It should not be surprising that since Obama's State of the Union address, in which he refused to kowtow to the radical Tea Party deficit hypocrites, the lies have spread far and wide. Most of these concern which president "has created the most massive deficit in the history of the U.S."- and this is being egregiously pinned on Obama.
The lying and disinformation began with Michelle Bachman's Tea Party reply (to Obama's State of the Union address) telecast over CNN, in which she proclaimed:
"Two years ago, when Barack Obama became our president, unemployment was 7.8%, and our national debt stood at what seemed like a staggering $10.6 trillion. We wondered whether the president would cut spending, reduce the deficit and implement real job-creating policies.
Unfortunately, the president's strategy for recovery was to spend a trillion dollars on a failed stimulus program, fueled by borrowed money. The White House promised us that all the spending would keep unemployment under 8%. Not only did that plan fail to deliver, but within three months, the national jobless rate spiked to 9.4%. It hasn't been lower for 20 straight months. While the government grew, we lost more than 2 million jobs."
Unfortunately, Bachmann, like most Tea Party morons, has no remote grasp of economics...period. She does deserve credit for noting that before Obama entered office the national debt stood at $10.6 trillion. And since it stood at $4 trillion when Clinton left office (he had actually created budget surpluses his last five years), this means that George W. Bush amassed a total debt in that interim of:
$10. 6 trillion - $4 trillion = $6.6 trillion
Where did that debt come from? We can easily add it up here, line by line for the slow of wit, or math deficient:
$1.7 trillion (2001 tax cuts)
$500 billion (2oo2 capital gains tax cuts)
$1.9 trillion ("Operation Iraqi Freedom" - including $300 billion to pull equipment out)
$600 billion (2001- 2008 period of Afghanistan invasion-occupation)
$1. 4 trillion (2003 Medicare Modernization Act, most of which goes to Big Pharma, as per a 2003 Goldman-Sachs analysis)
$500 billion (2008 bailout for Banks, Lehman Bros., AIG etc.)
Thus, we see in fact that the president who has racked up the largest cumulative deficits is none other than that 'born again' bozo, Gee-dumbya Bush.
Now enter Obama. His deficit tally is as follows:
$858 billion (2009 - for a combined stimulus package with tax cuts, plus project money)
$600 billion (2009-2010 costs of Afghan occupation- most of this due to finally entering the costs legitimately rather than having them "off the books" as was done under Geo. W. Bush)
$225 billion (2010 - additional stimulus package for food stamps and extension of unemployment benefits)
$30 billion (2010-2011: total cost of implementing Obama health care reform law. Most costs will not kick in until 2014)
$960 billion (2010: Cost of the Bush tax cuts extension tax package and extension of unemployment benefits passed by Democrats AND Republicans in December)
This marks a total of just under $2.7 trillion.
Why is Obama's deficit estimate inflated? Because the Repukes and Teepees like to add mandatory costs of government operation (due to passive automatic expenditures via government entitlements payments) to his deficit creation when this was never done under Gee Dubya. Thus, the debt ceiling will indeed reach $14.3 trillion by late March - not due to active legislation passed by Obama or the Dems - but because of the passive and automatic increases of paying out Social Security checks for 43 million beneficiaries, as well as their Medicare benefits, plus a further supplement of at last $170 billion for Afghanistan. Oh, and one half the amounts for Medicaid recipients in the states!
All of this is white washed by the liars who want to make Obama out the bad guy!
What would Reeps and their liars have us or Obama do? Stop payment of all Social Security checks forthwith so the elderly have to dive into dumpsters for kibble and tossed out cat food? Stop paying Medicare benefits so elderly just crawl into ditches and die from their pneumonias, flus, heart attacks or whatnot? WHAT is it these lying fuckers want? Well, to see their inflation of Obama's deficit contributions, that's exactly what they want! To pull the plug on seniors, and maybe even totally pull out of Afghanistan too. (Though turkeys like Florida TEE PEE Reep-Rep Marco Rubio insist they want us there until the last dog is hung, or at least the last Taliban.)
Now, what of Bachmann's other reckless claims? Such as "the president's strategy for recovery was to spend a trillion dollars on a failed stimulus program, fueled by borrowed money"?
