Remember the Teaparty? Remember how angry and outraged they were when President Obama strapped this country around his waist and pulled it out of the ditch? Remember how Republicans stood on the sidelines and criticized every dime Obama spent to revive a dead economy?
Because of the quick and decisive actions of President Obama, the economy rebound. The Stock Market that was free-falling off the cliff grabbed the rope thrown by Obama and somehow managed to pull itself back to today’s record levels. And unemployment continually decreased.
Yes, Obama did what he had to do to save America, in spite of the grumblings of the Teaparty and the Republican party.
But where is the Teaparty now? Where are the Republicans? Miraculously, they are in lockstep with their little drummer boy, Donald Trump. Blind with their giddiness as he increased the federal deficit by 32 percentto pay for a campaign promise giving permanent tax cuts to millionaires and billionaires, like Donald Trump.
The federal deficit hit $895 billion in the first 11 months of fiscal 2018, an increase of $222 billion, or 32 percent, over the same period the previous year, according to the Congressional Budget Office (CBO). The nonpartisan CBO reported that the central drivers of the increasing deficit were the Republican tax law and the bipartisan agreement to increase spending. As a result, revenue only rose 1 percent, failing to keep up with a 7 percent surge in spending, it added.
Our grandchildren will thank us later… I’m sure of it!
Donald Trump might be the first president to step on his own tax cuts. With February 15 in sight, and most companies ready to use the new tax tables for that payday, the resident philanderer, sexual braggart, pussy-grabber-in-chief has decided that the #MeToo movement might be getting too close to the Oval Office for his comfort. Not only will this dilute the message that many Republicans want to send, that the president is finding his footing and is acting–here we go–presidential, but it will remind many voters that although they will be getting a bump in their pay, there is a steep price to pay for the pizzas they’ll be able to pay for.
And don’t think for a minute that the president is actually worried about Rob Porter or Roy Moore or Al Franken or Bill O’Reilly. He’s worried about the one and only person who matters to him in all matters–himself. He knows that the Stormy Daniels affair was real, and so does his wife. He knows that he was speaking a truth to Billy Bush when he was talking about what rich Neanderthals can do to women when they want to assert their power. He knows that allegations about other members of his staff reflect poorly on him, so naturally he decides that rather than lead the country through this important societal upheaval, his best shot at saving himself is to belittle the women who are leading it and making credible, provable accusations.
Plus, the president’s newfound respect for due process is about as sincere and his handshake with Hillary Clinton during the debates. He’s not trying to right a wrong here. He’s trying to dismiss the issue because ultimately it leads to his front door. Due process meant nothing when he was painting NFL players as un-American or in crafting legislation that would allow Dreamers to stay in this country, or in judging the Central Park Five as guilty despite the fact that they were, in fact, completely innocent.
Don’t the victims deserve due process too?
I guess that when you’re on the other side of due process, like, say, when you’re being investigated by someone who actually knows what the phrase means and how to apply it, or you’ve been accused by dozens of women of committing sexual crimes against them, then I can imagine it would be uncomfortable to know that you could actually be held liable, lose your job or go to jail because of your actions.
As for those tax cuts, Democrats have to be careful because in the short term they will be a real boon to many wage earners who might decide that they can tolerate the president’s behavior if it means an extra $100 per month. Yes, the stock market has gyrated wildly, but the key is real wages and jobs. Inflation is about to erode much of the wage gains that many Americans are counting on, and a good part of those wage gains will be in the form of bonuses. Trade wars will make goods that much more expensive. And our foreign policy is a mess. These are winnable issues for November. The president’s outbursts are but extra sauce.
Remember, and I mean always remember, that more people voted for Hillary Clinton’s vision of America’s future than Donald Trump’s. “The country” does not support his policies and “the American people” did not speak in favor of his agenda in 2016.
The president has said some terrible things about minorities. He’s forgetting that he is one himself.
The federal budget deficit fell more sharply than in any year since the end of World War II, the Treasury Department reported on Thursday that the deficit for 2013 dropped to $680 billion, from about $1.1 trillion the previous year.
