US budget deficit increases 21%, on track for biggest gap in six years

Yes sir re Bob. Sure am glad the government was able to collect all that social security from me and manage to save a tiny amount so that I could live high on the hog on $14,000 a year when I turned 62.

 

No Obama didn't ... that claim is for the mathematically and budget impaired.

 

By January 2009, the United States had accumulated $10.6 trillion in debt. That's the net amount the country had borrowed from Washington through the Bush years. The gross national debt as of 2017 came to $19.7 trillion. That's an increase of $9.1 trillion — a hair short of doubling.

Sorry, but you have been duped by fake news again.

 

Yes, that's true.

More than half of Fox and Rush Limbaugh's audience are in that category.

 

That's true. It's also deliberately misleading.

First of all, in January of 2009, Bush's last fiscal year was four months old, so most of the deficit that got run up in 2009 belongs to George W Bush, who had already doubled the national debt and bequeathed his successor an ecomomic disaster on the scale of 1929. For obvious reasons, right wingers think we ought to ignore that.

Indeed, folks like you parroted the GOP line that we should do nothing, and start cutting the very programs that were created especially for such a contingency. They loudly opposed the auto bailout (blaming Obama for it, even though Bush was prepared to give away the same money with no strings attached). Had they gotten their way, a Depression would have spread across the land, and the folks who voted for Trump in 2016 would have been out of work and surrounded by failed business and industry.

No one in the talk radio right ever wanted to talk about the culprits of the financial crash. Indeed, they openly shilled for Wall Street, saying (and still insisting) that the solution was to give Wall Street whatever it wanted.

And now, all the little Trumpsters are cheering for a tax cut bill that gave huge bonuses to bond traders, market makers and CEO's and a few nickels and dimes to the mob. Every dime of it borrowed against future tax payments.

This cycle has done more to grow the gap between rich and poor, and depress middle class income than any other actio by government.

And it is the perfect con. Wall Street and its mouthpieces (particularly right wing media) has sold the white working class trickle down economics for forty years, and convinced them that the real reason that they have less and less to show for it is because of the brown and blacks people "taking their jobs". (most of these people can't point to an actual time when the "wrong " people took their job, but that's what the AM radio shouts at them all day.

 

Trump gets some of the blame for the deficit, but the largest share of the blame goes to Congress (all the Democrats and a big chunk of Republicans) who wanted the biggest budget in the world ever and forced it on Trump if they gave him the critical increase in the military.

 

Correlation without causation. Look it up.

 

Ridiculous. The King of Debt was a willing participant in putting us on the path of a $1T deficit at a time of good GDP growth and low unemployment........which I believe is unprecedented.

 

Back when Obama was running up his debt, I complained about it. The democrats were not interested. It was OK.

Now that Trump is running up his debt, suddenly the democrats are deficit hawks.

What changed? Only one thing. This time it was Trump who was president. Hypocrisy? You betcha.

Just a bit of a side comment. In my own budget, I am more willing to go in debt in bad times than good times. I don't like the higher debt, but I am less concerned about it with a good economy when the revenues coming into the government are likely to increase.

 

Why do you blame President Bush for the recession?

 

The Recession was the Democrats fault.

Before the Democrats took Congress in 2007 unemployment was 4.1%, gas was $1.70 a gallon, and the economy was expanding. Then the Democrats took Congress in 2007 and promptly destroyed the economy. When Obama became president in 2009 he made it twice as bad.

Let’s do a little math here:

Bush was president for 8 years, from 2001 to 2009.

As I said, in 2007 unemployment was 4.1% and the economy was expanding. That is SIX years into the Bush presidency mind you - SIX OUT OF EIGHT. (And BTW: 4.1% is almost perfect since there is no such thing as a 0% rate.)

Now, can anyone explain to me why the first six years of the eight-year Bush presidency was just fine, and then magically, when the Democrats took over Congress, the economy tanked? Simple: The Democrats took power. When they took power they pushed their social engineering policy of trying to let minorities who wants to own a house own a house whether they could afford it or not. All the bad loans the banks made, they were browbeat into that by the Left. And THAT was the first domino in line to fall.

The biggest propaganda lie ever concocted and foisted upon the American people is the lie that Bush caused our economic crisis. In fact, Democrats did, with policies that can find their genesis in the Clinton years

Democrats are always the agents of bad economies

 

Absolutely false statement, based on both lies and unmitigated hatred.

The big picture, from another thread:

 

Trump wanted a massive military buildup (one wonders why since he has been going around undermining our allies and make it clear that the US isn't interested in world leadership. If we want to retreat back into the isolationism of two centuries ago, we don't need a massive military.

Trump has no real support for his draconian cuts, but the GOP was happy to hide behind Democrats in keeping these programs.

And it isn't as if we haven't seen this before.

The same thing happened with Reagan and George W Bush. The GOP hid behind the Democrats and sat silent while their tax cuts and military adventures went on the national credit card.

You are falling for the same scam the GOP has already run twice in the last forty years.

Anyone could see it coming, Especially with an incompetent clown like Trump.

 

Repeating your own lies and copying the false claims of others does not make you credible.

In fact, the longest economic growth cycle in US history happened during the eight years that Obama was President. He bequeathed a very healthy and growing economy to the stooge in the White House now, who has done nothing of note other than pass Wall Street's tax bill.

