Deficit spending in perspective...

[PisnNapalm]

http://blog.heritage.org/2009/03/24/...t-in-pictures/


Check out the graph. Obama is gonna make Bush and even Reagan look like amateurs at government spending.

[Neo31rex31]

hasn't he already....

[autotech6506]

I can see the republicans slogan in 2012...."We don't want 4 more years of the same old failed policies and ridiculous spending"

Talk about your irony

Hey if it worked for Obama maybe it will work for us too

[eXceLon]

On one hand I want to blame Bush and the Republicans for leaving the country in the fiscal and economic situation that we're in, since that's a large part of the reason for the deficit numbers were seeing. As the article points out, Obama is really just finishing the financial bailout that Bush started. People already seem to forget that the 700 billion bank bailout was proposed and signed by the Bush administration.

On the other hand the Obama Administration really is expanding government spending far beyond just the economic stimulus that they believe to be necessary to get us through the current recession. Some of that may arguably be necessary, but financing it with deficit spending is not the answer. It's like managing a household or business budget, if you want to spend money you need to figure out how to pay for it. That people failed to do that and buried themselves in debt is one of the reasons for our current economic situation.

It also doesn't help that the country is getting older, and demographics shifts threaten to bankrupt programs for the elderly like Social Security and Medicare. Social Security is anticipated to begin spending more than it takes in from taxes around the end of Obama's first term, so just as we might anticipate to be recovering from the current situation we'll get kicked while we're down from entitlement programs.

I can blame Bush and the Republicans for their tax-cut and spend strategy, but the impending crisis from social entitlement programs like Social Security falls squarely on the Democrats. The Republicans might have knocked us to our knees, but it's Democratic spending that will put the bullet in the back of our heads.

I don't even necessarily blame Obama for some of what he is doing, but I really don't think he is taking the threat of long-term deficits seriously enough. A one time stimulus is one thing, but these deficits extended out for a decade are quite another.

[Morel42]

You do realize that Obama is now including War spending in his budgets.. Unlike Bush who passed how many emergency spending bills that weren't included in the yearly OBO figures?

[LBaker]

The current president will have a higher budget deficit than all previous presidents combined. You're getting your "change" all right...

[1861]

It is all Bush's fault !

[PisnNapalm]

You do realize that Obama is now including War spending in his budgets.. Unlike Bush who passed how many emergency spending bills that weren't included in the yearly OBO figures?

Did you read all of the article??

UPDATE: Many Obama defenders in the comments are claiming that the numbers above do not include spending on Iraq and Afghanistan during the Bush years. They most certainly do. While Bush did fund the wars through emergency supplementals (not the regular budget process), that spending did not simply vanish. It is included in the numbers above. Also, some Obama defenders are claiming the graphic above represents biased Heritage Foundation numbers. While we stand behind the numbers we put out 100%, the numbers, and the graphic itself, above are from the Washington Post. We originally left out the link to WaPo. It has been now been added.

[Nomad]

Wow, and I never thought somebody would honestly be able to make the case that Bush was a fiscal conservative. I guess it's all relative.

Something I heard once about out of a frying pan and into a fire...

But hey, we're all socialists now, apparently.

[tntblaster]

Graph is inaccurate... says Bush increased 700B below it.. yet no bar on the graph is even close to 700 ...

They dumped that into the 2009 O Side.