In fact, most serious economists (not the cartoonish supply siders of the Right) agree that the Stimulus achieved its most important mission in preventing another Great Depression. This perception is based on the correct insight that the demand side of the economy had gone kaput. No one was spending, not the private sector, not the consumer and not the banks (who were overladen with credit default swaps from the subprime mortgage crisis) and didn't even trust the equity of OTHER banks, i.e. in lending to them!
Thus, government became the spender of default. Without the Stimulus, no spending would pump a dime into the flailing economy, the banks would cease all credit issues - including for mortgages, student loans and businesses, and we'd have been in the grips of another 1931 world! The unemployment rate, which Bachmann bitches about being nearly 10% would be at least 15-17%.
But the problem with yahoos like her, and other teepee morons, is they never know what they don't know. They think, in their 200 cc craniums, that because the worst didn't happen, then what they beheld in reality was worse than the worst. They are idiots! They rank right up there with the anti-Kennedy idiots and media imbeciles who claim he "did next to nothing" when he literally spared us from nuclear war in October, 1962.
If Obama could be faulted for one thing in his Stimulus package, it was in going way too far over the line for tax cuts - which comprised nearly one-third of the total Stimulus, and weren't even obvious to most people (hence, little appreciation therefrom). This was because they were bungled into paychecks as opposed to being given in one lump sum payment. But in order to get the deal done at all, which required the vote of at least Repub - Olympia Snowe - he had to allow the tax cuts, while cutting back on the food stamps, never mind the latter would have delivered more bang for the borrowed buck!
Had the tax cuts been disallowed, and the food stamps increased in place, while spending projects also enhanced, we'd have seen a lowering of the unemployment to below 8%. I estimate, along with Nobel winning economist paul Krugman, that Obama needed to pump for at least $1.6 trillion in stimulus - minus any dampening tax cuts. Hence, his error was in not being bold enough.
It is a shame that instead of thanking Obama for sparing them the suffering and travails of another Depression, the Tea Party and its toxic demagogoues are more into tarring the first black president - which of course fully discloses their racism. All these critiques (including the insipid birther lies that he was really born in Kenya) are merely subterfuge tactics because actual racism is now frowned upon.
It is truly sad that we must perforce share this nation with a pack of howling screech monkey morons.
But having exposed their claptrap for what it is, we are then entitled to ignore them.
The lying and disinformation began with Michelle Bachman's Tea Party reply (to Obama's State of the Union address) telecast over CNN, in which she proclaimed:
"Two years ago, when Barack Obama became our president, unemployment was 7.8%, and our national debt stood at what seemed like a staggering $10.6 trillion. We wondered whether the president would cut spending, reduce the deficit and implement real job-creating policies.
Unfortunately, the president's strategy for recovery was to spend a trillion dollars on a failed stimulus program, fueled by borrowed money. The White House promised us that all the spending would keep unemployment under 8%. Not only did that plan fail to deliver, but within three months, the national jobless rate spiked to 9.4%. It hasn't been lower for 20 straight months. While the government grew, we lost more than 2 million jobs."
Unfortunately, Bachmann, like most Tea Party morons, has no remote grasp of economics...period. She does deserve credit for noting that before Obama entered office the national debt stood at $10.6 trillion. And since it stood at $4 trillion when Clinton left office (he had actually created budget surpluses his last five years), this means that George W. Bush amassed a total debt in that interim of:
$10. 6 trillion - $4 trillion = $6.6 trillion
Where did that debt come from? We can easily add it up here, line by line for the slow of wit, or math deficient:
$1.7 trillion (2001 tax cuts)
$500 billion (2oo2 capital gains tax cuts)
$1.9 trillion ("Operation Iraqi Freedom" - including $300 billion to pull equipment out)
$600 billion (2001- 2008 period of Afghanistan invasion-occupation)
$1. 4 trillion (2003 Medicare Modernization Act, most of which goes to Big Pharma, as per a 2003 Goldman-Sachs analysis)
$500 billion (2008 bailout for Banks, Lehman Bros., AIG etc.)
Thus, we see in fact that the president who has racked up the largest cumulative deficits is none other than that 'born again' bozo, Gee-dumbya Bush.
