditures. Note that the regular DOD budget excluded the costs of the Iraq occupation and the war in Afghanistan.
In FY09, DOD spending increased to $651 billion. Their current budget request is for $708 billion, plus another $33 billion to, you know, actually fight wars.
As always, the notion of decreasing the deficit and national debt through reductions in military spending is one of the most absolute Washington taboos. What possible rationale is there for that?
Spencer Ackerman weighs in:
Everyone in Washington who studies the Pentagon budget quickly finds gobs and gobs of wasteful spending. Not some people. Not dirty hippies. Every. Single. Defense. Analyst. If I was so inclined, I could spend my days doing nothing but attending conferences on the latest defense jeremiad or policy paper about how to cut it. I already spend too much of my time reading this stuff on defense-community email listservs.
For the Obama administration to exempt defense spending from its kinda-sorta-spending-freeze is a position that makes no sense from a policy perspective. None at all. From a political perspective, it only begins to make sense because a brain-dead media would amplify the braying ignorance blasted from a GOP congressional megaphone about Defense Spending Cuts OMG. And even then it doesn’t make sense. A holdover Republican Defense Secretary is now the biggest advocate of an even slightly sensible defense budget in the Obama administration.
UPDATE: House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-CA) and House Minority Leader John Boehner (R-OH) both are calling for a Pentagon spending freeze.
Senator Hatch: Under Bush, ‘It Was Standard Practice Not to Pay for Things’
Posted by Richard Warnick in 4th Estate (Media), Bush Administration, Conservatives, Deficit, Orrin Hatch, Rachel Maddow, Republicans, This Blog, Utah Politics on December 29th, 2009
First of all, a big thank you to Rachel Maddow for coming to work this week. She has the best show on MSNBC. This post is for those who missed her last night.
Visit msnbc.com for breaking news, world news, and news about the economy
I always say that the definition of a gaffe is when a politician accidentally speaks the truth, especially when it’s politically disadvantageous. Senator Hatch gave us a great gaffe, as reported last Friday by the Associated Press (emphasis added):
All current GOP senators, including the 24 who voted for the 2003 Medicare expansion, oppose the health care bill that’s backed by President Barack Obama and most congressional Democrats. Some Republicans say they don’t believe the CBO’s projections that the health care overhaul will pay for itself. As for their newfound worries about big government health expansions, they essentially say: That was then, this is now.
Six years ago, “it was standard practice not to pay for things,” said Sen. Orrin Hatch, R-Utah. “We were concerned about it, because it certainly added to the deficit, no question.” His 2003 vote has been vindicated, Hatch said, because the prescription drug benefit “has done a lot of good.”
Of course, that was a big understatement when you consider not only Medicare Part D but Bush’s tax cuts for the rich, military operations in Iraq and Afghanistan, and the Wall Street billionaire bailout. For all of these, 100 percent of the cost was simply added to the federal budget deficit. The Bush administration doubled the National Debt to more than $10 trillion.
To their credit, some conservatives have criticized the Bush administration’s fiscal irresponsibility. Bruce Bartlett, an official in the administrations of Ronald Reagan and George H.W. Bush, now a columnist in Forbes:
The human capacity for self-delusion never ceases to amaze me, so it shouldn’t surprise me that so many Republicans seem to genuinely believe that they are the party of fiscal responsibility. Perhaps at one time they were, but those days are long gone.
America’s Lost Decade
Posted by Glenden Brown in Bailout, Deficit, Economy, Poverty, This Blog, Unemployment on October 2nd, 2009
Big hat tip to Barry Ritholz.
The economic picture is not pretty. September 09 job losses were more than expected – 263,000. While that’s better than last winter it’s still ugly. Don’t forget – the US needs to add around 1.3 million jobs per year just to keep up with population growth. From December 2007 to August 2009, the US lost over 7 million jobs. That means the actual job deficit is the number needed to keep up with population growth plus the number lost. So even a return to 2007 employment levels would be insufficient. It gets worse.
In 2009, the US economy had 1.3 million fewer jobs than in 1999. That is the worst decade since the Great Depression – in fact it is the only decade since the Great Depression that the US had an absolute loss of jobs. Other economic measures suggest that the current Great Recession has wiped out many if not all of the economic gains made since 1999.
