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McCain advisor - We would have deficits too

misterman

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The top economic adviser to John McCain's presidential campaign acknowledged on Monday that the U.S. would be running a historic deficit this year even if the Arizona Republican had won the White House.

In an interview on MSNBC, Douglas Holtz-Eakin argued that under McCain's stewardship economic policy would have been strikingly different than under Obama -- with a much smaller stimulus bill and government expenditures going down as opposed to up.

But the former Congressional Budget Office director did acknowledge that, even with these changes, the country "probably would still have a record deficit" as is projected under the Obama administration.

McCain's Top Campaign Adviser: Record Deficits Would Have Happened Under McCain, Too
 

Why stop at blaming Bush, let's say that FDR who ran up much debt fighting a war toom us down a slippery slope.

Doesn't anyone get it that the public rolls their collective eyes with this BS blame game.

Do you remember one of the lines Nixon and his cronies tried to use during Watergate. Everyone plays dirty in politics, we just got caught!

If this is the best we can expect from Obama and his team this will be a long four years.
 
Why stop at blaming Bush, let's say that FDR who ran up much debt fighting a war toom us down a slippery slope.

Doesn't anyone get it that the public rolls their collective eyes with this BS blame game.

Do you remember one of the lines Nixon and his cronies tried to use during Watergate. Everyone plays dirty in politics, we just got caught!

If this is the best we can expect from Obama and his team this will be a long four years.

So you disagree that many of the problems Obama is facing he inherited from bush?
 
Too rarely in our politics today is a small glimmer of reality allowed to peak through. Douglas Holtz-Eakin acknowledged a reality that Republican leaders today have been denying on the Senate floor, on the air waves and to everyone on the street who'll listen.
 
Too rarely in our politics today is a small glimmer of reality allowed to peak through. Douglas Holtz-Eakin acknowledged a reality that Republican leaders today have been denying on the Senate floor, on the air waves and to everyone on the street who'll listen.

I thought it was kind of a gutsy call to say what he said. I mean I know he said that it would not be as bad as it is now if McCain was elected, but he is not trying to paint a rosy color picture that because of President Obama we are reaching record deficits.

It is nice to read something that is not saying because of President Obama is doing this we are in trouble. Instead Holtz-Eakin is saying that it would be bad regardless.
 
So you disagree that many of the problems Obama is facing he inherited from bush?

Actually things were pretty good until 2006 and the dems took over the congress......then it just got worse when Obama got elected...seems like in 2005 we had 5% unemployment and no trillion dollars deficit........

I guess you lefties will still be blaming Bush when Obama is gone....when does he start taking some of the blame along with the dem congress............
 
Actually things were pretty good until 2006 and the dems took over the congress......then it just got worse when Obama got elected...seems like in 2005 we had 5% unemployment and no trillion dollars deficit........

I guess you lefties will still be blaming Bush when Obama is gone....when does he start taking some of the blame along with the dem congress............

That's because things don't always have immediate effects. But to assume that Bush is blameless in this is just silly
 
That's because things don't always have immediate effects. But to assume that Bush is blameless in this is just silly

Nobody said he was but the problem is things are 10 times worse since the dems took over and Obama was elected......

So bad we got a Republican in Teddy's senate seat...........who would have ever thunk it.
 
"By the time I took office, we had a one-year deficit of over $1 trillion and projected deficits of $8 trillion over the next decade," Obama said in his State of the Union speech.

"The Bush administration's swing from surpluses to deficits added more debt in its eight years than all the previous administrations in the history of our republic combined," David Axelrod, a senior strategist for Obama, wrote in The Washington Post.

The theme is clear. According to the Obama Administration deficits as far as the eye can see are the fault of one man: George W. Bush. They relentlessly push this message from the Obama White House. Let's do a little fact checking.

First it is important to understand that an administration only suggests a budget. Under our form of government, Congress is actually in charge of appropriating money. Hence, you have a mad scramble every two years, when committee assignments are passed out with Members of Congress elbowing each other to get a seat on the aptly named "Committee on Appropriations".

So when Obama uses speeches to whine about the "fiscal disaster" he inherited from Bush, he should actually be complaining about the Democratic Congress run by Nancy Pelosi and Harry Reid that appropriated and adopted the budget during the later years of the Bush term.

As the party that controlled Congress since January 2007, it is the Democrats that have held all the cards in the budget debate. They essentially wrote the budgets for FY 2008, FY 2009, as well as FY 2010 and FY 2011. Oh, and if we need to remind him, Barack Obama served in these Democratic majorities, so he cannot feign ignorance of the process.

George W. Bush's Office of Management and Budget (OMB) during those years were constantly in conflict with the appropriators over spending too much money.

In FY 2009, Nancy Pelosi and Harry Reid actually bypassed Bush entirely, passing only continuing resolutions to keep government running until Barack Obama could take office. Then once Obama was safely in office they passed a massive omnibus spending bill to complete the FY 2009 budgets.

So what did the deficits look like during the time period Congress was controlled by the Democrats? In the FY 2007 budget, the last of the budgets written by Republicans the deficit was the lowest in the last five years, and it was the fourth straight decline in deficit spending.

Once Democrats in Congress took control, the budgets and deficits exploded.

The budget just unveiled by Obama's team is so large and so out of control, he should be embarrassed to compare it to any of the Bush budgets.