Now enter Obama. His deficit tally is as follows:
$858 billion (2009 - for a combined stimulus package with tax cuts, plus project money)
$600 billion (2009-2010 costs of Afghan occupation- most of this due to finally entering the costs legitimately rather than having them "off the books" as was done under Geo. W. Bush)
$225 billion (2010 - additional stimulus package for food stamps and extension of unemployment benefits)
$30 billion (2010-2011: total cost of implementing Obama health care reform law. Most costs will not kick in until 2014)
$960 billion (2010: Cost of the Bush tax cuts extension tax package and extension of unemployment benefits passed by Democrats AND Republicans in December)
This marks a total of just under $2.7 trillion.
Why is Obama's deficit estimate inflated? Because the Repukes and Teepees like to add mandatory costs of government operation (due to passive automatic expenditures via government entitlements payments) to his deficit creation when this was never done under Gee Dubya. Thus, the debt ceiling will indeed reach $14.3 trillion by late March - not due to active legislation passed by Obama or the Dems - but because of the passive and automatic increases of paying out Social Security checks for 43 million beneficiaries, as well as their Medicare benefits, plus a further supplement of at last $170 billion for Afghanistan. Oh, and one half the amounts for Medicaid recipients in the states!
All of this is white washed by the liars who want to make Obama out the bad guy!
What would Reeps and their liars have us or Obama do? Stop payment of all Social Security checks forthwith so the elderly have to dive into dumpsters for kibble and tossed out cat food? Stop paying Medicare benefits so elderly just crawl into ditches and die from their pneumonias, flus, heart attacks or whatnot? WHAT is it these lying fuckers want? Well, to see their inflation of Obama's deficit contributions, that's exactly what they want! To pull the plug on seniors, and maybe even totally pull out of Afghanistan too. (Though turkeys like Florida TEE PEE Reep-Rep Marco Rubio insist they want us there until the last dog is hung, or at least the last Taliban.)
Now, what of Bachmann's other reckless claims? Such as "the president's strategy for recovery was to spend a trillion dollars on a failed stimulus program, fueled by borrowed money"?
In fact, most serious economists (not the cartoonish supply siders of the Right) agree that the Stimulus achieved its most important mission in preventing another Great Depression. This perception is based on the correct insight that the demand side of the economy had gone kaput. No one was spending, not the private sector, not the consumer and not the banks (who were overladen with credit default swaps from the subprime mortgage crisis) and didn't even trust the equity of OTHER banks, i.e. in lending to them!
Thus, government became the spender of default. Without the Stimulus, no spending would pump a dime into the flailing economy, the banks would cease all credit issues - including for mortgages, student loans and businesses, and we'd have been in the grips of another 1931 world! The unemployment rate, which Bachmann bitches about being nearly 10% would be at least 15-17%.
But the problem with yahoos like her, and other teepee morons, is they never know what they don't know. They think, in their 200 cc craniums, that because the worst didn't happen, then what they beheld in reality was worse than the worst. They are idiots! They rank right up there with the anti-Kennedy idiots and media imbeciles who claim he "did next to nothing" when he literally spared us from nuclear war in October, 1962.
If Obama could be faulted for one thing in his Stimulus package, it was in going way too far over the line for tax cuts - which comprised nearly one-third of the total Stimulus, and weren't even obvious to most people (hence, little appreciation therefrom). This was because they were bungled into paychecks as opposed to being given in one lump sum payment. But in order to get the deal done at all, which required the vote of at least Repub - Olympia Snowe - he had to allow the tax cuts, while cutting back on the food stamps, never mind the latter would have delivered more bang for the borrowed buck!
Had the tax cuts been disallowed, and the food stamps increased in place, while spending projects also enhanced, we'd have seen a lowering of the unemployment to below 8%. I estimate, along with Nobel winning economist paul Krugman, that Obama needed to pump for at least $1.6 trillion in stimulus - minus any dampening tax cuts. Hence, his error was in not being bold enough.
It is a shame that instead of thanking Obama for sparing them the suffering and travails of another Depression, the Tea Party and its toxic demagogoues are more into tarring the first black president - which of course fully discloses their racism. All these critiques (including the insipid birther lies that he was really born in Kenya) are merely subterfuge tactics because actual racism is now frowned upon.
It is truly sad that we must perforce share this nation with a pack of howling screech monkey morons.
But having exposed their claptrap for what it is, we are then entitled to ignore them.
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