In nominal terms, that is the smallest deficit since 2008, and signals the end of a five-year stretch beginning with the onset of the recession when the country’s fiscal gap came in at more than $1 trillion each year. As a share of the nation’s economy, the budget deficit fell to about 4.1 percent, from a high of more than 10 percent during the depths of the Great Recession.
The report comes days before the White House is scheduled to release a new budget for the fiscal year beginning Oct. 1 that avoids cuts in spending and focuses on ways to help spur the still-tepid recovery through additional government investment.
We all know that Republicans are not being honest when they say President Obama is increasing the deficit. And what makes that lie even worse is when they try to tie the sequester into their false claim.
But facts don’t lie, and Rachel Maddow used one of her segments last night to debunk both Republican lies – that Obama has increased the deficit and that reducing the deficit is their reason for favoring the sequester.
Here’s the official report that put all their talking points about the President raising the deficit to rest. The report comes from Center for American Progress.
Since the start of fiscal year 2011, President Barack Obama has signed into law approximately $2.4 trillion of deficit reduction for the years 2013 through 2022. Nearly three-quarters of that deficit reduction is in the form of spending cuts, while the remaining one-quarter comes from revenue increases. As a result of that deficit reduction, the projected rise in debt levels from today through 2022 has decreased by nearly 10 full percentage points of gross domestic product. In fact, under today’s policies, debt levels in 2022—as a share of GDP—will be only slightly higher than they are expected to be by the end of next year. That doesn’t mean there is no more work to be done, but it does show we’ve come a long way already.
They’re all politicians, regardless of what Mitt Romney wants to call himself. But what does it say of the Romney campaign and the Republican leaders when they chose three major lies to base an entire convention on?
Lie Number 1. – “You Didn’t Build That.”
Those were the words President Obama used at a campaign event. The President was talking about all the different factors that contribute to all successful businesses. But Republicans are only focusing on the you didn’t build that phrase and they are telling their followers that President Obama is against businesses.
“If you were successful, somebody along the line gave you some help. There was a great teacher somewhere in your life. Somebody helped to create this unbelievable American system that we have that allowed you to thrive. Somebody invested in roads and bridges. If you have a business, you didn’t build that. Somebody else made that happen.
Anyone with a hint of common sense can look at that quote and conclude that the President was correct. Somewhere along the line, somebody gave entrepreneurs some help. Yes, business owners formulate a business plan, some invested every dollar they had and put in the long hours. But doing that alone does not make a successful business. It helps to have a proper education and good teachers. It helps when customer have access to a business whether it be through roads, public transportation or the internet. And yes, it helps when there is a system already in place that facilitates the business plan and allows that plan to be successful.
So Republicans can focus on the “you didn’t build it” part of the President’s speech all they want. The facts… the simple facts show that the president is correct.
Lie Number 2. – “Obama increased the deficit by $5 Trillion”
This lie is another example of what Republicans and the Romney campaign is famous for – placing a laser focus on one part of a political argument and enlarging that argument to a point where it becomes the whole story.
Yes, $5 Trillion dollars were added to the deficit under the Obama administration, but that’s not the whole story. For anyone who is genuine and want to know more, the full story is about where this $5 trillion comes from.
Here are the facts on the $5 trillion:
The George Bush wars in Iraq and Afghanistan were conducted on a credit card. In his infinite wisdom, George Bush did not include these wars in any budget. Mr. Obama on the other hand chose to bring this information to the American people and $853 billion – the price of both Bush wars – were added to the deficit.
The George Bush Tax Cuts – Another Bush policy that the Bush administration chose not to add to the deficit. In an effort to be transparent President Obama budgeted this cost and $2.2 trillion appeared on the deficit, thanks to Bush.
Other Bush Credit Card Policies – The costs of these Bush policies were also hidden from the American people, and these cost were finally budgeted by the Obama administration:
Defense – $616 Billion
Non Defense – $608 Billion
Entitlements – $293 Billion
Troubled Assets – $294 Billion
Prescription Drug costs – $180 Billion
And there you have it. The whole story on the $5 trillion deficit increase, all items from the George Bush-era.
