Obama Economic Plan: $25.4 trillion Deficit In 10 Years

francois60 said:

They aren't meant to be right, they are meant to be objective guesses. The CBO was created so that parties wouldn't just make up BS numbers to sell their legislation. The CBO score isn't considered absolutely correct, but it is at least objective.

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It isn't objective at all. They can only make assumptions based upon the data and circumstances presented to them. They are now nothing more than a political football for corrupt and dishonest politicians who have them do things like pretend 6 years of Obamacare is actually the entire cost of 10 full years of implementation.

It's still useful though, because what we had before the CBO was Democrats passing Medicare based on cost estimates that were one tenth what they actually were. The CBO is a lot more accurate and objective by comparison.

Objective Voice said:

Sure budgets will change over time. However, the point of both the OP and post #5 is fear. Both do the same thing in the right way for those who support their ideology and want someone else in the White House: The instill fear that this country will never get its fiscal house in order AND that this President wants nothing more than to keep spending. But the fact is Pres. Obama's long-term ecomic plan as outlined by the CBO does make a decent effort of brining the deficit under control over the next 10 years.

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Even more telling is a comparison of Romney's plan that increases defense spending while cutting his taxes even more. Plus the repeal of AHC that will cost another trillion. He's on track with the other Republicans for further massve deficit increases. This chart shows it quite clearly. How the GOP has a reputaion for cutting spending is beyond reason.

Mainly because Democrats keep accusing them of doing it while Republicans claim to want to do it. Of course the reality is different, but both parties think it's in their interest to portray Republicans as budget cutters.

However, at least since the Tea Party started pulling the strings, the Republicans have actually been good at stopping new spending. Romney's plan doesn't add up, but then Presidential plans almost never do. He'll have to choose his priorities.

"Obama is gonna raise the debt by $25T over 10 years!"
"Oh no! That's horrible! We must do something!"
"Indeed! We need to vote for that other guy, the one who's campaigning on even more tax cuts and spending increases than Obama!"
"Capital plan! That'll stop Obama from raising the debt!"

Obama promised a net spending cut. As you have figured out by now, no President can stand by their plan. Romney will get into office, and his advisors will lay it down for him like they did with Clinton and he'll make it work. There's nothing in Romney's history that indicates a guy who is going to just live with big deficits.

francois60 said:

Obama promised a net spending cut. As you have figured out by now, no President can stand by their plan. Romney will get into office, and his advisors will lay it down for him like they did with Clinton and he'll make it work. There's nothing in Romney's history that indicates a guy who is going to just live with big deficits.

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You do realize that Clinton - despite his reputation - increased spending every single fiscal year he was in office?

Federal Budget Receipts and Outlays

Everyone does. But spending increased only 3% per year, which meant spending grew slower than the economy. Romney supports the Ryan budget, which increases spending 2.8% per year.

francois60 said:

That's mistaken. Some liberal blogs have compared Ryan's budget to the CBO baseline. But that's a bad measurement because no one actually supports the CBO baseline, which assumes that all the Bush tax cuts expire this year and payments to doctors under Medicare drop in accordance with the sustainable growth policy.

The correct comparison is with the current policy baseline, or better yet, the Obama budget. Compared to those, it cuts the deficit more:

James Pethokoukis | Analysis & Opinion | Reuters.com

5) Those savings – 2.4 percent for Obama, 3.5 percent for Ryan — are over ten years vs. cumulative GDP of $196 trillion over 2012-2021 (not counting interest expense). In dollar amounts, that works to savings of $4.7 trillion for Obama and $6.9 trillion for Ryan. So the Ryan Path saves $2.2 trillion more.

6) But that’s not all! The Obama Framework likely uses the same higher growth assumptions as Obama’s February budget. When CBO re-ran that budget using its own gloomier forecast, it found the Obama plan raised $1.7 trillion less than it claimed. Ryan uses the CBO numbers. So a back-of-the-envelope estimate — adjusted for similar economic assumptions — finds the Obama Framework would only save $3 trillion vs. $6.9 trillion for the Ryan Path over ten years. And nearly 2/3 of Obama’s savings comes from higher taxes (net interest)

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Again, you are simply buying the incredibly unlikely assumptions built into the Ryan proposal. First, Ryan STATES that spending will decline without specifying what spending he would cut, other than Medicare and Medicaid (which would place a huge burden on the poor and elderly). And second, Ryan ASSUMES that revenue will increase markedly as a percentage of GDP without providing any rationale to explain that supposed increase. And finally, Ryan ASSUMES that unemployment will fall to 2.8%, which is about as likely as a martian invasion.

