Patvann:

when Obama took office $10,626,877,048,913.08
debt as of today $11,771,450,693,745.00

I have called Obama’s spending as “an orgy of spending” you obviously have not been listening. Bush was President during what many here have been calling “good economic” times… and so why did the National Debt nearly double during his reign? We all know why Pres Obama is spending so high right now, and that is because our economy is in shambles and his philosophy is that spending will help improve things which will in turn slow the growth of the debt. I am not sure if that is the right direction as I HAVE ADVOCATED HERE A BALANCED BUDGET AMENDMENT! If we are going to spend something, we need to pay for it! Bush did not do that in 8 years of “good economic times” why the hell not! So if I sound like I am giving Pres Obama a pass, I am not. Just read what I have written. But since Bush is now history… it is easy to judge his success and failure since his policies were disastrous.

MataHarley: figures that your blame Dubya crap doesn’t fit your narrow focus. I don’t defend either the GOP or DNC run Congress that presided during the Dubya years.

The Republicans during President Bush were very unified in getting his policies for tax cuts (or as it should be called, not paying our bills). I am honest for my feelings about Bush, just like those here dislike Obama, that is fair game. I base my position on 8 years of his policies, not just 9 months, and parenthetically the 9 months where the economic world had nearly collapsed. I guess if we could just forget the failures of the Bush administration we could say he had a good presidency, but the failures were very serious and catastrophic in nature.

I keep posting about a Balanced Budget Amendment, why don’t you agree with me on that? Or do you want to leave those future Republicans the opportunity to deficit spend, like that chart you posted before that showed, not projected, but actually that all of the recent Republican presidents were not good at balancing the books.

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Oh! I see the bag-of hair’s little self-delusion!

Don’t you all see? This moron wants us to associate 8 YEARS of spending by Bush, to 9 MONTHS of spending by Obama, and have us all believe it that because Obama has SO FAR ACTUALLY SPENT less in those 9 months than those 8 years (but we can’t look at the 8-year projected-costs of his already in-law programs) that we are mistaken in our belief that Obama has spent more.

I know! Lets smoke unicorn farts, and pretend no more money will be spent by Obama EVER, thus making Blast feel good about reaching for the koolaid to wash down the smegma!!!

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Yeah… figures that your blame Dubya crap doesn’t fit your narrow focus. I don’t defend either the GOP or DNC run Congress that presided during the Dubya years. Or haven’t you learned enough of civics to know that only Congress can appropriate, and all the POTUS… no matter what party… can sign or veto.

The danger comes when you have a POTUS, like Obama, demanding entitlement program after entitlement program, and armed with a Congress willing to bankrupt the nation to achieve “social justice”. And that’s where we are now. THe Pelosi/Reid/Obama combo will destroy this nation financially, and turn the US dollar into toilet paper.

The “largest nosedive” was over a decade in the making, and the center of that financial tsunami can be laid squarely at the feet of Congress… both parties.

As far as national debt goes, every admin will end up with a higher number of debt because of inflation. However Bush’s doubling of the national debt over eight years makes him look like Ebenezer Scrooge compared to Obama’s quadrupling of that same debt in under a year. Do you say anything about that? Nope… you defend it by saying Bush was a big spender.

Back to the garbage pile analogy for you.

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Mata, that graph is laughable. It does show that Republicans have the worst actual record for fiscal responsibility… The reality is that when President Bush took office the

Beginning of Bush’s Presidency – national debt $5,727,776,738,304.64
End of Pres Bush’s Presidency – national debt $10,626,877,048,913.08

(real dollars and not percentages)

Oh, and during those care free economic times our economy took the largest nosedive since the great depression.

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What’s the phrase I’m looking for?

Oh, yeah: “Cognitive Dissonance”.

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Care to try again, Blast? Sorry that facts get in the way of your BDS.

See full size graphic here

From Heritage Foundation research % of GDP spending went from 18-21% under Bush. The bulk of that went up after the DNC gained control of Congress.

