Deficit wars and common sense
The NY Times offers this article by David Leonhardt that purports to prove that Obama isn’t responsible for much of our projected deficit problem—although it does admit that he hasn’t done much of anything to fix it.
Is anyone the least bit surprised that, when the Times “analyzed Congressional Budget Office reports going back almost a decade, with the aim of understanding how the federal government came to be far deeper in debt than it has been since the years just after World War II,” it came up with the idea that Obama’s programs will be responsible for only “a sliver” of it?
I’m certainly not surprised. Nor do I—or, I would wager, most people who read the article—have the economic chops to figure out for certain whether the article is the usual slanted stuff offered by that newspaper (previous experience in areas in which I am more conversant have led me to a deep distrust of the Times) or whether there’s some—or even quite a bit of—truth there.
One thing of which I am certain: the Times piece fits in quite nicely with the Obama narrative of “I inherited this so don’t blame me,” and with the general Obama-supporter mantra of “everything that goes wrong or will go wrong during the entire Obama adminstration will be by definition Bush’s fault.”
Here’s an example of some arguments for the other side (also see this). The latter piece offers a quote that rightly points out that Senator Obama supported “nearly all policies and bailouts that created” the supposedly “inherited” Bush-era debt. Hmmm.
It’s also very difficult to reconcile the conclusions reached in the Times piece (supposedly based on analyses of Congressional Budget Reports going back about a decade) with this more recent report from the Congressional Budget Office itself saying that not only did the Obama administration underestimate the deficit projections for 2010 and 2019 by about a third, but that:
…Obama’s projected deficits are more than double what they would be if the president had merely stuck with the current spending and taxation proposals left by the Bush administration.
That sure doesn’t sound to me like Obama is only responsible for a “sliver” of the projected debt. And that much stronger critique of Obama was arrived at by the very same group the Times is citing.
However, I have little doubt that, as the Times states, a great deal of the projected deficit will come from entitlement programs that were many years in the making, and to which both parties and many administrations have contributed. That’s hardly a secret; we’ve known for quite some time that things were going to get worse with the entitlement programs, and neither party has had the courage to do much about it because it’s been political poison until now.
Such reform hasn’t been accomplished in part because, until recently, we haven’t seen ourselves as being in a financial crisis. But now we are, and we have been since shortly before President Obama took office. That, to my way of thinking, is one of the huge differences between the (smaller) deficits piled up by President Bush—whose fiscal policies I believe to have been insufficiently conservative, by the way—and the much larger deficits Obama is proposing: unlike Bush, the current president is doing this in the teeth of a clear and present fiscal crisis.
The stimulus package is an excellent example. It was both expensive and unnecessary, a huge bouquet tossed by Obama and the Democrats to their favorite constituencies under the pretense of saving the economy. It was a perversion of the help it was purported to offer, a cynical ploy designed to reward Democrat special interest groups under the guise of helping us all, fast-tracked because of the emergency but most of which hasn’t even been paid out yet (some emergency, eh?)
In the latest Rasmussen poll, America seems to agree with the “expensive and unnecessary” description: more people than not now say that the rest of the stimulus ought to be canned.
Of course, all of these deficit projections are so fraught with unknowns that partisans can spin them and make of them what they will. I’ll just attempt to use what I hope is some common sense here: if a ship is taking on water and threatening to sink, you don’t help things out by adding buckets and buckets more of the stuff. That is exactly what Obama has done, and it’s not over yet.
Great article, and to reiterate again, Obama’s recent comment to us, “You haven’t seen anything yet.” The inflation era which is lurking only shortly ahead will be a hard lesson for the naive masses who suckered for the latest left-wing power ploy, and who empowered this traitor and his political gang in the last election…
Neo: fix the headline. ” defecit.”
The “blame Bush” line is getting less and less viable. As the saying goes, there are only so many time you can go to the well before it runs dry.
While GWB was no conservative and spent far too much taxpayer money on dubious government programs including Medicare drug legislation, I recall he had an initiative to address social security reform and the democrats stone walled his efforts. Most vivid is the shot of the Democrats at the state of the union address. They all sat with their arms folded and refused to acknowledge that there could possibly be a problem with their dear entitlement program. Hillary was highlighted by the cameras.
Now BHO calls for Pay Go except on all the mega spending initiatives that he supports.
