Obama admin predicts 10-year federal deficit of $9 trillion

shit happens, wars aint cheap nor are bailouts which are bs and he is responsible for a bit of them but so was last president who put the massive bank ones into action as well as the automakers bailouts. which was mismanaged in some wicked wrong ways. sort of like a final paycheck to assorted friends. but yes obama get flack too. i do not swallow koolaid.

It all started with Reagan. I cannot believe that so many people think that man was a hero. He made it OK for every President after him to spend recklessly.

Every budget Reagan submitted to congress was balanced but the Democrat Congress created the deficits.

From 1981 -1987 the republicans controlled the Senate. The democrats did retake control in 1988 by a 10 seat margin.

So the Republicans controlled the White house and the Senate yet let the democrats in the house run the show for six years? Somehow I don't think that is very accurate. Why didn't they rail them in? Reagan is known for tripling the national debt during his presidency and much of that spending was done on the military and defense. I would love to see some kind of proof that all of his deficit spending was done to appease a slight democratic majority in the house.

God bless America

While it is the liberal NY Times there is some nice info here.
http://www.nytimes.com/2009/04/26/opinion/26cannon.html

Here are some highlights:

"Mr. Reagan?s substantial public backing enabled him to persuade a Democratic-controlled House to pass his tax and budget bills."

and this one

"Unfortunately, Mr. Obama also shares with Mr. Reagan a tendency to indulge in best-case economic scenarios. Mr. Reagan never submitted a balanced budget to Congress. Spending as a share of gross domestic product increased to a high of 24.4 percent during the Reagan years, and the national debt quickly hit $3 trillion."

So maybe he didn't submit balanced budgets after all.

......

It all started in 1913 and picked up steam in the 1930s.

I hope everyone is buying gold.

Reagan cut the marginal tax rate on the wealthiest of Americans from 70% to 38%. He promised it would spur an orgy of investment and rocket the economy to new levels of production and prosperity. Instead, his ?supply side economics? did the exact opposite. It produced the deepest recession since the Great Depression.

Output fell 2.2% in 1982 while budget deficits soared. When Reagan took office in 1981, the national debt stood at $995 billion. Twelve years later, by the end of George H.W. Bush?s presidency, it had exploded to $4 trillion. Reagan was a ?B? grade movie actor and a doddering, probably clinically senile president, but he was a sheer genius at rewarding his friends by saddling other people with debts.

Bill Clinton reversed Reagan?s course, raising taxes on the wealthy, and lowering them for the working and middle classes. This produced the longest sustained economic expansion in American history. Importantly, it also produced budgetary surpluses allowing the government to begin paying down the crippling debt begun under Reagan. In 2000, Clinton?s last year, the surplus amounted to $236 billion. The forecast ten year surplus stood at $5.6 trillion. It was the last black ink America would see for decades, perhaps forever.

George W. Bush immediately reversed Clinton?s policy in order to revive Reagan?s, once again showering an embarrassment of riches on the already most embarrassingly rich, his ?base? as he calls them. He ladled out some $630 billion in tax cuts to the top 1% of income earners. In true Republican fashion, they returned the favor by investing over $200 million to ensure Bush?s re-election. Do the math. A $630 billion return on a $200 million investment: $3,160 for $1. I?ll give you $3,160. All I ask is that you give me $1 back so I can keep the goodness flowing. Do we have a deal? Republicans know return on investment.

But the cost to the public has been a return to the exploding deficits of the Reagan years. Bush blew through Clinton?s surplus in his first year. The 2004 deficit reached $415 billion, a record. Still, its real size is masked by the fact that Bush has shifted $150 billion from the Social Security trust fund in order to make the shortfall look smaller. It?s like pretending you?re richer when you move money from one pocket to another. Both sums have to be repaid, so the real amount borrowed is the $415 billion ?nominal? deficit plus the $150 billion from Social Security or $565 billion.

According to the CBO, in 2004, Bush's 10 year deficit projection was $4.5 Trillion.... IN 2004. Read that again... In 2004 the CBO said that Bush's 10 year deficit was $4.5 Trillion... and that was with accounting tricks that the Bush admin utilized.

The Obama budget projected a 2009 deficit of $1.75 trillion. But that number would have been much lower had the White House used the same accounting tricks and conventions used by the Bush administration.