This year, alone… sans health care… Obama and his Congressional puppets take that up to 26%. For the math challenged, that’s a five percent increase in under a year.

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Aye, you need to get a calendar, it is 2009, not 2019.

Bush ran up more debt that any other president. That is a fact.

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@Blast:

Bush ran up more debt that any other president. That is a fact.

Buzzer sounds.

You need a new calculator.

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Patvann: Why don’t YOU go read what you typed in your first posting. -You wanted to raise taxes to cover debt.

I said “How about if we actually paid enough taxes to cover what our government actually spends, with or without any health program.”

That would mean, either we cut spending… or increase taxes… it means if WE spend money, WE need to pay of it.

Patvann: You just claimed Bush spent more than every president

You need to be honest in your debate, you don’t even quote me properly “Bush was in charge for 8 years which culminated in near total collapse of our economy – not to mention his running up more debt than any other president.”

If you read what I said, Bush ran up more debt that any other president. That is a fact.

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@Blast:

We’ve already been through the TARP issue with you before, remember this?

http://www.americanthinker.com/2009/02/who_are_the_big_spenders.html

Re: TARP

Myth. Republicans spent more on bailouts than Democrats. After all, Bush’s bailout, supported by John McCain, was $850B while Obama’s stimulus was only $787B.

Fact. It is true that 850 is more than 787. But when you get into who really asked for what amounts, and who voted for those amounts, the Democrats are responsible for 80% of all bailout spending – and the worst 80%.

The original bailout proposed by the Bush administration was for $700B and its purpose was to save the financial system. But then Congress added another $150B of “sweeteners” unrelated to financial rescue. New cost: $850B. As for the $700B, it would come in two chunks of $350B each, with the second chunk needing a second request by the President and a second approval by Congress.

But a funny thing happened. By January 8, after three months of bailing out troubled assets, only $267B had been spent and the Bush administration saw no special need for the second chunk of money. Bush left it up to Barack Obama to ask for the second chunk of the bailout money. If Obama didn’t want it, Bush was done with the bailout; if Obama did, Bush would go to Congress for the second chunk as a favor to Obama.

On January 12, by letter to Congress, Obama did ask for the second chunk . (President Bush then did the yeoman’s task of formally requesting the second chunk, what with him being the actual President and all.)

Then another funny thing happened. The new Obama administration said it needed a second bailout, a totally separate one, as an economic stimulus rather than a financial system rescue. And its cost would end up being $787B. Total cost of the two bailouts: $1,637B (not including future interest payments).

So we can blame $350B on Bush and $1,287B (the $787B second bailout, the second $350B chunk of the first bailout, and the $150B of sweeteners in the first bailout) on Obama and Congress.

By that measure, Obama and Congress get 79% of the blame.

And who, exactly, voted for these two bailouts in Congress? The stimulus passed with 244 votes in the House (all Democrats) and 60 votes in the Senate (57 Democrats and 3 Republicans). Bush’s bailout passed with 263 votes in the House (172 Democrats and 91 Republicans) and with 74 votes in the Senate (41 Democrats and 33 Republicans). That is, Obama’s stimulus was 99% Democrat and Bush’s bailout was 63% Democrat, going by total votes cast in both houses of Congress.

If we weight the price tags of the two packages by party vote, the Democrats are responsible for $1,315B and the Republicans are responsible for $322B, or a bit more than what actually went to rescue troubled financial assets.

Either way you measure it, the Democrats can claim about 80% of the credit for these two major bailouts totaling more than $1.6 trillion of federal spending, increasing by a third our national debt (held by the public), in less than five months time.

Moreover, the 20% credited to Republicans actually went to troubled financial assets. There is at least a case that this money helped avoid a system-wide breakdown of our banking system, and therefore truly saved us from financial catastrophe. The other 80% is more like very expensive confetti, with entrenched Democratic support groups being the confetti suppliers. They get the real money; we get the confetti and the debt.

Yep, $787B stimulus, 8% across the board increase to the budget, increase in SCHIP, purchase of Obama Motors, etc. his spending just keeps piliing up.

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