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. The acknowledgment by Holtz-Eakin is a blow of sorts to the GOP argument that the record-breaking $1.56 trillion projected deficit is solely Obama's responsibility. One hour after Holtz-Eakin's interview, for instance, RNC Chairman Michael Steele sent out a statement, lashing the White House for "growing the deficit by record proportions and killing jobs by raising taxes on small businesses." In actuality -- as most sober-minded economists attest -- many of the deficit problems the current administration faces today are traced directly back to the policies of its predecessors. In December 2009, the Center on Budget and Policy Priorities concluded that the then-$1.4 trillion annual deficit run by the government under Obama had much to do with the Bush administration's package of tax cuts, the wars it launched in Iraq and Afghanistan and its response to the recession. Those findings mirrored a report released a month earlier by the Democratic-leaning Center for American Progress -- which concluded that much of the deficit was owed to the decrease in tax receipts the federal government was receiving as a result of the recession. http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2010/02/01/mccains-top-campaign-advi_n_444458.html
so McCain would have sucked only half as bad. Which is why conservatives stayed home. Comparing Obama and the dems to Bush and McCain is like comparing milli to vanilli.
Stimulating "money flow" by throwing money into worthless ventures is a type of stimulus. But it is like pissing in the wind. Sure ... McCain would have had to do a stimulus. I'm sure it would have been more reserved ... Likely it would have been along party lines ... conservative to have a longer lasting effect of stimulus. Using Keynesian "money flow" can be great as long as the stimulus builds economic strength and has long lasting future return. If it is just tossing money into the system with no foresight ... then it is a dangerous, temporary and dismal fix. This is what we got with the democratic party line efforts of big Government stimulus fix.
This asshole thinks that the Democrat's proposed 3.8T budget is OK, so he undermines his own party by saying that the Republicans would have done the same thing? Anyone with a brain would disown this turncoat asshole.
A forthcoming study by the Center on Budget and Policy Priorities concludes that the $1.4 trillion annual deficit run by the government has little to do with current White House policies and much to do with George W. Bush's actions. "What we have looked at were several major contributors to the deficit: the tax cuts between 2001 and 2003 (on the assumption they get extended in 2010), the cost of the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan and the effects of the recession as well as the legislative response to the recession," James Horney, director of federal fiscal policy at the Center, told the Huffington Post. "When you take those things into account -- in other words, if we hadn't enacted the tax cuts, had the wars, if we hadn't had the recession and needed the legislation to deal with those problems -- the deficits are much, much lower. And basically none of those represent Obama's policies. He didn't run saying he wanted to pass a stimulus to deal with the recession or that he wanted to continue the war in Iraq or escalate [to this extent] in Afghanistan. He inherited these issues once he took office." http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2009/12/10/obama-grappling-with-fall_n_387121.html
not good at all but impossible to instantly reverse at this point. i am not happy at all that obama is spending the same on needless wars as bush did.