The CBO's alternative scenario does not cure any of those fatal flaws.

IOW, drawing any conclusions based upon these assumptions is pure folly. The only thing you could conclude with any degree of confidence is that the analysis is fundamentally flawed and would result in far more deficit spending than the report suggests.

francois60 said:

Everyone does. But spending increased only 3% per year, which meant spending grew slower than the economy. Romney supports the Ryan budget, which increases spending 2.8% per year.

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1) Everyone does not know that Clinton increased spending every year. I corrected a liberal on that very fact just a few days ago on this site.

2) With deficits running well over a trillion dollars , ANY increase is spending is - IMO - absolutely pathetic.

The US federal budget is almost double what it was 10 years ago - spending is TOTALLY out of control.

Not enough revenue is not the problem...pathetic politicians (on both sides) with NO sense of fiscal responsibility are.

francois60 said:

Mainly because Democrats keep accusing them of doing it while Republicans claim to want to do it. Of course the reality is different, but both parties think it's in their interest to portray Republicans as budget cutters.

However, at least since the Tea Party started pulling the strings, the Republicans have actually been good at stopping new spending. Romney's plan doesn't add up, but then Presidential plans almost never do. He'll have to choose his priorities.

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There's a Democrat in the Whitehouse so of course they are focused on reducing spending. They only jack up spending when they are in power, look at the chart I posted. Romney is aleady promising to increase defense spending and further cut Govt. revenues with more tax cuts for himself. The deficits will skyrocket if another Republican gets into the Whitehouse, that is what they do.

DA60 said:

1) Everyone does not know that Clinton increased spending every year. I corrected a liberal on that very fact just a few days ago on this site.

2) With deficits running well over a trillion dollars , ANY increase is spending is - IMO - absolutely pathetic.

The US federal budget is almost double what it was 10 years ago - spending is TOTALLY out of control.

Not enough revenue is not the problem...pathetic politicians (on both sides) with NO sense of fiscal responsibility are.

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Clinton paid for his spending increases unlike all the Republicans who simply raised the deficit instead.
Revenue at 15% of GDP IS the problem. We have spent at least 20% of GDP every year for the last 20. It is usustainable.

iguanaman said:

Clinton paid for his spending increases unlike all the Republicans who simply raised the deficit instead.
Revenue at 15% of GDP IS the problem. We have spent at least 20% of GDP every year for the last 20. It is usustainable.

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Spending has doubled since FY 2001 - and you say the problem is not enough revenue?

Whatever.


Have a nice day.

DA60 said:

Spending has doubled since FY 2001 - and you say the problem is not enough revenue?

Whatever.


Have a nice day.

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If you mean defense spending, you are right. It has doubled since 911. Blaming the President for that is comical. Romney wants to increase that even more while giving more tax cuts to himself and his billionaire friends. It's even more comical that you think that would do anything but balloon the deficit just like Bush did. You want to spend us into oblivion while you cut revenues to record lows compared to GDP. That is not funny.

Who Is The Smallest Government Spender Since Eisenhower? Would You Believe It's Barack Obama?
So, how have the Republicans managed to persuade Americans to buy into the whole “Obama as big spender” narrative?
It might have something to do with the first year of the Obama presidency where the federal budge increased a whopping 17.9% —going from $2.98 trillion to $3.52 trillion. I’ll bet you think that this is the result of the Obama sponsored stimulus plan that is so frequently vilified by the conservatives…but you would be wrong.

The first year of any incoming president term is saddled—for better or for worse—with the budget set by the president whom immediately precedes the new occupant of the White House. Indeed, not only was the 2009 budget the property of George W. Bush—and passed by the 2008 Congress—it was in effect four months before Barack Obama took the oath of office.
Accordingly, the first budget that can be blamed on our current president began in 2010 with the budgets running through and including including fiscal year 2013 standing as charges on the Obama account, even if a President Willard M. Romney takes over the office on January 20, 2013.

