patrick.net

From Obama’s Spending: ‘Inferno’ or Not?

The truth is that the nearly 18 percent spike in spending in fiscal 2009 — for which the president is sometimes blamed entirely — was mostly due to appropriations and policies that were already in place when Obama took office.

So if current spending is an “inferno,” it’s one that Bush (and Congress) is mostly responsible for starting. But it’s also true that Obama has done little to put it out.

There you go. The deficit and the debt are the fault of the republicans; Obama did nothing to rectify the situation, but republicans under Bush caused it. The Republican Party is not the party of fiscal responsibility. Neither is the Democratic Party, but they are closer.

Dan,
Here is my go to site for national debt statistics that get sliced and diced several different ways:
http://www.skymachines.com/US-National-Debt-Per-Capita-Percent-of-GDP-and-by-Presidental-Term.htm
So far, Obama is on track to be the only President to reduce the the growth rate of the national debt in all four years of his term.

EBGuy says

o far, Obama is on track to be the only President to reduce the the growth rate of the national debt in all four years of his term.

True, but that's not an accomplishment. That's like saying for the past four years Chubby McFatass, a 300 lb guy, managed to slow his wait gain. Even stopping the growth in weight or debt is not an accomplishment. An accomplishment would be decreasing the debt or weight.

People act like borrowing has "momentum". It doesn't. Just because I take out a mortgage doesn't mean I have to take out a second mortgage the next year and a third one the year after. The act of borrowing doesn't have inertia that needs to be overcome.

Eventually Chubby McFatass is going to eat himself to death unless he starts shedding the pounds.

The problem I have with conservatives on this issue is that they haven't been true fiscal conservatives since before Reagan. Reagan started the whole spend and charge strategy which Dick Cheney embraced with the words "Reagan proved deficits don't matter.", and all conservatives have gladly accepted deficits and rising debt as long as the president is a republican and the money is spent on "defense" industry jobs, i.e. warfare welfare. And that's pure hypocrisy on the side of the right.

That said, the Obama administration has not dealt with the deficit responsibly and has used way too much monetary debasement to bail out the banks when it should have done public works projects instead. Public works projects would have actually improved the quality of life and America's competitiveness. Bank bailouts don't.

I'd rather rebuild New Orleans than A.I.G.

True, but that's not an accomplishment.
All right. How about four more years 'til a Clintonian surplus. :-)
WSJ had a nice article today about how money is flowing into 'safe haven' Scandanavian banks. And we all know what happened to them two decades ago -- pre-privatization (aka nationalization), reorganization and then selling them off on the open market. One can hope for Old Testament justice.