Obama's trillions dwarf Bush's 'dangerous' spending

Obama's trillions dwarf Bush's 'dangerous' spending
By Byron York
Chief political correspondent 2/24/09

Pelosi and Reid called Bush's budgets "dangerous" and "unpatriotic," but with Obama, they've changed their tune.

Back in 2006, when Democrats were hoping to win control of the House and Senate, party leaders worked themselves into a righteous outrage over the issue of out-of-control federal spending. Rep. Nancy Pelosi, D-Calif., called the Republican budget “irresponsible” and “unpatriotic” because it increased the amount of U.S. debt held by foreign countries. Sen. Harry Reid, D-Nev., accused Republicans of going on “an unprecedented and dangerous borrowing spree” and declared GOP leadership “the most fiscally irresponsible in the history of our country … no other president or Congress even comes close.”

President Barack Obama, accompanied by Vice President Joe Biden, are seen in the State Dining Room of the White House in Washington, Monday, Feb. 23, 2009, before they addressed the National Governors Association regarding the economic stimulus package. (AP Photo/Charles Dharapak)
You won’t find too many defenders of George W. Bush’s record on spending these days, even among Republicans. But a check of historical tables compiled by the Office of Management and Budget shows that the spending that so distressed Pelosi and Reid seems downright modest today. After beginning with a Clinton-era surplus of $128 billion in fiscal year 2001, the Bush administration racked up deficits of $158 billion in 2002, $378 billion in 2003, $413 billion in 2004, $318 billion in 2005, $248 billion in 2006, $162 billion in 2007, and $410 billion in 2008.

The current administration would kill to have such small numbers. President Barack Obama is unveiling his budget this week, and, in addition to the inherited Bush deficit, he’s adding his own spending at an astonishing pace, projecting annual deficits well beyond $1 trillion in the near future, and, in the rosiest possible scenario, a $533 billion deficit in fiscal year 2013, the last year of Obama’s first term.

And what about the national debt? It increased from $5 trillion to $10 trillion in the Bush years, leading to dramatically higher interest costs. “We pay in interest four times more than we spend on education and four times what it will cost to cover 10 million children with health insurance for five years,” Pelosi said in 2007. “That’s fiscal irresponsibility.”

Now, under Obama, the national debt — and the interest payments — will increase at a far faster rate than during the Bush years.

“We thought the Bush deficits were big at the time,” Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell, told me this week as he prepared to attend Obama’s Fiscal Responsibility Summit. “But this is going to make the previous administration look like rank amateurs. We could be adding multiple trillions to the national debt in the first year.”

At some point last week, the sheer velocity of Obama’s spending proposals began to overwhelm even experienced Washington hands. In the span of four days, we saw the signing of the $787 billion stimulus bill, the rollout of a $275 billion housing proposal, discussion of Congress’s remaining appropriations bills (about $400 billion) and word of a vaguely-defined financial stabilization plan that could ultimately cost $2 trillion. When representatives of GM and Chrysler said they might need $21 billion more to survive, it seemed like small beer.

The numbers are so dizzying that McConnell and his fellow Republicans are trying to “connect the dots” — that is, to explain to the public how all of those discrete spending initiatives add up to a previously unthinkable total. Obama’s current spending proposals, Republicans point out, will cost more than the United States spent on the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, the general war on terror and Hurricane Katrina in the last seven years. And that’s before you throw in the $2 trillion fiscal stabilization plan.

“This is big government, man,” McConnell exclaimed, his matter-of-fact manner giving way to sheer amazement. “It makes previous attempts at big government pale in comparison — they’re going to go beyond the New Deal and the Great Society by far.”

The new spending guarantees that the problems that so disturbed Pelosi and Reid just a couple of years ago — high interest payments and an increasing number of foreign debt-holders — will get worse. Yet so far, the Democratic leaders have refrained from using words like unpatriotic, irresponsible and dangerous to describe Obama’s budget.

