…and then try to blame Democrats for it.
This is simply fantastic analysis from David Leonhardt from the NYT tracing how the US got to trillion dollar deficits, that you should all bookmark and refer to when the usual suspects show up to pretend that the sky just started falling on Jan 20, 2009. Especially now that the GOP will be repeating the lie that Obama is responsible for all of it are pushing the Read the whole thing, but here is the gist:
The story of today’s deficits starts in January 2001, as President was leaving office. The Congressional Budget Office estimated then that the government would run an average annual surplus of more than $800 billion a year from 2009 to 2012. Today, the government is expected to run a $1.2 trillion annual deficit in those years.
You can think of that roughly $2 trillion swing as coming from four broad categories: the business cycle, President George W. Bush’s policies, policies from the Bush years that are scheduled to expire but that Mr. Obama has chosen to extend, and new policies proposed by Mr. Obama.
The first category — the business cycle — accounts for 37 percent of the $2 trillion swing. It’s a reflection of the fact that both the 2001 recession and the current one reduced tax revenue, required more spending on safety-net programs and changed economists’ assumptions about how much in taxes the government would collect in future years.
About 33 percent of the swing stems from new legislation signed by Mr. Bush. That legislation, like his tax cuts and the Medicare prescription drug benefit, not only continue to cost the government but have also increased interest payments on the national debt.
Mr. Obama’s main contribution to the deficit is his extension of several Bush policies, like the Iraq war and tax cuts for households making less than $250,000. Such policies — together with the Wall Street bailout, which was signed by Mr. Bush and supported by Mr. Obama — account for 20 percent of the swing.
About 7 percent comes from the stimulus bill that Mr. Obama signed in February. And only 3 percent comes from Mr. Obama’s agenda on health care, education, energy and other areas.[…]
I don’t think that the less than 250K tax cuts were and extension of Bush’s policies, since he was unconcerned about taxes for this group. Nonetheless, the whole piece is worth a read, including good discussion on the inaction in fixing the deficit. It will need to be fixed, but as you can see from the chart after the jump, that the wingnuts screaming that the sky is falling are basically screaming for Obama to fix what is mostly their mess. And the apocalyptic rhetoric about how we all die if the deficit isn’t solved? Ask yourself where these people were when GWB decided to borrow money to give tax cuts. Be sure to scroll all the way down the chart — the last two arrows would be the bit that Obama is responsible for.