1. The $1.75 trillion deficit included $250 billion for additional assistance for financial institutions that the White says it's not requesting in the budget but may need later in the year. The Bush budget would have excluded this from the budget and simply added it later if and when the funds were needed. Excluding it from the Obama budget as Bush would have done would have reduced the apparent deficit to $1.5 trillion.
2. The Obama budget included $75.5 billion for additional funds for activities in Iraq and Afghanistan. This would also have been excluded from the Bush budget. Doing that here would have reduced the apparent deficit to about $1.4 trillion.
3. The Obama budget included about $70 billion in lower revenue from the one-year patch for the Alternative Minimumn Tax that was included in the stimulus bill. The Bush budget typically assumed that the AMT would not be patched even though everyone knew it would be. The Bush accounting treatment would have reduced the deficit to about $1.35 trillion.*
4. The Obama budget included about $20 billion for natural disasters; the Bush budgets always assumed that there would be no floods, earthquakes, droughts, hurricanes, tornadoes, etc. Using the Bush budget rules, this would have reduced the 2009 deficit to $1.33 trillion.
5. Finally, the Bush budgets always assumed that the physician reimbursement provisions in Medicare would go into effect as planned even though, just like the AMT patch, it was virtually guaranteed to be scaled back. This would have reduced the deficit to about $1.3 trillion.

The bottom line is that money needed to be spent to continue the economic recovery effort... ON TOP of the fact that Obama had 2 wars to pay for as soon as he entered office... Say what you will, we are starting to see the sprouts of positive economic indicators and will continue to do so. Once Obama and Congress get rid of the Bush tax cuts for the wealthy, we will be back on track to pay down the debt... just like under Clinton... Clinton had to do the exact same thing... The reason is that Democrats believe in demand side economics rather than supply side economics (The Republican theory that has NEVER worked). "Trickle Down" economics is a proven failure that exploded our deficits and debt... and that is the pure fact of the matter. Blaming it on Obama, who hasn't even been in office a year yet, is just retarded. The economic forecast was dire years before he even decided to run for president (as I detailed above).

I can't believe we printed all that money

Meh...I'll agree that Clinton probably did have some policies that helped, but his presidency also coincided with the boom of the internet. In fact, arguably why the US is losing economic power in relation to some countries now like China and India is because they're catching up on the internet. Late 90s and then the dot com burst was the online equivalent to the 20s going into the 30s/the depression...of all the shit Bush didn't do right, I wouldn't have blamed early economy woes on him...he had the dot com burst + 9/11 early in his presidency. War on Iraq, our shitty economy later in his tenure etc. however...god what a fucking pooch screw he turned out to be. I wonder how much Dick Cheney personally profited from being his puppet master for 8 years and getting Haliburton all those contracts.

What I'm primarily surprised about now with this 9 trillion in 10 years projection is that it was hard to imagine the economy getting any worse than it was under Bush, and yes it was arguably going to get worse before getting better, but now the White House is basically saying it will not improve much throughout the entire tenure of this administration and then some? I realize deficit does not equal the state of the economy, but that's a pretty bleak outlook from an admin of a man that claimed to be able to fix all this. You wonder how much of that $9 trillion will actually be spent on helping citizens directly that need the help vs. helping businesses and industries that screwed themselves like the banks. Universal healthcare is nice, but is it absolutely imperative to get it done right this minute when it'll add more fuel to the blazing deficit fire and further fuck the dollar? IMO Obama focusing on it now is like Bush shifting focus to Iraq after 9/11 and failing to find/kill Osama...just makes no sense to me. Meanwhile more and more people will lose their homes and get buried under their mortgages and debt and it just seems like Obama's not going to do shit about it.

I love how people think. Here we have Nation saying that "Bush blew through Clintons surplus in his first year". Maybe he was fixing Clintons fuck ups? Were we not going into a recession?

But we can not blame Obama for anything because he hasnt been in a year.

Im not saying Reagan was right or that Bush was right. But at least use logic in your arguments.


It is not only Reagans theory that has failed it is Keynesian eco that has failed.

Here is a fun website

http://www.usdebtclock.org/

My main point was that the deficit is not entirely Obama's fault and that Bush has ALOT to do with it... and so did the Republican Congress by passing an unfunded mandate in the form of the Medicare Prescription Drug program. Here is a study that shows exactly how we ended up where we are right now. That said... if you read the CBO Directors Blog, things are not entirely gloomy.

AMG someone that really knows the history of taxation and spending ;)

+1 for you sir

I like pie

liberal rag.

Reagan tried to force congress to spend less by cutting taxes. He cut taxes because it was the right thing to do. However, it didn't stop the congress from spending.

Bingo. Congress is largely to blame.

Note to right wing wackaddos saying Congress caused the problems... none of that spending gets done until the President signs the bill... duh...

David Stockman would disagree with you.

I blame all republicans.

