Karl
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In my earlier post I was clearly willing to assign that $400B to Obama, so you have resorted to a strawman. Again, a failure in a debate setting.[...]Just a heads up but government appropriations are distinctly NOT the real world. As soon as the appropriations are done it goes into that year. The actual spending may occur later but if its not a budgetary line item it goes into the budget year its appropriated---IE 2009.
Saying its a given fiscal year and all responsibility goes to the previous year's President would be the case in normal circumstances. However, thats not quite how it played out. Are you willing to say Obama bears no responsibility for a budget he signed? A budget that increased the FY spending by $400B before the stimulus?
Given that you want to assign only about $400B of the FY2008 shortfall to Bush and/or Bush policies, while given that we know that at least the wars were being run off budget (which would increase the $400B by a significant amount), let's try a different approach -- one not susceptible to opinions, interpretations, or budgetary smoke-and-mirrors, although we will have to abandon the FY approach:
On 1/22/2008, the total public debt, as it is currently defined, was $9.2 trillion
On 1/20/2009, when Obama took office, the total public debt was 10.6 trillion ( Government - Debt to the Penny (Daily History Search Application) )
Clearly, during Bush's last year in office the effective annual deficit was $1.4 trillion. No smoke. No mirrors.