American politics has truly hit a new low

[Pangloss]

It was counted -- it was added to the national debt. I don't like it either, but even if we count it that way Obama surely comes out ahead, because you'd have to add TARP to Bush's 2008 or 2009 budgets, which makes those deficits much LARGER than $1.4 trillion.

 

Or maybe not? Honestly I'm not sure I want much more part of this deficit tallying. Accounting make me head hurty.

[swansont]

I could have been more clear. Your source doesn't say that Obama didn't or won't raise taxes. It says that he cut withholding.

 

That was in regard to how the tax cut got into your pocket, in contrast to cutting a you check. There was a new tax credit created (the "making work pay" tax credit, mentioned three paragraphs from the end), and the withholding was changed accordingly so you wouldn't have to wait until you got your refund to have it.

 

http://taxes.about.com/od/deductionscredits/a/making_work_pay.htm

[Pangloss]

There were a number of new tax credits instituted. There's a $7,500 one for electric vehicles, and I believe another big one for college tuition.

 

None of this belies a statement that he might raise taxes in the future.

[jryan]

There were a number of new tax credits instituted. There's a $7,500 one for electric vehicles, and I believe another big one for college tuition.

 

None of this belies a statement that he might raise taxes in the future.

 

 

 

Well, and tax incentives are iffy to categorize as a "tax cut". Once upon a time they were categorized as incentives.

 

I think that is why Obama has a problem "convincing" America that he cut taxes. A $10/paycheck tax reduction (or whatever is comes to) is hard to notice even if you aren't one of the many Americans who has seen little or no growth in their take home pay for two years. Likewise, unless you were one of the small minority that bought a house, or a car you likely didn't enjoy any of those tax incentives either.

 

And spending in general was raised more than taxes were cut, so in the final accounting all he did was spend somewhat less of of the taxes from some of us.

Edited October 28, 2010 by jryan

[jryan]

A final post on this because I think what I have is the definitive bit of evidence on the Bush -vs- Obama budget claims that are swirling around.

 

First: Bush never signed a FY2009 budget. What he signed was a continuance. Here is a WaPo article on off shore drilling that started my search..

 

The point of interest is in the second paragraph: "Democrats said they gave in to White House demands rather than risk a showdown over the "continuing resolution" Congress must pass to fund the federal government through March."

 

So Bush signed the continuance into law. But what happened to the FY2009 budget? Well...

 

Second: The FY2009 Omnibus bill was introduced into Congress by Democrat David Obey on February 23rd, 2009 and signed into law by President Obama on March 11th 2009.

 

But that isn't all. I kept looking and found something else interesting...

 

Third: The $1.41 trillion debt in 2009 was calculated from the March 2009 budget

 

 

Conclusion: The 2009 budget was entirely under the watch of President Obama and the Democrats in the House and Senate. So did the Obama administration just forget that the 2009 budget was theirs?

[bascule]

A final post on this because I think what I have is the definitive bit of evidence on the Bush -vs- Obama budget claims that are swirling around.

 

First: Bush never signed a FY2009 budget. What he signed was a continuance. Here is a WaPo article on off shore drilling that started my search..

 

The point of interest is in the second paragraph: "Democrats said they gave in to White House demands rather than risk a showdown over the "continuing resolution" Congress must pass to fund the federal government through March."

 

So Bush signed the continuance into law. But what happened to the FY2009 budget? Well...

 

Second: The FY2009 Omnibus bill was introduced into Congress by Democrat David Obey on February 23rd, 2009 and signed into law by President Obama on March 11th 2009.

 

But that isn't all. I kept looking and found something else interesting...

 

Third: The $1.41 trillion debt in 2009 was calculated from the March 2009 budget

 

 

Conclusion: The 2009 budget was entirely under the watch of President Obama and the Democrats in the House and Senate. So did the Obama administration just forget that the 2009 budget was theirs?

 

From what I can deduce from the Wikipedia article:

 

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2009_United_States_federal_budget

 

Proposed spending: $3.107 trillion

Actual tax revenue: $2.1 trillion

Defecit after proposed spending: $1 trillion

Actual deficit: $1.4 trillion

Actual spending: (?) $3.5 trillion

 

So I'll conceed that the real budget added $400 billion on top of the original budget proposed by Bush. However, supposedly that budget omits the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, which Obama supposedly included. If anyone can provide a definitive answer to this I'd certainly be interested in how much actual money the Obama administration spent on top of the budget proposed by Bush.

Edited October 30, 2010 by bascule

[Pangloss]

Conclusion: The 2009 budget was entirely under the watch of President Obama and the Democrats in the House and Senate.

 

That was an interesting set of facts that I'd not heard before. I think Bascule's response is the correct perspective (IMO), but your point does add a bit more complexity to the picture. Thanks for bringing it up.

[bascule]

That was an interesting set of facts that I'd not heard before. I think Bascule's response is the correct perspective (IMO), but your point does add a bit more complexity to the picture. Thanks for bringing it up.

 

To use an allusion to what I do for a living, jryan doesn't understand the difference between architecture and ops. You can't blame the ops people if the system was designed wrong, even though it's their responsibility to keep the system running. When Obama got his chance to be in charge of a budget, he did the proper capacity planning and the deficit went down.

 

--

 

In other news, Jon Stewart gave an awesome speech at the Rally to Restore Sanity. The entire thing was littered with some excellent points. Some of the major themes were that the idea that Americans are too politically polarized to work together to accomplish things is silly and we do this every day in our day-to-day lives so it's ridiculous that problems can't be resolved in Washington. There was lots of talk about the detremental effect that 24 hour cable news networks are having on this country (with an implicit nod to Fox) but that they aren't directly responsible to our problems, they only serve to distort our views about other Americans and contribute to the polarization.

 

It's great stuff and I recommend you all watch it as soon as clips of it become available.

[Pangloss]

I enjoyed his rant at the end as well. It reminded me of John Galt's speech at the end of Atlas Shrugged (though mercifully shorter).

[bascule]

I enjoyed his rant at the end as well. It reminded me of John Galt's speech at the end of Atlas Shrugged (though mercifully shorter).

 

I don't know what to make of that comparison, except I actually enjoyed Jon Stewart's speech greatly and thought the themes were something even you could relate to. John Galt's speech on the other hand, well like pretty much everyone I've known who's read that book my reaction is "WTF is this and how long does it go on?" then I proceeded to skip the next 30 pages or so.

[Pangloss]

Lol, true enough. Francisco's speech earlier about the root of money might be more appropriate. I don't mean to suggest a direct ideological comparison, just a suggestion of its degree of political significance. I think it will be downplayed, especially by the insulted talking heads in the media, but I think it played very well with the people, and I think maybe it has some serious staying power.

 

I think the best line was something like "If everyone is shouting, we can't hear anything."

[Pangloss]

The Gallup poll out today suggests that it's not about putting Republicans back in charge, it's about throwing out people in power. I've started a new thread on the subject here.