gergroy said:
I seem to recall Obama being elected on a campaign of hope and change. One of those changes being reducing the deficit. It is true that most of the spending increase has been due to pre-existing entitlements and lower revenue due to the recession. However, Obama has done absolutely nothing to reduce the spending or reform the entitlements or change much of anything. |
Obama's changed plenty. He ended the ban on stem cell research, ending the Iraqi war, is in the process of ending the Afganistan war, signed into law credit card reform, the Affordable Care act which is going a ways to ending the Health Insurance industry's abuse of the system by requiring them to spend 80% of what their customers pay them on health care and by banning the health insurance company's ability to exclude people with pre-existing conditions (aka sick people), he signed Lily Ledbetter, reformed the Credit Card industry, formed the Consumer Protection Bureau, and became the first sitting president to openly support homosexuals. He ended Don't Ask Don't Tell through legislation (a political statement, mind you, because the Supreme Court had declared it unconstitutional just weeks before), expanded federal benefits for gay couples working in the government and became the first sitting president to openly support gay marriage.
And these days he's also showing a lot of political courage by not just embracing something that was considered taboo just two election cycles ago, he's also becoming the first presidential candidate in a generation to embrace a populist message.
As for not cutting the deficit and reducing spending, well, that's a rather difficult thing to do in the middle of an economic down turn, especially given what he was left with. A tax cut that took hundreds of billions out of government revenue every year, two incredibly expensive wars, not to mention the reduced tax income that comes with that economic down turn he, again, inherited, which also spawned TARP, which of course just about everyone supported including McCain, Romney and Obama because it kept our financial sector from crashing in on itself and making the economy even worse then it already was (of course, this brought a variety of other negativies and let the banksters get off scott free, but we are talking about goverment spending and not the too big to fail financial sector, right?).
During an economic recession, the last thing the government should do is raise taxes or cut spending, the only ways to reduce the deficit. The government spending billions less in the economy is the equivolent of the public spending less: less spending means less money being put into the economy, which means less economic growth. That's why the stimulus was needed, and why the CBO estimated it saved at least a million jobs. Raising taxes, particularly on the JOB CREATING middle class, would like wise give them less money out of pocket to put into the economy. Finally, there where things like Cash For Clunkers and the auto bail out, the latter of which saved many vital middle class jobs.
So yeah, Obama didn't manage to reduce the deficit by much. But given what he inherited, that isn't much of a surprise. Now, since you love charts so much, I got some for you:
First, a breakdown on which president accrued how much debt during their tenure, courtesy of the New York Times:
Now, a breakdown on what individual things factor into our debt's past and future, derived from CBO estimates:
And there you have it.
The main concern right now should not be debt. Most of our debt is held by our own citizens or our government. Our country has seen far worse in terms of debt to GDP. After WW2, our national debt had climbed to 127% GDP. When republican President Eisenhowever came into power in the middle of an economic down turn, massive debt, and high taxes, his first instinct was not to cut spending and lower taxes.
Instead, in the 1950s, we grew our way out of debt and recession. Eisenhower undertook the building of the interstate high way system, which revolutionized our infrastructure and allowed our businesses to thrive. He started the space race against Russia. He kept our highest effective tax rate at 91%, which encouraged the CEOs of wealthy companies to reinvest their company's profits back into the company, rather then taking a big fat pay check. Our current highest effective tax rate of 35% is nothing compared to what my grandpa paid in the 1940s and 50s when he made his fortune.
That is what we need to do now. We need to grow our way out. We need higher government spending to fix our roads and bridges, invest in public servants, and overall simply make America the kind of country it used to be before supply side trickle down economics and deregulation that took place over the last 30 years decimated our middle class.
That felt good. I'm done.