The ship is nearly swamped. China is making that abundantly clear. Treasury yields are up again today along with the price of crude. It is very likely that we will see the dollar’s devaluation prove that politicians (of any party) cannot print their way to prosperity. Balanced budgets anyone?
“Not me” is a toddler’s retort. The USA will shortly have a lesson in basic economics. The dollar will collapse, hyperinflation will insue, taxes will be raised, unemployment will grow, recession becomes a depression. No individual/company/nation can survive such crushing debt.
For a quick take on the deficit problem, see this.
The logic of the Times article strains credulity. We have all seen the numbers and numbers don’t lie. It really started to get grossly out of control beginning with the Pelosi Congress after their resounding 2006 election. For whatever reason, President Bush could not stop it, and I think I know why. It was a trade off between he and Pelosi over Iraq. In order to keep funding for operations there, he had to agree to her other demands.
Only morons could miss the quantitatively gargantuan amounts of money the Porkulus Bill authorized and then the budget appropriations bill after that one. This does not include what is next on their agenda: cap and tax and the socialization of health care. The cap and tax will diminish the economy, thereby shrinking revenues even further.
The curious thing about this frantic campaign in recent weeks by the president’s handlers is that it is happening in the midst of him having popularity ratings stubbornly holding above sixty percent. Methinks they want to keep it there in order to have unassailable political momentum for the rest of the legislative agenda. That is how these Chicago Alinsky thugs operate.
The other thing is that secretly they may be panicked by some internal polling data that show strong disapproval of specific measures the president and Congress have taken. As Rush mentioned today, there is a disconnect between the president’s personal popularity and polling data about specific policies enacted.
I seem to remember Bush trying to open a dialog about social security spending and being beat up over it…..
How serious he was about really dealing with it, I have my doubts, but we never even got to the discussion thanks to…. Come on, guess…
I picked up the NYT while at my local Starbucks this morning, and glanced at the article. My immediate reaction was “this reporter is making up stuff,” and I threw the paper back in the bin.
Even if the NYT writer had something useful to say, I’ve become so contemptuous of the NYT, that I’m not willing to spend the time needed to see if there’s anything worthwhile in such an obviously “blame Bush” article.
The NYT is simply not credible. There is much more useful economic information on the internet.
So, does anyone reading neo-neocon think that now is the perfect time to spend billions on hi-speed railroads linking Chicago and St. Louis or Los Angeles and San Francisco?
Gringo: Oops, will fix the typo.
I agree with Promethea. The NYT is simply not a credible newspaper. It has been in that condition for a very long time. It has had Communists in its employ (Walter Duranty and I.F. Stone), and has engaged in espionage against the U.S. government at a time of war. It has had journalists who make shit up.
This is a comment from Tim P. It wouldn’t get past the spam filter, so I’m trying to post it myself as an experiment to see if it will post successfully:
Here’s an easy to understand graph for the mathematically un-inclined.
Just like Obama’s unemployment appears to be worse than predicted with or without the stimulus as shown here.
Personally, I’m becoming more & more convinced that the wrecking of our economy is deliberate since I can’t believe for a minute that these folks are ALL that stupid.
I’ve always seen myself as center right, which is to say that I am deeply skeptical of government programs and government spending, but not reflexively against them. I could accept some goverment action when it can be shown that it is specifically targeted at meeting a specific need, and when the program it is targeted to appears capable of meeting that need. But it was clear to me that the way the so-called stimulus bill was put together could not, in any way, be seen to be a specific effort to accomplish the goal of stimulating the economy.
I am not an expert at economics. In fact, anyone who knows me will attest that math, itself, is not my strong point. However, even a economics-deficient person like myself could see that the manner in which the so-called stimulus package was put together was one designed to just bundle a bunch of money together and just throw it out there to awaiting piggies.
One thing of which I am certain: the Times piece fits in quite nicely with the Obama narrative of “I inherited this so don’t blame me,” and with the general Obama-supporter mantra of “everything that goes wrong or will go wrong during the entire Obama adminstration will be by definition Bush’s fault.”
It fits nicely into that narrative because that narrative is true. Though it’s easier to whine about “narratives” then it is to actually attempt to prove that Leonhardt’s breakdown is wrong.
X: you either didn’t read the rest of my post or you did and would rather “whine” about non-existent whining.
I too think that Obama is purposely trying to wreck the economy. I always wonder about Rahm E. and D. Axelrod. Are they in on this plan? If so, why?
