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Originally Posted by Ntruder
Its because the Right Wing Echo Chamber didn't bitch about Bush's deficit spending and his huge national debt on a daily basis, so all of their sheep didn't realize it. But now, the Echo Chamber is loud and clear about deficit spending, so all the sheep are suddenly concerned. See, these "tea party" idiots don't get their news anywhere outside of the Right Wing Echo Chamber, so its very easy to control what issues they are concerned with.
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No president before Obama has spent so much money within months of going into office. No one!
Everyone has been talking about deficits for 30 years. Why do you think it is only now that people are talking about it? They are just now saying that Obama is increasing the deficit in a matter of months to the level we borrowed during 2 terms (8 full years) under Reagan.
So WHY were you concerned THEN, but not now when the deficit grew so much in a matter of months compared to what took 8 years under Reagan?
Just an FYI, the CONGRESS spends the money not the President. The president proposes a budget and Congress then decides what is spent and how. It is just a guideline for Congress when the Congress is controlled by the opposing party but is not generally changed as much when the White House & Congress are both controlled by the same party.
As far as I have read, Obama is spending about $1.75 TRILLION additional
on top of what the "regular" budget of about $2.85 Trillion was. Now I am not saying the spending to some degree was needed as I believe it was, but both Bush & Obama did not put enough controls on how this bail out money could be spent IMO. AIG is only one such example.
Medicare/Medicaid annual spending is about $387 Billion MORE than what is coming in from payroll taxes. Here are the numbers:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2007_Un...federal_budget
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Total receipts
Receipts for fiscal year 2007 were $2.4 trillion. FY2007 on-budget receipts were $1.7 trillion. FY2007 off-budget receipts were $608 billion. Off-budget receipts include Social Security and Medicare payroll taxes, as well as the net profit or loss of the U.S. Postal Service.
Source: preliminary FY2007 year-end estimate from the U.S. Treasury Dept.
The IRS estimated that there were about $345 billion in uncollected taxes, which is sometimes referred to as the "tax gap.".[1]
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Total spending
A pie chart representing spending by category for the US budget for 2007
The President's actual budget for 2007 totals $2.8 trillion. Percentages in parentheses indicate percentage change compared to 2006. This budget request is broken down by the following expenditures:
- $586.1 billion (+7.0%) - Social Security
- $548.8 billion (+9.0%) - Defense[2]
- $394.5 billion (+12.4%) - Medicare
- $294.0 billion (+2.0%) - Unemployment and welfare
- $276.4 billion (+2.9%) - Medicaid and other health related
- $243.7 billion (+13.4%) - Interest on debt
- $89.9 billion (+1.3%) - Education and training
- $76.9 billion (+8.1%) - Transportation
- $72.6 billion (+5.8%) - Veterans' benefits
- $43.5 billion (+9.2%) - Administration of justice
- $33.1 billion (+5.7%) - Natural resources and environment
- $32.5 billion (+15.4%) - Foreign affairs
- $27.0 billion (+3.7%) - Agriculture
- $26.8 billion (+28.7%) - Community and regional development
- $25.0 billion (+4.0%) - Science and technology
- $20.5 billion (+0.8%) - Energy
- $20.1 billion (+11.4%) - General government
Much of the costs of the Iraq war and the Afghanistan war until FY2008 have been funded through supplemental appropriations or emergency supplemental appropriations, which are treated differently than regular appropriations bills. Senior congressional leaders have contended that those war costs, as much as possible, should go through the regular budget process, which provides for greater transparency. Determining the costs of the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan is complex. CBO has estimated that "war-related defense activities" in 2007 were "roughly $115 billion." (CBO, The Budget and Economic Outlook: An Update, August 2007, Box 1-1, available at <http://www.cbo.gov/ftpdoc.cfm?index=8565&type=0>) See Below for total defense spending.
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I highlighted in red some of the increase % over the prior year budget that really stand out to me. One thing to notice is that NOTHING actually went down and ALL aspects had budget increases, showing that government grows every year even when revenues go down.
I am not sure what the answer is, but printing more money at about 50% of the budget is really a recipe for disaster IMO. Remeber that joke roll of tioilet paper you could buy as a gag gift? Well we may be able to use REAL money if we do not do something to change this.
I am not bashing Obama here, but rather I am bashing the state we are now in financially and how they are attempting to get out of it. There were a lot of bad decisions made by Bush AND being brought to a new level by Obama IMO though. Is spending our way out of it with no one (treasury notes from foreign people/gov't) to foot the bill for this which requiring the printing of more money at such a high % IN ONE YEAR the answer?
No question Obama got handed a bad situation of the equivalent of a "perfect storm" of financial collapses, but no one individual is responsible. The gov't as a whole IS responsible and that includes Congress as much (or more IMO) as any President.
IMO, we are no where near "out of the woods" or even near the bottom I fear. I hope I am wrong, but that is how I see it right now. I think we will see another big downward drop again before we are near the bottom.