{"id":9290,"date":"2011-04-15T10:16:19","date_gmt":"2011-04-15T14:16:19","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/cfif.org\/v\/freedom_line_blog\/?p=9290"},"modified":"2011-04-15T11:34:50","modified_gmt":"2011-04-15T15:34:50","slug":"the-bush-administration-didnt-create-your-record-deficits-mr-obama","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/cfif.org\/v\/freedom_line_blog\/9290\/the-bush-administration-didnt-create-your-record-deficits-mr-obama\/","title":{"rendered":"The Bush Administration Didn’t Create Your Record Deficits, Mr. Obama"},"content":{"rendered":"

Observers like Charles Krauthammer<\/a> are correct:\u00a0 Barack Obama’s partisan budget attack<\/a> this week was a “disgrace.”\u00a0 Almost every sentence was tawdry, caustic or simply dishonest.<\/p>\n

One suggestion early in Obama’s speech stood out because it is so easily refuted by simple numbers.\u00a0 Namely, his latest attempt to scapegoat the Bush Administration and portray his own record deficits as somehow attributable to it:<\/p>\n

We increased spending dramatically for two wars and an expensive prescription drug program -\u2013 but we didn\u2019t pay for any of this new spending.\u00a0 Instead, we made the problem worse with trillions of dollars in unpaid-for tax cuts -\u2013 tax cuts that went to every millionaire and billionaire in the country; tax cuts that will force us to borrow an average of $500 billion every year over the next decade.\u00a0 To give you an idea of how much damage this caused to our nation\u2019s checkbook, consider this:\u00a0 In the last decade, if we had simply found a way to pay for the tax cuts and the prescription drug benefit, our deficit would currently be at low historical levels in the coming years.”<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

But take a look at the actual historical deficit data<\/a>, with particular attention to 2007, which was the last year under a Republican Congress and White House.\u00a0 That year’s deficit came in at $161 billion, which is one-tenth<\/em> the size of Obama’s projected record $1.65 trillion 2011 deficit.\u00a0 That 2007 deficit was also down from $378 billion in 2003, when the tax cuts, Iraq invasion and drug benefit occurred.\u00a0 In his usual straw-man manner of argumentation, Obama mocked those who claim we can reduce our debt by eliminating “waste, fraud and abuse,” but what better way to characterize his latest un-presidential harangue?<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Observers like Charles Krauthammer are correct:\u00a0 Barack Obama’s partisan budget attack this week was a “disgrace.”\u00a0 Almost every sentence was tawdry, caustic or simply dishonest. One suggestion early in Obama’s speech stood out because it is so easily refuted by simple numbers.\u00a0 Namely, his latest attempt to scapegoat the Bush Administration and portray his own […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":4,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[70,84,81,59,562,19,102,12,14,61,179,71,44],"class_list":["post-9290","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-posts","tag-budget","tag-congress","tag-debt","tag-deficit","tag-economics","tag-economy","tag-free-market","tag-health-care","tag-president-obama","tag-spending","tag-stimulus","tag-taxes","tag-white-house"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/cfif.org\/v\/freedom_line_blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/9290","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/cfif.org\/v\/freedom_line_blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/cfif.org\/v\/freedom_line_blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/cfif.org\/v\/freedom_line_blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/4"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/cfif.org\/v\/freedom_line_blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=9290"}],"version-history":[{"count":5,"href":"https:\/\/cfif.org\/v\/freedom_line_blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/9290\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":9294,"href":"https:\/\/cfif.org\/v\/freedom_line_blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/9290\/revisions\/9294"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/cfif.org\/v\/freedom_line_blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=9290"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/cfif.org\/v\/freedom_line_blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=9290"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/cfif.org\/v\/freedom_line_blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=9290"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}