I didn't vote for him and I am no Obama supporter beyond the fact that he is our President, but to blame this all on him, or his party is sheer ignorance. The acrimony between the majority of democrats, republicans and in particular, the tea party koolaid kids and their unwillingness to go beyond politics and address the problem in a reasonable manner is at the heart of the matter. Sure spending is and has been out of control and needs to be prioritized and reduced significantly. Increasing revenue from the average citizens is not going to solve the problem, but the refusal to make the very wealthy and oil companies pay their fair share is an affront to every American that has to bust their *** to make ends meet. They are the real people suffering from all this. I am no economics expert by any stretch of the imagination, but something is out of kilter when the major oil companies profits are multiplying every quarter, as the price per barrel of oil and more importantly, the price at the pump goes up. I laugh out loud just about every time I hear James Carville, but the other day he said the most sensible thing I believe I have ever heard come out of his mouth. "The only thing worse that a politician that thinks about getting reelected, is one that doesn't think about getting reelected." S&P blamed all of Washington for this and that is squarely where it lies. There are going to be more incumbents than Obama who's reelection will be in doubt, whether they are thinking about it, or not.
Well, well, well. Paso's "math" error was actually a dispute about what projections to use- the WH's rosier ones or the ones deemed more realistic by S&P. Who could have called that? "Math" error S&P used the CBO's Alternative Fiscal Scenario which assumes discretionary spending rises at the same rate as GDP growth. Treasury wanted them to use CBO's Baseline rate which assumes that discretionary spending grows at a lower rate than GDP. Which do you think is more likely? At any rate, even using the CBO's more optimistic projections, the debt would be 345 billion less in 2015 and 2 trillion less in 2021. Of course, "less than" here means less than the prior projections- even under the rosy best case scenario pumped by the WH, the debt would have grown to 14.5 and 20.1 trillion in 2015 and 2021, respectively. So S&P said "fine, we'll use your assumptions, you're still 14.5 trillion in debt in 4 years and 20 trillion in 10, welcome to AA+, *******."
President Downgrade should do the right thing and announce on Monday that he is not seeking a 2nd term. That's the best (and only) stimulus he has left.
And when will everyone learn how ****** up the Tea Party was to hold up the Debt Ceiling bill for all their shenanigans. They have a role to govern which they did not do. They can have their debate about spending...but that totally was not the time or place. Of course, intelligence is never part of their game. Hook'em!!!
What kind of person says he'll do one thing before going to Washington, gets elected on that premise, then goes back on that when things get dicey? That's a joke, right?
My friend, the Debt Ceiling bill has always been passed as routinely as going to the head in the middle of the night for us old guys. Reagan passed it double-digit times. It was the political uncertainty that caused S&P to do what they did. If that bill had passed 3 months ago like it should have, it would not have been a blip on S&P's radar. Hook'em!!!
partly true but because the left would not cut enough per the suggestions of S&P. also the "uncertainty" has to do with a 15 trillion hole and soon to be 22, 61 trillion of unfunded liability, slowing economy, the "cuts" do not have soon enough, not large enough cuts, no budget etc The Link
The Republicans have amnesia and need a small history lesson to understand where the deficit came from. It's lots of fun to blame Obama for everything, but this ain't on his tab: The Link Hook'em!!!
horn69, you keep saying that as if you're argument is that it's not fair to blame Obama for the current deficit spending. First off, "fair" is a concept invented to make 1st graders behave in class. We're adults, and we know better. Second, it's not the spending. It's the borrowing. The US "borrowed""Borrowed" is in scare quotes because a lot of the borrowing was from the US Treasury) $1.5 trillion last year. The global GDP is $75 trillion. IOW, the US borrowed 2% of the world's economic production, and we borrowed it for a bunch of stupid crap. Reasonable people view that and see it as unsustainable. Blaming it on Reagan is like your wife buying a new Land Rover you can't afford on credit, and saying, "WHell, don't blame me! You were the one that wanted to buy the house!"
Bush was a liberal spender we agree, but the answer is not more spending and BHO is making him look like a conservative. Most liberals feel BHO has not spent enough. So, again, thank God for the tea party in bringing this to the table. The rest of the world is telling us the same thing. "In his State of the Union address tonight, President Obama will reportedly issue a call for "responsible" efforts to reduce deficits (while simultaneously calling for new federal spending). In light of the President's expected rhetorical nod to fiscal responsibility, it's worth keeping in mind his record on deficits to date. When President Obama took office two years ago, the national debt stood at $10.626 trillion. It now stands at $14.071 trillion — a staggering increase of $3.445 trillion in just 735 days (about $5 billion a day). To put that into perspective, when President George W. Bush took office, our national debt was $5.768 trillion. By the time Bush left office, it had nearly doubled, to $10.626 trillion. So Bush's record on deficit spending was not good at all: During his presidency, the national debt rose by an average of $607 billion a year. How does that compare to Obama? During Obama's presidency to date, the national debt has risen by an average of $1.723 trillion a year — or by a jaw-dropping $1.116 trillion more, per year, than it rose even under Bush.
Spending can be responsible or not. To call Bush's spending "liberal" by virtue of his having spent us into oblivion is missing the point.