Well, my post was in reply to a previous post that claimed every budget Reagan sent to congress was balancaed and it was their spending that sent it into deficit spending. That clearly isn't the case.

blasphemer! stone him!

Again, the republicans held the white house and the senate and there was only a small democratic majority in the house during Reagan's first 6 years in office. So that small majority ran things? A group that controlled one of the three major groups responsible for the budget are the only ones to blame? I think you are out of touch with reality. I'm not saying they don't share some blame, I'm sure they do, but to say they are largely to blame is pretty crazy.

nation x.....excellent points. Very articulate and precise. It amazes me that people don't see how bad we have been misled by certain administrations. Don't get me wrong, both sides of the aisle have a lot of blame for where we are at. The fact of the matter is that Republicans look at Regan as a God when almost all of his economic decisions were failures. Same with Bush. Where was the fiscal responsibility Bush ran on? Now everyone wants to judge Obama after just one year and a complete clusterfuck of a mess he walked into.

Agreed, Regan was the first president in this country's history to ever double the national debit during peace time. Since then, each Republican President has followed suit in doing the same. Bush Sr set new records doing it in just under 4 years while Clinton was the only recent president since Regan to not double the debit.

Still though I'm not happy about the 9 bil thing.. its gonna be hell on this country if that's accurate..However this has been building up for years now and it appears that it's time to pay the piper for all the reckless spending the last 20 years.

The president signs the budget and therefore is responsible for it. If you remember when Clinton was in office, he wouldn't sign what the Republican congress gave him until it was how he wanted it. Do you not remember the govt shut down during the battle with Clinton vs Republican congress?

Reagan could have done the same, "if" what you claim is true.. Instead he signed off on budgets that doubled our national debit.

Wait till oil's move to $100+ triggers hyperinflation.... The Jimmy Carter era wasn't all that bad. Sure, we had stagflation but we also had the birth of punk rock (arguably--some would say it began with the garage bands of the 60s), feathered back hairstyle for men, the AMC Gremlin was a hoot, platform shoes for men, DISCO (gotta love it)...... the list goes on.

Oil was just about $130 per barrel not too long ago. Then it dropped back down. We can survive it as long as it doesn't last for years. A recession with very high gas prices would suck bad

Think that through:

High oil spikes right now = cost of local goods go up + cost of imports go up = Everything gets more expensive = hyperinflation = people consume even less = deeper ressession = more jobs lost = banks really not lending now = farmers can't farm = food shortages = people consuming even less = possible population panic over food shortages and high gas prices, and so on.

I've said it before, this mess hasn't even started yet. Oil is going to skyrocket, so is gold. The dollar is going to crash, as is the market, and we will go into a depression that will be unlike anything anyone could predict.

Life as we know very well be changing very soon. It has happened to many great nations in the past, and the USA is not exempt to such a collapse. Look back in history, it happens. I've stocked up on enough dehydrated food and water to last for one year, and I have enough weapons and ammo to protect my family. I also have a LOT of gold and silver in my floor safe that I can use if the USD crashes. I'm prepared.

It's coming. Are you ready?

Well, Actually that is basically what I said. I said we had high oil costs for a short time not too long ago and survived. We could survive it again as long as it didn't last very long. If it did last a while then we would see a long term spike in the cost of many things not just gas. As you say, food, energy and so on. This could be very bad for us if it happens for any prolonged amount of time.

You say you are prepared, but are you? You really have a years worth of food and water stored in your house? Are you sure about this? Do you understand exactly how much food and water that is? Say you have three people in your family. You would go through at least 1 gallon of water per day, but when you add in cooking it could easily be more like 2+ gallons per day. So you have somewhere between 365 -730 gallons of water (more if you have more in your family or just use more)? Plus enough food for three meals a day for as many people as you have? Do you have a bunker where this is stored? Are you prepared to hold off your starving neighbors who no doubt are also armed?

In the end will it really matter? If things get as bad as you say they will it will be worse than the previous great depression which basically lasted about 10 years. So after a year your food and water will run out and you will be right there with the rest of the country. I'm not saying not to prepare yourself for the worst and if there is a wave of violence and unrest you could bunker up and let that subside, but in the end the only real way to prepare for something like this is to have a ton of money. Enough money that you can survive without having any sort of income for several years. Maybe you have that, maybe not. What I know for sure is that I have been hearing doomsday scenerios like this ever since I was a kid and it hasn't happened yet. Maybe someday it will. Maybe not. We really can't know for sure.

Tripled it.

the mere thought of hyper inflation scares me to death.

Nothing got done unless Tip O'Neill said so !

Just so I have this correct. You are saying that Tip O'Neill was more powerful and influential than the republican controlled senate and president of the united states?