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richardhutnik on 23 October 2012
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klystron said:
richardhutnik said:

The first year of Obama in office was a mess as far as the economy went.  You had numerous stimulus and other things thrown in, trying to prevent a great depression level, if not worse, meltdown.  Money was thrown at things, including bailouts.  You can't use the first year of Obama's administration as anything.  A lot of that was baked in also from Bush's budget.  

But you need to look at now here, Obama did support the budget cut plan without tax increases for ANYONE.  Obama also slashed taxes for the middle class by reducing FICA.  There was agreement here.  But, Obama doesn't support budget cuts alone.  And that is the reality of things.

Does this mean that shrinking the government for its own sake is Obama or the Democrat's approach?  No.  But there is reality of trying to contain costs, which is hitting hard now.  The debate now is over whether or not the marginal tax rate on the upper end should go back to the pre-Bush era or not.  

Regarding being fillibuster-proof congress (supermajority), it was less than 80 days Obama had:

http://sandiegofreepress.org/2012/09/the-myth-of-the-filibuster-proof-democratic-senate/


Even if it wasn't a full two years, what did they achieve? The Senate has not passed a budget since April 2009. There were not any filibusters on them because Republicans wanted the democrats on record as supporting the president's budget. (which had no cuts! not one of obama's budgets proposed cuts to anything except NASA) Not sure how you can say Obama supported budget cuts when each year his suggested budget was larger than the previous year's suggested (and unpassed) budget.

It was less than 80 days with a super majority, including Ted Kennedy on his deathbed.  I spoke to you about this, and was addressing it, because you brought up the whole supermajority thing, which was an argument that Obama had a prolonged period of time with a fillibusterproof congress.  It wasn't so.  

As far as budget cuts go, it wasn't just cutting them for the sake of cutting them, but to reduce the size of the deficit, in addition to raising taxes on $250K+ in revenue.  It is Obama would go with budget cuts, if they include tax increases.  But also Obama did approve the cuts without tax increases, in order to raise the debt ceiling.  

Actually, if you look at Obamacare, there is over $750 billion in cuts to the growth of spending in Medicare to pay for it.  The GOP harps on it.  There were also cuts to defense budget also, the GOP harps on.

http://abcnews.go.com/blogs/politics/2012/08/fact-check-obama-ryan-romney-backed-medicare-cuts/

You can see more cuts here:

http://money.cnn.com/2011/02/14/news/economy/wacky_budget_cuts/index.htm

Budget cuts in Washington consists of cutting the rate of growth of government.  It leads to issues with talk of the Department of Defense being gutted, when rate of growth in money going to it is being cut.  The budget is a forecast of need, and you slash the increases in growth and thus cut it.  And in regards to this, you see the rate of growth, past 2009, has ended up being only marginally more.  Yes, under Obama, the rate of growth is less.

As for your other post at the end, let's stick with the budget, deficits, cuts and taxes increasing or not.  You are free to talk about the stimulus failing in another thread.  It is important to try to stay on topic here rather than chance down distracting rabbits.  It is a fine subject to discuss, just not connected to this topic.  Feel free to start another thread to harp on it if you like.