 Pres. Obama |
It’s not my fault!
“That wasn’t me,” President Barack Obama said on his 100th day in office, disclaiming responsibility for the huge budget deficit waiting for him on Day One.
It actually was partly him _ and the other Democrats controlling Congress the previous two years _ who shaped the latest in a string of precipitously out-of-balance budgets.
And as a presidential candidate and president-elect, he backed the twilight Bush-era stimulus plan that made the deficit deeper, all before he took over and promoted spending plans that have made it much deeper still.
A look at some of his claims Wednesday:
OBAMA: “We began by passing a Recovery Act that has already saved or created over 150,000 jobs.” _ from news conference.
THE FACTS: This assertion is flawed on several levels. For starters, the U.S. has lost more than 1.2 million jobs since Obama took office, according to the Bureau of Labor Statistics. Even if Obama’s stimulus bill saved or created as many jobs as he says, that number is dwarfed by the number of recent job losses.
OBAMA: “Number one, we inherited a $1.3 trillion deficit. … That wasn’t me. Number two, there is almost uniform consensus among economists that in the middle of the biggest crisis, financial crisis, since the Great Depression, we had to take extraordinary steps. So you’ve got a lot of Republican economists who agree that we had to do a stimulus package and we had to do something about the banks. Those are one-time charges, and they’re big, and they’ll make our deficits go up over the next two years.” — in Missouri.
THE FACTS: Congress, under Democratic control in 2007 and 2008, controlled the purse strings that led to the deficit Obama inherited. A Republican president, George W. Bush, had a role, too: He signed the legislation.
Obama supported the emergency bailout package in Bush’s final months — a package Democratic leaders wanted to make bigger.
#31, you are correct, the “Ownership Society” was always largely trumpeted by George W. Bush. But, as with all the other politicians that pollute Washington, it was in his interest to do so.
#29:
“they never imagined that financial institutions would misuse the reforms in the way that they did.”
Like this is some kind of excuse. You could argue that Bush and Co. never imagined Iraq would be such a mess all the way into 2009.
Politicians are judged on outcomes, not intent.
He must have saved at least 150K jobs.
I do not know who he is saving them for but he needs to let me apply for one.
Face it folks! Except for a handful of EXTREMELY wealthy families, the United States of America is FAR better off today under President Barak Obama than it was 6 months ago, despite the fact that the hangover persists.
The lesson for the future is this: When you hear someone say ‘trickle-down’, you’re about to get reamed, lied-to, snowed, marketed, and fed a line so that you vote in a way that is in the best interests of a very very few.
@ MS
Deregulation has hurt us, but that’s hardly the only problem.
Governments have expanded laws and regulation so vastly over time that few companies actually do or are capable of doing their own payroll or human resources.
Our companies, especially multi-state ones, are so burdened with laws and regulations that they have fluff jobs that specialize in the artificial complexity and outsource many functions to other companies that specialize in handling them.
And it is almost all expense. A big expense.
And none of this protects an American job from being moved to Mexico or India.
Combined with trade agreements, our companies are at a big disadvantage and jobs here that are not locked to geography or by law are at a big disadvantage.
The real fun is going to begin when we get inflation as government job pay and government benefits are tied to inflation.
So at a time the government should cut back, expenditures will dramatically increase.
So many complicated problems …
# 36 Hmeyers
Regulation has cost some money? Sure – Police cost money. It probably would have cost one one-millionth of the financial ruin just Bernie Madoff wreaked upon us to have stopped him.
Oh – that would be money and political will. Not something that exists anymore in the GOP.
Hey Dvorak & co — where is all this anti-Obamaism coming from?
You keep arguing that everything is his and the Democrats’ fault, then in the same breath argue that they should hurry up and fix it. Ignoring the fact that pretty much everybody in Washington for the past 30 years has fingers in the pie of failure.
Perhaps this is an internet bullshit thing, this incessant pointing of fingers at whomever is top of the heap. However, I am getting a bit tired of the continual berating of policies that, in most cases, have not even really begun. The machinery of the stimulus and the new budget hasn’t really started yet.
Ah, but you have to bullshit your way around announcing everything the administration does is wrong and horrible and will just ruin us all, otherwise you’d have nothing to say.
Like we aren’t already in the damned hole and trying to dig our way back out.
We’ve dumped a President into a huge crisis – we have to give him a chance to right the ship.
Oh, that’s right you all are A.D.D. internet conspiracy ninnies. I forgot.
Like you will in about 30 seconds.
[See post#26 – Ed.]
#38, Jim, you really haven’t been paying attention, have you? Most of the editors here could hardly be accused of “anti-Obamaism .”