Even in the most positive light, those economic gains were less the stellar. The Recession that began in March of 2001 was followed by a long, dreary “jobless recovery” during which even though GDP was increasing, relatively few private sector jobs were being created. From Rutgers:
There are no simple or singular explanations for this underperformance. On the positive side, corporate America may have been much more disciplined in its hiring in reaction to the excesses of the preceding 10-year expansion, when robust job creation may have been partially due to overstaffing. This would suggest a much more efficient economy. Or, perhaps productivity gains enabled economic output to grow with fewer staffing additions, again suggesting a more efficient overall economy.5 On the negative side,
outsourcing of economic functions to lower-cost nations may have finally taken its toll, reducing job opportunities for Americans. Or, soaring health-care costs may have become a much more significant inhibitor to job creation. Whatever the reasons, the weakness of job growth during the most recent expansion does not portend that the nation will have a robust employment bounce when the current recession comes to an end. Moreover, as noted previously, the United States did not go on an undisciplined overstaffing binge during the 2001–2007 expansion. Thus, not having to correct such excesses should have moderated the employment consequences of the current economic downturn. That was certainly not the case, since the nation has just experienced the worst employment losses since the Great Depression. And the recent pattern of jobless and job-loss economic recoveries, as discussed below, raises questions about the timing of a post-recession employment rebound.
AND:
To put this new millennium experience into perspective, during the final two decades of the twentieth century, the nation gained a total of 35.5 million private-sector jobs. During the current decade, America appears destined to lose more than 1.7 million private-sector jobs.
What we’re facing is the dynamic Paul Krugman described in The Return of Depression Economics – a sustained period of poor economic performance. Consider that in the 1930s, even though GDP recovered to 1929 levels, employment did not. Economic performance in the 1930s was problematic; unemployment dropped from 25% to 14% between 1933 and 1936, a truly dramatic improvement but 14% unemployment is still devastatingly high. The Great Recession that began in 2007 evolved through 2008 into a collapse of financial markets. Paul Krugman and Brad DeLong have both argued that the economic events we’ve lived through were not unpredictable; they were in fact predicted and were in fact that obvious outcome of the regulatory and economic choices that America has made over that last 30 years.
The outcome has been the worst job market in 70 years. The economic dislocations of the Great Recession are going to take time to erase:
From the Rutgers Report:
As noted above, the nation’s August 2009 private sector employment deficit is 7,047,000 jobs simply because of employment losses directly caused by the recession. In addition, during the 20-month recession to date, another 1,534,000 private-sector jobs were needed, but were not added, to accommodate labor force growth.11 This raises the August 2009private-sector employment deficit to 8,581,000 jobs. It is further assumed that employment losses (totaling 500,000 private-sector jobs) will continue to December 2009, an assumption that could be optimistic.12 Labor force growth during this four month period (September through December) will require an additional 310,000 jobs. Therefore, between August 2009 and December 2009, the employment deficit could grow by an additional 810,000 private-sector jobs, bringing the total December 2009 employment deficit to just under 10 million (9,390,000) private-sector jobs. Thus the nation is confronting an extraordinarily long and difficult recovery period.
Barry Ritholzt sums up the news with this sentence:
The “Harsh Arithmetic of the Employment Deficit” means that we will not likely return to 2007 employment levels until (ugh) 2017.
That’s eight years kids. To my eyes, that kind of long term employment outlook is not simply grim, it must not be allowed to remain unaddressed. We need jobs and if the private sector can’t provide them, maybe it’s time to create the new WPA and CCC.
Recession traffic
Posted by Glenden Brown in American History, American People, Deficit, Economy, Unemployment on April 20th, 2009
I don’t have numbers to back this up but I can’t shake the feeling that the traffic on my commute is markedly less than it was six months ago and definitely less than a year ago. Almost every morning, I drive down Fifth South to the freeway. Not so long ago, the traffic was heavy the entire way. Now, it’s only heavy at the State Street intersection. Given that unemployment in Utah has doubled (albeit that means a change from 3% to about 6%) it’s amazing the difference.
I realize when making decisions you need to examine the marginal impact of what you’re doing – for instance if you increase your marginal costs by 5% by adding some process but you generate a marginal savings of 6% it’s a good decision. The marginal impact of 3% additional unemployed persons on traffic seems – at least from my non-scientific observation – to be significant.
