Speakeasy forum: Second time in history

aloud and choked on the part where it says the US has to pay for the legislation it has already enacted, and not recently enacted, It has to suck it up and pay the Pensioners their Social Security, and Medicare, and all those other programs that people with exceptionally fortunate circumstances and a tidy nest egg or a good healthy income love to hate.

I assume you remember this same bun fight between Newt Gingrich and President Bill Clinton? Why is it always Republicans against a Democratic President. It's not like the Democrats dug the hole that the US is in right now, it was those fiscally responsible Republicans who put Two Wars on the Credit Card and tanked the Banking/Investment system. And significantly expanded the cost of the Defense Budget from Reagan afterwards.

Rob

He will have doubled our national debt. Even liberal news sources are starting to sound worried, and more important, pointing directly at Obama.

March 2012 "(CBS News) The National Debt has now increased more during President
Obama's three years and two months in office than it did during 8 years
of the George W. Bush presidency. The Debt rose $4.899
trillion during the two terms of the Bush presidency. It has now gone
up $4.939 trillion since President Obama took office."
====================

"According
to Obama, raising the debt ceiling was a sign of leadership failure
("The fact that we are here today to debate raising America's debt limit
is a sign of leadership failure"), and a clear indication that the U.S.
was simply incapable of paying what it already owes ("It is a sign that
the U.S. government can't pay its own bills") — a fact that made us
vulnerable to foreign pressures ("It is a sign that we now depend on
ongoing financial assistance from foreign countries to finance our
government's reckless fiscal policies").
The problem, according to Obama, was that there was no end to the
federal borrowing in sight, a pathology that had blinded us to what a
trillion dollars really was: ("Over the past five years, our federal
debt has increased by $3.5 trillion to $8.6 trillion. That is 'trillion'
with a 'T.'")

"Our debt also matters internationally. My friend, the ranking member of
the Senate Budget Committee, likes to remind us that it took 42
presidents 224 years to run up only $1 trillion of foreign-held debt.
This administration did more than that in just five years. Now, there is
nothing wrong with borrowing from foreign countries. But we must
remember that the more we depend on foreign nations to lend us money,
the more our economic security is tied to the whims of foreign leaders
whose interests might not be aligned with ours." "

Oh wait, that's Obama talking about Bush. Shouldn't we apply the same "failure" rule to his administration now? Or maybe a massive "failure" rule?

"Not surprisingly, President Obama is
blaming the Bush administration for the debt racked up under his own
presidency. Recently, on 60 Minutes, the president was asked to
respond to critics who point out that the debt has gone up $5.2
trillion since he took office. In response, Obama claimed:
"Over the last four years, the deficit has
gone up, but 90 percent of that is as a consequence of two wars that
weren't paid for, as a consequence of tax cuts that weren't paid for, a
prescription drug plan that was not paid for, and then the worst
economic crisis since the Great Depression. Now we took some emergency
actions, but that accounts for about 10 percent of this increase in the
deficit, and we have actually seen the federal government grow at a
slower pace than at any time since Dwight Eisenhower, in fact,
substantially lower than the federal government grew under either Ronald
Reagan or George Bush."
Fact checkers from the Washington Post, Factcheck.org, and Politifact.com all agreed these claims are simply false. In his claim, Obama had the 10% part right. However, that 10% was more
properly attributed to his predecessor's role in creating the deficits
from 2009-2012. The remainder is attributable to Obama's policies
(~40%), the recession (~40%), and other (~10%)."
http://abcnews.go.com/Business/national-debt/story?id=17159803

.....the fact that Bush did put "two wars on the credit card" and that he had six years of Republican control of both Houses during which he could have reversed any of those Clinton-era policies he felt were putting the economy in danger.

It basically doubled. You continue to either try to ignore that or blame it on his predecessor.

If the wars only cost 800B, where was the 4.2T spent?

Diana

not to mention the massive reconstruction and rebuilding that was being done in Iraq and Afghanistan.
Life insurance on military personnel was also hugely upgraded and vet benefits were increased That's a bad thing?
I am with you on TARP. There should never have been a blank check and allowing the big wigs to get their big bonuses on our dime. But like the Bay of Pigs, the new President was just continuing something that started in the previous administration. Obama did demand certain things from the car manufacturers.
Diana

of seniors and as far as social security goes, we did without the COLA for two years under BO, and didn't even mind.....we re-adjusted, and could easily do without that extra $25 or so per month again IF we could be guaranteed that he would use it (or any other President after him) to reduce the National Debt and not find something else to freaking spend it on.

A big chunk of it was spent on those two wars, which Bush kept out of the budget and kept requesting "emergency funding" for, which is how he was able to come up with those nonsensical numbers you keep repeating.

.....the total outlay for TARP was $475 billion, of which $358.2 billion had been returned at the time of writing. Add revenue on those funds of $47.6 billion and that leaves a net cost of $69.2 billion. That's actually less than I thought it was and yes, it's a drop in the bucket of the $5 trillion deficit increase the Bush administration ran up.

.....that you're tacitly acknowledging that TARP did not in fact make up most of Bush's debt increase, and that there was other spending under his presidency, that he approved of, that caused it.

Good.

Both of those combined are a drop in the bucket, yet you focused on them as opposed to the real causes of that huge increase in debt. Why?