In a nutshell, the deficit will surge to a record-breaking $1.56 trillion. This tops the last shocking $1.41 trillion in red ink. And as Karl Rove pointed out in the Wall Street Journal, when measured against economic output, Obama looks even worse. "Mr. Bush's deficits ran an average of 3.2 percent of GDP, slightly above the post-World War Two average of 2.7 percent. Mr. Obama's plan calls for deficits that will average 4.2 percent over the next decade," Rove wrote.

The deficit will remain above $1 trillion, even in 2011 when Obama’s so-called "budget freeze" begins. This is because in an Obama freeze spending in a multitude of programs actually goes up.

So the next time you hear the Whiner-in-Chief complain about his predecessor, remember the Congress that appropriated the funds was a Congress in which he served in the majority.

So who inherited what?
 
Nobody said he was but the problem is things are 10 times worse since the dems took over and Obama was elected......

So bad we got a Republican in Teddy's senate seat...........who would have ever thunk it.

The facts speak against you Navy. The economy is performing better than it has in over 6 years.
 
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What is the unemployment rate DD?

So far less than Reagan's high of 10.8% BTW employment is considered a lagging indicator by most economists.
 
So far less than Reagan's high of 10.8% BTW employment is considered a lagging indicator by most economists.

try 17% if you count people who have given up looking, and I will play the Obama card, Reagan's was all Carters fault with his 21% interest rates..............
 
Actually things were pretty good until 2006 and the dems took over the congress......then it just got worse when Obama got elected...seems like in 2005 we had 5% unemployment and no trillion dollars deficit........

I guess you lefties will still be blaming Bush when Obama is gone....when does he start taking some of the blame along with the dem congress............

The bottom line - as is the point of this thread - is that it's silly to blame or credit whoever happens to hold office at the time for the economy's performance. The government doesn't just run the economy. And most of what the government does to affect the economy only shows its effect years later.
 
Actually things were pretty good until 2006 and the dems took over the congress......then it just got worse when Obama got elected...seems like in 2005 we had 5% unemployment and no trillion dollars deficit........

I guess you lefties will still be blaming Bush when Obama is gone....when does he start taking some of the blame along with the dem congress............

Yea things were "pretty good".. just as it is "pretty warm" when you piss in your pants.

The amount of denial here by you Navy and a few others is astounding. Bush DOUBLED the national debt in his 8 years for god sake. He use debt spending policies that were doomed to fail and any economist that is not blinded by partisan right wing politics knows this. You do not freaking increase the debt and deficit during boom years.. that is when you are suppose to bring them down. But hey, live in lala land if you want.

Face it, if McCain was in power, he would have cut taxes no doubt, for the rich, which would not have done a damn for the economy, and the deficit most likely would be as big if not bigger. Those are the realities of deficit spending policies of the GOP... it did not work under Reagan and it did not work under Bush. The fiscal conservative died out before Reagan and out of the ashes the big spending tax cutting push the problem to our children Conservative was born.
 
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Actually things were pretty good until 2006 and the dems took over the congress......then it just got worse when Obama got elected...seems like in 2005 we had 5% unemployment and no trillion dollars deficit........

I guess you lefties will still be blaming Bush when Obama is gone....when does he start taking some of the blame along with the dem congress............
right, there was just a 317 billion dollar deficit. not including what was spent from ss.
 
The bottom line - as is the point of this thread - is that it's silly to blame or credit whoever happens to hold office at the time for the economy's performance. The government doesn't just run the economy. And most of what the government does to affect the economy only shows its effect years later.

THe government raises taxes.......that is huge why the economy is a disaster..
 
Yea things were "pretty good".. just as it is "pretty warm" when you piss in your pants.

The amount of denial here by you Navy and a few others is astounding. Bush DOUBLED the national debt in his 8 years for god sake. He use debt spending policies that were doomed to fail and any economist that is not blinded by partisan right wing politics knows this. You do not freaking increase the debt and deficit during boom years.. that is when you are suppose to bring them down. But hey, live in lala land if you want.

Face it, if McCain was in power, he would have cut taxes no doubt, for the rich, which would not have done a damn for the economy, and the deficit most likely would be as big if not bigger. Those are the realities of deficit spending policies of the GOP... it did not work under Reagan and it did not work under Bush. The fiscal conservative died out before Reagan and out of the ashes the big spending tax cutting push the problem to our children Conservative was born.

And Obama has increased the debt 10 fold more then all the presidents combined in the history of our country and he has done this in 1 shsort year.......
 
So you disagree that many of the problems Obama is facing he inherited from bush?

Do you disagree that many of the issues that Obama is dealing with have either became worse based on the things he's done, or in the end is simply following the Bush model and plan for how to fix them?

(I figure I'll just use what is apparently now The Makeout Hobo's standard method of posting, which is to not actually answer anything or address anything but just ask questions.)

Do you disagree that in part much of the spending under Bush prior to 2006 was for military expenditures that came about because of his stance on the War on Terror which occured due to 9/11 which was in part inherited by extremely flawed policies and decisions of the prior administration?

(lets see just how far we can use the "lets not answer anything and ask questions and blame the one before" to go back in time. Here, you get to now not bother to answer anything and tie it Bush I. I wonder how far back we'll get with the blame game)
 
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