"Cato [Institute]: Don't Blame Obama for Bush's 2009 Deficit"

[13]

"Cato [Institute]: Don't Blame Obama for Bush's 2009 Deficit"
by Dave Johnson
Jan. 30, 2010

"Republicans like to claim that Obama 'tripled the deficit' and point to the huge 2009 budget deficit. They use charts that show the 2009 deficit was, indeed, huge and about triple the prior year's borrowing. But the 2009 budget was the last year of BUSH budgets.

When you look at charts or hear descriptions from Republicans, they always say that this was Obama's deficit. This is just propaganda- lies intended to deceive. For example, when Obama spoke at the Republican caucus retreat yesterday, GOP Rep. Jeb Hensarling of Texas said that Obama had 'tripled the deficit.' A CNN fact check addresses this,



Obama was essentially correct when he said he inherited a budget deficit of $1.3 trillion. Though the budget deficit for 2008 was a then-record $458.6 billion, the CBO issued a projection in January 2009, just days before Obama took office that the budget deficit would reach $1.2 trillion that year, before the cost of any new stimulus plan or other legislation was taken into account.


So again, Republican claims that Obama has somehow increased the deficit are just lies intended to trick people. This massive increase that was reported after the fiscal year ended Sept. 20 occurred under Bush.

Don't believe me? See the conservative Cato Institute on this:

'Listening to a talk radio program yesterday, the host asserted that Obama tripled the budget deficit in his first year. This assertion is understandable, since the deficit jumped from about $450 billion in 2008 to $1.4 trillion in 2009. As this chart illustrates, with the Bush years in green, it appears as if Obama's policies have led to an explosion of debt.

. . . But there is one rather important detail that makes a big difference. The chart is based on the assumption that the current administration should be blamed for the 2009 fiscal year. While this makes sense to a casual observer, it is largely untrue. The 2009 fiscal year began October 1, 2008, nearly four months before Obama took office. The budget for the entire fiscal year was largely set in place while Bush was in the White House.

Please click through to see the charts. And then look at Cato: Who's To Blame for the Massive Deficit? for an even better explanation."

Of course you have to read the entire article at the Cato Institute URLS to get to the heart and Truth of the matter -- which is that Bush left a massive deficit and Obama inherited it and is doing the best anyone could do with such a mess.

[Byteryder]

The yesterday fool is back again.

[aesopsfable]

READ IT AND WEEP DUMMY 13 BUSH ON THE LEFT OBAMA ON THE RIGHT.

[Byteryder]

From the same article.....
 
Big government won't work any better for Obama than it did for Bush.

[chuck_curtis]

So, what about the projected trillion dollar deficits going forward?  Time for blame is over.  It's time to fix Washington, for good.  It's time to elect people who have the People's best interests in mind, people like ourselves, people from down here in the trenches who are taking the brunt of what all of Washington stands for -- the paper aristocracy.

[aesopsfable]

WITH DUMMIES LIKE 13 AROUND IT IS NO WONDER WE GET A DUMMY LIKE OBAMA FOR A PRESIDENT.

[13]

From the same article.....

Big government won't work any better for Obama than it did for Bush.

That may or may not be true. 

It depends on what kind of big government you're talking about and what it is actually doing.

But anyway, I'm not going to disagree with you just out of hand.

I just know that not everything called "cloth" is made of the exact same material.

You've made some pretty decent posts, today, byte, civil if nothing more, but still civil and some obviously thought out.

[whaler23]

a large portion of the current projections include porjections from past legislation and associated interest if its kept intact ...
 
least we forget..

[dg9990]

It is correct to balm the 2007-2008 Congress for much of the mess. The rest of the blame goes to the 2009-2010 Congress. ......
 
It's time or some constructive change beginning in 2011.

[Byteryder]

 

That may or may not be true.

 
It must be tru, 13.  They are the words and opinion of the same person that wrote the rest of the article you found to truthful..
 
eh?

[13]

a large portion of the current projections include porjections from past legislation and associated interest if its kept intact ...

least we forget..

Thanks for the reminder, whaler.   

I know what you say is true, but if called on to elaborate, I wouldn't be able to do that at this minute, and it's not fair to ask you to elaborate, because if you're like me, this place could become a full time job -- almost already is -- just trying to remember all the details of everything or research, corral and post them -- and at the end of the day, I'm just flat tired...

[whaler23]

Whoever won the presidency in 2008 was going to face a grim fiscal situation, a fact already well known as the presidential campaign got underway. The Congressional Budget Office (CBO) presented a sobering outlook in its 2008 summer update, and during the autumn, the news got relentlessly worse. Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac, the two government-sponsored enterprises (GSEs) that became embroiled in the housing meltdown, failed in early September; two big financial firms — AIG and Lehman Brothers — collapsed soon thereafter; and others teetered. In December 2008, the National Bureau of Economic Research confirmed that the nation was in recession and pegged the starting date as December 2007. By the time CBO issued its new projections on January 7, 2009 — two weeks before Inauguration Day — it had already put the 2009 deficit at well over $1 trillion.


The End.