So, how do the actual Obama annual budgets look?

Courtesy of Marketwatch-

•In fiscal 2010 (the first Obama budget) spending fell 1.8% to $3.46 trillion.
• In fiscal 2011, spending rose 4.3% to $3.60 trillion.
•In fiscal 2012, spending is set to rise 0.7% to $3.63 trillion, according to the Congressional Budget Office’s estimate of the budget that was agreed to last August.
•Finally in fiscal 2013 — the final budget of Obama’s term — spending is scheduled to fall 1.3% to $3.58 trillion. Read the CBO’s latest budget outlook.
No doubt, many will wish to give the credit to the efforts of the GOP controlled House of Representatives. That’s fine if that’s what works for you.

However, you don’t get to have it both ways. Credit whom you will, but if you are truly interested in a fair analysis of the Obama years to date—at least when it comes to spending—you’re going to have to acknowledge that under the Obama watch, even President Reagan would have to give our current president a thumbs up when it comes to his record for stretching a dollar.

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Who Is The Smallest Government Spender Since Eisenhower? Would You Believe It's Barack Obama? - Forbes

iguanaman said:

If you mean defense spending, you are right. It has doubled since 911.

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I said 'spending', not 'defense spending' (though that is WAY out of hand as well).

Spending has doubled in TOTAL since FY 2001.

And it has tripled since FY 1990.

Federal Budget Receipts and Outlays

Even though inflation has gone up a fraction of that since 1990.


Spending is out of control and both parties are to blame.

Velvet Elvis said:

Here's the Obama "spending cuts" in a nutshell...

Step 1: Propose $1 trillion in spending hikes.
Step 2: Pass a law reducing "spending" within that time frame by $100MM
Step 3: Puff out your chest, and brag that you lowered spending by $100MM
Step 4: Confuse the voters by thinking your $900MM in hikes really is $100MM in cuts.

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Exactly... more wool... IDK if there's enough sheep in Scotland for all the wool he's gonna need...

He also has sold everyone on buying that the Bush Tax cuts caused the debt...

Even in the CBO data that suggested that the Bush Tax Cuts (EGTRRA and JGTRRA) lowered the revenue by $1.6T (over their 10 years), but Obama's Tax Act cost $858B. So why is it wrong that we had $160B/yr of tax cuts from Bush, but it's okay that Obama created $450B/yr in tax cuts? The CBO says Obama's Tax Act of 2010 will cost us more than the stimulus!

Also... last I checked... OBAMA EXTENDED THE BUSH TAX CUTS!!! If he thought they were part of the problem, why did he endorse their extension?

You can't stretch the wool out that far... many of us can see through it...

DA60 said:

I said 'spending', not 'defense spending' (though that is WAY out of hand as well).

Spending has doubled in TOTAL since FY 2001.

And it has tripled since FY 1990.

Federal Budget Receipts and Outlays

Even though inflation has gone up a fraction of that since 1990.


Spending is out of control and both parties are to blame.

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As you can see from this chart it is DEFENSE spending that has had the greatest increase since 2001. It's ironic that the House and certain people on this board all want even more defense spending. It sort of blows their cover don't you think? The want to cut programs they don't like and it has nothing to do with saving money.

iguanaman said:

Even more telling is a comparison of Romney's plan that increases defense spending while cutting his taxes even more. Plus the repeal of AHC that will cost another trillion. He's on track with the other Republicans for further massve deficit increases. This chart shows it quite clearly. How the GOP has a reputaion for cutting spending is beyond reason.

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Hate to break it to you... Your graph is off by a couple years... Sorry...

Then again, you should've notices, when both the WWII debt spike on your graph occurs after the war is over... And when the massive spike for the current debt you have all on Bush and none on Obama... Cute how that works...

See, the other indicator would've been that you have Bush leaving office with the debt to GDP ratio of around 90%... when it was actually well below that when Bush left office... At the worst case scenario the debt was $10.5T, and the GDP was $14T... making it 75%... just "slightly" off by 15% points... no biggie...

See here it is in nominal dollars...


Massive spike under Obama... which you tried to hide as nominal only, as if inflation from 2009-2009 was the major cause of the spike... not the massive spending, and the craterous deficit which was created...