The claim the Democrats wrecked the economy after they took Congress in 2007 is also false. It is a popular right wing line, but no right winger can point to a single thing that the Democratic Congress did that affected the economy in that period. They go silent, or repeat the false charge every time they're challenged.

Besides, the collapse was well underway in 2007. Anyone in the real estate and construction business could see the signs emerging in the summer of 2006, as the boom peaked. Many of the bankers certainly knew. Goldman Saches was busy unloading its positions in liar loans to their own customers, a practice that was outlawed by Elizabeth Warren's Consumer Financail Protection Bureau, only to be brought back by the Trump Administration.

Three times in forty years, the GOP has injected a sugar and caffiene high into the US economy by enacting a huge unfunded tax cut, targeted to benefit the top 1%, and sold to the rest of the country in nickels and dimes.

Three times in forty years, the GOP has massively increased borrowing and debt to do it.

Three times the GOP has insisted that this scheme would grow revenue and erase the deficit with growth. That has NEVER happened, and it won't happen this time.

And two times, the boom ended in economic recession with a giant debt hangover, which is exactly were we are headed now.

 

Ridiculous. You fit right in with our friend Bluesguy, who continues to peddle the nonsense that Dems gaining majority in congress in early 2007 somehow caused the pop of the housing bubble that started in mid 2007. Somehow, the Dems must have caused all this economic mayhem in a few months by actually not changing anything like tax rates etc.

On the other hand, GWB, who had a GOP majority in congress for the four preceding years and in the house for six years, has NO responsibility for the great recession. Only in Trump fan lala land...

But, if you want to talk about economic facts, the great recession was cause by a huge overhang in private debt, which was years in the making. Not the least caused by supply side policies that made people feel prosperous for a while with borrowed money, while putting all purchases on the credit card or home equity loans.

The GWB economy was a fake economy, just as fake as the one that Trump is generating right now with borrowed money.

 

Obama's spending was in the form of government subsidies and social programs. Essentially taking FROM the private sector to spur growth with government spending. Remember shovel ready jobs?

It didn't work. It resulted in more dependence on government and a lack of creating an economic engine in the private sector.

He borrowed money to give people a sense of recovery. The recovery was stagnated and slow, because simply, that format doesn't work and the slight positives are offset by a massive deficit burden.

Trump on the other hand, rather than spending, reduced the tax liabilities of the private sector to stimulate growth. It worked. Our economy took off, and that isn't a coincidence.

The realization of that growth takes time.

The Obama fans supported his format for 8 years with little growth. Trump passes his tax plan, and they call it a failure within a year.

I think history will show, the private sector is best format to stimulate growth, not the government. It's tax and spend verse minimal governmentand reduced spending. Now they just need to reduce spending and watch what happens.

 

STOP!!! So where is the money going?? I would cut spending to 1/20th of what it is now. Let me at the budget!!! Planned parenthood, foreign aid and other programs would be GONE, and military spending I would cut by 80% (we are being invaded and our national sovereignty is gone, so what are they protecting, certainly not America as I knew it). I would ax the government too, and make court cases extremely rigid, reduce prosecutions by 90%, legalize drugs (including prescription ones) and end the DEA. Lord would I have fun.....
I learned to keep a thin budget, raise 6 children, everything I have I own outright (and I got a lot of stuff) because I followed my depression era raised parents example. The government needs to be paired down to the same level.

 

It was not a massive military buildup. Many, if not most military units had been declared non-operational because so much equipment was down for lack of parts. I am most familiar with this in the case of the Air Force. Trump merely gave the military enough money to repair the damage caused by Obama.

 

What good is a military that is running all over the world, but not defending the borders of the homeland against invasion? Lets make it a self defense force and let it do self defense of our nation. Read Sun Tzu "art of war". It tells what it costs to field an army in the field, and how it hurts the populace in the homeland.
Balanced budget with NOTHING off line, it all needs to be in the budget.

You have to literally dismantle the welfare state.

 

I do not have a serious disagreement with this. However, I was just in a long discussion with an anti-Trumper who was complaining about Trumps efforts to get the other NATO members to pay their fair share. I said that if they did not pay their fair share, we should just go home and let them do it by themselves.

Apparently the anti-Trumpers are seriously conflicted with each other.

 

For the most part the U.S. military are expeditionary forces. Not a border patrol.

 

James Madison was pretty clear about who has the "power of the purse".

The Federalist No. 58: “The House of Representatives cannot only refuse, but they ALONE can propose the supplies requisite for the support of the government....This power over the purse may, in fact, be regarded as the most complete and effectual weapon with which any constitution can arm the immediate representatives of the people, for obtaining a redress of every grievance, and for carrying into effect, every just and salutary measure.” (all caps mine)

 

But Trump can veto it.

 

Well, it's pretty silly to try and place anti-Trump people into one basket - they range from socialists to long time Republicans, and
a whole bunch of people in-between.

 

I would hardly call "The Art of War" to be a useful guide for a modern army. There are some principles which hold to this day, but they are few and far between. In the 5th Century, an army left their home country and got little or no support from their home country. They lived off the land which is sure to irritate the owners of that land.