Wednesday, April 29, 2009

Obama's Deficit

Obama's intellectual deficit, that is, in addition to fiscal ...

This graph showing the Obama administration's projected deficits is not new, but a couple of my fellow bloggers are posting it with reference
to Obama's townahll meeting today as a comparison to Bush-era budget deficits:

Nice Deb's got the quote:

“Those of you who are watching certain news channels on which I’m not very popular, and you see folks waving tea bags around, Obama said, “let me just remind them that I am happy to have a serious conversation about how we are going to cut our health care costs down over the long term, how we are going to stabilize Social Security.”

“But,” Obama continued, “let’s not play games and pretend that the reason [for the deficit] is because of the Recovery Act.”
Moe Lane's got both the graph and the video from the townhall event, and he adds:

He’s not really all that gracious when it comes to dealing with people that don’t already love him, is he? Kind of smirky, with a faint flavor of exasperation. But perhaps I’m just being mean and cynical: if you really want to have a conversation on our financial situation, Mr. President, that’d be great. Can we start with this?
"This" would be the graph.

More at
Memeorandum.

5 comments:

d.eris said...

"He’s not really all that gracious when it comes to dealing with people that don’t already love him, is he? Kind of smirky." Now that reminds me of someone, who was it again, oh yeah his predecessor. Neither of the duopoly parties has a monopoly on smug. They'd all be talking with their eyes closed (;-) if they didn't need the teleprompter.

The Vegas Art Guy said...

Yes but Obama is in office and his predecessor is in Texas. And if you look at that graph you can see why people attended all those tea parties.

It's time to stop blaming Bush and either put up or shut up...

dave in boca said...

It looks like the Leno clown is keeping a GWB impersonator on because the cowardly Jaybird is afraid to take on Obama. Letterman is an impersonation all by himself, of what running second for a decade can do to a guy's self-respect.

I can see the lack of reporting on the Stimulusporkpie Bonanza remaining uncovered by the obsolescent dead-tree press & media. But soon the piper will want the interest on top of that last Boomer self-indulgent snatch/grab of the US Treasury. That's for the echo and GenX or Y or Hoo-mever.

Dave said...

I actually believe the true numbers will even be worse than the CBO says, as I think federal tax receipts are going to be way off for some time to come. This will be mostly due to what I believe will be a seriously under performing economy, which that graph suggests to me the Obama people didn't even take into consideration.

I plucked this out of the CATO Institute's website a couple of days ago. The total number of federal subsidies has now gone above 1,800. Its a short report but very informative:

http://www.cato.org/pubs/tbb/tbb_56.pdf

Yeah, its going to be one hell of a train wreck, alright.

-Dave

d.eris said...

vegas art guy, I'm not 'blaming Bush,' I'm blaming the two-party system, I guess you didn't get the joke (see Southpark smug episode). As for "putting up or shutting up": I've helped organize groups to attend the local tea party in NYC, the 'end the fed' rallies, anti-war rallies, and anti-bailout rallies.