Here it is in Debt to GDP ratio, more accurately than what you have here...


See where the massive spike in Debt to GDP ratio also occurs... Under Obama... largely because of his increases to Bush's last budget... from $2.7T to $3.1T

Then, unfortunately what these graphs don't show, is in the following years, when he increases that $3.1T to $3.6T, $3.8T, $3.7T, and $3.8T, how the Debt to GDP ratio goes over 100% again for only the 2nd time in our nation's history...


It's not so much that the Republicans have a history of cutting... there has clearly been a mixed bag... However, what has been shown is that Democrats throw money around like it doesn't actually have a value in times of crisis... and that has lead to several severe explosions of our debt... for WWI, the depression, WII, and now Obama's decision to "stimulate" the economy, by making it dependent on grant money...

Fiscally responsible Republicans have cut the deficits and the debt over time... and if you go back and do this same type of chart by party affiliation of the Senate and Congress, you could get an eye opener on who effects the budgetary situation in what manner...

IndepCentristMA said:

Fiscally responsible Republicans have cut the deficits and the debt over time... and if you go back and do this same type of chart by party affiliation of the Senate and Congress, you could get an eye opener on who effects the budgetary situation in what manner...

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Romneycare is hardly fiscally responsible.

iguanaman said:

As you can see from this chart it is DEFENSE spending that has had the greatest increase since 2001. It's ironic that the House and certain people on this board all want even more defense spending. It sort of blows their cover don't you think? The want to cut programs they don't like and it has nothing to do with saving money.

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Please save the partisan political rap for someone else...it bores me to death (from both sides).

Both parties COMPLETELY SUCK at fiscal responsibility.

Partisan politics is slowing destroying America.


And btw, military spending has increased under Obama.

US Military Spending Over the Years

IndepCentristMA said:

Hate to break it to you... Your graph is off by a couple years... Sorry...

Then again, you should've notices, when both the WWII debt spike on your graph occurs after the war is over... And when the massive spike for the current debt you have all on Bush and none on Obama... Cute how that works...

See, the other indicator would've been that you have Bush leaving office with the debt to GDP ratio of around 90%... when it was actually well below that when Bush left office... At the worst case scenario the debt was $10.5T, and the GDP was $14T... making it 75%... just "slightly" off by 15% points... no biggie...

See here it is in nominal dollars...

Massive spike under Obama... which you tried to hide as nominal only, as if inflation from 2009-2009 was the major cause of the spike... not the massive spending, and the craterous deficit which was created...

Here it is in Debt to GDP ratio, more accurately than what you have here...

See where the massive spike in Debt to GDP ratio also occurs... Under Obama... largely because of his increases to Bush's last budget... from $2.7T to $3.1T

Then, unfortunately what these graphs don't show, is in the following years, when he increases that $3.1T to $3.6T, $3.8T, $3.7T, and $3.8T, how the Debt to GDP ratio goes over 100% again for only the 2nd time in our nation's history...


It's not so much that the Republicans have a history of cutting... there has clearly been a mixed bag... However, what has been shown is that Democrats throw money around like it doesn't actually have a value in times of crisis... and that has lead to several severe explosions of our debt... for WWI, the depression, WII, and now Obama's decision to "stimulate" the economy, by making it dependent on grant money...

Fiscally responsible Republicans have cut the deficits and the debt over time... and if you go back and do this same type of chart by party affiliation of the Senate and Congress, you could get an eye opener on who effects the budgetary situation in what manner...

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Wow, my head is spinning from that yarn, the Democrats caused WWII? This chart gives a clearer picture of who caused most of our debt.

TheNextEra said:

Romneycare is hardly fiscally responsible.

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Correction: CommonwealthCare is no longer fiscally responsible, after 1) the Democrats in the legislature overrode all the line-item vetoes that Romney took out of the bill and 2) Democrats amended the legislation to include wider coverages than were stipulated under the plan as Romney signed it.

Still... even with the tinkering around, the situation saved MA a boat load of money...