I believe that George Soros is one of the people who are getting Obama to destroy free enterprise and American wealth and power. Naturally, I have no proof. I’d love to know what others think.
We’re living in a nightmare right now. Like a nightmare, the bad stuff hasn’t actually happened yet. In my personal nightmares, I always wake up before the bad stuff actually happens (usually drowning or falling off a cliff or tall building).
It’s so creepy that Obama is able to do so many things that we can see are horrible. A short list: messing with bondholders, favoring auto unions at the expense of other auto people, giving money to ACORN, favoring “green energy” in a scam to benefit GE, planning to make tiny little cars in a country where millions drive long distances (the Plains States, for example–has he ever driven in one of those?), pressuring Israel, blabbering about N. Korea, planning “hi-speed rail” (I love that one, cuz you still have to have a car after you arrive at the station, duh!).
OK, my list is growing, and Mrs Whats-it will be after me for my gigantic run-on fragment with crazy punctuation and no subject, verb, or object. 😉
Yes, I believe that Obama is out to destroy this country.
at Salon.com, Camilie Pagila, makles the following comment:
“And here, I fear, the monstrous stimulus package with which this administration stumbled out of the gate will prove to be Obama’s Waterloo.”
You should read the liberal comments.
She offered both praise and rebuke for Sotomayor, yet one comment I read you would have thought Pagila hated Sotomayor. What is wrong with these people? If you disagree with one little thing they attack like rabid dogs.
http://www.salon.com/opinion/paglia/2009/06/10/waterloo/index1.html
jon baker: It’s really quite simple. They are fanatics.
Given that the topic of this post is the NYT, I wasn’t sure whether Neo’s misspelled word in the title should be “deficit” or “defecate.”
Rush Limbaugh is now calling the mainstream media the “State Run Media.” This shameless article by the NYT is an example of why it’s hard to refute that name.
The president and his advisers are trying to sell the idea that the deepening of the recession is entirely laid at George Bush’s doorstep. Yet, the decisions of investors and companies are forward-looking. They are looking at what their cash flows and expenses are going to look like under the tax and regulatory policies of the current administration. They are also using, in their discounted cash flow analysis, hurdle rates that incorporate inflationary expectations and expected risk-free rates over the next five years.
I’m still having a debate in my own mind about what is going on within the Obonga administration. The people who work there and their contacts in industry surely must know and understand the things I just wrote about above. They have to! How can they not, folks? Therefore, the question comes to my mind, “Surely at least some of these people would not want to do something that deliberately sabotages the U.S. economy?” And if this really is all about sabotaging the U.S. economy, would not at least one person among them come forward to warn us all and blow the whistle on the president and the rest of the crim
Something happened on my keyboard and my above comment was cut off and submitted. Continued…
criminals? Because deliberately trying to sabotage the economy is treason. And if it is treason, well, we have to do something about it.
If this is indeed what is happening, then we have to look at who stands to financially benefit from it. Immediately a certain currency speculator with a history of this kind of criminal activity comes to mind. And he hides on the Dutch possession of Curacao. He has been found guilty in France of illegal acts and he is under indictment in Hungary for manipulating markets.
Guess who that is?
FredHjr,
There was something about Thailand and that fella too, if i am not mistaken.
“…And if this really is all about sabotaging the U.S. economy, would not at least one person among them come forward to warn us all…”
Who would report it?
One of best things we can do on the political front right now is to try to wake people up that the MSM can not be trusted. Forward articles that show this.
And you’re not, Jon.
I’ll admit that I stopped reading the article when the author claimed that cap and trade would cost nothing. I just couldn’t take it seriously as an honest attempt at that point. So kudos for plowing through the whole thing, I couldn’t do that.
I’d say the liberal ideology has indeed evolved into one of wanting US economic destruction. Simply on the theory that only then can it be correctly re made in their own image.
The fanatics aren’t just the fringe bloggers. They are this administration and all of main stream democrats.
Deer President Won,
In Texas I learned that when you’ve dug yourself a hole, and can’t get out, you stop digging down. Stop spending like an entire carrier task force full of drunken sailors on liberty.
IRA,
Having served in the Navy for 6 years from 1988 – 1994, I take offense to the drunken sailors sentence.
/sip
It is a stereotype that is undeserved.
/sip
I think you should apologize.
/gulp
🙂
That’s right — sailors waste their OWN money.
Now hand around the pickled eggs and beer (I used to date a submariner –!).