Critics who bash Congress and the Obama administration’s stimulus and jobs programs as the cause of the nation’s high deficits ignore the main sources of the wave of red ink: the Bush-era tax cuts, the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan and the economic downturn.
A new study by the Center on Budget and Policy Priorities shows that “Just two policies dating from the Bush Administration – tax cuts and the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan – accounted for over $500 billion of the deficit in 2009 and will account for almost $7 trillion in deficits in 2009 through 2019 … These impacts easily dwarf the stimulus and financial rescues.”
The Bush tax cuts, where most of the benefits went to the wealthiest Americans, the war in Iraq, which the Bush Administration predicted would be paid for with oil revenues from Iraq, and the war in Afghanistan were adding billions to government spending when the recession began in 2007. As the recession deepened into the Great Recession, the Congressional Budget Office issued a report in January 2009, two weeks before President Obama was sworn in, that the 2009 deficit would be “well over $1 trillion.”
The spending on economic stimulus and job creation programs are a small part of the deficit and decrease over time, while the Bush tax cuts, if extended, will widen the deficit in future years. The Obama Administration has proposed keeping the tax cuts for middle-class families intact while letting the tax cuts for wealthy Americans expire.
Sun. September 19, 2010
Who would want the job Obama has of actually being blamed for the results of the Bush Presidency which are not only currently fouling us up but are projected to increase due to the interest costs of the deficits W left us and the ongoing deficits he built into future years. His \"administration\" got the tax cuts in time to stimulate the economy ahead of his second term. You have to consider that that stimulus helped \\\"boom\\\" the housing industry and assure its collapse just as he left office. Of course he hoped it would happen on Obama\\\'s watch- and of course his policies are the leading cause of our current fiscal problems. Pity the poor schmoos that had less taxes to pay and went out and bought a house they could not afford and now have lost it. Of course \\\"W\\\" had to unilaterally go to war in Iraq (which did not have WMD\\\'s) because he wanted to get Saddam for pappy! Of course funding the war was never given a thought!Sat. July 31, 2010
The excessive spending by both the executive branch and legislative branches of government are the reasons. You cannot spend yourself out of a money shortage. The govenrment needs to tighten it\'s belt and stop throwing money around like it\'s candy.Tue. July 27, 2010
It\'s interesting to note that one of the so called conservatives\' favorite son, Dick Cheney, said, when chided for the tax cuts and the looming deficits, during the Bush Administration, \"Reagan proved that deficits don\'t count.\" Now those conservatives who approved the legislation that caused the deficit, seem to believe the contrary. It\'s obvious to anyone with intelligence, that hypocrisy reigns supreme within the Republican party.