Prior to CommonwealthCare there was the Uncompensated Care Pool, because the federal government requires hospitals to take on patients, even if they don't have health insurance... but didn't provide insurance for them... They were able get federal funding to help foot the bill for this, but the federal money only covered like 30-40% of all the expenses. The federal government contributed $300M, but the total cost of the Uncompensated Care Pool was $735, leaving MA to pick up $ the remaining $435M. As a result of CommonwealthCare, they eliminated the Uncompensated Care Pool, and created a separate fund to pick up the remainder. That fund was only paying out $415M, using $300M from the federal government, meaning MA cost of healthcare dropped to $115M as a result of Romney's healthplan. The cost of covering for the uninsured in MA dropped by 40%, and the share MA was paying fropped 70%.

That's called fiscal responsibility...

This wasn't even part of the cuts, savings, and additional revenue generated to balance the largest deficit in MA history of $3B when he took over, which he turned into a $2B surplus in 2 years time.

This was part of the later savings that Romney was initiating, which included departmental consolidation, recovering costs from the Big Dig, and the healthcare bill... They all worked, and have been continued under his successor Deval Patrick...

So Romney's healthcare plan was fiscally responsible, despite your lame attempt to misclassify it...

iguanaman said:

Wow, my head is spinning from that yarn, the Democrats caused WWII? This chart gives a clearer picture of who caused most of our debt.

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LMFAO... no it doesn't... it gives a heavily partisan collection of data an even greater partisan image... and I know the very site you got it from...

Several things jump out immediately...

1, notice the funny green line... the assumption of "if Reagan and Bushes balanced their budgets and the Dems did what they did"... Well, "what they did" during the 80s was expand welfare, social security, etc. which wouldn't have had the debt receding as they put it on there... The Dems were part and parcel of the increases in spending throughout the 80s... yet he ignores that...

2 Notice how sharply he has the line of spending go up with Reagan... only it makes it seem like it was done on day 1... Reagan didn't jack up spending the day he stepped foot in office... not the way it is inaccurately depicted in this cartoon-like graphic...

3, Notice how his line of where Bush's contribution to the debt stops is well after 2009 in the scale of the graph? The red line even crosses over the black one, but you can see the blue one is intentionally started to the right of the black line...

Odd how that works, considering, Obama altered Bush's last budget by $400B dollars... raising it from $2.7T to $3.1T... Bush did raise his own budget from $2.3T to $2.7T, so yes the increase occured under Bush... but it SPIKED when Obama came in and raised Bush's raised budget from $2.7T to $3.1T, and then added more on to $3.6T, $3.8T, $3.7T, $3.8T... that spike occured then... Not where the line depicts it...

The graphic I showed is far more accurate in terms of this, and I even showed it both for nominal dollars and debt to GDP ration so you can compare and see the real percentages, as opposed to what your partisan cartoon-like graphic infers... (plus he ought to know damn well what effect the congresses have had on the debt, so to make it seem like its directly on the president is foolish, even for him)...

I never said the Dems created WWII... but the spending bing that accompanied it... Lend Lease got us spending on the war, when we weren't even a part of it... FDR throw money we don't have at the problem technique... Look at the massive mountain of debt which we still have as the result of FDR...

Then, the next mountain had definitely been building before Obama... but its reaching what we all hope is it's massive peak during the Obama administration... that debt needs to come down... and the man who is contributing to it, is the man who increased spending from $2.7T to $3.8T, despite a drop in revenue from job losses...

Same old throw massive amounts of money we don't have problem coming back to haunt us again...

Dago, Clinton didn't need to pay for his spending increases because the economy grew faster than spending. I agree that 15% of GDP revenue is not sustainable, but to get back to 18% quickly you'd need to repeal all the Bush and Obama tax cuts(like the payroll tax cut). And even if we get back to 18% revenue, there's still the small matter of spending being 24% of GDP.

So by a 2-1 margin, we do have a spending problem.

francois60 said:

Dago, Clinton didn't need to pay for his spending increases because the economy grew faster than spending. I agree that 15% of GDP revenue is not sustainable, but to get back to 18% quickly you'd need to repeal all the Bush and Obama tax cuts(like the payroll tax cut). And even if we get back to 18% revenue, there's still the small matter of spending being 24% of GDP.

So by a 2-1 margin, we do have a spending problem.

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Clearly both spending and revenue need to be addressed. Unfortunatley about 0% of Republicans will admit this most basic of facts. Romney has stated that he would not accept a deficit reduction package consisting of 10:1 spending cuts to revenue hikes.