There's more at the link.Barack Obama used to get very upset about federal budget deficits. Denouncing an "orgy of spending and enormous deficits," he turned to John McCain during their presidential debates last fall and said, "We have had, over the last eight years, the biggest increases in deficit spending and national debt in our history … Now we have a half-trillion deficit annually…and Sen. McCain voted for four out of five of those George Bush budgets."
That was then. Now, President Obama is asking lawmakers to vote for a budget with a deficit three times the size of the one that so disturbed candidate Obama just a few months ago. And Obama foresees, for years to come, deficits that dwarf those he felt so passionately about way, way back in 2008.
Everywhere you go on Capitol Hill, you hear echoes of the last campaign's spending debate. So on Thursday morning, as the budget fight raged, I asked McCain about the president's seemingly forgotten concern about deficits. McCain doesn't like to rehash the campaign - "The one thing Americans don't like is a sore loser," he told me - but when I read him Obama's quote from the debate, he said, "Well, there are a number of statements that were made by then-candidate Obama which have not translated into his policies."
That's an understatement. The deficit issue could be one of the most, if not the most, consequential of Obama's unkept campaign promises. Just how consequential was made clear last week in a little-noticed conference call featuring Budget Director Peter Orszag. Orszag was trying to explain to reporters how the Obama administration calculated its rather rosy forecasts for economic growth. Near the end of the call, he was asked whether deficits along the lines of those predicted by the Congressional Budget Office are sustainable."
Cartoon Hat Tip: Political Pistachio.
4 comments:
While I agree that McCain was correct in his assertion, from a purely political standpoint, it might not have been the smartest thing he could have said at the time.
The MSM had been working double overtime to convince the majority of the government-schooled dumbMasses that the economy was tanking. McRino's handlers should have been cognizant of that fact, given the level of economic illiteracy that exists in this country today.
IMHO, that economic illiteracy is the reason Barack Hussein Obama is now residing in the White House, instead of walking the streets of Chicago "organizing" the communities therein.
-Dave
It is indeed criminal to run huge deficits during periods of economic growth (i.e. you should run minimal deficits during this periods, if not a surplus), which is what the Bush administration did.
Running a deficit during a period of recession in order to promote demand is one of the instrument any government should use.
This is called economics 101 and there is indeed a big difference between the deficits of the Bush administration that makes no economic sense and the one witnessed today.
Funny, anon, how I didn't see even one Democrat protest the expansions of Medicare and education that helped run up those deficits -- or try to turn things around those last two years of Mr. Bush's tenure.
And how many of our New Bosses excoriated Mr. Bush's predecessor for gutting the military ... the rebuilding of which also ran those deficits up?
Don't tell me that using our treasure in rebuilding our military -- and sending it to resolve problems in the MidEast ... didn't make economic sense.
It's hard to prosper when you're dead from a terrorist attack ... especially when it has been leveraged from a wealthy, technically-advanced Afghanistan 2.0; aka Iraq 2002, to the degree that it makes the death toll at the WTC look like a bad freeway pileup.
For that matter, that day put a trillion-dollar hit on the economy, by some estimates ... so preventing multiple hits like that through proactive, decisive intervention does make economic sense.
As we now see in Iraq ... just as we saw regarding the Soviet Union ... we got something for the money spent on defense.
As for what the current Administration proposes -- we saw that between 1965 and 1979, when those who thought like Mr. Obama did nothing but perpetuate poverty and foment malaise, despite their good intentions, by working to implement their ideology as policy.
Yes, there is a difference between the two ... a difference in results ...
... because one spent our treasure in an area that is the proper purview of government ...
... while the other spends money in areas where government is structurally incapable of efficient and effective intervention, because its tool kit is effectively limited to two items ...
... a big bag of money, and handcuffs.
Anon:
Don't piss on my back and tell me it's raining.
more to the point. Didn't Obama say that it was 'sound', not strong?
and Robert Gibbs spent 3 minutes detailing the nuances between the two words... which is always fun to watch. :)
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