How much did Obama’s policies add to the deficit? According to the chart below, when the expenses and revenues are taken into consideration, the Obama policies adds just about $983 billion. It breaks down like this:
And the Republican’s claim in itself makes no sense. A recent article by MarketWatch details that spending under President Obama is at a 60 year low. How can he “increased the deficit by $5 trillion if he’s not spending? The graph below explains:
In addition to the study by MarketWatch, PolitiFact did their research and agrees – spending is less under Obama. From PolitiFact:
Obama has indeed presided over the slowest growth in spending of any president using raw dollars, and it was the second-slowest if you adjust for inflation. The math simultaneously backs up Nutting’s calculations and demolishes Romney’s contention.
Lie Number 3 – “Obama removed the work requirement in Welfare.”
This particular lie was told (and will be told again and again) by the Republican Vice President candidate Paul Ryan. This lie was, like I’m sure you all know by now, debunked by every respectable fact-checker in the field. But the fact that this lie is already debunked did not stop the vice president candidate and he mentioned it in the biggest speech of his career – his speech to the nation.
The lie is based on a memo from the Obama administration to the states, where the states are granted a waiver from the federal program if they (the states) can show better more effective way to transfer welfare recipients from welfare to better training and work. But unfortunately, many in the Republican base choose fiction over facts and the Romney campaign is feeding this lie to these people.
And now that we’ve come to the end of the Republican convention, what can we really say we’ve learned?
Although a tad more of the Republican candidate was revealed to the American people, it was hard to believe what I was seeing and what I was hearing from the Convention podium. How can we believe anything coming from these Republicans when the very foundation of their Convention was based on lies?
The Republican governor of New Jersey and endorser of Republican presidential candidate Mitt Romney, is falsely attacking the President. What else is new? “What the hell are we paying you for?,” Christie askedyesterday, implying that the president could have changed the outcome of the failed Super Committee.
“I was angry this weekend, listening to the spin coming out of the administration, about the failure of the supercommittee, and that the president knew it was doomed for failure, so he didn’t get involved. Well then what the hell are we paying you for?” Christie said in Camden, N.J.
“It’s doomed for failure so I’m not getting involved? Well, what have you been doing, exactly?” Christie was contrasting the Tea Party and Occupy Wall Street movements, saying both stemmed from “anger” with government’s inability to respond to the financial crisis.
But while Christie said “both parties deserve blame for what’s going on in Washington, D.C.,” he pointed the finger squarely at Obama for failing to strike a budget deal. “Why the president of the United States refuses to do this is astonishing to me. If he wanted to run for Senate again and just be 1 of a 100, I’m sure he could have gotten reelected over and over again in Illinois,” Christie said. “He’s the one in Washington and he’s got to get something done here. And it’s not good enough just to say, ‘Well, I’ll get it done after the election.’”
Of course, this claim that President Obama could have worked his magic and convince Republicans hellbent on protecting the taxes of millionaires, is false. Republicans would want you to believe that Mr. Obama was missing in action on deficit reduction.
The facts however, are very different.
It was, after all, President Obama who first introduced a proposal to cut the deficit by $4 trillion. And he spent the entire summer trying to work with Republicans to come to some agreement. He even played golf with John Boehner, trying to come to some understanding on what spending cuts to make and at what cost.
But because of Republicans’ secret pledge to make this president fail by tanking the economy, the possibility of a deficit reduction would work against their pledge. They unanimously said “no” to the President’s proposal, and decided to put their faith in the hands of the super committee – a group of 12 people who knew the dire importance of the job at hand, but chose ideological political positions instead.
So, now that the super committee has failed to do their job, it is obviously President Obama’s fault. He should have sat in with the Super Committee everyday, giving his input and recommendations to a group of people who want him to fail.
The failure of the super committee was inevitable. Republicans went into the negotiating process knowing they were going to agree to absolutely nothing thus, causing its failure. And nothing would have been more pleasing to Republicans like Chris Christie, than having President Obama take part in that failure.