#33 – BRM
As much as you might want to place blame on minorities, immigrants or lower income people, the reality is that they had little to do with the financial crisis that this country is experiencing.
I agree that intent and outcome are different things, but to blame an individual politician for the utter and complete abuse of the financial system by the financial institutions to whom we are supposed to trust our money is beyond hypocritical, it is contemptuous of truth and trust.
Place blame where it belongs, hold people to high standards, don’t use the excuse of of some politician not dotting all the I’s and crossing all the T’s for the abuses committed by the those that robbed you and me of our futures.
The collapse of banks has nothing to do with individual homeowners, and everything to do with financial institutions paying $20 Million bonuses to those that manipulated the system best, regardless of the long term consequences.
Barney Frank’s guilt… the attempt to help poor black people to get into affordable housing. The fact that we were lied to, manipulated, offered deals that sounded good but even you or me don’t understand, that has NOTHING to do with Barney Frank, and everything to do with deregulation. Leveraging 35 times that worthless mortgage that the homeowner honestly believed he could afford based on the bank’s figures, the bank lying about it’s value, while hiding it’s future viability and reselling it under false terms, has NOTHING to do with Barney Frank, and everything to do with deregulation.
Its like a hollywood disaster movie, the president is always black.
Another point being lost in this debate is that culpability for the housing fiasco goes all up and down the food chain. Just as it was in the interest of federal politicians to promote conditions that pushed people into houses, it was also in the interest of local governments to allow overdevelopment and property tax assessors to inflate the values of these properties for grow local tax revenue.
the rule of thumb with politics… accuse the other party of doing exactly what you are doing. i love it, a spin article accusing of spin.
every one of you who stood by bush and re-elected the worst president in history is now holding a skewed microscope to obama. from what is said, he can do no right and will is condemned by you from the start. ask yourself if you are really looking at this with an open mind.
at some point, obama created his own worst enemy. he built himself as some sort of larger them life person that would finally work for the common man. he promised the world to us voters and we, the voters, once again fell for the lie hook, line, and sinker. case in point, California Proposition 1F would prohibit california lawmakers from getting raises. well, the truth is they haven’t had any raises in years. they really get a yearly “cost of living increase” which they themselves vote on. same thing with congress, no raises, just cost of living increases.
to conclude, they’re all the same pieces of shit
Really? Did you actually watch the press conference, KD Martin?
Yes, Obama put plenty of spin on the stories he told, but there was a whole heck of a lot more truth in them than what you posted.
I’m more sick of the stuff being posted on Dvorak these days than the b.s. the politicians are spewing.
[See post#26 – Ed.]
The Washington Post article lost page 2, so I added a “More information here” link to the article. Sorry about that, and thanks BubbaRay.
Worst president ever.
Hi People,
Talking as an aussie. We love you guys.We love the relationship your country has with ours. Well a lot of us do.We’re all in thre financial crisis together.Problem is as a world leader you head is in your own ass a long way a lot of the time.Fair enough to a point. This is the first administration in my life that puts itself into others shoes. Hell we have cringed at your foreign policy for a long time. The Obama administration has made some well needed statements on foreign policy that will in time heal some of the oafish mistakes of the past. We’re all feeling the financial crisis but the future looks better politically because you have someone with a brain and balls at the helm.Cheers gents.
#51, rat,
Yes!!!
And we are so damn better off without Bush. For the condemnation of Obama, can anyone imagine where we would be today with Bush; the worst President who ever served a full term still in office? One term was bad enough, but two terms of that idiot has ruined the nation for years.
Or how about if McCain had of won, how would Phil Gramm handle things as Treasury Secretary? How many remember the man accredited / blamed for deregulation was slated to be McCain’s financial man. Well, McCain sure wasn’t a economy type guy.
Or if Ron Paul had of won the Presidency. It would be our own fault we were laid off. Ya, everyone could go into business for themselves if they didn’t like it. Hell, we would even legalize marijuana to placate those out of work. But fuck screwing with the economy, just let the big banks fail and ruin everything.
100 days is not enough time to turn around the economy. It took Bush eight years to ruin it, let’s give Obama some time to fix it.
Alfred1, get a life. You have been blaming Obama for all our evils even before he took office. The bigger question is “Why do you hate America?”
It did not take Bush 8 years to ruin the economy. The economy only really tanked in the last part of his administration, after the Democrats had a majority in Congress and got control of the legislative process.
Deowll is correct that the Dems created this mess with bad government policy (having Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac lend to undeserving people, perhaps out of a racist/racial agenda). Bush tried to stop this, but he could have tried harder.
