8/04/2010

Lest We Forget

Remember 
> to Vote in November


"Inherited Deficit" ???
The Washington Post babbled again today about Obama inheriting 
a huge deficit from Bush. Amazingly enough,...... a lot of people swallow this 
nonsense. So once more, a short civics lesson.


Budgets do not come from the White House. They come from 
Congress, and the party that controlled Congress since January 2007 is the Democratic Party. They controlled the budget process for FY 2008 and FY 2009, as well as FY 2010 and FY 2011. In that first year, they had to contend with George Bush, 
which caused them to compromise on spending, when Bush somewhat belatedly got 
tough on spending increases.


For FY 2009 though, Nancy Pelosi and Harry Reid bypassed 
George Bush entirely, passing continuing resolutions to keep government running 
until Barack Obama could take office. At that time, they passed a massive omnibus-spending 
bill to complete the FY 2009 budgets.


And where was Barack Obama during this time? He was a member 
of that very Congress that passed all of these massive spending bills, and he 
signed the omnibus bill as President to complete FY 2009. 
If the Democrats inherited any deficit, it was the FY 2007 deficit, the last 
of the Republican budgets. That deficit was the lowest in five years, and the 
fourth straight decline in deficit spending. After that, Democrats in Congress 
took control of spending, and that includes Barack Obama, who voted for the budgets.

If Obama inherited anything, he inherited it from himself.
 In a nutshell, what Obama is saying is, I inherited a deficit 
that I voted for and then I voted to expand that deficit four-fold since January 
 20th.!!! Am I f***ed up or what? TIFN
PS. I didn't write this, it was sent to me, unattributed, in an email!! But here it is anyway.

5 comments:

Sam said...

Yeah I saw the email and many like it, but I'm not sure if putting blame on anybody is the solution here. Bush was a notorious debt spender and Obama continued that trend with a massive government bailout, lest the economy totally collapse into chaos and a run on the US dollar. You're right that the Congress actually passes the budget, but they happen on a President's administration.

I don't have a lot of time for arguments that serve no purpose, but am interested in the solution to the problem! Unfortunately, that means raising taxes - or in this case, letting the Bush tax relief measures expire. Folks hate to say it, but we're flat broke.

The Fed is one of the forms of governments that is allowed to fund itself through debt spending. Many states such as Texas have a constitutional provision that you have to have the cash to pay off any funded program, and all cities and counties in Texas have the same laws prohibiting deficit spending.

Knowing how we got so horribly broke won't help fix the problem when we obviously need more cash and less spending.

Of course, even if Alan Greenspan (a tough Reagan conservative) advocates higher taxes, that is contrary to the GOP's mantra to reduce taxes. I don't see any way in hell that reducing taxes will solve the problem, since we'll have less revenue than ever. That whole "trickle-down economics" was pretty much a farce in practice, even though it sounded good on paper.

But Obama has it wrong too, since he just wants to tax the rich people, like those who make more than 200 or 300K a year, and retain Bush tax relief for the middle class and poor. It's a shame that BOTH the left and the right have gotten the answer wrong on both accounts.

That's politics for ya, two sides bickering over money and neither having a practical solution in the least. I tend to agree with Everett that the Congress needs some serious fresh blood and we need to "throw out the bums."

But I'll take it one step further" we need to outlaw all political parties, Republican and Democratic. There is nothing in the Constitution that says anything about requiring partisan political groups and party seniority and Congressional committees to be loaded up with the members of the prevailing party in power. For example in our town, we outlawed the use of political parties when running for office, as a part of our City Charter. Nice! No more idiots spouting party rhetoric and BS.

-sammie

Everett said...

Hi Sam, Yes I think the two party system should be thrown out and let it be whomever gets the most votes for the office gets it!! Then you might get something RATIONAL passed as laws. You'd have to convince a majority to vote yes on its MERITS not its pork barrel status!

I agree that Bush was a big spender and was screwed up about a lot of other things too. But like the guy said in the missive, the dems could have stopped him in his tracks in 07 IF THEY HAD WANTED TO!

Let s try and get all these new members to congress to commit to term limits also! THAT is one of the biggest problem with that den of thieves and iniquity.

Throw the bastards out! Every stinking one of them but most especially the ones from Mass and RI!

Sam said...

LOL, I have a problem with paying any politician any money. One dollar a year! Two terms max!

The original members of the Congress were only paid a nominal fee, I forget how much but it was pretty much nothing. The concept of being a career politician never entered their minds.

Nowadays it is Big Bidness as we say in Texas. You need many millions to get elected, and you have to churn many millions in office just to stay afloat. If you're not running to save your own neck, your raising millions for fellow party members.

The Founding Fathers would be horrified at how politics turned out to be Big Bidness. Our country was supposed to be founded on noble concepts such as laws and liberties, not grubby cash. It's pretty darn near treasonous! You're supposed to debate the merits of any law, treaty, liberty, or whatnot on its own merits, and not for a quarter million dollars of cash wrapped in aluminum foil in your freezer.

The amount of corruption in our government is truly gross. You have lobbyists, which are second only to prostitutes for the ability to churn easy money. Then you have "party whips" meant to enforce votes and election money - Tom DeLay was a pro at that. And if you think Obama "cleaned house" on the lobbyists, they're making more money than ever! For example, the oil and gas lobby spent 100 million in ONE MONTH to defeat climate change rules. Gee, ugh, anybody could draw the same conclusion for a dollar a year, since none of the climate change proposals were reasonable or even constitutional. As my son says, "like no duh."

Sorry to rant, Ev, but I feel better now. -sam

Old NFO said...

Yeah, this is totally out of control... Term limits will be one of the few things we can do, IF we can even get them passed...

Sam said...

My motion is to take up consideration of repealing the 14th amendment and than talking about a new constitutional amendment to limit terms for federally elected officials in some way.

Not too sure about the first but the second seems like a slam dunk - well maybe.