If he had played a role in the negotiations, the super-committee’s failure would be his fault. If he didn’t take part, the failure of the super-committee would be his fault.
The Republicans already knew who to blame way before the committee failed. They were just waiting to see which card the President played. It’s classic Republican politics.
Today, President Obama outlined his plan for deficit reduction. He again called for a balanced approach to reducing the nation’s deficit through both spending cuts and raising revenue by asking the top 3% of the wealthiest Americans to pay the same rate middle class Americans already pay. Of course, Republicans used the last few days to get their talking points out, calling the President’s proposal “class warfare.”
But President Obama had an answer for them;
It comes down to this: We have to prioritize. Both parties agree that we need to reduce the deficit by the same amount — by $4 trillion. So what choices are we going to make to reach that goal? Either we ask the wealthiest Americans to pay their fair share in taxes, or we’re going to have to ask seniors to pay more for Medicare. We can’t afford to do both.
Either we gut education and medical research, or we’ve got to reform the tax code so that the most profitable corporations have to give up tax loopholes that other companies don’t get. We can’t afford to do both.
This is not class warfare. It’s math. The money is going to have to come from someplace. And if we’re not willing to ask those who’ve done extraordinarily well to help America close the deficit and we are trying to reach that same target of $4 trillion, then the logic, the math says everybody else has to do a whole lot more: We’ve got to put the entire burden on the middle class and the poor. We’ve got to scale back on the investments that have always helped our economy grow. We’ve got to settle for second-rate roads and second-rate bridges and second-rate airports, and schools that are crumbling.
That’s unacceptable to me. That’s unacceptable to the American people. And it will not happen on my watch. I will not support — I will not support — any plan that puts all the burden for closing our deficit on ordinary Americans. And I will veto any bill that changes benefits for those who rely on Medicare but does not raise serious revenues by asking the wealthiest Americans or biggest corporations to pay their fair share. We are not going to have a one-sided deal that hurts the folks who are most vulnerable.
But explaining simple math to a group who thinks teachers are the enemy and wants to eliminate the Department of Education, may not be the easiest thing to do, but based on the President’s attitude today, I think he’s up for the challenge.
I like the way Dave Johnson started his article on this subject.
He gathered the following three charts from the Budget of the United States Government: Historical Tables Fiscal Year 2012, and advised us that the next time “your right-wing brother-in-law” who “…is plugged into the FOX-Limbaugh Lie Machine, and keeps sending you emails about “Obama spending” and “Obama deficits” and how the “Stimulus” just made things worse…”, these are the charts you should show him.
Keep your fingers crossed and hope for the best. Although you will be presenting that person with the facts, the FOX-Limbaugh Lie Machine is very effective. Most, subjected to their daily dose of lies, don’t even know they’re infected.
Here goes!
Chart 1 – Spending
Under George Bush, spending increased by 88%.
Under Barack Obama, spending increased by 7.2%. Yet, this President is being blamed by the right for massive spending.
Chart 2 – Deficit
On the left of this chart, we see Bush increases the deficit by $1.4 trillion. This was after taking office with a $128 billion surplus from his predecessor, Bill Clinton.
On the right of this chart, we see Barack Obama temporarily increasing the deficit, mainly because when he came into office, George Bush’s fiscal policies were still in effect. For the remaining years of Obama’s term/s, deficit projection is expected to be at reduced levels, as compared to that of Bush.
Chart 3 – The Stimulus
This one is so simple, even Fox dedicated viewers could see what’s happening. When George Bush left office, as shown in the red, his policies caused a consistent job loss in the private market every month. After Obama took office, and after signing the stimulus into law, the blue lines shows fewer and fewer monthly job loss, eventually resulting in job gains. And as the chart says, July marked the 17th consecutive month of private sector job growth under President Obama.
But then again, if your brother-in-law is already brainwashed by the FOX-Limbaugh Lie Machine, charts like this showing the truth are not what he’s looking for. For him, it may already be too late. But try anyway.