Greg Allen said: “Bush failed at everything he put hand hand to. (Well, except tax cuts for the rich)”
Actually, Bush cut taxes for all taxpayers (most of whom were middle-class). He did succeed with this: it helped the economy, and the resulting growth from the tax cuts actually resulted in increased IRS revenues.
OK,
1. less then 6 months and you THINK he knows whats going on??
BUSH DIDNT even after 8 years.
2. you want the economy fixed FAST??
YOU REALLY DONT WANT TO GO THERE.
It could be done by the restructuring of ALL BANKS and business in 1 BIG SHOT. And all the poor would suffer until the CORPS figure out ALL THE BACK DOORS, so they can make MORE MONEY.
3. OK, fun time. YOU TRY TO GET 150 people and 2 LARGE groups to agree on something.
THAT is the Congress and reps, and demo and repubs.. THERE is so much fighting..I wonder WHY we pay them. and GUESS what, NONE of them is thinking of US.
YOU REALLY want some fun. SEND a report card to EACH citizen about HOW AND WHAT his representatives are DOING. what they voted for, what NOT, how many DAYS MISSED..
1 group is backed by the GUN lobby the other by the cigarette lobby, and another group is Against MJ and posts ADDONS to ANY BILL it DONT WANT, with the MJ lobby bill, to KILL the main bill.
YOU DONT WANT to know about whats going on…
FIRE THEM ALL…LET the cits vote FOR ONCE..
You look like you are quoting a source, but you do not list the source. Hard to look at the whole thing without providing a clear link. The source is always important in reading things and determining the credibility of the statements.
#30 – Sea Lawyer,
#17, I wouldn’t expect anything less from a thoroughbred Keynesian like Paul Krugman.
Minor point, but that does seem to be a rather flippant dismissal of a Nobel Prize winning economist.
The point for which I had posted that link was, quite simply, the point that he made about government stopping spending now.
The government is the only one spending at the moment. If they stop spending, that’s it. The small green pieces of paper all stop dead in their tracks. That would be bad.
Even Obama doesn’t claim he will get it 100% right. However, if he gets it 70 or 80% right, it may be enough to dig us out of the hole that 28 years of voodoo Reaganomics from both parties dug us into.
#36 – Hmeyers,
Governments have expanded laws and regulation so vastly over time that few companies actually do or are capable of doing their own payroll or human resources.
Would you mind citing some examples of these? I don’t mean to be antagonistic about it. But, for the last 28 years, I’m only aware of corporations becoming more free as humans become less free. I’d like to reverse that trend.
Remember folks, corporations are not alive. They have no inalienable rights. The concept of a corporation is a tool. Like a hammer or a screwdriver, the corporation has no rights. It has only whatever rights we decide to grant it.
Corporations were created to allow people to feel confident investing their money that the loss would be limited to their investment. I still support that use of a corporation.
I do not support its use in swaying government legislation, protecting its owners and officers from prosecution for their own negligence or crimes, or any of the other obscenities we have allowed them to get away with.
We the people need to take our nation back.
I am perfectly fine with regulating corporations and corporate greed within an inch of their lives. I do not want long term government ownership of corporations, in general. However, I do want corporations regulated. And, I want them to follow the law. When their officers do not, they must be held accountable. This has not been the case for quite some time.
#38 – Jim,
Anti-Obamaism? Do we really need two more isms just to special case this one president? (Yes, anti-Obamaism implies the existence of Obamaism.)
I think Obama is the best president by far that we have had in my adult life. I also think he has some faults. I most certainly do not consider myself an Obamaist, whatever that might mean.
#45 – Alfred1,
And the country is worse off now than before…everything bad is up…everything good is down…
Really? Did you read that in the Bible?
Jan 20:
DOW: 7,949.09
S&P 500: 805.22
Nasdaq: 1,440.86
Today:
DOW: 8,185.73
S&P 500: 873.64
Nasdaq: 1,711.94
#54 – dmarks,
It did not take Bush 8 years to ruin the economy. The economy only really tanked in the last part of his administration
Check the graphs. All major indicators took a significant hit within the first 6 months of W’s first Reign of Error. By July, 2001 all three indexes quoted above were quite a bit down, still 3 months before 9/11 so don’t blame bin Forgotten for that one.
#29, Remove all blame from the individuals and people start to believe they don’t have to be responsible for their own mistakes. Who in their right mind would believe they could afford a $350,000 home on a $70,000/yr GROSS income? If the bankers told you that and you believed them, you are too stupid to live.
Uh, now let me be clear, I did not hear the speech. Uh, but I know it must have been about hope. Because with hope we will see change. And with change, uh, we will see a better America… snoozzzzzzze
So, in the final analysis, based on what tangible, measurable, statistics, is the country doing better than 3 months ago?
The only thing I know that has increased is wasteful gov spending.