Where Did the Debt Come From?

[dalegg 143]

The election is over so you can stop lying now. The deficit was $1.2TN when Obama took office. While it is true that he did not cut deficit in half, he has certainly not doubled let alone tripled it.

I remember when Obama was promising to cut the deficit in half thinking that with all the talk he was giving about that, he couldn't have just meant the deficit that was created mostly by the end of year bail-outs that happened while he was campaigning. And when I found out that in fact he did, I said - well, that's just cheating counting the bailouts, because to cut the deficit in half at that point, he would have simply needed to get to a point that was still worse than Bush's worst full year, and surely he wasn't planning on half-trillion dollar bail-outs every year.

But nonetheless, it turns out that he did mean that, and what is even worse, he didn't manage to even pull that off. So now what is his plan to cut a 1 trillion dollar deficit? Raise about 40 billion dollars in taxes. Excellent. Like I don't think he'll come up with some spending bill that more than covers that anyway.

I am neither here nor there as to whether he raises those taxes either. One part of me wishes the Republicans would just give it to him so that we can say - look, we have given you your budget and we still have a massive deficit, so 8 years later the new Democratic candidate can't still blame Republicans. The other half of me hopes the Republicans don't give in, and Obama finally gets a spine and calls their bluff and lets the fiscal cliff come because that is the only way we are going to have any real deficit reductions anyway. I'll even let him blame the Republicans for forcing his hand.

Edited November 13, 2012 by dalegg

[mawilson 2,133]

One part of me wishes the Republicans would just give it to him so that we can say - look, we have given you your budget and we still have a massive deficit, so 8 years later the new Democratic candidate can't still blame Republicans. The other half of me hopes the Republicans don't give in, and Obama finally gets a spine and calls their bluff and lets the fiscal cliff come because that is the only way we are going to have any real deficit reductions anyway. I'll even let him blame the Republicans for forcing his hand.

I love the fact that you get it. So few people do.