Of course, they would never use such phrases to attack their own team. But the most important thing to understand about Pelosi and Reid is that while their rhetoric has changed, their substance hasn’t. Back in the Bush days, when they were denouncing Republican over-spending, they were also pushing the congressional leadership to spend more, not less, on just about everything. Now, returned to power, they’re doing the same thing. Only bigger.

 

Big numbers to be sure. Maybe good, maybe not so good. Probably not so good. But let's not compare apples to oranges. Bush didn't have his own "legacy" to contend with. His exit, while not all that clean, was fairly well timed -- like when someone just barely jumps out of a collapsing building on TV.

 

Oh so when Bush was spending it was definitely a problem. Now that Hussein is spending even more it might or might not be a problem.

How is too much spending and TOO MUCH spending comparing apples to oranges?

And how is it that a two term president whose been blamed for literally everything from blowing up the WTC to tsunami's doesn't have a legacy?

 

If Obama mooned everyone at his presidential address thunderdog would defend it.

ZZZzzzz jr. may be able to reason but certainly never shows it and so therefore shouldn't even be addressed seriously.

 

Are you context-challenged? Bush does have a "legacy," such as it is. He was just lucky that someone else now has to contend with it, rather than he himself. What I essentially said is he left a pile for the next guy. Read my earlier post again, for the first time. Slowly.

 

Meanwhile, Bush did moon the entire nation, figuratively speaking, and you defended him heroically.

 

You specifically said he had no legacy.
If it was meant to be taken in some mysterious context, maybe you should have been more specific.

And your response to this, or did you just forget?


How is too much spending and TOO MUCH spending comparing apples to oranges?

 

Let's face it.
The Republican Party is in shambles, and America is on the verge of a Depression - - - quite possibly facing a permanent decrease in its standard of living.

Republican's can't criticize Obama's tax increase > $250,000 because they look like the Party of the "rich", so they go after the Keynesian Federal spending that now has to occur because of the legacy of failed Republican policy over the past 8 years.

That "cartoon" character, Bobby Jindal of Louisiana was a total hypocrite last night after Obama's speech. And if this is the BEST speaker that the Republican Party can find, then they are in HUGE trouble.

Jindal decries Government spending and essentially claimed that the Stimulus Package was "corrupt" and that "transparency" needs to come to Washington:

"We believe the way to strengthen our country is to restrain spending in Washington, and empower individuals and small businesses to grow our economy and create jobs."

That didn't keep him from accepting Hurricane Katrina funds, now did it? It didn't keep his Party from supporting "no-bid" contracts over in Iraq, now did it? It didn't cause his Party to make sure that the funding of the Iraq War was in the actual budget, now did it?

But leave it to the Republican Party in Congress that had a MAJORITY the last 6 of 8 years to Spend, Spend, Spend, with nary a VETO by George Bush. Jindal even admitted as much:

"In recent years, these distinctions in philosophy became less clear - because our party got away from its principles. You elected Republicans to champion limited government, fiscal discipline, and personal responsibility. Instead, Republicans went along with earmarks and big government spending in Washington. Republicans lost your trust - and rightly so."

Now that our Country is on the verge of a Depression from 8 years of de-regulation "Phil Gramm" style and a President that spent 25% of his two-terms in office on "vacation" at the Crawford Ranch, the Jindal's of the world want Government to sit back and do absolutely nothing.

Wow, sounds like a great recipe for a Nation of "quitters".

We aren't quitters.




P.S. I was a registered Republican for 28 years until last year.

 

No argument from me on those comments.

I just don't see how even more mega spending of money we don't have is an improvement. Let alone "change".

And then there are all the corrupted carer politicians being appointed by the new POTUS, many of them tax cheats. Did someone say "change"?.

I understand and was not overly surprised by the election results.

What I do find annoying though is Obama's supporters making excuses and rationalizations to explain away his more of the same fuck ups, just because their on Obama's "team".

Why can't you guys just call a spade a spade? (no pun or offense intended)

And I only continue to vote Republican because I can't stand liberals, even if the line differentiating them has blurred.