But, for every car not on the road – making my commute easier – there is a person without a job. That means a household under financial pressure. Every job lost is a personal and family tragedy. Read the rest of this entry »
Tea Bagger Insanitea
Posted by Richard Warnick in Barack Obama, Conservatives, Deficit, Disaster, Economy, Michelle Malkin, National Politics, Republicans, This Blog, Unemployment on April 10th, 2009
What have we learned so far about the tea baggers? They don’t believe President Obama was born in the United States. They think Obama’s impeachment is overdue– after less than three months in office. They have no idea what the 1773 Boston Tea Party was about (taxation without representation).
Doug Powers, writing on Michelle Malkin’s blog, explains that it’s not the tea baggers who are insane, it’s The Government!
Think about the monumental efforts in both time and intellect that are wasted in order to satisfy insane government demands.
I attend the tea parties as a way of showing that it saddens me to know that people who might have otherwise cured a horrible disease, designed grand buildings, created art and music, invented a car that runs on kumquats that people actually want to buy, expanded their businesses, explored the farthest reaches of the universe or had more time to devote to charity are now spending most of their energy trying to figure out a way to write off their lawnmowers as dependents.
Kumquat cars? Listing your lawnmower as a dependent? All perfectly rational in wingnut land. Remember, this is a rant about a THREE PERCENT tax increase only on incomes of $250,000 a year or more– that doesn’t even take effect until 2011, when the Bush tax cuts will be allowed to expire on schedule.
Malkin herself proclaims that the April 15 tea bagger events are not being orchestrated by “Beltway GOP swamp creatures”– quite the opposite:
Untold numbers of protesters are as sick of GOP capitulation and Beltway Republican cravenness as they are of Democrat wealth redistributionism. The left-wing conspiracy theorists give Beltway GOP swamp creatures far too much credit. They couldn’t have pulled off hundreds of protests over the past month and hundreds more to come if they tried. There are individual fiscal conservatives in Washington who have carried the torch. But tax protesters have been very vocal that the Republican party establishment is in so many ways a part of the problem, not the solution.
Of course, in reality these are astroturf events heavily backed by the Faux News Channel and corporate lobbyists based in Washington. As Think Progress points out:
The principal organizers of many of the local events are actually the lobbyist-run think tanks Americans for Prosperity, Freedom Works, and Newt Gingrich’s American Solutions. The groups are heavily staffed and well funded, and are providing all the logistical and public relations work necessary for planning coast-to-coast protests.
UPDATE: Matt Yglesias comments that the tea bagger movement is “incredibly stupid”:
Part of the underlying absurdity of this, however, is that it’s just so transparently silly to be pouring so much time and energy into trying to make Barack Obama appear unpopular when he’s not unpopular. There’s such a thing as opinion polling and it can answer this sort of thing pretty conclusively…
Reps. Bishop and Chaffetz to Speak at SLC Tea Bagger Rally
Posted by Richard Warnick in 4th Estate (Media), Barack Obama, Deficit, Economy, National Politics, People Are Nuts, Republicans, This Blog, Utah Politics on April 8th, 2009
Bush supporters have executed a perfect political 180. NOW they are all for impeaching the President, whatever it takes. What are they so fired up about? Deficit spending!* Allowing the Bush tax cuts to expire on schedule at the end of next year! …and/or Glenn Beck’s latest dimwitted conspiracy theory.
Next Wednesday, the right-wing tea bagger movement comes to a full boil with rallies heavily promoted by Faux News, Rush Limbaugh and Michelle Malkin. In Salt Lake City, Reps. Jason Chaffetz and Rob Bishop are scheduled to speak. Stay tuned. There are definite comedic possibilities.
When: April 15, 12:00 pm – 3:00 pm
Where: Federal Building Plaza, 125 South State Street
________
* This is funny for several reasons. Former President Bush inherited a budget surplus, and turned it into a deficit with generous tax cuts for the rich. Then the Bush administration started running new record budget deficits year after year, while the right wing said nothing.
The Republican April Fool’s Day alternative to the Obama administration budget still projects permanent deficits exceeding $500 billion into the future –with even more tax cuts for the wealthiest top five percent.
UPDATE: This morning’s Salt Lake Tribune reports that tea baggers are mailing tea bags to Capitol Hill, much to the consternation of staffers who can’t tell the difference between Lipton and anthrax. The solution? “Virtual tea bags” on teabagcongress.com. “Party like it’s 1773!” (actual slogan, I didn’t make it up).
UPDATE: Surprise! The “grassroots” tea bagger movement is being orchestrated by corporate lobbyists.
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