Please read what I wrote. I am including war spending in the figures I'm using.
Egads.
The problem with using
some official numbers in this discussion is that, yet again...
Bush put the war off-budget. If you're looking at documents generated during the Bush years, you will miss a big chunk of military spending.
The Obama administration put the war spending back into the budget for its figures. In addition, other costs like health care for veterans won't be broken out clearly. So, I typically use the data released by the OMB in more recent years, as they include ALL the spending by ALL the Presidents, and 3rd parties (which do most of the hard work for you).
Here's the FY2015 figures. What you want to look at for expenses are tables 3.1 and 3.2:
http://www.whitehouse.gov/sites/default/files/omb/budget/fy2015/assets/hist.pdf
And:
Study: Iraq, Afghan war costs to top $4 trillion - The Washington Post
See the above OMB chart, and
History of the United States public debt - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
No matter how you slice it, the simple fact is that the debt did grow by a significant amount under Bush 43. That's what happens when you wage two wars, offer a new entitlement, and cut taxes at the same time. Even if you somehow believe he "only" increased it to 73%, then Bush 43 increased the debt-to-GDP ratio just as much as Obama, while Clinton actually
reduced the debt-to-GDP ration by about 10%. Please, face facts.
This is not about who deserves what. It's just a simple fact that the Bush tax cuts resulted in the federal government receiving significantly lower revenues, than if the cuts had not been enacted.
Egads.
OK, let's go over some basic budgeting.
(Fiscal Year Revenues) - (Fiscal Year Expenditures) = Fiscal Year Deficits or Surpluses
When you put in a tax cut, it means
less revenues. When you have
less revenues in a year with
more expenditures than revenues, that's going to increase the deficit.
It doesn't matter if you happen to cut taxes and, due to other factors, revenues go up. You are still collecting less in revenues than you would have, if you cut taxes.
Get it?
'Kay
The idea that "tax cuts increase tax revenues" simply does not apply here, because we are nowhere near the Laffer Curve.
Economist's View: Yet Again, Tax Cuts Do Not Pay for Themselves
No, New Tax Cuts Will Not Pay for Themselves | Economic Policy Institute
Art Laffer Did Not Say Anything So Stupid As All Tax Cuts Pay For Themselves - Forbes
Or, to put it another way:
People don't hire employees because they got a break on estate taxes. CEO's definitely don't hire more people because of a cut in their personal tax rate; in fact, if laying people off boosts the stock price, and the CEO is compensated with stock, he is
more likely to fire people because of a cut in capital gains taxes. If I own a small business, and I buy a bunch of IBM stock, and sell it 5 years later, and get a 5% break on capital gains, it's not likely to convince me to hire another employee at my business. A bank is not going to split off a high-frequency trading unit because of a 2% tax increase. A hedge fund manager is not going to close up shop because the carried interest tax rate on his personal income goes up 10%. I find it somewhat hard to believe that when you did your taxes in 2003, you saw that you'd save 5% on your personal income taxes compared to 2000, and on that basis decided to hire an additional staffer at your business.
What drove the economy during the Bush 43 years? Mostly a real estate and financial bubble, which was well under way before Congress enacted the Bush tax cuts. The economic benefits of the Bush tax cuts did not spark that bubble.
No, I understand that this is exactly how Medicare works, and it's how single-payer systems work around the world. I also recognize that you're engaging in the fallacy of composition.
egads
Again: I am talking about aggregate spending. It doesn't matter that Bush kept the war spending out of the DOD budget, it doesn't matter that some defense spending is discretionary while some is non-discretionary. None of that matters.
No, they really couldn't. The Republicans would have undoubtedly filibustered any attempt to retire the cuts early, and extending them was part of the 2010 relief package.
And
I'm waiting for you to recognize that the figures you're citing as the 2015 $3.9 trillion budget INCLUDE SOCIAL SECURITY AND MEDICARE.
I'm sorry, but statements like this make it obvious that you don't understand economics. Inflation induced by a government printing up money, and using it to pay the government's bills, will
undoubtedly cause inflation regardless of other macroeconomic conditions. In fact, that type of inflationary pressure will
cause other problems like unemployment. We see exactly this in Zimbabwe, where Mugabe printed up currency to pay for government expenditures.
Again, read my post.
These types of economic analyses and predictions are not being put out by the Obama administration.