President Obama and former President George W. Bush at the dedication of the George W. Bush library in Dallas.
A new report from the New York Times attempts to answer the questions – how did our economy get to this point? And where did this massive deficit come from? The report took the spending habits of the last president, and compared them to those of President Obama, from his inauguration in 2009 and projected through 2017, and interestingly, despite what Republicans and Conservatives think, George Bush still out-spent Barack Obama by more than 2 to 1.
When President Clinton left office in 2001, George Bush inherited a surplus, one that was projected to be over a trillion dollars for the next decade if the Clinton policies remained in effect. The chart below, which took information from The Congressional Budget Office and The Center on Budget and Policy Priorities, tells the story of George Bush and his spending ways, and how he turned a surplus into a deficit beginning in 2002, and how that deficit grew each year until he left office in 2009.
The Bush wars in Afghanistan and Iraq, along with Defense – $1.5 Trillion added to the deficit.
The Bush Tax Cuts – $1.8 Trillion added to the deficit.
Non-Defense Discretionary spending under George Bush – $608 Billion added to the deficit.
Bush Tarp and other Bailouts – $224 Billion added to the deficit.
Bush’s Medicare Drug Policies – $180 Billion added to the deficit.
Bush’s Stimulus and other spending – $773 Billion added to the deficit.
All in all, George Bush took an actual surplus of $127 billion in 2001 and turned it into a deficit of $319 billion in 2005. His total in new spending equaled over $5 trillion. This figure dwarfs the $1.44 trillion in new spending President Obama is expected to make through two terms ending in 2017.
It should be noted that the biggest spending spree George Bush and the Republicans went on, according to these figures from the Congressional Budget Office, was the Bush Tax Cuts. The New York Times report puts it this way; “If all of them [Bush Tax Cuts] expired as scheduled at the end of 2012, future deficits would be cut by about half, to sustainable levels”.
We all know the importance of America meeting her financial obligations and the global impact if Washington cannot or will not come together and figure out a way to get the debt ceiling raised. Over 200 world renowned economists recently wrote a letter to congress advising, no, demanding that the debt ceiling be raised and raised ASAP.
And while Republicans have steadfastly held their ground and insist that no new revenue be part of any debt ceiling debate, what exactly did their leader, Ronald Reagan, have to say about this very issue the many times America’s debt stared him in the face? On August 11th 1982, in Billings Montana, Ronald Reagan spoke to the crowed and explained the necessity of tax hikes on the wealthy by posing this question;
“Would you rather reduce deficits and interest rates by raising revenue from those who are not now paying their fair share, or would you rather accept larger budget deficits, higher interest rates, and higher unemployment?”
Reagan went on and raised the debt ceiling 18 times throughout his presidency.
Yes, everyone in these debates seem to believe that raising the debt ceiling to pay our bills is necessary. But the Republicans’ position that it must only be done through spending cuts with no new revenue is not only wrong, it’s immoral.
The millionaires and billionaires in this country owe a large portion of their wealth to the policies of this nation. The freedom of our government to empower an individual to be creative, to have and allow an idea to blossom into a product or service that benefits the masses. Whether it’s through subsidies, loopholes or legislative laws, these various provisions by the government increases the profit margin.
This is the reason we are considered the greatest nation on earth – we are free to dream and be innovative. And we are encouraged by these policies and the prospects of huge profits, to use the American capitalistic system to make our dreams come true. It is therefore, necessary that in this time of economic uncertainty, everyone – especially the rich – contribute to America’s recovery. This is not the time for more hand-outs. Sitting back while the poor and middle class bear the load of this economy is not the patriotic thing to do. It is wrong, and this type of mentality does a great disservice to the nation.
The choice is clear to all who are honest with themselves. Would we rather larger budget deficits, higher interest rates and unemployment, or should we demand that the millionaires and billionaires pay their fair share to the country that is partly responsible for their acquired wealth?
It’s time to close these loopholes, it’s time to end these unnecessary subsidies, it’s time that everyone contribute to this nation’s recovery.
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